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GhostOfTomJoad

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by GhostOfTomJoad

  1. I helped my dad steal dirt. We'd drive a few miles to the neighboring town which was mostly farm land. On the side of one backroad was probably a 10' bluff of good top soil. We'd shovel the dirt I to plastic tubs then throw them in the back of the '73 Plymouth station wagon & take back home to level out a section of our backyard. Probably made twenty trips one summer weekend. People would drive by occasionally but nobody said anything. The land nearby was clearly fenced and there was a driveway about 100 yards past where we'd dig. The closest we came to being caught was when I noticed so.e teenagers looking back down at us from top of the bluff, but they were just a young couple out smoking & poking.
  2. Lots of hand me downs. But because I was the only boy & had 2 older sisters I was getting girls' clothing. It was pretty much limited to winter sweaters which also meant my sisters were forced to wear plain, drab shit (not easy to do in the '70s). The worst part was not being able to have my own boy's bicycle w/ the top bar. I had to ride a girl's bike for the first few years which meant I was picked on constantly in my shitty, poor MN town. When my sisters moved up to 10-speeds, my dad took a bottom bar off of one of their bikes and had it welded upside down on another bike to make it a boy's bike. Except it still had the two bottom bars so yeah, I was still teased ruthlessly & got my ass kicked because of my hybrid boy/girl bike.
  3. I was watching the Longhorn baseball game at the local watering hole yesterday and was catching up w/ a friendly acquaintance I haven't seen in a few months. He's in his 60s and could retire at any time but is waiting for a package out the door. He must be a Fox News/Newsmax type because he decided to sneak in a talking point about "well, the stock market was overdue for a correction after hitting 45,000 so in the long run this is probably a healthy thing." I damn near choked on my beer w/ laughter and told him "that's the equivalent of saying 'well, my car two-year old car with 12,000 miles on it was due for an oil change so it's really for the best that an uninsured motorist plowed into it and totaled it in the parking lot of Home Depot.'" Totally clueless.
  4. I don't know if a hundred people have heard this. Came out exclusively to independent stores on Record Day in 2014. It was a scathing indictment of the Bush/Cheney years. It's even more applicable today. "She says, in this house it's so easy/To set a world on fire/All you need is a name/The money/And a soul full of reckless desire"
  5. Plus we opened up huge doors for farmers in South America to penetrate while American farmers were caught in the middle of the original tariffs war. Take a look at which countries' farmers are experiencing real growth in APAC and which ones are struggling to return to pre-2018 levels.
  6. If there's justice in the universe, all of their Kentucky homes will be destroyed by the storms moving through the area. And when they stand there, hat in hand, waiting on FEMA and federal assistance they are greeted with "too bad, so sad." And a bunch of Canadians should be allowed to stand there, point, laugh, and say how they think it's funny.
  7. Overlooked but worth watching for the performances. That's a solid cast in a film bigger than it's budgetary restrictions.
  8. He announced today that Tracks II is coming out in June. Recordings from 1983 - 2018 that are essentially seven unreleased albums. The original Tracks was pretty remarkable. The Promise had some nice outtakes from the Darkness era with some so-so filler. Sony's looking to get some return on their half billion dollar investment. I'm probably one of the few who's gonna throw down $350 for nine LPs.
  9. Terms of Endearment
  10. Pitfall. It was the tits back then.
  11. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a damn fun movie.
  12. You're overthinking the cursing. Just look at the Texas values currently represented by our top politicos (unabashed greed, moral depravity, adultery, thievery & using high office to amass wealth illegally, etc). Add to that the continued erosion of rights for women, children, POC, the LGBTQ+ community, etc. "Texas Values" = be a straight, white, male Christian (in name, not deed) and everything is great.
  13. @immamac and why, exactly, have you not marketed a special Weird MF tier of surlyhorns membership?
  14. The book is both a prequel and a sequel to Heat which means H2 would be very expensive to film if Mann is going to make an honest attempt to capture the tone of the original. Location shooting alone would take the production to at least 3 continents. And the reported list of actors Mann is pursuing is intriguing but would likely require pay cuts if they really want to get this made. Adam Driver - Neil McCauley Austin Butler - Chris Shiherlis Ana de Armas - Elisa (new character) Jeremy Allen White and Channing Tatum are apparently also pursuing roles if you believe wikipedia. But I'd take any report of Pacino reprising his role as Vincent w/ a huge grain of salt (and if true, hope to fuck it's just a short cameo).
  15. It's been interesting watching the changes to monthly updates that my financial advisor puts forth on a monthly basis over the past 6 months from the lead up to the election, inauguration, and now. As recently as two months ago they were long & had tremendous detail w/ graphs, charts, comparisons to dotard's first term, etc. The one that they produced in early March didn't take a whole lot of imagination to see that they're all clamoring to find some way to polish the turd Trump and DOGE are dropping on us all, but they can't. Just a cautionary tale about times being "uncertain" and that market corrections are overdue, etc.
  16. Oh for fuck's sake. Barnes is exactly who his record says it is: A very good coach with some seasons that wildly exceed expectations mixed with a few too many WTF results. He cleans up well, his programs avoided major stink, and he covered up his earlier personal foibles well enough to avoid much scrutiny. He's made a shit load of money raising the bar at football schools. But he's a hall of very good type who'll make the HOF due to a long career.
  17. Yeah, it's gotta piss off the O&G fat cats who've long counted on the influence their money buys. Except they maybe didn't count on the king of the grifters to turn around and let them know that he's got more than enough oligarchs, tech bros, and assorted billionaires beholden to him to make up their end.
  18. John Lennon, MacKenzie Phillips, Alice Cooper & Mickey Dolenz I got. Who's the dude in the sweater? Surely not Gordo.
  19. Barnes was a Bible thumping hypocrite whose "spiritual advisor" was casting far too long of a shadow in the locker room. The timing of his exit was good for all parties.
  20. Well you see when these people and thousands (millions?) others stop receiving their checks, the administration will simply proclaim that to be a lie. Everyone who was supposed to get their benefits was paid, the others were fraudsters. And don't believe any reports from the lame stream liberal media. Whatever DOGE reports on X is the truth.
  21. He's a billionaire so eventually there's gotta be a doc on Iovine. And it should be fascinating. Swept studio floors. Swapped out tape reels. Might have lucked into his first big break by being awake when Bruce was recording 18+ hours a day for Born to Run and his job as "tape operator" got upgraded to an "engineering and mixing" credit. Then came Damn the Torpedoes followed by convincing Bruce to hand over Because the Night to Patti Smith for some lyric edits. And what he did after that to recognize the emergent power of hip hop and build an audio empire on cheap headphones w/ Dre on Beats? Nobody out hustled Jimmy Iovine.
  22. We're in the final stages of a month-long bedroom/bathroom reno. We've been living in our guest room w/ our cat the entire time w/ most of our clothes on storage racks in my wife's home office. The crew has been great, but six days a week, 8:30AM - 5 or 6ish PM of having people in & out of your house, construction noise & mess, etc., will wear you out. The quartz counter tops went in on Wed. The shower glass might be another couple weeks but we should be able to move back into the space this weekend and use most everything. Mrs GOTJ was thrilled about being able to soak in her garden tub again (a bone of contention w/ me: I think bathtubs are useless & wanted to rip it out to make a massive, two person walk-in shower space but she's one of those people who likes to soak in a big bowl of dirty water). The crew was installing the fixtures yesterday. All of the hardware was in the box EXCEPT the set screw that holds the Roman tub filler fixture to the deck and the little brushed nickel plug that covers up the screw hole. I go to Home Depot w/ the spigot. We confirm it's an M6 bolt, and of course they have nothing but standard bolts that are ugly as shit and will stick out like a dick on an earth worm. Oh, the back of the spigot faces the center of the bathroom and will be clearly visible as soon as you enter the space. I get hold of Ferguson/Build.com where we ordered all of the fixtures from and explain the situation. I've got the order number and everything. Trevor the CSA was very helpful and apologetic and found the exact part from the manufacturer's list (which wasn't documented anywhere in the provided parts list or installation paperwork). "We'll go ahead and get that ordered for you and shipped to you free of charge." Hey man, that's great news. Thanks! Then the fun part: it's back ordered w/ an ETA of 4-5 weeks. For a fucking set screw. I've convinced Mrs GOTJ that they can finish the install w/ a temporary ugly ass bolt just to get it done & it will be a simple fix when the part arrives. But one 78 cent screw--which would have cost me $22 if they didn't decide to do the right thing--is really pissing me off right now.
  23. Lulz. My friend who lives a couple blocks away has one of these. And he has the worst lawn on earth. He brags about how the bags it makes are so dense they weigh 50-60 lbs. He's probably only used it once or twice, but is always offering to loan it to someone because he thinks it's such a cool device. I'm sure it's buried in one of the 3 backyard sheds he has (because he can't fit anything more than one can of WD-40 in his hoarder's special garage. He's also got a riding lawn mower (doesn't work), a push mower (same), and has used a battery powered robot mower for the last two summers that just kinda wanders around like an outdoor Roomba without making any noticeable difference other than scaring the dog.
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