Glibertarians.com 2019 Archive

Category: Pastimes

  • OverRated: The Week in College Football Polls

    I’d sooner be a Wildcat edition

    Standard Advice:  go with your first read!  Whenever, it seems, I’ve changed my mind on the line, the putt then breaks the original way . . . every stinking time.  And so it went for me after I recently opined:

     

    Oklahoma gets better every week, and the grind past Texas qualifies them to enjoy a well-earned last laugh . . . they were, they are the real deal in 2019 and so we must admit that the Sooners were not over-ranked after all.  I was dead wrong on this one.

     

    Well, when I said I was wrong:  I was wrong.  After several weeks in the top six, the newly schooner-less Sooners laid an egg in Manhattan and finally fell five spots in the AP.  K State walked away from them after an even first half; OU brought it back close, but the Wildcats were just working clock and enjoying the inevitable win while the network commenters tried to convince viewers otherwise; a failed onside kick almost gave Norman a chance and did give the guys in the replay booth at Conference a nice excuse to delay play a good seven minutes before the fat lady could sing.  Anyways, the Crimson were Creamed but will go on to a solid bowl.

     

     

    Personal note:  the 2000 KSU team had the quickest defense I’ve ever seen, and you simply couldn’t pass against Terence Newman.  Their fans travel well and have a fearsome, deafening, unending set of cheers.

     

     

     

    Meanwhile, master-class of the week in pointy ball was given by The University of the South at Columbus.  The Buckeyes applied the very best talent from Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, and Maryland to the would-be spoilers from Madison.  Save future injuries, LSU is the only defense that would seem to have a strong chance of stopping Ohio State.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Notre Dame is perennially overrated, and you might say that I beat that drum enough, but, earlier in the year, they lost to Georgia and then were still ranked above Georgia; it’s just ridiculous, predictable, and this nonsense is crippling the ability of Catholic children to develop logic skills.  Saturday #19 Michigan plowed them like so much snow and the AP accordingly downgraded them eight slots to finally be below both of their known betters.  The great Protestant conspiracy to keep these good kids down has finally won 2019, but don’t worry:  the ND nonsense will flare back up next summer.  Moving on:

     

    Week Nine Most OverRated Football Program Results

    1          Minnesota did make soup out of Maryland 52 – 10

    2          Appalachian State did ruin the Jags of South Alabama

    3          SMU survived red-shirt factory Houston’s sometime quarterback Tune

    4          Oregon edged Washington State at home

    So ZERO new toldjasos™ this week, but, speaking of Notre Dame, I never booked the original win on them at the time so I’m adding that to the list now and taking Oklahoma off my list of misses as well.  Otherwise, a very quiet week we had.  So what’s the longer view?

     

    Well, the Committee (motto:  We Meet in Grapevine!) has yet to convene or vote.  The question, like most years, is:  who’s number four?  Conference championships are a toss-up, but we have every reason to expect these teams in the mix:

     

    Big Ten           Ohio State, Penn State, or Minnesota

    SEC                  Alabama, LSU, or Florida

    ACC                 Clemson

     

     

     

     

    And these guys can pound sand:

    PAC64              Oregon is just too weak; expect a second team from the Big Ten or SEC instead

    Big XII             Oklahoma is only the best of the rest after losing to KSU

    Notre Dame    is not as good as Oregon

    AAC                  UCF is not a top twenty team

    MWest             Boise State is not a top twenty team

    MAC                 Ball State might be a top hundred team

    Okay, everyone knew all that before the season’s first snap (it’s rigged against the small schools!!!!11!!)  Back to our weekly idiocy:  who’s who and what’s what?

     

    Yet Another Week N + 1 Most OverRated Football Programs

    1          San Diego enters our list as most overrated team of the year but is off next week

    2          SMU will meet Memphis in an overrated (and televised) mouse tussle

    3          Appalachian State continues to dominate the JV and will host the Statesboro Blues

    4          Minnesota is trending up but will get stomped by Penn State

    5          Oregon is barely overrated but might have their hands full with USC

     Honorable mentions – I like LSU, but they’re not Numero Uno (Ohio State at a minimum is clearly better on offense).  Baylor is too big for its britches, and Cincinnati love is overheating, but I’ll give them a bit of rope for now.  The same guys who formerly believed in Oklahoma have switched horses to Kansas State.  Previously bagged Utah and Boise State are sliding back up in the competency vacuum.  Wake Forest shouldn’t be within ten slots of the AP at all, and yet they’re there.  This much never changes:  the AP 25 is lunacy, a doctoral thesis in mass hysteria begging to be written.  Now:  on to accounting.

     

    Year to Date Hides on the Wall

    1          Georgia lost at home to the second-best team from South Carolina that had lost to UNC

    2          Utah lost to an unrated USC but seems to be coming back

    2          Stanford was revealed by USC

    2          Syracuse was unranked after Maryland

    2          Michigan was blown out by Wisconsin

    2          Notre Dame sold off after losing to a highly ranked Georgia

    7          UCF was edged by an unranked Pitt

    7          Iowa was no number 15 as Michigan proved

    7          Wake Forest allowed Louisville to hang 62 on them

    7          Cal was dumped from the AP after losing to Arizona State

    11        Boise State lost by three to toothless BYU

    11        Iowa State was dethroned before their decent showing against Iowa

    11        Memphis lost to possibly 80th best team in the nation Temple and disappeared

    14        Michigan State slowly fell out of the ratings, so I was right after all

    14        Clemson was dethroned by Mack Brown retirement project UNC

    14        Texas lost to OU (mid-season toldjasos™) and has continued to suck

    14        Texas probably over-paid for losing to titan LSU (early-season toldjasos™), but then they let Kansas hang 48 on them at home

    18        Auburn over-paid for losing to Florida

    18        Texas A&M probably over-paid for quality losses against Clemson and Auburn . . . or maybe not

    20        Washington State was de-ranked after becoming lowly UCLA’s first win

    20        Virginia continues to lose after losing to can-play-with-UGA-but-not-Michigan Notre Dame

    22        Oklahoma lost to Kansas State . . . inexcusable

     

    Year to Date It-Would-Seem Blown Calls Because They’re Doing Okay Really Well

    1          LSU

    2          Florida seems to have earned their status by defeating top-ten Auburn

    3          Oklahoma is no longer a blown call because Kansas State

    4          UCF is now a skin on the wall after Pitt

    5          Michigan is no longer a blown call because Wisconsin

    6          Washington State is no longer a blown call because UCLA

    Our year now stands at 22–2-4.  So closes a tasty week!

     

    links to older opinions:                  2019-10-24                 2019-10-17                  2019-10-10                  2019-10-03                  2019-09-26                  2019-09-19                  2019-09-13                  2019-09-06
    Disclosure of sources of bias:  your correspondent has attended the University of Tennessee, Memphis State and the University of Memphis, Christian Brothers College . . . and he sleeps with an alumna of Georgia whose parents met at Washington State . . . and his son went to Houston . . . and he never met anyone from TCU he didn’t like . . . and he irrationally hates Notre Dame, UCF, Clemson, and Notre Dame.

     

  • Concealed Carry Redux : A Crossword

    It turns out that my longer clues get cut off in the interactive version, 32d para ejemplo, you’ll have to refer to the image below or the PDF version if you want to read the full clue. Also it turns out you people suck at getting the themes so I added shaded squares to give you some help, they too don’t appear in the interactive version. I reported this glitch to the site where I build puzzles but they asked for my password so they could see the puzzle in question and I, not wanting to be cancelled for using terms like spic, peckerwood, towelhead, and poi-slurper, decided to let it go.  No beta tester this time, one may think this means that any errors will be on me, but I’m going to assign a Glib at random to be at fault. Remember this is for entertainment purposes only, please no wagering. Good luck, we’re all counting on you. And as always enjoy.

     

     

     

     

    If you prefer a PDF   Concealed Carry Redux

    If you need to cheat  help  Solution

    You can go here and work an interactive version. The Password is “Your Pet’s Name”

    Some of you have reported trouble with the interactive version, I also have an Across Lite file but I’m not sure how or if I can post those here since you’d need to download it, If you see me in the comments and use Across Lite hit me up with a burner email account and I can send it to you that way.

     

    Tonio didn’t beta test this one but any errors are still on him.

  • IFLA: The “@#!!*&# Useless Stars!” Edition of the Horoscope for the Week of October 27

    There are times when one turns to the skies for advice, only for the skies to respond with “lol, get fucked.  I’m going to be completely random and you can’t force me to be otherwise.”  Such is the situation this week, with none of the planets wanting to have any connection or relationship with any other.  Now, as contrary as the planets may want to be, they can’t avoid the fact they are actually out there in space, so we still have their relationship with the zodiac to fallback on, and one particularly interesting event will be happening.

    Hail Scorpio!  You begin your season already hosting Mercury and Venus for that initial luck burst, unfortunately it’s not going to last as long s you’d like, because Mercury will be going retrograde before the week is out.  It will be Station Retrograde on Halloween, to be precisely.  Mercury (chance, luck) retrograde (chaos) in Scorpio (secrets, darkness, genitals, creepy-crawlies) is about as perfect a Halloween event as one could hope for, so this should be a Halloween to remember.

    Libra is doing its best to protect us from the conjunction of the moon with Mars (literally, the tides of war).  A more self-indulgent reading of this would be that this week is an auspicious time to partake of martial games or simulations.

    The cards have lots of reversed swords, warning against violence.  This is not a big deal for a bunch of NAPpers

    Scorpio:  6 of Swords reversed – Declaration, confession, publicity, a proposal of love

    Sagittarius:  2 of Cups – Love, passion, friendship, affinity, union, concord, sympathy, the interrelation of the sexes

    Capricorn:  Ace of Coins reversed – The evil side of wealth, bad intelligence; also great riches.

    Aquarius:  4 of Cups – Weariness, disgust, aversion, imaginary vexations, blended pleasure.  Since the source predates Fred Waring, daiquiris are not what is being referenced in that last bit.

    Pisces:  Page of Coins – Application, study, scholarship, reflection, news, messages and the bringer thereof; also rule, management.

    Aries:  4 of Wands – Country life, haven of refuge, repose, concord, harmony, prosperity, peace.

    Taurus:  The Hireophant – Marriage, alliance, captivity, servitude, mercy and goodness; inspiration

    Gemini:  The World – Assured success, recompense, voyage, route, emigration, flight, change of place

    Cancer:  9 of Wands reversed – Obstacles, adversity, calamity.

    Leo:  Knight of Wands reversed – Anecdotes, announcements, evil news, indecision, instability

    Virgo:  Page of Swords reversed – competent person working against you, unforeseen situations, unpreparedness.

    Libra:  King of Swords reversed – Cruelty, perversity, barbarity, perfidy, evil intention.

  • What Are We Reading for October 2019

    It’s October, which means you’ve all been reading the copy of The Collected Works of SugarFree we sent C/O your direct supervisor, right? I hope it didn’t get lost in the mail. Binding books in the skin of genuine Subaru drivers is both time consuming and expensive.

    jesse.in.mb

    Suzanne Crowder Han: Korean Folk & Fairy Tales. I brought this home with me from Daegu  and read it at the time, but had forgotten just how odd some of the folk tales could be (especially when filtered through cultural and linguistic translation. The main thing is if you ever get a chance to trick a dokkaebi  (도깨비) out of xer bangmangi (방망이), you should definitely do it and then explain to your shithead older brother who had disinherited you after your father died how you went about it so that he can get his comeuppance when he acts out of greed rather than innocence.

    S. Blyth Stirling: Naked Scotland: An American Insider Bares All. I’d be lying if I said that cover had nothing to do with me picking the book. I was mostly looking for a primer on cultural mishaps beyond calling slacks “pants” or discussing the inexplicably-popular-again “fanny packs.” The book is breezy and fun and sits comfortably in the American Abroad and Travelogue genres.

     

    SP

    I’ve been reading thrilling textbooks on subjects as fun as medical law and ethics. Or trying to get time to read them, anyway.

    However, I’ve been taking small bites of some cookbooks and ways-of-eating books. You’ll notice a theme.

    The MIND Diet

    The MIND Diet Plan and Cookbook

    Diet for the MIND

    The Healthy Mind Cookbook

    Deep Nutrition

    If there is any interest, I’ll write a post about the MIND diet.

     

    Tulip

    I am re-reading all of Susan Wittig Albert’s China Bayles series.  China Bayles is a former Houston criminal defense attorney who leaves the rat race behind to run an herb shop in the fictional Texas hill country town of Pecan Springs.  Like many fictional towns, Pecan Springs has a crazy high murder rate and China helps to solve them.  If you like cozy mystery series, this one is great.  There are over 20 books in the series, the characters actually evolve over time, and Albert includes recipes and further reading in every book.  So far, every recipe I have tried from the series has been great.

     

    OMWC

    I’ve barely had time to wind my wristwatch. Wait, do people still wind wristwatches? Let me tell you about the onion on my belt…

    But at least I can get a few minutes in while relaxing in the smallest room of the house. And what’s in there includes Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson’s Farthest Star,  a rather pedestrian SF novel with some crafty writing but nothing particularly novel (cough, cough) to say. Painful for me to write this since I am a huge fan of Pohl. The genre is often termed “Big Dumb Object” and I think that’s fitting. This book is perfect for the application.

    The other book gracing the bathroom is the oft-thumbed Valve Amplifiers, 4th Edition. Geeks only, please, but if you are consumed with electronic anacrophilia as I am, this will delight.

     

    SugarFree

    Lovecraft, all Lovecraft. I reread it all every couple of years. Going back to him after spending the summer reading the antecedents to his fictional universe and the descendants that followed it, going back to the man himself is very comforting.

    Fun Fact: On a word count basis, all the fiction Lovecraft ever produced is still less to read than Stephen King’s It.

     

    Mad Scientist

    How To Restore British Sports Cars by Jay Lamm. This isn’t really a “how to” book so much as it is generalized advice applicable to many vehicles. Not necessarily British. Not even necessarily cars.

    mexican sharpshooter

    This month I picked up a classic with a twist.  Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds.  I was given the option of reading it in high school but I instead picked a different book to report on.  I want to say it was War of the Worlds but I don’t recall.  What I do recall is my English teacher simply citing the phrase “undead” to describe the book.  As much as I enjoyed his class I am happy to say he was wrong.  I am rather enjoying it, though it is taking longer than I anticipated.  The entire book is annotated by a number of experts in the field of chemistry, physics, sociology, and ethics.  The book itself is nothing like how it was portrayed in Hollywood, especially given how intelligent the monster is throughout the book and draws many questions all too often posed in science fiction, such as, “What is the whole human thing anyways?”

  • The Sacred Glade

    Before Rome existed, the druids lived in Germania, and worshiped the Old Gods, and were Kings Among Men, feared and revered at the time, for they had the fortune of the Gods.

     

    They erected temples and made sacrifice in the nearby forest, pleasing the Gods, until one day…

     

    Rome appeared. They had heard of, and some even fought these Shining Invaders, but no one really believed it, until they Came, Saw, and Conquered everything before it, and then the Gods were angry.

    Flocking

    First you take the area you want to cover, and lay down some PVA, then paint it out, not too thick, and leave some air gaps so it dries in the middle.

     

    I like to do my accent color before my primary colors, I can always enhance later.

     

    “And we came upon a ford, and upon the Right, we observed a small Glade of what appeared to be diseased trees, the engineers said this was due to the Barbarian Temple across the stream, and that no Roman should enter the Glade, we were pleased and made it so,” Commentaries, by Caesar. 

     

    Water

    These came out nice, then I got some turf on the rest and had to repaint/waterize it, but it’s cool.

     

    Single color is OK for a WG table, but a diorama requires more, depth is obtained by using darker colors where you want deeper, due to the limits of the “water” material you use. I use Modge Podge for most things, and acrylic resin for the big stuff. You want to lay down a shallow groove in the foam, then paint darkest, lighter then a bit of sand/ochre on the shoreline, I add some shrubs depending on the scale. Whitewater needs to be dry brushed, after your water is dry (what?) take a brush full of white paint and wipe off 90 percent on some cardboard, then Lightly begin stroking the paint downstream, very gentle, and you will see the wave tops appear, apply as you like for effect. 

     

    Autumn, 1944, France

    Major Richard Licum is tasked with taking the crossroads at Lille Dique, with him is the 69th tank battalion of the Rheem. 

    Licum: Lt. Queef, options!

    We could go to the forest but it’s spooky

    1. Munsch, options

    Well I have a few, they look tasty…

    Shut Up Mench!

    Fortunately they found General Winter, who told them to hold in position, hehe,

     Obergeneral Schitz, is in a pickle, he’s outgunned, and only has a rag tag collection of Stugs, and some old Pz2s, and one Tiger. His forces are mostly kids and old men.

    I needed to make bases for the men, and used Googly Eyes, crushed flat, the men are only a half inch tall, I may leave them with white bases so I can find the little guys.

    I have a few more things to add, new stuff for me, but it should finish nice, and I’ll tell you a story, til then,

    Gallery, https://photos.app.goo.gl/MpHrVHrBcxvotRwD9

     

     

     

     

  • OverRated: The Week in College Football Polls Ugly Trophy Edition

    Ugly Trophy Edition:  It turns out there are teams out there worse than MICHIGAN

    This past week we learned that there is a college in Ypsilanti, so don’t go using that sweet town’s name in vain just because you want to make fun of Jim Harbaugh (personal motto:  I was born in Toledo!).  We also learned that GM’s Willow Run plant closed in 2010 (thanks, Obama), so we’ll need to pick on some other township the next time we want to make tranny jokes.

    Out on the grid-iron, we book only two toldjasos™, but one comes at the high cost of conceding a mistake.  The week that was:

     

    Week Six Most OverRated Football Program Results

    1          Boise State unremarkably trounced entertainment engineering powerhouse UNLV

    2          Wake Forest doesn’t play Unitas-less Louisville until next weekend (I misread their calendar)

    3          Georgia finally took the all-time series lead over hapless Tennessee

    4          Florida handled Auburn and child quarterback Nix

    4          Iowa was corn-holed by the near-nobodies at Ann Arbor

    6          Texas recovered from an early scare to survive at West Virginia

    7          Auburn has a solid defense, but so does Florida, so they fell five places

    7          Oregon quietly managed Cal

    9          Oklahoma beat KU by only 25

     

    Iowa’s not much to brag on, but some trophies are just uglier than others.  Ranked 14th, they gave up eight sacks to 19th ranked Michigan and fell, appropriately, four spots.

    Auburn’s loss to Florida was a very even match, but in the polls your punishment is always all out of proportion to what happened at the game.  So Auburn falls five places, and they are now proven to have been at least a bit over-rated.  I can’t put it more succinctly than MSN:

    . . . a game that was tense, sloppy, mistake-filled, oddly coached and generally impossible to figure out from possession to possession.  After four turnovers apiece and a whole bunch of other weirdness, it was No. 8 Florida blowing the game open on Lamical Perine’s 88-yard touchdown run with 9:04 remaining, giving the Gators a terrific win and a 6-0 record despite some very clear flaws. And for No. 7 Auburn, it was a reality check about life with a true freshman quarterback in Bo Nix, who seemed rather overwhelmed with the whole thing and made some truly terrible decisions . . .

     

    This correspondent has trifled with Florida and had bagged them already earlier in the season when AP voters had lost their collective nerve over the Gators.  But now we must concede that any earlier call on UF was bull feathers and book them as a clear miss.  They feature a second-string quarterback, but, as usual, their defensive secondary is fearless and fast.  They’re still over-rated a place or two, but that’s still too close, so let’s just agree I was wrong on this one.

    So snarking about the rankings is nearly dead for the year; there’s just not much new left to yell about from the peanut gallery.  Indeed, in my admittedly very slow news, I found that if you duckduckgo for “heckler” you get endless pictures of cool pistols; that’s all I learned this week.  Now . . . onto your season’s-under-way and Iowa-free rankings:

     

    Newest Week N + 1 Post-Iowa Most OverRated Football Programs

    1      Wake Forest will host Unitas-less Louisville as my All-Time Most OverRated Team of All-Time!!11!!

    2      Minnesoda almost ties the Wake record with their ridiculous debut but should edge Nebraska by four

    3       Memphis jumps onto our board; Temple won’t have a prayer against the Tiger Hype

    4       Boise State hosts Hawaii

    5       Georgia should roll over The Other USC

    6       Texas meets worthy Oklahoma in the Red River Classic

    7       Oregon should bulldoze Colorado

    8       Oklahoma meets worthy Texas in the Red River Classic

    Honorable mentions – Utah is still over-ranked, but I’ve made enough fun of them already this year.  SMU should damp to their mean soon.  So how has our year gone so far?

     

    Year to Date Hides on the Wall Rated

    1          Utah lost to an unrated USC

    2          Stanford was revealed by USC

    2          Syracuse was unranked after Maryland

    2          UCF was edged by an unranked Pitt

    2          Iowa was no number 15 as Michigan proved

    6          Cal was dumped from the AP after losing to Arizona State

    6          Iowa State was dethroned before their decent showing against Iowa

    6          Michigan State fell out of the ratings, so I was right after all

    9          Clemson was dethroned by Mack Brown retirement project UNC

    9          Texas probably over-paid for losing to titan LSU

    9          Auburn probably over-paid for losing to Auburn

    9          Texas A&M probably over-paid for quality losses against Clemson and Auburn

    13        Washington State was unranked after becoming lowly UCLA’s first win

    14        Michigan was blown out by Wisconsin

    15        Virginia probably over-paid for losing to can-play-with-UGA Notre Dame

     

    Year to Date It-Would-Seem Blown Calls Because They’re Doing Okay Really Well

    1          LSU

    2          Florida seems to have earned their status by defeating top-ten Auburn

    3          UCF is now a skin on the wall after Pitt

    4          Michigan no longer a blown call because Wisconsin

    5          Washington State no longer a blown call because UCLA

    Let’s score this year 15–2-3 so far, nothing to be ashamed of.  So closes another week!

     

     

    links to older opinions:                  2019-10-03                  2019-09-26                  2019-09-19                  2019-09-13                  2019-09-06
    Disclosure of sources of bias:  your writer has attended the University of Tennessee, Memphis State and the University of Memphis, Christian Brothers College . . . and he sleeps with an alumna of Georgia whose parents met at Washington State . . . and his son went to Houston . . . and he never met anyone from TCU he didn’t like . . . and he irrationally hates Notre Dame, UCF, Clemson, and Notre Dame.

  • Asset Forfeiture : Yet Another Crossword

    Okay, enough of you miscreants seemed to appreciate the effort so here one more. The theme answers in this one are pretty tortured so I’ll add a hint at the very end of the post, if you don’t want a spoiler don’t scroll down to fast. And remember this is for entertainment purposes only, please no wagering. Have fun!

    If you prefer a PDF      Asset Forfeiture

    If you need to cheat  help  Solution

    Lastly you can go here and work an interactive version. The Password is “Ookla > Chewie”

     

     

    Don Escaped Texas beta tested this one as well and made a few good suggestions (none of which I listened to this time) but any errors are still on him.

     

    Hint: The theme answers* are victims of asset forfeiture. for example 55 across should be DREAMBOATANNIE but the cops seized the boat so now its DREAMANNIE.

    (more…)

  • The end of the road

    I wanted to wait for a resolution, but I can’t wait around. It seems my Company bailed on me due to a dubious, unethical series of events, so I’m in limbo right now, maybe go back to Walmart.

    We did make it to AZ, broke as fuck but not hungry, yet, so I decided to build a 1/144th scale Wargaming table. There are 2 million Wargamers out there, and while they love to play, they hate to build, that’s where I come in….

    How it’s done

    First question, what are you going to do? Dioramas? WG tables? Scatter pieces?

     

    Some nomenclature:

    WG: Wargaming tables with fixed scenery and terrain, very tough and take players abuse well, not cheap, if done well.

    Dioramas: very expensive due to the level of detail required, and very fragile when finished.

    Scatter pieces: these are cool, basically rocks, trees and terrain features that can be moved around to create new scenarios, usually with a battle mat.

    Battle mats: I forgot those, imagine a tarp with caulking covering it, a bit of paint and Voila! War gaming!

     

    In this episode I will show you How I do it. I hope you enjoy, let’s begin.

    First is materials. I get slab foam from Home Depot, but it’s widely available, and some drywall mud, this is essential to making foam look like life, then I figure out what to do….

    After deciding I glue my foam slabs together and cut/sand it all down, layer it all together, then make a trench for my water courses, this is critical, the material I use wants to level, so you need to contain it somewhat. By this time we have the bluffs, hills and river mostly in place, now we need roads. 

    The Megalith:

    I have a plethora of small stones in the front yard so I went wacky with a Stoned Henge monument, take my psycho mind and some rocks and behold! StonedHenge! 

    I went with the Roman roads theme after watching a YT on the subject, very east/west, with some north/south to follow the river, this is difficult. Try to make sure a straight road looks natural after 2 millennia? Let’s see…

     

    As usual, I had no thought of doing this until I sat with a beer and just looked, and it came to me…..

     

    How it’s done pt2

    Good materials, and an imagination are all it takes, fun or money, it matters not. Build or die is my motto.

    Do your elevation layout first, then paint a base coat of your landscape, brown, green and blue, keep the glue away!

    How do I do landscape, Yusef?

    Foam, a cheap knife from Dollar Tree, some sandpaper and you’re done. It’s important to notice that nothing in nature is static, even with patterns, chaos rules, deal with it and you will make nice scenery! Find primary colors for your rock features, then tint dark, overbrush, then tint light and dry brush.

    I’m out till next week, see ya! 

    Gallery, so far.

    Cheers!

  • OverRated: The Week in College Football Polls

    Thin Gruel as Serious Play Begins Edition

     

     

    This week we book three toldjasos™, but none are monumental or hard math.  What happened:

    Week Five Most OverRated Football Program Results

    1          Cal lost to unranked Arizona State and fell completely out of the top 25

    2          Iowa cracked concrete design powerhouse Middle Tennessee

    2          Virginia proved they can play with we-can-play-with-UGA Notre Dame

    4          Boise State was in their bunk all weekend

    5          Florida blanked can-you-find-it-on-a-map Towson (hint:  Maryland)

    6          Clemson survived UNC’s two-point win-now PAT attempt but fell from the top spot

    6          Georgia kept to the shade for the weekend

    8          Texas is resting up for the Red River Classic

    8          Auburn more than ably handled Mississippi State

    10        Oregon ducked any comers for the weekend

    11        Oklahoma raided Texas Tech

     

    So, we only have three heads to mount on the wall this week.  Clemson was really easy math:  they couldn’t go up from number one and they were unlikely to stay there.  Think of it like betting on a Wallenda to die this century:  you can’t go wrong on some things.  On the one hand, the Tigers only dropped one spot this week; on the other hand, it takes cojones to go against all public opinion and declare that the reigning champions aren’t necessarily the best team in the sport; the easiest thing to do would be to keep your head down, but your writer is all about calling balls and strikes, even in football.  I’m not getting a tattoo over this, but I’m booking the win:  a very small, very high-risk win.  Parting shot:  they’re still overranked (as is Alabama), but I’m cashing out of these high-risk positions for this tax year.

    Cal, on the other hand, is my meat-and-potatoes:  broadside at 200 yards dropped in their tracks.  I had added them to my over-rated list because they had zero business being ranked at all much less number 15.  They stood out like tourists in Paris and deserved to get mugged.  As my toppest mostest overratedest team of last week, no one should be shocked that they would promptly lose to some other PAC256 nobody and get bounced completely out of rankedness.  I called it; this is what I do (just drops ball in endzone after TD and runs promptly from the field, no dance or chest thumping).

    Virginia, however, is very weak sauce as far as call-outs go.  If anything, they played Notre Dame well and proved they deserved their ranking.  But that’s not how the polls work:  they’re about mania, and you get pumped up and you get slapped down.  Virginia’s rack is too small for the den wall; we’ll just tack it up over the work bench in the barn and not point it out to neighbors or anything.

    So, folks, it’s getting much harder now to play the old OverRated game:  it’s late in the hand and there are only so many trump cards left to lead with.  Basically, we’ve made fun of pretty much everyone possible already, and the AP voters have learned the hard way about several teams and fairly much atoned:  there’s little low-hanging fruit left and the AP poll, at least, is pretty much in order or at least arguably in the ballpark.  Still, ranking teams is like building a mutual fund:  you gotta buy something even in an up market.  And I’ve got some old picks hanging around that weren’t very good and sooner or later I’m going to need to unload them; again, like stocks, I’ll wait until some quarter when I’ve got a ton of gains to offset and, until then, they remain on the books somewhere in the appendixes next to several asterisks.

     

    That said:  here’s your thin-gruel high-stress tax-avoidance-structured portfolio of the overranked:

     

    Newest Week N + 1 I Believe! Most OverRated Football Programs

    1          Boise St jumps to the top of our poll in time to kick around Glib bridesmaid UNLV

    2          Wake Forest joins the overranked in time to host Unitas-less Louisville

    3          Georgia will probably nuke Neyland to hold serve in the SEC East

    4          Florida or Auburn must lose, so I’ll be at least half right about something

    4          Iowa plays Khaki Bowl host University of Ypsilanti

    6          Texas will go all STEVE SMITH on West Virgina’s MountainMen

    7          Auburn or Florida must lose, so I’ll be at least half right about something

    7          Oregon lucks into playing recently revealed Cal

    9          Oklahoma should vaporize perennially impotent KU

     

    So how has our year gone so far?

     

    Year to Date Hides on the Wall Rated

    1          Utah lost to an unrated USC

    2          Stanford was revealed by USC

    2          Syracuse was unranked after Maryland

    2          UCF was edged by an unranked Pitt

    5          Cal was dumped from the AP after losing to Arizona State

    6          Iowa State was dethroned before their decent showing against Iowa

    6          Michigan State fell out of the ratings, so I was right after all

    8          Clemson was dethroned by Mack Brown retirement project UNC

    9          Texas probably over-paid for losing to titan LSU

    9          Texas A&M probably over-paid for quality losses against Clemson and Auburn

    11        Washington State was unranked after becoming lowly UCLA’s first win

    11        Florida was ranked down after silly pre-season enthusiasm (but are back up now!)

    13        Michigan was blown out by Wisconsin

    14        Virginia probably over-paid for losing to can-play-with-UGA Notre Dame

     

    Year to Date It-Would-Seem Blown Calls Because They’re Doing Okay Really Well

    1          LSU

    2          UCF is now a skin on the wall after Pitt

    3          Michigan no longer a blown call because Wisconsin

    4          Washington State no longer a blown call because UCLA

     

    Let’s score this year 14–1-3 so far, nothing to be ashamed of.  So closes another week!

     

    links to older opinions:               2019-09-26              2019-09-19              2019-09-13              2019-09-06

     

    Disclosure of sources of bias:  your writer has attended the University of Tennessee, Memphis State and the University of Memphis, Christian Brothers College . . . and he sleeps with an alumna of Georgia whose parents met at Washington State . . . and his son went to Houston . . . and he never met anyone from TCU he didn’t like . . . and he irrationally hates Notre Dame, UCF, Clemson, and Notre Dame.

     

     

  • What Are We Reading – September 2019

    SugarFree

    Still working on re-reading The Expanse series. (Too much Borderlands 3, brah.) I hadn’t read the last two books, so I’m into new stuff, finally. Not sure how the TV show is going to handle the [censored]. But the end of the 6th books, Babylon’s Ashes, wouldn’t be the worst place to stop the show so they might not have to worry about it. I should be done with the series in time for my all-horror October tradition.

     

    OMWC

    I will confess that most of my book reading this past month has been in the bathroom. And nothing particularly interesting. Lots of magazines, though. Geeky, geeky magazines.

    So this will be prospective: I’m about to take a plane trip, and my reading on the way will be something beyond geeky. Bob Cordell’s Designing Audio Power Amplifiers was sent to me as a courtesy copy, and I’m anxious to dig in. This is the shit you do when you don’t actually have a life, but it will sustain me through 8-10 hours of airplane and gate area entertainment..

     

    jesse.in.mb

    Atkins New Diet Revolution. The boyfriend wanted to “go keto” and I suggested we maybe read a book about it instead of basing our diet on the whims of Redditors. The BF continued to read random things from Redditors and is getting a bit crazy. I need a beer to handle this and cannot have one. Weep for me Glibertarians.

    Finally finished The Boys which I started months ago and just picked up when I had 20 minutes and a tablet in hand. It was good. The humor felt ’90s transgressive (even though it’s from the mid-aughts): sort of ham-fistedly offensive for the sake of offense, and there was a massive lull of filler stories in the middle but I was glad I finished it up and would still recommend it even with what I perceive as shortcomings.

     

    mexican sharpshooter

    I promised everyone I would read something this month; I finally came through on a promise!  First time this week…

    I read Universal Basic Income:  For and Against by Anthony Sammeroff.  This name might strike a few of you as familiar as this is the person Andrew Yang was scheduled earlier this month to debate regarding UBI, but apparently found better things to do.

    He does go through the arguments for UBI, and many of the theoretical benefits it may provide such a society, and does so in as objective manner one could expect from an opponent of the idea. He doesn’t spend a lot of time arguing against it in this book, rather he questions why modern necessities became so expensive.  Half the book cleverly spells out the reason UBI is not needed, by pointing out all the things proponents of UBI insist is needed because of it’s great expensive is a result of the deleterious effects of government policy on the market.  He discusses housing markets for example, as one area one might spend their monthly stipend, then discusses all the ways government regulations limit housing development, dry up supply, and therefore drive up housing prices.  The market he argues, creates competition necessary to drive the cost of luxuries down to where they are not really luxuries anymore, which raises the standard of living for those at the bottom of the income ladder.

    He even discusses automation and cites case studies performed by the US Air Force that found the drone programs actually increased the number of Airman and contractors needed to make the drones fly—in spite of the fact the drone does not have a pilot and aircrew on board.

    Ultimately the message is remove that one thing that keeps the market from functioning in its natural form, and we don’t really need an arbitrarily defines standard of living issued to everybody.

    JW

    I’m back to cereal boxes, but I’ve expanded my reach to high bran cereal. That gives me time to take the box into the toilet with me for reading.