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Ghost of LL

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by Ghost of LL

  1. Having traveled around Europe for the last month, I have to observe that Israel really has no international sympathy at this point. They had everyone's support after October 7. Now, they have none. It's far worse than how the United States frittered away the international support we had afer September 11, which is really kind of hard to imagine. As an aside, it's kind of weird how the only foreign-language television programs most international hotels show are news channels. But there you have it. So as an English-speaker in a European hotel, your television options are typically limited to BBC, CNN International, and Sky News. Fortunately, I speak German. So I could watch ARD and ZDF. I also understand enough French that I could watch France24. And let me tell you--every one of those news stations are wall-to-wall coverage of the genocide in Gaza. And that's how they' style it: "genocide." And the video--and there's a lot of video of starving children and Isreali-blocked food aid--support that characterization. Bevo and Magic can bloviate all they want here on a college-football message board. It doesn't matter. Israel has turned itself into an international outcast. And the diplomatic consequences are starting to be felt. France and the UK will recognize Palestinian soveignty. Those are the two big European players in the diplomatic sphere. And that's the first step; it won't be the last. International pressure akin to what South Africa experienced is coming. And as was the case with South Africa, the United States is going to be late to the party. But it'll eventually get on board. Israel is absolutely killing itself here.
  2. I'm sorry, but that's just ridiculous when you have Sprague's across the street and Jolie Rogers around the corner.
  3. Vienna is also a helluva good food town. You would expect it to be when maybe a third of the population was born outside Austria. We had some absolutely fantastic Asian and Middle Eastern food in Vienna. Last Thursday, though, we went to Doubek. It's really wild because they don't use any electricity or gas in the kitchen (apart from lighting). Everything is cooked on fire, either directly or indirectly in an oven. It's really cool to watch. Of particular interest to my Cajun and Cajun-adjacent friends @Brisketexan @Kyrie Eleison @Pescado_Rojo is what they did with the Carabinero. It's a prawn, but it looks a bit like a really long crawfish. Anyway, they cooked the thing and then tossed the heads into a press to extract the tamale, which was then made into a sauce. It was goddamned incredible.
  4. Vienna is full of actual history. It reminds the movie buff of Belloch's statement to Indiana Jones who is holding a bazooka to the Ark of the Covenant: "We are only passing through history; this is history." In the Imperial Treasury, you have the crown of the Austrian Empire dating back to the 17th Century. But in another room, there is the crown of the Holy Roman Empire, which dates to the mid-10th Century. Next to it they have a reproduction of Durer's woodcut of Charmlemagne wearing that crown. Charlemagne never wore that crown. It was made a few generations after Charlemagne died. It doesn't matter. It's cool. You also have all the relics. The Spear of Destiny. That's great. But you also have a tooth of St. John the Baptist and a piece of the tablecloth from the Last Supper. Oh, and a strip of Jesus's loincloth and one of the nails from the Cross. But those are of dubious provenance. What’s not are Charlemagne’s Bible and bag. These are things Charlemagne actually touched and used 1,200 years ago. In the Capuchin Crypt, you've got all the tombs. The saddest ones are the children. And there are a lot of them. And then there are the ones of the children with the mother who both died in childbirth. There's more than a few of those. The best though is Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico. He's down there. And his tomb is always decorated by visitors from Mexico. But if you are interested in history in Vienna, don't skip out on the Army History Museum. They have the car in which Franz Ferdinand was riding when he was assassinated, along with his bullet-pierced uniform.
  5. So another quick-hit from Vienna. We are at the Hotel Imperial. It’s a Marriott property, and I have a lot of points/status. So I booked one of our rooms on points, and the other got a nice upgrade to some sort of junior suite. All great. Until yesterday, when a rain storm moved in. When I tell you it was raining in the junior suite bathroom, that doesn’t really describe it. Like a lot of water coming from all over. Mrs LL’s hairdryer and some of her makeup was destroyed. So to apologize, we got another upgrade. This time to the Royal Suite. It’s … adequate.
  6. Israel is killing itself alongside its genocide of the Gazans. Public opinion in America is shifting radically against it. Public opinion in Europe is almost unanimous. To survive in that neighborhood, Israel needs friends. It’ll soon have none.
  7. The thing about Obama is that Donald Trump is in the Epstein files.
  8. The thing about anti-redhead discrimination is that Donald Trump is on the Epstein List.
  9. Too soon, motherfucker.
  10. There’s going to be a much more comprehensive post on my travels in Germany and Austria over the last couple weeks forthcoming. But as a quick teaser, here’s my view from my hotel in Salzburg as I enjoy a bier and clean out some emails. I hope everyone has a lovely Friday. Tchuss.
  11. Probably so. There aren’t just a whole lot of people out there. So it’s easy to know the handful of family names. The solar farms have been quite controversial, as I understand it. I’m not a local, so I haven’t much paid attention. I just know that some people aren’t happy with their neighbors leasing their land out to be used for power generation.
  12. So fun story on that: nearly a century ago, we had a Great Depression. Many are saying it was the best Depression. It came at the end of a half-century of nearly uninterupted Republican government. Many people don't know that. Anyway--I digress. My family has had a few tracts in Bell County for a very long time. I didn't really know how long. I knew it was family land and that was it. Cotton farming, mostly. But Cotton is hard on the land; for the last 20 years it's been corn. And corn doesn't make very much money. So we leased the upper tract to a solar outfit to build a solar farm. A few months ago, Oncor came asking for an easement to run transmission lines across the lower tract. There was some family discussion, but at the end of it we decided to go ahead. There was some discussion about the fact that my grandparents had kind of envisioned that as the bug-out property. Papa worked for the DOD and figured it might be good to have a place of last resort if the end of the world came about. And these days, . . . . But in that discussion, I asked how it came about that the family owned this random property (or really set of properties) in Bell County. And it turns out that my great-great grandfather was a soon-to-be-retired teacher in the very early 1930s, and as local farmers went bankrupt he would buy their tracts for virtually nothing from the local bank (which itself was about to (and ultimately did) go bust). So yeah--we leased out that tract to Oncor. It paid for my son's first car: a new BMW. There's plenty left over for his sister's car in a couple years. And along with it comes a lesson in family history. And why the family's crest ought to feature a vulture.
  13. Umm, Mandy—according to my BIL, I believe the correct term is “cloud seating.” Thank you for your attention to this matter.
  14. Yes—he really fucking spelled it that way. Because he’s a goddamned moron. But sadly, the reality of it is that he’s completely average.
  15. Meanwhile, my idiot BIL is posting on Facebook “Cloud seating has GOT to stop!” And that’s exactly how every politician is going to escape accountability. And it’s exactly why the GQP cultivates that type of stupidity. if any of you think any positive change is going to come from this disaster, you’re very sadly mistaken.
  16. The flow on the Perd at Fredericksburg just doubled in the last 15 minutes. I mean--goddamn.
  17. Well, Kerrville is about to get wiped out by this flood. And a lot of people won't be able to rebuild with FEMA now functionally out of business. So any of y'all looking for some cheap Hill Country real estate and willing to take advantage of some human misery . . . this may be your shot real close to home.
  18. But you can’t remove politics from it. Somebody who would support causing this much suffering is not a good person. They’re great people to you. But they’re bad people. It’s something we all have to deal with. My brother-in-law is a guy whose company I enjoy. He’s been good to me. But knowing his politics and listening to what he has to say about various out groups and the joy he takes in Trump hurting them—he’s a bad person. And I very frankly don’t want to be around him.
  19. Which would suggest that the people you know are not, in fact, either smart or good.
  20. I'm not talking about Protestants broadly. I commented on "Protestants who fetishize the Ten Commandments." And that's a lot of them. But it's certainly not all. I'm fairly atheistic these days, but I grew up Catholic. And at least when I went through CCD, the Church was pretty fucking supersessionist. I assume it still is, based on my occasional readings of what the Pope has to say. So I tend to think of this weird love of the Ten Commandments among purported "Christians" as a purely Protestant phenomenon.
  21. I don't think it's even a matter of squaring that circle. It's just a fucking circle. If you look back at the original text--and any Biblical scholar worth a damn will agree with this--Yahweh isn't saying "I am the only god out there." He's saying that "you shall have no other gods before me." That necessarily implies the existence of "other gods." Now, Yahweh is a jealous fucker. He doesn't want you putting Baal or Zeus ahead of him. But he's not saying that they can't be co-equal. And he's sure as shit not saying that Baal and Zeus don't exist. So fire away and hang your Vedas and Sutras and whatever else. Just don't hang them above the Ten Commandments, I suppose. Or maybe do. Jesus told y'all fuckers that the Ten Commandments don't really matter. There are really just Two Commandments: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” I'll just never understand Protestants who absolutely fetishize the Ten Commandments in the face of Jesus's actual fucking words.
  22. AMERICA FIRST! This is every client I've ever had who said "we're just filing a quick suit for declaratory judgment." Yeah--those counterclaims are a real bitch, though.
  23. Don't worry. The Department of Homeland Security's counter-terrorism center is led by . . . hold on . . . let me check my notes . . . oh, god--a kid who was working at HEB last year.
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