The Axiom... repeated.

Today is go back to work day for me... I'm not excited.
Yesterday I checked my 401K.  Once a year I'm allowed to transfer funds tax free into a safer place, where the stock market will have little to no effect on my savings.  No, I don't convert it to cash and hide it in my mattress, if that's what you're thinking.  Interestingly enough, while everybody is crowing about how great the stock market is, since April, my 401K is down 2.26%.  The only funds there are the ones being deducted from my paycheck.  Matching funds from my company have all been lost.  Okay, so what's wrong with this picture?  Maybe the economy isn't quite as good as Republicans say it is.  Sure, unemployment is down, but where's the money!  Show me the money!
And, of course, the Idiot Jerk in the White House is doing flaming cartwheels over Bob Woodward's book.  Can we talk about salty nuggets which leave you wanting more... and more.  I might actually buy it, you know?  As I was reading little snippets yesterday, all I could do was laugh.  If this thing is even halfway true, it makes dysfunctional look downright normal.
At the same time, I was horrified at how reprehensible the Republican Party has become.  They support this monstrosity of humanity simply because he gives them what they want.  Their hatred for America has never been so obvious.  They want a Republican dictatorship, and he is only too happy to oblige.  Except he, very, very unpopular.
For those who have never heard it, I'm going to repeat Dave's Axiom..  "A popular president can move the country to either the left, or the right and the public will go along with him.  An unpopular president, trying to force the country to either the left, or the right, will move the public in the opposite direction."  His disapproval rating pretty much sits at 60%.  Almost 2/3's of the country believe this Idiot Jerk is totally unfit to be president.  They want him out of the office.  Believe me, he will be gone sooner than you think.
On a lighter note, I started playing Skyrim again.  This is probably my fourth play through, though I don't know if I'll finish.  Mostly it's to hold me over until the next Assassin's Creed comes out.  From the reviews I've been seeing, that game is going to be simply spectacular.  They're saying the story is over 100 hours longs.  That's simply amazing.  Here's some game play with Alexios on the island of  Lesbos.

Hot, right?  Really Hot.  This is where he fights Melania, you know?   Chick with the snakes in her hair... wait, you're telling me Melania doesn't have snakes in her hair.  Then it must be that other chick... Medusa.

My nuts

So, it's Tuesday morning.  I have about 180 lbs of dogs jumping around on the bed playing with their squeaking, purple squirrel, and from all of the squeaking it sounds like they're having a grand old time.
Last week, when I was down in Lebanon and stopped by the Gingrich Memorial Pool, I picked up a bunch of walnuts.  My first thought was to husk them and eat them when I got home, however, I got to thinking.  Wouldn't it be really neat to take some Lebanon walnuts and plant them here in Enola, forty-three miles away.  They're fast growing trees, producing fruit in  5 - 6 years.  True, in 30 years they can reach a height of 100 feet but let's face, I'm not going to be living here in 30 years.  Out of all the walnuts I brought back, only 2 are viable - but that's all it takes since they are cross-pollinators.  I'm excited!  Sometime tomorrow morning I'm going to plant my nuts.

Also, in 3 days Assassin's Creed - Origins gets released.  This game is already garnering some major accolades.  It's still not too late to buy some stock in Ubisoft because this game is going to make a fortune (thinks hundreds of hundreds of millions).  Here's the final release trailer.  I can't even imagine how great it would be to climb up the face of the Sphinx.

And, if you're interested in the "Do Nothing Party's" shitty tax plan, well, evidently there's already heaps and heaps of issues going on behind the scenes, what with the Idiot Jerk saying 401K's aren't going to be touched and the GOP desperately trying to find some small way to keep from diving head first into the Cesspool of Debt.  I'll bet they're terrified that their Kansas failure is going to slap them silly.  Kansas, you ask?  Yepper.  They've already used a conservative spin on that state's failed tax system and things went horribly wrong.  Corporate tax breaks don't create jobs, they merely pad pockets and provide bonuses.  Conservatives are great believers in "do as I say, not as I do."

He fingers... she speaks

So, yesterday I drove down to the Lebanon VA Hospital to speak to my surgeon.  Interestingly, he told me that my hernia was old, that I'd had it for some time, and that my going to the gym regularly, strength training, and extensive bits of cardio had exacerbated the problem.  What ever... it's getting fixed on November 14, which is 6 days after my birthday.  What I have to look forward to is 2 days of discomfort, 12 days of Rest and Relaxation, and then 2 more weeks before I'm fit enough to start hitting the gym again.  I cannot wait.
After my consultation, I stopped in to take a pee and saw large poster of an attractive man holding an ax posted above the urinal.  What caught my eye was the headline:  Don't fear the finger.

Now, even though this was meant to be taken seriously, I had to laugh, in fact, I'm still laughing.  In fact, I suspect there are a lot of men out there, both gay and straight, who will be laughing with me.

Oh, and evidently Rex Tillerson may, or may not have, called the Idiot Jerk in the White House a moron.  An article in the Washington Post pretty much indicates that because this is making headlines, it's a pretty good indicator that he is in a death spiral.  We all know that the Idiot Jerk is cursed with an horrendous ego problem, and he must find the idea that one of his cabinet members my possibly have called him a moron must be shattering.  As I said to Rozzie, maybe we should start a pool, wagering which rat will jump ship next.
And here's a bit more of Assassins Creed, Origins.  Cleopatra speaks.  Gaming is not what you think it is.

Don't you wish you could ski down a pyramid like that?

The origins of ... stuff

So, today is Wednesday and I'm off work today - vacation day, though it's going to be anything but a vacation.  I have an appointment at 10:20 with the surgical team at the VA Hospital in Lebanon, about an hour away, where we're going to discuss my hernia.  What I'm hoping is that by 10:30 I have a date set in stone.  I want it fixed, as soon as possible.  If they can do it in 2 weeks that would be just ducky dandy.  Unfortunately I have this terrible feeling they're going to give me a date about 2 months from now, not what I want to hear.  I need to be able to start doing things again without the fear of my intestines popping through my muscle wall, or worrying about them getting trapped in a pocket of muscle and getting squeezed to death.  My routines are all screwed up.  No gym.  No cardio (except for walking, which does very little to get my neurotransmitters popping).  Besides, in 3 weeks 3 new games that I've pre-ordered are released:  Assassin's Creed Origins, Wolfenstein II, and Destiny 2 (for PC), and what better way is there to spend 2 weeks recovering.
I see the Idiot Jerk in the White House still refuses to call the Vegas horror domestic terrorism, even though Paddock evidently put a lot of time into planning the thing, including the set up of cameras to monitor the hallways leading to his room.  Does that surprise you?  Me?  No.  His definition of terrorism needs to include religion - it can't be terrorism unless it's carried out by Muslims.
And, tucked away in the LA Times this AM was a smidgen regarding those Crazy to the Right contributors, and how they're getting all pissy about the Do Nothing Party's inability to do... well... anything.  The Young Guard wants the Old Guard gone, and (this is funny) they are saying that the party may actually have to lose seats in the House and Senate in order to replace them with more like-minded crazies.  And.... wait a minute... replace them?  (this is where you laugh)  Yeah.  For those who didn't know, this is how losers begin to acknowledge their unpopularity, that the Idiot Jerk in the White House, with his dismally low approval rating, is taking them towards a dead end.  They're dropping these little turds so that in 12 months they can kind of say "I told you so."
And, of course, since the game I'm most looking forward to is Assassin's Creed, Origins I thought I'd share a trailer.  Egypt - Cleopatra... Julius Caesar... this is going to be great!

Now doesn't that give you a warm fuzzy feeling?

Origins and Idiocies

Okay, so here it is Tuesday, my first legal day off in a 5 day stretch, and it's hot outside.  Some have been saying we've been having a heat wave, but they're wrong, this is nothing but a warm spell - a heat wave is when the temperature is in the mid to upper 90's (F) and runs for 7 or more days.  Tomorrow the temperature is going to be lower and I can get at the yard work which needs to be done.
The big news yesterday was at E3.  UbiSoft announced "Assassin's Creed - Origins."  The setting is ancient Egypt - think pristine pyramids, date palms for days, and hungry crocodiles. And, of course, I did put a pre-order in, which means I'm going to have to take off on 10-27-17.

A bit of irony from yesterday was that Dave, a friend from my Navy Days sent out an email about 15 minutes after I did my post announcing that the USS Constellation, which was decommissioned a while back, has been almost completely dismantled for scrap iron.  Recycled.  Everything ends up getting recycled - that's why we have history. 

And yesterday, the Idiot in the White House gathered his cabinet around him and said  "Never has there been a president, with few exceptions - case of FDR, he had a major depression to handle - who has passed more legislation and who has done more things than what we've done."  Yeah, that's right.  He said that.  My Mom has Vascular Dementia and she's not nearly as delusional as he is.  Perhaps the time has come to prepare for the GOP wake because this Idiot has staked it through the heart.