2024? No WAY

 - Here we are, like it or not

- A really stupid news story from Odessa: man breaks into a total stranger's house with a bag full of sex toys to engage in highly kinky sex. The charming man and his intended victim did not know each other, but seems he knew a younger woman lived there.  

- Funny how political winds change. Read an article describing 1 in 5 ‘college age’ people now hold bin Laden in a favorable view. Some years back a James Bond movie featured the brave freedom fighters in Afghanistan coming together to help the MI 6 hero oust Russian troops. The Mujahdeen as they were called are now called Taliban. Political visionaries like Martin Luther King and Pres JFK have been replaced with George Floyd, Trayvon something, and other thugs.  Congressional brand names on the dole for 50 years, never contributing a damn thing, keep getting re-elected, sometimes get elected president.  

- I wonder how hard, if even possible, it would be to drop off the grid. Carrying a cell phone (even if off) or using a credit card guarantees it won’t happen. Answering ‘have you ever’ type games on Facebook can show data analysis types where you’ve been, what you like, what you eat, and so on.  Checking email can pinpoint one’s location with time/date stamps. Using connected smart appliances at home, driving WiFi equipped vehicles, having utility bills, whatever.

I don’t particularly mind having a presence, but when that presence is used nefariously, I mind a lot. Case in point, when Deb and I bought our then new trucks in 2012, we used the Sirius XM freebies for some months.  I provided Deb’s number as mine, and vice versa. To this very day, we get spam calls from all over the globe trying to sell something.  13 year old data and still getting these.

- It’s my genuine prayer that 2024 will see the return on the concept ‘United’ in United States, but I doubt it will happen this year, if at all. Politicians in New York are trying to eliminate our choices for president, California doing its best to force the nation into policies already proven to be failures, Texas being harassed by the feds for enforcing federal laws they abjectly refuse to enforce.  We can’t last much longer with  this.

- Gripe of the day: each year I get older, the tighter jars like spaghetti sauce lids are. I swear those machines need some maintenance. That’s my story 

- Seems now the mental midgets in the White House are introducing legislation to change refrigerators, as they are some sort of hazard to the environment. Someday we’ll have a government that actually identifies real challenges and implements policy to reduce or eliminate those challenges, but it won’t ever happen until we get actual servants instead of thousands of people trying to justify their paychecks. Right now we’ve got a non existent border, millions sucking money without any right to receive, on the brink of World War 3 with the smallest military in 80 years, partisan criminals in every imaginable lettered agency, runaway crime, etc etc etc…but they are worried about the appliances in your kitchen.

- Some things in life are absolutely worth it. Playing music in a *genuine* Texas Dance hall is such a thing. McLean Dance Hall has become a traditional New Year’s Eve gig for the band, with the audience comprised of almost exclusively ranching and farmer families, folks from bare toddlers to over 90, all with the sole ambition of gathering, dancing, and just letting it hang out. Lord willing, when our grandkids are old enough we’ll be taking them up there, show them what being a TEAL Texan is all about