Note: A preview from my upcoming autobiography, Life’s Too Short to Smoke Cheap Cigars (Or to Drink Cheap Whiskey.)
Bull!
Most folks these days don’t think about cattle much. Our increasingly urbanized populace knows, vaguely, that beef and dairy products come from cattle. They may have a half-way decent mental image of what most cattle look like – big, boxy critters, basically a perambulating digestive system with beef mounted around the periphery, a head on one end and a big bag for producing milk and cheeses on the other. There are other things that go on at the end across from the head, things which are best not discussed in polite company. That will not, of course, prevent me from discussing them here.
But what these urban and suburban dwellers don’t understand is the bovine species’ largely unsuspected and malicious intelligence, nor how quickly they can turn that malice into action. But when I was a young fellow, back in Allamakee County, in the heart of northeast Iowa’s dairy country, we understood it all too well.
As for the city-dweller’s misconceptions of the nature of cows, this is something I learned from the first good friend I ever had who hailed from a big city – something that had to wait until I joined the Army.
Fort Dix, New Jersey – sometime in the early Eighties
It was a hot, sweaty, humid day at Fort Dix, New Jersey – the exact wrong sort of day to be suffering through an Army Basic Training field exercise.
Not that there is a right sort of day to be suffering through an Army Basic Training field exercise.
At the end of a “lane” that featured lots of pyrotechnics and tear gas, we were given five minutes to rest and recover before the next bit of training. The moment the Drill Sergeant yelled “Fall out,” I staggered to a tree and crashed to the ground under the shading branches.
My buddy, a skinny city kid from Philadelphia, dropped down to the sandy ground beside me, groaning. “I think I cracked a rib,” he complained. “Damn grenade simulator went off right behind me. Knocked me right over. Think I hit a rock when I went down.” He rubbed his ribs. “Man, imagine if this was real. I mean, real people shooting real shit at us. Can you imagine that? Scare the crap out of me, I tell you that.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I replied, with big-tough-country-kid nonchalance. “I’ve faced stuff more frightening that bullets and grenades.”
“The hell you say,” my buddy said. “What’s scarier than bullets and grenades?”
“Cows.”
Back in Allamakee County
The Old Man had raised Black Angus cattle for many years but had mostly foregone farming by the time I was old enough to wander around much on my own. Black Angus cattle are compact, even-tempered beasts, but are still big enough and unpredictable enough to cause problems, but all in all, Dad didn’t have too much trouble with them.
Later, though, his timbered acreage in Allamakee County was surrounded by dairy farms, the favored breed for which in those days were Holsteins – big cattle, heavy, sometimes bad-tempered. Most of my friends’ families were involved in the dairy business to some extent or another, and the neighbor’s cattle had the uncanny ability to break fences and would frequently wander onto our property, at which point it became my job to run them off.
I once broached the subject of using my .30-30 to run them instead into the big freezer in the workshop but was rebuffed with a loud roar.
Instead, I experimented with a few other means of chasing errant bovines off the Clark property. One of my early efforts involved an old fiberglass recurve bow and blunt arrows, which I bounced off bovine rib cages and hindquarters. This had less than positive results, either merely annoying the cattle or angering them. After spending half an hour about twenty feet up a big box-elder tree one afternoon with four or five angry cows milling about beneath, I gave up on the archery solution.
We finally settled on light skeet loads of #9 shot from a 12 gauge, delivered from about 20-30 yards. The light shot warmed the cows’ hindquarters without penetrating the skin, and that usually moved the cows along – except for the odd instance that saw the Old Man or myself running around the flat ground across the creek with a few cows in pursuit.
Holsteins were cows to watch out for. But there was one local bovine, not a cow as such but most emphatically a bull, the very thought of whom struck terror into the hearts of all the local kids.
A Local Legend
This huge Holstein bull lived on one of the farms belonging to the expansive Duffy clan. Unfortunately, the farm in question lay in a pleasant little valley through which ran the pleasant little waterway of Waterloo Creek, in which swam a pleasant little population of pleasant little trout. The bull maintained a constant vigil of what he thought of as his personal stretch of Waterloo Creek. His zeal in pursuing trespassers made him a constant problem for those of us with a passion for fishing; his evil disposition, vast size and uncanny deviousness made him dangerous for even his owner. The bull was a killer, and only the board full of blue ribbons and large sums he earned his owner in stud fees had preserved him to this point. His back was as broad as a ’69 Cadillac, his head larger than a twenty-gallon washtub topped by needle-tipped horns. His eyes glittered red and angry, full of hate for any moving object that was not one of his cows.
This bull was notorious enough, in fact, that all the local folk had unanimously given him a name. He had some long, fancy pedigree name that nobody knew or cared about; instead, he was known locally as The Antichrist.
My first encounter with The Antichrist occurred when I was about fifteen. I was mooching around in the Waterloo Creek valley looking over some favored fishing spots. There was a beautiful big pool in a pasture on the back reaches of one of the Duffy farms that always held fat brown trout.
I was just climbing over the fence when I heard a strangled bellow. I froze in place, the top strand of barbed wire uncomfortably close to some delicate real estate and looked over to the trees along the creek.
There stood The Antichrist, a massive, menacing presence. He lifted a front hoof and dropped it. He let out a snort that could as easily come from some massive, primeval monster.
I disengaged from the fence and stole quietly away. No amount of trout was worth chancing The Antichrist. Several of my friends had already had close calls with him, and I had no desire to repeat their experiences.
But the closest call we ever had with The Antichrist happened two or three years later and involved my friend Jon’s big-city cousin Albert and a time-honored country kid tradition: A snipe hunt.
Now most folks nowadays wouldn’t fall for this stunt. Even the most urbane of urban dwellers have heard of this old trick, I suspect in part because of this Internet thing all the kids are doing these days. But back in the late Seventies, the Internets weren’t even a gleam in Al Gore’s eyes yet, and precautionary information traveled more slowly.
So, when my buddy Jon’s cousin Albert was coming to visit from Chicago, we had no trouble selling him on the exciting adventure of a nighttime snipe hunt. Albert’s family were staying with Jon’s aunt and uncle in town, but Albert had spent quite a bit of time hanging out with us out in the boonies, and was taking rather enthusiastically to fishing, camping and woods-bumming; in other words, a typical summer.
We set the date for our snipe hunt on a warm July weekend. Albert’s folks dropped him off at the Hooper place that Saturday afternoon. I was already in residence; Jon and I had been plotting for two hours before Albert showed up. All was in readiness.
Jon had through mysterious means obtained a large burlap sack, big enough to contain a small elephant. I had a small, cheap plastic flashlight. The hill we chose for the exercise contained some of the nastiest brush to be found in northeast Iowa – acres of blackberry brambles, sumac thickets, and towering oaks that blocked out the sun even on the brightest of days; the evening coming promised only the thinnest of sliver moons to light the forest. Perfect!
The day ended, and after supper the three of us were standing in the Hooper barnyard planning strategy.
“OK, since you’re new, Albert,” Jon was saying, “You’ll have to stand in the brush and hold the sack. The thing is, you can’t shoot at night, so what we’ll do is to loop around up to the top of the hill and sort of drive the snipe down to you. You stand and hold the sack and catch the snipe as they come a-runnin’ down the hill.”
“Won’t they fly?” Albert wanted to know.
“Nope.” I assured him. “Snipes only fly in daylight. They’d rather run after dark, that way they don’t run into trees and such.”
Albert looked around at the gathering gloom.
“Are you sure?” he quavered.
“Hey!” Jon protested, using a phrase that foretold unspeakable horror to anyone who knew Jon and I better. “Trust us!”
We drove out to a quiet stretch of country road. “Up there,” Jon indicated one particularly large, dark hillside covered with hardwood timber. “That’s where were going.”
We climbed out of The Van, hopped a barbed wire fence, and headed up the hill. It was a good mile from the road that we placed Albert, holding his sack, on the edge of a blackberry thicket.
“We’ll have to take the flashlight, Albert.” Jon informed our victim. “We’ll need it to see our way up to the top.”
“Uh, ok….” Albert sounded doubtful. There under the trees it was darker than a crow’s wing in a pile of coal on a dark night. We left Albert holding the bag, and aided by the anemic flashlight beam, trooped on up the hill.
Jon and I had forgotten one crucial detail about this hillside, where this evening there grazed a herd of Holstein cattle. We had neglected to consider who owned this hill overlooking the Waterloo Creek valley.
Once we were out of earshot of Albert’s stand, we could no longer contain our glee at his predicament.
“Now,” Jon was telling me, “we can loop around over the top of the hill and down the other side, and then we’ll follow the road back to The Van. We can go into town and have something to eat. We’ll go back and get old Albert about 2AM, hawhawhawhaw!!”
“Hawhawhawhaw!!” I replied. “I can’t wait to see the look on his face after four hours in those woods!! This is gonna be great!!”
We’d forgotten about the lynchpin of the Duffy dairy herd.
“Hawhawhawhaw!” Jon and I laughed our way through the woods, up the hill to the meadow on the top.
As Jon and I entered the open meadow at the top of the hill, we were still filled with mirth. We had forgotten that his father was grazing his cattle in the high meadow.
A deep, rolling snort echoed across the dark meadow. We strained to see the source of the sound; even in the open it was too dark to see much of anything.
“Haw?” Jon querulously asked the darkness.
Somewhere out in the darkness, The Antichrist stomped one foot. A tremor went through the ground beneath our feet; several branches fell from the trees behind us. Jon looked at me, his eyes wide with terror.
“It’s The Antichrist!” Jon shouted at me. “I forgot about him!”
“What should we do?” I shouted back.
“RUN!!!” Jon screeched.
The thunder of hoofbeats was already drumming in the dark, getting louder by the second.
To say that we ran for our lives is the grossest of understatements. We flew down that hill. We crashed through thickets in which a bulldozer would have helplessly bogged down. We ran over and snapped off saplings four and five inches thick, without notice. About one-third of the way down was a ravine; on the way up we’d been required to climb carefully down one side and scramble up the other. On the way down, both of us leaped the 20-foot chasm without missing a stride. Behind us was the ever-present thunder of hooves, slowly gaining on us; The Antichrist plowed a 6-foot wide swath through the trees; the farmer who owned the place in fact gained a full winter’s worth of firewood from the felled timber.
At one point during our headlong flight, dimly in the recesses of my subconscious, I recalled that we’d left Albert on the edge of a thicket nearby. He must have heard our headlong rush to escape a ton of pounding, snorting death; he called out to us.
“Are there any snipe, guys? Are the snipe coming?” I had a sudden flashed mental image of Albert standing, holding his sack, unaware of the onrushing Death in the darkness.
“RUN!” I shouted at Albert.
“What? Why?” he shouted back.
“BULL!” both Jon and I bellowed at once.
Albert had been wearing new white sneakers. As I flashed past Albert’s stand, I saw only a glimpse of two white sneakers and two huge, white eyes staring. The hoofbeats were getting closer; I reached deep inside myself, pulled out a little bit of extra energy from some unknown place, and put on some speed.
The pounding behind me had doubled somehow; then, suddenly, I was passed in the dark by a flying pair of white sneakers.
It seems Albert had been a varsity sprinter on his Chicago school’s track team. In his big-city ignorance of country ways, he didn’t realize how the ability to run like the very wind was frequently of great use in our hunting, fishing and camping adventures. At least not until the thundering sound of The Antichrist’s charge reached his ears. The very air crackled as Albert ran past us; a faint smell of ozone followed his flight. Jon and I homed in on the trail of acrid odor and followed it all the way back to the road where Jon’s van was parked, where we easily cleared the 3-strand barbed wire with single, effortless arching leaps.
The Antichrist skidded to a stop, frustrated by the barbed wire, his intent of reducing us to minor portions of the landscape deterred. We managed to halt our flight about 50 feet from the fence; the three of us turned to see The Antichrists’ beady, hateful eyes glittering at us in the faint glow of the moonlight. The bull casually lowered his head, scored out a foot-long sliver from a wooden fencepost with one horn, and let out one more mighty snort which blew Albert’s hat off; then he slowly turned, and ponderously made his way off into the darkness, towards his waiting cows.
Albert bent over suddenly. Jon grabbed for his arm, fearing he was fainting from terror. I grabbed his other arm; Albert was shaking uncontrollably. We both shook him, hoping to break him loose from whatever horror assailed him.
“Ha! Ha! HAHAHAHAHAA!!!! Albert was laughing! Not just laughing but laughing uproariously! Not a terrified, hysterical laugh, but a wild, carefree laugh, as one who’s just witnessed what was very possibly the greatest act of comedy he’d ever see in his life.
“You guys…” he panted, when he finally regained the ability to speak, “you guys, you told me…”
“What?” Jon demanded. “What did we tell you?”
“You told me it was the most exciting hunting there was!” Albert giggled. “I guess you sure showed me! It was sure exciting after all, it sure was!” Albert collapsed into the dust of the graveled road, clutching his sides.
Over Albert’s convulsing form, Jon and I looked at each other. We were witnesses to a Phenomenon; one we’d never expected. Despite all his citified manners, despite his pitiful lack of knowledge of fishing, shooting, hunting, tanning hides, running a trapline, or pretty much anything useful, Albert had the one quality that would gain him acceptance faster than any.
Albert was a good sport.
In time, he learned the rest.
Back at Fort Dix
“Cows,” my old Army buddy scoffed. “The hell you say. Ain’t nobody afraid of cows.”
Nearby, a kid from upstate New York suddenly popped upright. “Cows? Where?”
Another guy, this one from rural Wyoming, snapped out of a doze. “Cows? I don’t want to get mixed up with cows. They’ll have calves this time of year. They get mean when they have calves.”
A third kid, this one from central Missouri, chimed in. “Cows, oh, man, this is bad enough already without a bunch of damn cows wandering around.”
“Come on,” my big-city buddy replied to us all. “You’re all a bunch of big corn-fed farm boys, and you’re telling me you’re afraid of cows?”
“Not afraid, so much,” the guy from Wyoming said. We all knew he came from a long line of ranchers. “Just real, real cautious.”
I could tell my big-city buddy didn’t believe us. Most folks these days don’t think about cattle much. But even at the thought, my head came up automatically, scanning the open woods around us, not for Soviet soldiers, armored vehicle or even drill sergeants, but for cows.
As It Stands Today…
I’m still cautious around cows.
The stretches of Colorado landscape where I do my woods-bumming these days is frequently shared with cattle. These are beef cattle, usually Herefords or the Hereford-Angus crosses known as black baldies. These are reasonably tolerant cattle, and the fact that they spend summers on open range makes them cautious themselves and prone to staying away from people.
Also, bulls these days are mostly kept confined; AI (no, not that AI – Artificial Insemination) has replaced the need for most ranchers and farmers to herd a bull with their cows. But occasionally, usually in the distance, I can hear the ringing bellow of a bull. It’s a weirdly primal sound, one that still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
Most of the folks hereabouts, though, fish and hike unmolested by cows, and so miss out on the chance to amass tales of adventure. They really don’t know what they’re missing.
Comments
204 responses to “Allamakee County Chronicles VI: Bull!”
Great Story.
My Dad and Uncle were vaccinating and castrating some calves. I was maybe 10 at the time. There was 1 that had been lost the year before, that they decided could be a bull instead of a steer, but was going to still need vaccinating.
All were gathered in the barn. My job was to guard the space between the one piece of equipment in the barn and the wall, to keep the small calves from escaping their fate. 1 by 1 the little guys were taken care of and release into the field. The big guy saw what was going on and wan’t having a part of it. He decided I was not something to worry about. He charged thru the space, I flattened against the wall, he lept the back fence of the barn.
My Mom thought that I had been trampled, but I was fine. My Dad could see what happened and said he had never seen something make themselves so thin.
They decided to let him get a disease.
I remember the summers being sent out to the cousin’s farm for a week or two when I was a kid. Getting to feed the animals sure sounds fun the first time you hear about it (and think of petting zoos and the like). It’s not until you’re hauling a bucket of food up a hill to try for a handful of animals that you start to realize this isn’t fun. Then you get to learn why you always pour the food away from you, and over the fence, instead of being on the same side of the fence as the animals and the food.
For reference, usually there were 2-4 cows, 4-5 hogs, and 10-15 sheep.
Don’t go barefoot !
Excellent story, Animal.
I dig your writing style.
I’m having an aggravating day at work, but this story cheered me up a bit.
Thanks Animal.
Good read; made me want to listen to Jerry Closer.
Clower, dang it. Stupid auto correct.
Years ago when my dad first moved down to the family land in the ‘Bama all the old folks were excited that the line was coming back to the family place and would call him up for pretty much any reason. One night, his cousin (first cousin, once removed of his dad, my grandfather) calls him up to say that MacLeod had gotten loose, and would he please come and help her get him back in the fence. She was a spinster living with her elderly father. She was no spring chicken herself, and being independently middle-class and a little, uh, eccentric meant she did stuff like buy an Angus bull as a pet. Just the one bull. No cows. So MacLeod was what you’d call perpetually frustrated. My dad snapped an axle trying to drive MacLeod back into the yard, but, he explained, there was no way in hell he was getting out of that damn truck while that bull was loose.
I laughed, Mr Animal, I could identify with the conversation even without never having participated. Our story was to have the hunter shine his flash light into the bag so the snipe would run in.
We had cows but we had the inseminator on speed dial, that is “One Long” on the crank phone so the local operator would connect us, as the occasion arose. I think it was 7 bucks, no bull, for the service man come out and take care of business.
Great story, always enjoy learning that other kids had similar experiences. Good that some things haven’t changed, too much. Do you think this stuff still exists for farm kids? Sure doesn’t seem to any of those things happening in my neighborhood. Cell phones have captured any imagination that kids used have. Thanks
Cell phones have captured any imagination that kids used have.
sadly, can confirm.
There is a service-center/truck-plaza about 6 miles from my house by the freeway. You can hit the McDonalds on a Saturday afternoon and see the “middle-class” teenagers from the nearby housing development behind the counter that are barely functional serving burgers to teenagers in bluejeans and boots that drove up in a beat up truck. The farm kids have cell phones. They are on the phone coordinating all the things that need to get done on the farm before supper time.
That’s not really new. It was much the same with us and townie kids when I was a young fella.
Ole was a dairy farmer and decided he wanted to raise his own cows instead of buying them. Bulls were really expensive though and he ended up buying a cross-eyed bull on the cheap.
After a couple of months though, the bull hadn’t impregnated any of his cows. He called in the vet and told him all about it. The vet said, “well Ole, the problem is that the bull is cross eyed and that prevents him from mounting the cows”. Ole asked him if there was anything he could do. The vet told him that he could fix it for $2000. Ole wasn’t happy, but he said sure. The vet took out a six foot length of pipe and shoved it into the bull’s rectum then started blowing and blowing. Sure enough after about 10 minutes Ole heard a big POP and the bull’s eyes were normal.
Sure enough, the bull mounted a dozen cows and Ole’s heard started having calves. Ole was really happy.
Next spring came and one day Ole noticed the bull’s eyes were back to being cross-eyed. He wasn’t happy and he sure didn’t want to spend another $2000 on the vet. So Ole got his own pipe and had his hired man Sven hold the bull while he stuck the pipe in the bull’s ass and started blowing.
Ole blew for 20 minutes and nothing happened. Finally red faced, he told Sven to give it a try. First thing Sven did was pull the pipe out of the bull’s ass and reverse it. As Sven was getting ready to blow into the pipes, a disgusted Ole shouted “What are you doing Sven?”
Sven said “well I didn’t want to put my lips on the pipe with all your slobber on it”
Poor Leena.
I didn’t really live in the country where knowledge of cows or bulls was commonplace. I don’t think anyone in my high school graduating class could tell a Hereford from an Angus. We lived in a beach town that just happened to have *one* farm with some cattle, situated a couple of miles from the shore right off of old Route 1 (what is known as Rural Route 1 or 1A), the first major road in the U.S. that meanders along the New England coastline.
One night my idiot fiends decided cow-tipping was in order, so a group of them hopped the fence (I waited with some of the girls at the car!) and got up to a cow and started to “put their backs into it” when they heard the snort. It’s amazing how even lacking all knowledge of cows, those primal sounds and primate instincts kick in. I was leaning on the hood trying to ‘pitch some woo’ when I heard the scream: “BULLLLLL!!!!!” I’m certain it was all guys over the fence, but the voice sounded high-pitched enough to be feminine. They came hauling ass and barely made it over in time. We all laughed about it later over (more) beers, but man, in retrospect, someone could have gotten seriously hurt. Instead, it was just bruised egos, some manure on the shoes, and a funny memory.
Hadn’t thought about that in decades until I read this.
Thanks, Animal.
It never fails – whenever a townie takes it in his head to try “cow-tipping” it never works out well for them. Sometimes they get kicked, sometimes they just get chased out of the pasture – but the cow never, ever ends up tipped.
Trump operating in swing states
AZ
ME
MN
NH
NM
NV
MN Metro areas will carry the state blue. Can’t be helped, the numbers just aren’t there. He does have the benefit of Ilhan though, I’m guessing enough metros may want to move away from her. The other MN folks know better’n me though
He came shockingly close last time. I guess we’ll find out if the soccer moms are more freaked out about Illy and the Clowns than by DT.
Maine? I don’t think the demographics are there. yeah it’s the oldest state but those are Masshole retirees.
My hope – DT wins the popular vote. Because of their National Popular Vote law, it would mean California’s 55 electoral votes would have to go to him.
National Popular Vote doesn’t take effect until there are enough states to hit 270 electoral votes.
My hope – DT wins the popular vote.
Because that would kill off this stupid NPV proposal.
Until the next time the Popular Vote President is denied victory!
We can’t let the California Graveyard vote be marginalized!
And let’s not forget the non-citizen vote!
I’ve had to shoot over a cow’s head on several occasions to change their trajectory.
Fuck cows! Any animal that doesn’t bother cleaning its own shit off itself, deserves to be eaten.
what is the proper penalty for polygamy, Utah?
Utah has enacted tough penalties for polygamy in recent years, in a bid to move past the state’s complicated history with the practice. But a state senator now wants to reverse the crackdown and make polygamy a low-level offense on par with a traffic ticket.
Because freedom isn’t the goal, policy and policing will always be screwball.
Excellent story.
Where I grew up it was beef cattle, and the most common thing seemed to be Angus cows with a Brahma bull. Some of them were quite chill, but some weren’t
very similar solution as the Santa Gertrudis
I hate when I misplace a formula I derived before.
The loan repayment formulas always seem to be presented to determine the size of the payment based upon a known number of cycles. This is not what I need, since the bank gives me that as the minimum. I always want a formula to determine how many payments it would take if I changed the amount payed. So I have to take the classic formula and solve for n. Anyone got the free time to check my work?
P=Payment
r=rate per period
PV=Present Value
n=number of periods
P = (r(pv))/(1-(1+r)^-n)
P*(1-(1+r)^-n) = r(PV)
(r(PV))/P = 1 – (1+r)^-n
(r(PV))/P – 1 = -((1+r)^-n)
-(r(PV))/P +1 = (1+r)^-n
ln(-(r(PV))/P +1) = -n(ln(1+r))
ln(-(r(PV))/P +1)/ln(1+r) = -n
-1*ln(-(r(PV))/P +1)/ln(1+r) = n
I was told there would be no math.
Oops, where it reads (r(PV))/P +1 it should be ((r(PV))/P)+1, the +1 isn’t on the denominator.
What organic question does the financial solution give you? How does it change your life?
It tells me when my mortgage will be paid off if I change the repayment rate.
right: no one missed that
But how does it matter? What changed from when you took on the mortgage until now that matters or that needs fixing?
I misplaced my worksheet.
There’s no end of websites with amortization calculators.
And? You trust some script written by a first year intern?
More than a spreadsheet put together by me. Or you.
Oops, where it reads (r(PV))/P +1 it should be ((r(PV))/P)+1
I had the parentheses correct in the spreadsheet.
I cheat. I use a standard mortgage calendar online. I put in my current balance and number of months left on the mortgage. This should calculate my current payment. Then I just keep shortening the time scale and watching the payment go up. When I hit the payment that I am interested in, I have an idea of how many payments would be left.
Too much work.
As opposed to what you’re doing now.
Once the formula is correct, I don’t need to do anything.
I’m hinting that this is probably a smaller part of the big picture that just seems important. If you’ve got a 15-year mortgage at a competitive rate, that’s the most bang for buck you can get out of your worries.
Another notion is whether you lock your extra cash into the mortgage. If you bank your extra savings in some other conservative investment, on payoff day you will be in pretty much the same place, only you will have had choices with your money in the meanwhile should a special investment or business opportunity come along or some significant, unavoidable, and unbudgeted obligation arise. In other words, you wouldn’t need an equity loan just to get at your own cash.
There’s a reason I stopped paying extra on the mortgage. The interest rate is low enough that I’ll (more likely) get a larger return by investing the extra. Also, having a decent balance in an account is a nice cushion for other things.
I’m getting rid of my debts. I want that day when I can stand there and say “I am debt-free.” That has been my financial objective since graduation.
I’m trying to do the same. I’m close enough on the house that I could pay it off out of savings, but be cash poor for a few months. I want to crush my car payments, but their at 0% so there is no benefit to it since i’m keeping them for >150K miles.
no benefit
I know what you mean, and we may have kicked this around before, but there is one benefit: operating on a cash basis activates the pain centers of the brain and leads to keener decisions elsewhere. Fear raises the consciousness and puts emotional ledgers in balance.
If I tell you that a fire ant is going to bite you on the first of the month for the next 48 months, you shake it off as a distant annoyance; if I tell you 48 fire ants are going to bite you now, you will walk wider of the mound. . . and you will keenly note all the other things you might have stepped in while you are navigating.
That is a spectacular analogy.
I want to crush my car payments, but their at 0%
Its still debt, even if you have effectively agreed to a prepayment penalty equal to 100% of the interest. That interest is still in there, even if its not stated.
there is no benefit to it
Not with that prepayment penalty, there isn’t.
** curtsy **
Don’t you have Bama blood? It’s thought that fire ants arrived via boat at Mobile.
Yep, a bunch of Bamas from Wilsonville and thereabouts, but my great-grandfather decamped to Newton, TX when he retired, which is where I learned about fire ants, why they’re called fire ants, and why you should not stand around large, interesting mounds that break apart real good when you whack them with a stick.
No one pounds that drum louder than I do: good luck.
But don’t make financial decisions for anything other than financial reasons: just because the mortgage will get that money eventually is no reason to tie it up with them now.
Shit, if I stop saving, I could close out the mortgage in two years, or even twenty months if I go crazy.
I’m not going to do that.
(My house was cheap – as houses go)
You need six months of expenses on hand at all time, so don’t get too close to the bone.
I’m excited for you. Go crazy: put it in savings until you have what you need, then write the check to pay off the mortgage when you have it. Wins both ways and is flexible.
My expenses are too high. I’m spending too much on something. I’m going to have to review my purchases for the past couple of months and figure out what to make myself stop doing.
review my purchases
exactly; sane and simple, but most folks won’t do it
I don’t use this app myself, but many like this: https://www.everydollar.com/budget-app
TW: associated with Dave Ramsey
I have spreadsheets, I’ll work it out.
Easy, just start making extra payments on the principal, Make three extra payments, for example, pay the principal on payment 5/6/7 with the full payment due, #4. Subtract 3 payments from the bottom end. Now your next payment will be #8, you saved the interest on 5/6/7. I paid off my 30 years mortgage in 8 years, changed my whole life around.
Those front payments are the heaviest on interest but you already know that.
It’s easier for me to do the math than to regard this lump of $1,200 as payments number XY&Z. It’s just how my brain is wired.
Math in public. You’re brave
I need to get my brain in focus, and math is as far from all the squishy issues that have been stressing me as I can get. Either I solved it correctly, or I did not.
I can’t even.
Excel has an amortization template built in, which is set up to allow you to adjust the monthly payment either for every month at once or on an individual monthly basis, the formula for calculating n (if you don’t trust excel) is N= (ln(FV/PV))/(ln(1+r)) (natural log of (Future Value divided by Present Value) divided by natural log of (1 + the monthly periodic rate). Excel’s built in template works fine though, and I do these calculations regularly.
lol, I just realized I gave you the formula for the other direction (oeriods till you reach x value increasing, which fall apart since FV= 0 on a payoff):
The loan payoff equation is N = (-log(1- r * PV / P)) / log (1 +r). N represents the number of payments you must make, and r is the interest rate. PV is the amount presently owed and P is the payment.
the excel formula (in case you want to use excel but do not trust the template is -NPer(Rate,PMT,PV,FV,Type)
The Type tells it the ‘type’ ie if loan payment is due at the end of the period put in 1, or beginning of the period 0
I’m just getting to this, but that looks correct (with the usual rules that multiplication comes before addition, your original equation is OK, too)>
I’m still cautious around cows.
Growing up beef cattle country, I can confirm.
Also, bulls these days are mostly kept confined; AI (no, not that AI – Artificial Insemination) has replaced the need for most ranchers and farmers to herd a bull with their cows.
The ranchers around us would keep the bulls separately penned until they were needed, and then put them in with the cows. One huge ranch (over 500,000 acres) had a sizable longhorn herd, with any number of bulls. Watching the cowboys work the longhorn bulls was always interesting. They are big, and surprisingly non-aggressive, for bulls. Meaning they weren’t homicidal sociopaths, but more short-tempered and grouchy.
Great tale Animal, I remember snipe hunting with my Uncles as a kid, good times!
Boy Scouts here. With the extra fun of it not being “allowed ” on our camping trips. In retrospect, I’m sure the scoutmasters knew all about it. Teenage boys aren’t noted for their stealth.
They Think they are stealthy, really just awkward, bumbling morons,
Then they get a job,
We put a kid into full fledged shock with a snipe hunt one time. After he went to the emergency room, they got banned.
The scoutmasters knew exactly what the idiots in their charge were doing. We didn’t want to stop them, we wanted plausible deniability.
+1 100 yd spool of shore line
“Go get the nuts off of the DCA.” (The DC-A in Navy lingo is the Assistant Damage Control Officer. Sending new boot to that specific gentleman to request the “nuts off of the DCA” is usually good for a laugh for everybody involved, no matter the temperament of the DCA himself, really.)
A box of ST1s (ST-ONES) in Marine artillery will usually have some poor boot carrying a large, heavy box of rocks for longer than you would think.
Thanks Animal
I know someone who owns a few bison because he has too much money and a wife that thinks it’s neat. He frequently states that he’s never owned an animal that wanted to kill him so badly.
My uncle was a dairy farmer. I’m not enamored of cows in general. They’re only exceeded in stupidity by sheep and they’re far more capable of killing you than your average ewe.
I lived on a cattle ranch as a wee gold nugget. I went into the infantry after college because it was easier and safer.
The balls on these people.
I hope Amazon shuts that shit down. If they don’t, it’s never going to end.
“If the sea levels rise, HQ3 will be on a floating arcology.”
As before, the employees protesting this month want a complete end to the use of fossil fuels, not just carbon offsets.
“To maintain a viable company, we would need to offset the increased cost of our electricity usage with 50% pay cuts. Please sign here to volunteer.”
“Amazon is committed to a healthy planet and a clean, safe environment. To help offset the carbon footprint of our warehouses, in cooperation with our associates, Amazon pledges to match the first $300 of each post-tax contribution from each of our hourly warehouse partners. In order to facilitate the donation process, Amazon will deduct a portion specified by interested partners from each paycheck automatically. See your human resources supervisor for more information.”
“If you think you’re smarter than me, go start your own business. Otherwise, shut the fuck up and do your job.”
Are there any good books on Reagan’s treatment of the air traffic controllers strike I can recommend to Jeff Bezos?
The appropriate response is to say something along the lines of, “That’s nice. Do it on your break or don’t come back.” Amazon didn’t go from a mom & pop sprout farm to a massive e-tailer overnight, which means most of these people knew damn well what Amazon’s “carbon footprint” was when they needed the check. If they really mean business, they should quit and say that it’s for environmental reasons. This is just spoiled children bitching because they want another popsicle and they don’t think dad will really stop the car.
No, the appropriate response is “you’re fired”. They are actively denigrating their employer to the press. That should have consequences (it does everywhere I have worked).
Well, yeah, that really ought to be the response. It’s stunning to me that there are companies that would tolerate this kind of thing for any amount of time whatsoever. I’ve never worked anywhere where this wouldn’t result in my immediate termination.
I’ve found it’s easier to find an employer I admire than it is to change one I don’t. Why don’t they just fuck off?
They are trying to extort money from Amazon. Why fuck off when you can whine and make trouble and get money?
The good news is that the big protest the Somali employees tried to organize in Minnesoda only ended up with 15 actual workers joining the protest. The rest were smart enough to realize that they were getting paid pretty good for warehouse work and stayed on the job.
If you read the local rags, though, you had no idea that the protest fizzled so badly.
“the employees protesting this month want a complete end to the use of fossil fuels”
How, exactly? Seriously, those employees are just too dumb to be working for your company.
I presume then that the story reports that these employees all arrived at work on their bicycles, right? RIGHT?!? They themselves didn’t use any of these awful, evil fossil fuels that they’re so concerned about AMAZON stopping using, yes??
“the employees protesting this month want a complete end to the use of fossil fuels, not just carbon offsets.”
So, they want to be unemployed? That should be easy enough to arrange.
Well this post is just a bunch of bull. //jk
Animal didn’t steer us wrong.
The balls on that guy . . . .
Getting horny, huh?
You should all stop following the herd.
It was a simple misteak.
I knew it would put you in a bad moo’d.
Udder nonsense!
Some things never change, apparently.
VIOLENT BDS ACTIVISTS ASSAULT ISRAELI FILM FESTIVAL ATTENDEES IN BERLIN
So everybody went home. When even the Greens are saying the cops are too lenient on anti-semitic goons . . .
Who else…ah, shoot, it’s just too easy.
Ilhan Omar and Rashid Tliab Hardest Hit
I would love to see an intrepid member of our Beleaguered Media ask those two if they approve or disapprove of their co-BDSers trying to silence and assault Jews.
No farmers in my family tree. Dad’s dad was a house painter, but he retired when I was probably a toddler. Dad’s mother worked at the local meat packing plant until she was in her 60s (she was 20 years younger than her husband). Mother’s dad work on the line building tractors. All blue-collar labor.
Great article, Animal.
Also, bulls these days are mostly kept confined; AI (no, not that AI – Artificial Insemination) has replaced the need for most ranchers and farmers to herd a bull with their cows.
We keep our bull with the herd. He’s a miniature Jersey, but still 800 lbs and built like a tank. He was hand-raised by a friend in their backyard and is tame as can be. My 4 year old daughter hand feeds him, and he is a pleasure to keep. I know it’s not typical. Sometimes I forget how friendly he is and don’t let new farmhands know he is safe to be around. Then I look out the window and see them standing on top of the hay truck while waving their hands for me and screaming that the bull is loose.
I do carry a piece of rebar or thick stick around with me in the Spring. The bull gets…restless. He isn’t intentionally aggressive, but doesn’t understand that rough housing at his 800lbs could badly hurt me. A quick swat and he stops. If he charges (always playfully), I back him down by charging first with some yelling and hand-waving.
Jerseys are lovely, agreeable little animals. There was a guy lived over by Quandahl who had a herd of Jerseys; I helped him move them in and out of the barn a few times while hanging around over there trying to get his pretty daughter to notice me. She never did, but those sure were beautiful cattle. Like overweight deer.
The Antichrist plowed a 6-foot wide swath through the trees; the farmer who owned the place in fact gained a full winter’s worth of firewood from the felled timber.
I detect a little bit of exaggeration.
😉
It’s a good story.
“Well, the trees were planted with three feet between them, and the bull took out a row…”
/snark.
OT:
What If Americans Wanted Freedom As Much As Hong Kongers Do?
Boom. And right on.
RACIST!!!11!!!!
There should be some citizen swap system.
Any Socialist Democrat worth his salt would gladly move to HK for the glorious opportunity Beijing is providing. If Mr SD will pay for two tickets, his there and some freedom lover’s back here, I say the USG should sanction the swap. If HK objects, we could for each deal also kick in a bucket of balls or another baby commie to be named later.
Be the country that Hong Kong thinks you are
LOL.
I remember going on picnic when I was at NAS Memphis with some of the local trailer girls and a couple other Marines I was training with. We were out in the country and came to a barbed wire fence. On the other side were three big bulls looking at us with bad intentions. All of a sudden a kid from New Jersey threw a stone at one of them and hit it right in the ass (it was broadside to us).
The bull took about three steps towards us, but luckily stopped short of busting through the wire and stomping us. At least I assumed he stopped short because the rest of us immediately started running towards some nearby trees. Since the bull was still in the pasture, I just assumed he held up short.
When we all caught our breath we cursed out the NJ kid for being such a dumass. Like the city kid you talked about the city slicker couldn’t believe that a bull behind a fence was really a danger. We all explained to him that every couple years some poor dairy farmer would get killed by one of his cows and bulls are 10 times worse than an old milk cow.
I have eaten both burgers and steaks fwiw
Have you drank from the teat?
Your mom’s, yes.
I’m struggling to come up with a comeback, so will just congratulate you and go cry.
The more you know: cows can shoot projectile poop.
Excellent story, Animal.
I am starting to think that maybe you embellish your stories a bit. However, I will reserve judgment on that until I read 20-30 more.
Just because they aren’t facts doesn’t make the story not true.
All stories are true.
A Marine friend of mine said something like “All sea stories are 90% hyperbole and exaggeration… the other 10% is complete bullshit.” I don’t know if he got that from someone else, but I chuckled.
OT: Online harassment is the largest safety concern for female journalists, new study finds
People shouldn’t be harassed anywhere. Also, you don’t need to have a social media account – in fact as a journalist a social media account probably doesn’t do you any favors. Post your stories, defend your stories if you must, and then…work on more stories.
Criticizing how one reports a story, even harshly, doesn’t constitute harassment and a I’d be willing to bet they’re conflating the two. If they want less “harassment” they need to do better but instead they call for censorship.
Like go make some sammiches!
Harassment via social media isn’t harassment at all. YOU CAN TURN IT OFF!!!!!!
Unless you are a social media coordinator (or whatever the hell that iteration of telephone hygenists call themselves), your job and your life doesn’t need social media. If someone is harassing you, and you stay there, it’s really little different than hanging out in a hobo-camp when the hobos get a little too handsy for comfort. WALK AWAY!!!
I disagree. If you can’t go to the park because assholes call you names, that’s harassment. If you can’t post in public forums because assholes call you names, that’s harassment.
The problem is too many “sensitive” people view legitimate criticism as harassment.
I think this is more the case. Like it or not, social media is a significant part of a lot of people’s professional and personal lives. In the former case especially, a lot of public-facing roles are expected to maintain some kind of social media presence. While I agree that everyone is generally better off when social media is an insignificant blip on their radar rather than a major social venue (and news source) it’s not like giving up CS:GO because a bunch of kids are calling you a fag. Good lord, how many IT recruiters rely on LinkedIn to find leads?
I don’t consider LinkedIn social media. I know some sad people try to bend it that way but it’s easy to ignore it.
You see, I’m not sympathetic to this argument. I had a public facing-role where I was required to have a social media presence, so I set up a twitter account. I initially was determined to tweet whatever the role required. Very quickly I realized that every tweet I sent was diverting me from doing my job and so I just let the account sit there. So I quietly stopped tweeting and when confronted about it months later, led the anti-twitter rebellion which got the requirement dropped.
I understand that there are some positions where an active involvement in social media is required. But that’s voluntary. I recognize that I am pretty prejudiced against them as I see them as being prime candidates for being put on the Golgafrincham B Ark. But I just can’t imagine a situation where a person has to interact with people bent on harassing them on social media.
But I just can’t imagine a situation where a person has to interact with people bent on harassing them on social media.
Exactly. Just because some idiot posting “OWN THE _____TARD” stuff in your replies doesn’t meant you can’t just ignore them. I mean, unless you have the emotional maturity of a twelve-year-old and just can’t help yourself.
YOU HAVE THE EMOTIONAL MATURITY OF A 12 YEAR OLD!!!!!!!!
Except you can still post.
Seriously. We all lived through the Mary Stack years. She didn’t actually prevent us from airing a single opinion online. It goes to show how toothless harassment on social media actually is.
If you are a journalist, your job is to document things. Having conversations on twitter can be helpful toward that, but is utterly unnecessary. ditto facebook, instagram, pinterest, tinder etc.
It’s utterly different from being prevented from going to the park because the harassment at the park has a violent component (people preventing you from moving; drowning out your conversations with others etc).
OT: Online harassment is the largest safety concern for female journalists, new study finds
Online harassment is harassment.
Online harassment is NOT a safety concern.
TARRAN IS HARASSING ME! HELP! HELP! HELP!
Come see the violence inherent in the system!
here’s info about the survey results.
https://infogram.com/cpj-safety-survey-sept-2019-1h0n25jdd3zo6pe?live
appears to be mainly “online harassment” by “trolls” about “elections”.
What world do you have to live in to believe that the lives of journalists are endangered in 21st Century America.
Trump’s world?
Online harassment poses exactly zero safety risks. Its online. Sticks and stones, etc.
Unless the Left’s ongoing assault on the meaning of words has now extended to “safety” now meaning “being protected from or unlikely to cause danger, risk, injury or hurt feelings“
I only know dairy cows – the local dairy at my property has an open house every year. Free unlimited ice cream… and you can walk through the milking stations. Oh gawd the smell. Earthy is a kind word to describe a mass of cows crammed together in a hot, long shed.
High-speed suicide.
The NRA-ILA reports the rejected ad was from K-Var, and “included depictions of ‘assault-style rifles/sniper rifles.’” NASCAR’s media sales company told K-Var the racing giant is undergoing a “gradual shift in (its) position on guns.”
K-Var’s blog reported the entire quote from National Event Publications, which is NASCAR’s media sales company:
We just heard from NASCAR on a number of gun related ads and unfortunately, due a gradual shift in NASCAR’s position on guns, these ads must be edited/changed—especially those that are depicted as assault-style rifles/sniper rifles. NASCAR is still open to some of the less controversial gun accessories, concealed carry, or classes.
NASCAR’s changing position on guns follows Dick’s Sporting Good’s February 2018 decision to ban the sell of commonly owned semiautomatic rifles. Moreover, the change in NASCAR advertisement is occurring at exactly the same time as Walmart, Kroger, and Walgreens are banning open carry in their stores.
Flipping through the channels yesterday I cam across the race. The stands were nearly empty.
It just wasn’t the same after they introduced right turns.
Changing to a Sprint format is what killed it, it’s a 500 mile race for a reason, pussies……
That’s the distance from the still to the market by way of the backroads?
/Nascar’s roots.
We need to hold a moonshiner’s rally. Contestants need to deliver as much shine from the backwoods to the speakeasy as possible without being intercepted by revenuers. No other rules on car design. Location of intercepters and roadblocks are not posted prior to race.
Changing to a Sprint format is what killed it,
Eh, I like the stage racing. I think its mainly a demographic problem – young ‘uns, especially urban young ‘uns, just aren’t as interested in cars generally any more, and even less interested in car racing. Can’t blame them, really – cars are a lot less interesting now. You can see NBC really trying to do some millenial outreach, but its weird.
What does kids not understanding cars have to do with
a preference for a racing format where early competence and effort is ritualistically destroyed twice per race?
Especially at the roadcourses and Pocono, it’s ruinous.
I agree, road courses and stage racing don’t mix.
But for the ovals, it disrupts the early competence and effort no more than a yellow flag would: there’s a restart.
Hell, they don’t even all hit the pits between stages – part of the gamesmanship.
I think if they got rid of stage racing, it would do very little to solve their attendance and viewership problem.
This would be like the WNBA rejecting a tampon commercial. Know your audience. Upper class white urbanites is not your target demographic.
With the NASCAR fanbase being what it is an evolving view on the gun issue will definitely not put asses in the seats.
A lot of bullshit in this story. Good one.
When We Argue About Dave Chappelle, We Should Recognize That Super-Wokeness Is Mostly An Elite Phenomenon
This is a good piece for anyone who cares about the topic. Probably too many “to be sure-type qualifiers” in there for most of you, even though most of you are almost always wrong (naturally I am right) but it is still pretty good.
This would explain why the New Yorker’s headline for its piece criticizing Chapelle was titled “Know Your Place, Boy”
In sociolinguistics there is the concept of the “prestige dialect,” which is the variety of a language that is considered to be the most superior by the speakers of that language. The prestige dialect is usually, but not always, considered to be the “standard” form of the language. Interestingly, the prestige dialect is often not the speech of the most elite level of society, but the level just below it. In the USA, the prestige dialect is usually considered to be the speech of the white upper-middle class female. (Women are more conservative in speech-style than men as a rule.)
Interesting. I seem to recall that in German male voices are preferred for recorded warnings and auto navigation and the like.
I can say in Japanese the Tokyo dialect is the standardized one which I’m sure you knew. No idea if it is preferred to be male or female. As I’m also sure you know there is a bit of difference in spoken Japanese between men and women.
Part of it is another rule of thumb is that women are more likely to be the primary facilitator of language acculturation than men. It all starts from the mother and eventually spans out to early childhood caretakers, who typically are women. So while men tend to look towards masculine role models to acculturate their speech towards male societal norms, the background idea of what “proper” speech is identified with female speech.
It is pretty good and yes, the writer does add a fair amount of “to be sures”, but at least he *admits* to being one of the privileged elites and acknowledging it’s about class, not race. That’s always been the case. The entire Progressive movement has been about weaponized white guilt in rich, liberal enclaves telling the unworthies how to speak and act. Hillary Clinton didn’t have a “slip” about “the Deplorables -” that’s her entire life’s view of reality, as seen from the Rodhams. That she married Bubba was pure politics. They both loved politics and she knew he was going somewhere. I think that’s the only thing I like about that marriage: knowing how much she must have fucking hated being in Arakansas. Bentonville is the HQ of Walmart. My God, she must have wanted to kill someone… oh, wait, never mind.
For God’s sake man: it’s “YUTES”!!!
Someone I can get behind.
Lisa Song Sutton, a business owner and former Miss Nevada United States, has launched a congressional bid as a Republican for Nevada’s 4th Congressional District.
Sutton, who has a law degree from the University of Miami, launched her bid a few weeks ago with a campaign video that she posted to Twitter:
Sutton, whose father is a Vietnam war veteran and whose mother is an immigrant from Korea, is a self-described lifelong Republican who strongly supports small business, cutting regulations, the U.S. military, immigrant enforcement, border security, and the Second Amendment.
In an interview with The Daily Wire, Sutton, 34, revealed why she decided to run, the issues most important to her, how she plans to reach millennial voters, things the Republican Party needs to work on, and how being a successful business owner and former Miss Nevada has helped prepare her for the political world.
Someone I could get behind, too.
Would.
Something stuff something ballot box.
I expressly wouldn’t vote for anyone who had a father in ‘Nam. They are all Walter Sobchak to me
I am in favor of whatever of the things she is in favor of. Dayum.
*actually reads article*
Oh, shit, I actually am.
DAYAM
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/laurenstrapagiel/this-is-why-vsco-girls-keep-saying-sksksksk
“In a 2015 video, she accidentally hit her testicles and paused mid sentence with an “oop.””
“her testicles”
This is journalism.
To be sure.
the fuck is a VSCO girl?
Who cares?
It’s just the current iteration of Valley Girls.
now is it “visco” or vee ess see oh?
Visco.
Looks like tweener YouTube.
Buzzfeed: Bringing you all the latest shit you didn’t know you don’t care about in case you hear a teenage girl say it on television.
What do you expect from a site that devoted an entire article to how Asian people eat corn?
Sideways?
Nice.
OT
1. i think i’ve solved the mass shooter problem.. no more center-of-mass, no more easy way outs. instead, shoot them in the pelvic girdle. *pop pop* two hunks of lead rattling around their soft tissue. after a dozen+ surgeries just for a permanent limp, a colostomy bag, and a miserable life in prison, i think that would take the sheen off these killers’ endings and demotivate copycats. just a thought and is now my mental model for responding.
2. i’ve thought of a terribly un-woke R-word joke. any takers? why’d the retard wear khakis? his genes were ruined.
Meanwhile in MSM math…
NYC college student being held in Russia after medical marijuana arrest
That’s right folks a “few grams” = 19 grams. No need to comment on how wise it is to bring “medical marijuana” into another country without checking out the laws there.
What an idiot. If I were to rank order the countries to not smuggle pot into, Russia would be very close to the top of the list.
Most of the world would be on that list
It shouldn’t be illegal and she shouldn’t have been arrested. That being said, not a smart move on her part.
But I bet she had a note from her doctor!
19 grams is a lot of pot, right? Anyone know what the NY medical MJ possession limit is? Not searching for that at work.
In NY medical marijuana patients may possess a 30 day supply so whatever that’d be.
*thinks back*
With the strength of today’s pharma strains, even in my college days I think I would have been hard pressed to smoke more than ounce a month. Hard to say – pot smoking was generally a team sport, and what we got was generally nowhere near as good as what you can get now.
My friend and I were recently talking about those days – back when we would pass around a joint or two of what was probably old Mexican ditch weed.
“Are you high?”
“I dunno. I think so.”
Compared to today when one or two hits and I’m blasted – where I can feel the hit go down to my toes and rebound on the brain. A quarter will – in theory! – last me a long ass time since I only – in theory! – partake every once in a while.
Remember hash? I used to wonder why hash had become so hard to come by.
Then I was offered a few hits of medical mj. No need for hash with that stuff!
In AZ, you are allowed 2.5 oz. if you have a medpot card.
I don’t think we have an amount that is deemed to be “intent to distribute”; the penalties go up across the board for possession, cultivation, and sale from less than 2 lbs, more than 2 lbs, etc.
Idiot
Agreed. “[A]bout two-thirds of an ounce…” might qualify one for a “possession with intent to distribute” charge, certainly if Kamala’s across the row from you.
After checking with NORML, this is probably unlikely now. At least in the US.
Wood (after some eyebrow trimming)
The larval form of a Karen still displays the same level of ignorance and entitlement as the adult form.
https://tenor.com/view/dumb-ass-gif-7953745
I used to work on a dairy after school as a teenager. There were a couple of bulls on that farm and one in particular scared the ever living crap out of me almost every day. He also put my employer(50+ years of dairy experience) in the hospital for several weeks with broken ribs and a collapsed lung. He was fortunate enough to be saved by a feed vendor.
I was the boy that washes the cow teats before they were milked along with some feeding chores. Cows aren’t nice and know how to defend their tender bits.
In conclusion. I hate cows, except for the ones in the grocery store.
Also…boars. You don’t want to fall or get knocked down in a pen with them. They will ensure a closed casket.
>>washes the cow teats
go on…
I really tried to be mature and not link this again, but..
I like cows.
More cows.