Default Imagine a Baroque box label for craft brewed beer with 2(1)

Bringing a young woman into your life

They need a scapegoat for all their problems, and China qualifies as scape goat for the Right, especially being (at least officially) Communist and definitely nonwhite. There is definitely more racism among the right wing, or at least they show it more. So, unfortunately, Trump used China as a scapegoat during his term, at times, but he started doing it less and less towards the end. Doing this to China was a mistake, but at least he didn’t get all belligerent about Taiwan like Biden did, and what Biden did was far more dangerous. Unlike Biden, Trump preferred dialogue to war with China, Russia, and even North Korea. He is the dove of peace compared to Herr Biden!

I believe when Trump gets elected (notice that I am saying not “if” but “when”), he will no longer use China as a scapegoat anymore, recognizing its vast economic and military power and usefulness to the US, but he will blame everything on the Neocon Neoliberal US establishment, and he will be right. The establishment fully deserves it, with inequality (and resulting socioeconomic instability) under this establishment increasing exponentially over the last 40 years (and especially the last 20 years or so, post 2007 crisis), and a war on two fronts (Ukraine and the Middle East). This almost makes even Trump look like a Socialist!

As far as not trusting the mainstream narrative about Trump (and most other things), the Trump-supporters are right. What’s more, I believe that at least half of Democrats don’t trust the mainstream narrative anymore!

By Pe.pe Esc.obar

No more shadow play. It’s now in the open. No holds barred

Exhibit 1: Friday, March 22, 2024. It’s War. The Kremlin, via Peskov, finally admits it, on the record.

The money quote:

“Russia cannot allow the existence on its borders of a state that has a documented intention to use any methods to take Crimea away from it, not to mention the territory of new regions.”

Translation: the Hegemon-constructed Kiev mongrel is doomed, one way or another. The Kremlin signal: “We haven’t even started” starts now.

Exhibit 2: Friday afternoon, a few hours after Peskov. Confirmed by a serious European – not Russian – source. The first counter-signal.

Regular troops from France, Germany and Poland have arrived, by rail and air, to Cherkassy, south of Kiev. A substantial force. No numbers leaked. They are being housed in schools. For all practical purposes, this is a NATO force.

That signals, “Let the games begin”. From a Russian point of view, Mr. Khinzal’s business cards are set to be in great demand.

Exhibit 3: Friday evening. Terror attack on Crocus City, a music venue northwest of Moscow. A heavily trained commando shoots people on sight, point blank, in cold blood, then sets a concert hall on fire. The definitive counter-signal: with the battlefield collapsing, all that’s left is terrorism in Moscow.

And just as terror was striking Moscow, the US and the UK, in southwest Asia, was bombing Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, with at least five strikes.

Some nifty coordination. Yemen has just clinched a strategic deal in Oman with Russia-China for no-hassle navigation in the Red Sea, and is among the top candidates for BRICS+ expansion at the summit in Kazan next October.

Not only the Houthis are spectacularly defeating thalassocracy, they have the Russia-China strategic partnership on their side. Assuring China and Russia that their ships can sail through the Bab-al-Mandeb, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden with no problems is exchanged with total political support from Beijing and Moscow.

The sponsors remain the same

Deep in the night in Moscow, before dawn on Saturday 23. Virtually no one is sleeping. Rumors dance like dervishes on countless screens. Of course nothing has been confirmed – yet. Only the FSB will have answers. A massive investigation is in progress.

The timing of the Crocus massacre is quite intriguing.

On a Friday during Ramadan. Real Muslims would not even think about perpetrating a mass murder of unarmed civilians under such a holy occasion. Compare it with the ISIS card being frantically branded by the usual suspects.

Let’s go *pop*.

To quote Talking Heads: “This ain’t no party/ this ain’t no disco/ this ain’t no fooling around”.

Oh no; it’s more like an all-American psy op.

ISIS are cartoonish mercenaries/goons. Not real Muslims. And everyone knows who finances and weaponizes them. *wink* *wink*

That leads to the most possible scenario, before the FSB weighs in: ISIS goons imported from the Syria battleground – as it stands, probably Tajiks – trained by CIA and MI6, working on behalf of the Ukrainian SBU. Several witnesses at Crocus referred to “Wahhabis” – as in the commando killers did not look like Slavs.

It was up to Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic to cut to the chase. He directly connected the “warnings” in early March from American and British embassies directed at their citizens not to visit public places in Moscow with CIA/MI6 intel having inside info about possible terrorism, and not disclosing it to Moscow.

The plot thickens when it is established that Crocus is owned by the Agalarovs: an Azeri-Russian billionaire family, very close friends of…

… Donald Trump.

Talk about a Deep State-pinpointed target.

ISIS spin-off or banderistas – the sponsors remain the same.

The clownish secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, was dumb enough to virtually, indirectly confirm they did it, saying on Ukrainian TV, “we will give them [Russians] this kind of fun more often.”

But it was up to Sergei Goncharov, a veteran of the elite Russia Alpha anti-terrorism unit, to get closer to unwrapping the enigma: he told Sputnik the most feasible mastermind is Kyrylo Budanov – the chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence at the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.

The “spy chief” who happens to be the top CIA asset in Kiev.

It’s got to go till the last Ukrainian

The three exhibits above complement what the head of NATO’s military committee, Rob Bauer, previously told a security forum in Kiev: “You need more than just grenades – you need people to replace the dead and wounded. And this means mobilization.”

Translation: NATO spelling out this is a war until the last Ukrainian.

And the “leadership” in Kiev still does not get it. Former Minister of Infrastructure Omelyan: “If we win, we will pay back with Russian oil, gas, diamonds and fur. If we lose, there will be no talk of money – the West will think about how to survive.”

In parallel, puny “garden-and jungle” Borrell admitted that it would be “difficult” for the EU to find an extra 50 billion euros for Kiev if Washington pulls the plug. The cocaine-fueled sweaty sweatshirt leadership actually believes that Washington is not “helping” in the form of loans, but in the form of free gifts. And the same applies for the EU.

The Theater of the Absurd is unmatchable.

The German Liver Sausage Chancellor actually believes that proceeds from stolen Russian assets “do not belong to anyone”, so they can be used to finance extra Kiev weaponizing.

Everyone with a brain knows that using interest from “frozen”, actually stolen Russian assets to weaponize Ukraine is a dead end – unless they steal all of Russia’s assets, roughly $200 billion, mostly parked in Belgium and Switzerland: that would tank the Euro for good, and the whole EU economy for that matter.

Eurocrats better listen to Russian Central Bank major “disrupter” (American terminology) Elvira Nabiullina: The Bank of Russia will take “appropriate measures” if the EU does anything on the “frozen”/stolen Russian assets.

It goes without saying that the three exhibits above completely nullify the “La Cage aux Folles” circus promoted by the puny Petit Roi, now known across his French domains as Macronapoleon.

Virtually the whole planet, including the English-speaking Global North, had already been mocking the “exploits” of his Can Can Moulin Rouge Army.

So French, German and Polish soldiers, as part of NATO, are already in the south of Kiev. The most possible scenario is that they will stay far, far away from the frontlines – although traceable by Mr. Khinzal’s business activities.

Even before this new NATO batch arriving in the south of Kiev, Poland – which happens to serve as prime transit corridor for Kiev’s troops – had confirmed that Western troops are already on the ground.

So this is not about mercenaries anymore. France, by the way, is only 7th in terms of mercenaries on the ground, largely trailing Poland, the US and Georgia, for instance.

The Russian Ministry of Defense has all the precise records.

In a nutshell: now war has morphed from Donetsk, Avdeyevka and Belgorod to Moscow. Further on down the road, it may not just stop in Kiev. It may only stop in Lviv. Mr. 87%, enjoying massive national near-unanimity, now has the mandate to go all the way. Especially after Crocus.

There’s every possibility the terror tactics by Kiev goons will finally drive Russia to return Ukraine to its original 17th century landlocked borders: Black Sea-deprived, and with Poland, Romania, and Hungary reclaiming their former territories.

Remaining Ukrainians will start to ask serious questions about what led them to fight – literally to their death – on behalf of the US Deep State, the military complex and BlackRock.

As it stands, the Highway to Hell meat grinder is bound to reach maximum velocity.

Ten things

Pizza in a Tunnel

img 20161001 195929 largejpg
img 20161001 195929 largejpg

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

Ingredients

  • 3 cups buttermilk biscuit mix or Biscuit Baking Mix
  • 2/3 cup milk
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 tablespoons butter, melted
  • 1 1/2 cups sliced fresh mushrooms
  • 1 (3 1/2 ounce) package sliced pepperoni, halved
  • 1 (14 ounce) jar pizza sauce
  • 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
  • Cornmeal

Instructions

  1. Heat oven to 400 degrees F. Grease and lightly dust* a 10 inch fluted tube pan or an 11 cup ring mold with cornmeal.
  2. In a large mixer bowl, combine biscuit mix, milk, eggs and butter. Beat with an electric mixer on low speed until well combined. Beat on high speed for 1 minute, scraping bowl constantly.
  3. With back of spoon, spread 2/3 of the dough on the bottom and up the sides of the prepared pan to within 1 1/2 inches of the top; reserve remaining dough.
  4. Layer mushroom, pepperoni, pizza sauce and 1 1/2 cups of the cheese over the dough in pan.
  5. Spread reserved dough over the top of cheese layer.
  6. Bake for 30 minutes or until golden.
  7. Let pizza stand for 10 minutes on a warm rack.
  8. Use a knife to loosen sides of pizza, turn out onto ovenproof serving plate.
  9. Top with remaining cheese.
  10. Return pizza to oven for 1 to 2 minutes to melt cheese.
  11. Serve warm.

“Study Reveals How Ancient Humans Escaped Climate Extinction 900,000 Years Ago”

MPT 2048x600
MPT 2048×600
Figure 1: (A) 65°N summer solstice insolation, (B)Atmospheric CO2 concentration, Allan Hills vertical error bars indicate 2σ spread with horizontal age uncertainty, (C) Global LR04 benthic stacked δ18O (blue), ODP1123 seawater δ18O (black). The MPT and the “typical 41 ka-world” intervals are highlighted in grey and yellow respectively.

Some 900,000 years ago, humans nearly went extinct. According to the results of a genomics study published last year, modern humanity’s ancestors were reduced to a breeding population of barely 1,300 individuals in a devastating bottleneck that brought us to the very brink of annihilation. Now, a new study has found that a mass migration of humans out of Africa occurred at the same time.

It’s a discovery that confirms the previous dating of the population decline, and suggests that the two are linked to a common denominator; an event known as the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, in which Earth’s climate underwent a period of utter turmoilwiping out many species. The movement of early humans into and across Europe and Asia from Africa is difficult to reconstruct. The best evidence we have consists of a sparse record of bones and mostly stone artifacts, which can be challenging to date. However, the evidence suggests that it wasn’t one event, but multiple waves of early hominids and human ancestors that packed up their lives and made long journeys into new environments.

Two recent studies have linked human migration to a population bottleneck, based on different types of analysis. A close reading of the human genome found that a population bottleneck caused a loss of genetic diversity some 900,000 years ago. A second study, published a few weeks later, studied early archaeological sites in Eurasia, and dated the bottleneck to 1.1 million years ago.

This discrepancy makes it challenging to identify the climate event that may have caused or at the very least contributed to the temporary drop in numbers, so geologists Giovanni Muttoni of the University of Milan and Dennis Kent of Columbia University embarked on an effort to narrow down the timing of the bottleneck. First, the researchers re-evaluated records of sites of early hominid habitation across Eurasia, and found a cluster of sites reliably dated to 900,000 years ago. In comparison, the dating on older sites used as evidence of a population bottleneck was more ambiguous and therefore disputable.

They compared their findings to marine sediment records, which preserve evidence of changes in the climate in the form of oxygen isotopes. Ratios of oxygen trapped in sediment layers indicate whether the climate was warmer or cooler at the time the minerals were deposited.

The genomic data and the dating of the hominid sites together suggest that the bottleneck and the migration were simultaneous. During the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, global ocean levels dropped, and Africa and Asia dried out, with large patches of aridity. Hominids living in Africa would have faced horrible conditions depriving them of food and water. Fortunately, with the falling sea level, land routes into Eurasia became available and they were able to skedaddle, according to the researchers’ model.

This is not to say, they carefully note, that hominids had not migrated previously. Rather that the population bottleneck in the ancestor of modern Homo sapiens and the migration thereof occurred at the same time as a result of the climate upheaval that was occurring some 900,000 years ago.

“We suggest that the enhanced aridity during marine isotope stage 22 that caused the spread of savanna and arid zones across much of continental Africa pushed early Homo populations in Africa to adapt or migrate to avoid extinction,” they write in their paper. “Rapid migration in response to a severe climate trigger and concomitant means to escape is what can account for the … migration out-of-Africa at 0.9 million years ago and contribute to the modern genomic evidence in modern African populations of the bottleneck.”

The findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

https://www.sciencealert.com/study-reveals-how-ancient-humans-escaped-climate-extinction-900000-years-ago

Comment: I have found this stuff fascinating as far back as when I watched the National Geographic specials with Louis B. Leakey digging for bones in Olduvai Gorge. I started at RPI majoring in geology figuring that would be a good way to get into paleontology. Only later did I transfer to anthropology… and ROTC.

This story is a good example of what effect a changing climate can have on humans even when they occur on a geological time scale. Reducing our breeding population to barely 1,300 individuals and causing our ancestors to un-ass the area for parts unknown are damned drastic effects. In this case, humans certainly had no hand in influencing this particular episode of climate change. It would be interesting to compare and contrast the conditions leading to the Mid-Pleistocene Transition to what we’re seeing/not seeing today.

TTG

https://pastglobalchanges.org/publications/pages-magazines/pages-magazine/11517

They really think we’re dumb don’t they?

main qimg ee5a523a622cf073f8615d93d78597b3
main qimg ee5a523a622cf073f8615d93d78597b3

Russia Announces Two New ARMIES; 14 New Divisions, 16 New Brigades

Russia Announces Two New ARMIES; 14 New Divisions, 16 New Brigades

With his re-election accomplished, Russian President Vladimir Putin is now getting serious about the harm being done to Russia by the petulant and crazed collective West.   Defense Minister Shoigu has announced the creation of two new ARMIES for Russia, including fourteen (14) New Divisions of 10,000-15,000 troops EACH, and sixteen (16) new divisions of 3,000-5,000 troops EACH.

To put these two new armies in perspective, what Russia is now creating – above and beyond its present armed forces – is larger than the armies of:

Germany, Britain (UK), France, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Czech Republic, Croatia, Finland, Sweden COMBINED.

The big question now is whether or not Russia will resort to Conscription.

Stay tuned . . .

So true

One of the Moscow attackers, has been confirmed to be an ex-Ukrainian soldier who served in 2022

Moscow shooter suspect Rustam Azhiyev large
Moscow shooter suspect Rustam Azhiyev large

The investigation into the horrific attack at a Concert Hall in the Moscow, Russia region, has been positively identified as Rustam Azhiyev, a former UKRAINIAN SOLDIER (Image above) who served in 2022, as a shooter.

The man shown atop this story is the captured suspect and Russian law enforcement identified him and pulled up some of his history in the Ukraine Army:

Suspect Rustam Azhiyev Ukraine Army info
Suspect Rustam Azhiyev Ukraine Army info

In earlier stories about the Moscow Attack, it was reported that a White Renault automobile was caught on a dashcam, with men exiting carrying rifles, outside the concert hall which was attacked (HERE).

It was also reported earlier that the White Renault vehicle was captured and the men inside, who fled to nearby woods, were also captured (HERE).

Those men were identified as having been citizens of Tajikistan, which is shown on the map below:

Tajikistan Russia Map
Tajikistan Russia Map

Hours after the Terrorist attack near Moscow, that White Renault vehicle was captured on a road near Bryansk, Russia, which is shown on the map below:

Moscow suspects Caught Bryansk Lived Tajikistan Map
Moscow suspects Caught Bryansk Lived Tajikistan Map

Why were the suspects traveling toward UKRAINE when they are allegedly from Tajikistan?   Why does one of the suspects have ties to the UKRAINE armed forces?

The investigation is rapidly developing with evidence that it was UKRAINE that was deeply involved in this terror attack upon innocent civilians inside Russia.

Pittsburgh Is Being Destroyed. Here’s Why.

Transforming the United States into Haiti.

1
1

Lordy! I have family living in Pittsburgh.

Terrorists Wore Body Cams! Video of them Murdering inside Russian Concert Hall

Moscow perps in concert hall
Moscow perps in concert hall

The terrorists who attacked a concert hall inside Russia, apparently wore Body Cams or “Go-Pro-Type” cameras and took video of themselves as they massacred innocent people.   I have received one such video.

In the video, one can see an UNARMED co-conspirator, wearing what appears to be rifle magazine clip-carriers (no gun seen on him) waving a shooter INTO a hallway where innocent people were hiding. Image above.

The shooter enters the doorway to that hall and begins firing.

Moscow shooter in hallway
Moscow shooter in hallway

At least six people go down under his automatic weapons fire.  Blood spray and splatter, everywhere.

As the person wearing the camera turns, another terrorist attacker is shown kneeling at the throat of another victim, who had already been shot, but was laying, wounded and dying, on the ground.   The perpetrator is seen repeatedly slicing the victims throat — at least TEN SLASHES, with blood spewing from the gaping wounds.

Then that perp and others calmly walk away:

Unarmed co conspirator waving shooter into hallway large
Unarmed co conspirator waving shooter into hallway large

This is some of the most evil, vicious, horrifying, crime video I have ever seen.   It makes me sick to my stomach.  The Barbarity.  The inhuman behavior.   It is mortifying to me.

I find myself in an ethical and moral quandary over this video.  It certainly is “news.”  Of that, there is no doubt.

Yet the video is so utterly horrifying, so outside any behavior even remotely “human,” and so hideously violent, that I find myself recoiling at the notion of putting the video out.

I then asked myself if perhaps I should put still images from the video, like the one atop this story, and that begot yet another quandary.  Would publishing such still images, cause emotional distress to the families of the victims?

I have decided still images ought not be published except for the non-gruesome images above, either.

Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age.  Maybe, though, I’m just pushed too far on this one, and realizing there is nothing good that can come of publishing it.

I want you to know I have the video.   I’ve watched it.   It is frighteningly gruesome, and shows what can only be described as pure evil.

Biggest red flag

Happening Now: Russian Missiles Cross POLAND Border During Ukraine Attack

Happening Now: Russian Missiles Cross POLAND Border During Ukraine Attack

As of 11:53 PM eastern US time on Saturday night-into-Sunday, Russia is engaged in a large missile attack against Ukraine.  HOWEVER, “at least three” Russian missiles breached POLAND air space over the Village of Horodto, and POLAND has scrambled fighter jets.

The scalable map below shows the village of Horodto, Poland, on the border of Ukraine.

 

At least 7 Russian Tu-95MS bombers took off from the Olenya air field in Russia to launch long-range missiles at Ukraine.

Bombers also took off from Engels with a total now of 13 in the air.

This airfield is located just 100km from the Norway border in the far north.

MORE: 

6- Su-34 bombers are airborne

 

LARGE EXPLOSIONS IN LVIV. SECOND MISSILE VOLLEY INBOUND.

MISSILES ARE HEADED FOR KIEV!!!!

ALL of Ukraine now in Air Raid Alert:

GJZwuZIXQAA2T9n
GJZwuZIXQAA2T9n

 

Missiles Have Overflown Oserdow, Poland which is about 70km south of Horodto, Poland, previously overflown.

— Several Dozen additional Cruise Missiles have entered Ukrainian Airspace via the Chernihiv and Sumy Region.

— Multiple Russian Kh-101/555/55 cruise missiles on direct course to Kyiv from the north.

 

Massive explosions in Kyiv the city is under intense bombardment right now.

MORE:

At least 19x explosions in Stryi, on the Ukrainian side of the Polish-Ukrainian border:

Jackie Chan wise words

Vintage Shorpy

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Men can only take so much.

Then they stop.

 

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is talking nonsense. Its friends on Earth are worried.

NASA
NASA

“Frankly, I’m very worried,” he says. Ever since mid-November, the Voyager 1 spacecraft has been sending messages back to Earth that don’t make any sense. It’s as if the aging spacecraft has suffered some kind of stroke that’s interfering with its ability to speak. “It basically stopped talking to us in a coherent manner,” says Suzanne Dodd of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who has been the project manager for the Voyager interstellar mission since 2010. “It’s a serious problem.”

Instead of sending messages home in binary code, Voyager 1 is now just sending back alternating 1s and 0s. Dodd’s team has tried the usual tricks to reset things — with no luck. It looks like there’s a problem with the onboard computer that takes data and packages it up to send back home. All of this computer technology is primitive compared to, say, the key fob that unlocks your car, says Dodd. “The button you press to open the door of your car, that has more compute power than the Voyager spacecrafts do,” she says. “It’s remarkable that they keep flying, and that they’ve flown for 46-plus years.”

Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, have outlasted many of those who designed and built them. So to try to fix Voyager 1’s current woes, the dozen or so people on Dodd’s team have had to pore over yellowed documents and old mimeographs. “They’re doing a lot of work to try and get into the heads of the original developers and figure out why they designed something the way they did and what we could possibly try that might give us some answers to what’s going wrong with the spacecraft,” says Dodd. She says that they do have a list of possible fixes. As time goes on, they’ll likely start sending commands to Voyager 1 that are more bold and risky. “The things that we will do going forward are probably more challenging in the sense that you can’t tell exactly if it’s going to execute correctly — or if you’re going to maybe do something you didn’t want to do, inadvertently,” says Dodd.

Linda Spilker, who serves as the Voyager mission’s project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says that when she comes to work she sees “all of these circuit diagrams up on the wall with sticky notes attached. And these people are just having a great time trying to troubleshoot, you know, the 60’s and 70’s technology.” “I’m cautiously optimistic,” she says. “There’s a lot of creativity there.”

Still, this is a painstaking process that could take weeks, or even months. Voyager 1 is so distant, it takes almost a whole day for a signal to travel out there, and then a whole day for its response to return. “We’ll keep trying,” says Dodd, “and it won’t be quick.”

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/06/1236033493/nasas-voyager-1-spacecraft-is-talking-nonsense-its-friends-on-earth-are-worried

Comment: This is one hell of an adventure for NASA coders and engineers. I envy them. Years before the launch of Voyager 1, I was introduced to computers in an after school course in the computer center of Fairfield University. I ended up writing a Star Trek navigation game in Fortran by graphing polynomial functions. I wouldn’t know where to begin to do that now. Many years later I learned how to hack MS DOS to write stupid computer tricks and write simple viruses. That was all to support a cover. I couldn’t do that today, either. Those rudimentary old skills are nothing to sneeze at. Those NASA coders are living the dream… a techno-nerd dream, but a dream nevertheless.

TTG

The logic of anti-China idiots

2
2

Smart Boy

Stuffed Pizza

1362506743810
1362506743810

Ingredients

Crust

  • 1 recipe uncooked deep-dish dough crust

Stuffing Mixture

  • 1 bunch spinach, washed, stems removed, and lightly wilted (stir-fried)
  • 8 ounces shredded mozzarella cheese
  • 2 ounces Canadian bacon slices, diced
  • 1 teaspoon oregano
  • 2 cloves garlic, sliced thinly
  • 2 ounces mushrooms, sliced
  • 1/2 cup tomato sauce

Alternate Stuffing Mixture

  • 8 ounces shredded mozzarella cheese
  • 1/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
  • 1/4 pound hot Italian sausage, browned/crumbled and drained
  • 1/3 cup small pepperoni pieces
  • 1/4 cup sliced black olives
  • 1/4 cup sliced green olives
  • 1/2 package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
  • 1 teaspoon oregano
  • 1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Instructions

Stuffing Mixture

  1. Combine spinach, cheese, Canadian bacon, oregano, garlic and mushrooms for stuffing mixture.

Crust

  1. Spread dough in a greased deep-dish pan and up the sides for the bottom crust (approximately 16 ounces of dough for 14 inch deep dish).
  2. Par-bake the crust for four minutes.
  3. Add stuffing mixture to bottom crust in a deep dish pan and cover with top crust (approximately 13 ounces dough).
  4. Seal the two dough edges together with fingers and trim excess.
  5. Slit the top crust to allow steam to vent during baking.
  6. Add tomato sauce topping and bake in a preheated 450 degrees F oven on lower rack or directly on the pizza stone for 45 minutes or until crust is golden brown.
  7. Remove from pan and cool 5 minutes on a wire rack before cutting and serving.

Oooooh yes, and definitely no.

I had done some North American travelling (flights) in late 2019, and soon after arriving home in Canada I fell ill. I was sicker than I’d ever been… but it felt like a bad cold. Very bad. I lay in bed for 4–5 days with fever, aches, congestion, cough – no medicines could ease my agony. I am not a whiner either… quite the opposite. I don’t miss work.

On the Thursday of the week (having missed Monday – Wednesday out sick) I received a call saying that the Boss wanted me in Saturday because we were moving a ton of desks around the office, on his whim. For context, I’m an Office & Facilities Manager, so this did *technically* fall under my purview, though the Boss dreamt this up earlier in the week so I hadn’t been involved.

They threatened my employment if I didn’t show up for this desk move, despite touting a ‘no limits’ policy on vacation and illness. I showed up to the office that Saturday and did my job, sicker than ever. Life went on, my cough lasted 17 weeks (SEVENTEEN WEEKS) even with a steroid inhaler, I lost 18lbs off my already lean but fit frame. Management teased me & laughed about it as I coughed all over the office and just kept saying ‘you’re so sickly’…

Pretty sure I had COVID, and bad, but this was before tests were available.

I quit in January ‘20, just before the world learned of the COVID-19 virus circulating the world. Still can’t reconcile the arrogance and lack of empathy of that management team with the A++ company they purported to be.

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Jambo

Great story– and introductory pep-talk, thank you. And can concur, an East Asian chick giving one the flirtatious, and continuous, sausage look– on an Asian bus, no less, be it China, Korea, or Japan– is most definitely extraordinary, and likely one of those peculiar kinds of anomalies that seem to come hot and heavy, so to speak, when one is caught up in the midst of a pile of affirmations manifesting.
Had some very strange anomalies happen to myself, of late. I’ll spare you the details; but I think the Work being done on the Reality Universe by those Oompaloompa guys is making everything a lot more fluid, for want of a better term.
On another note, please throw us another story or two from the slammer back in Honkytonksville some time if you can, Metallicman. Was thinking again about your experience– and what it must have been like– the other day after you mentioned the halfway house stay following your stint.
In the meantime, enjoy the sossy looks, heh heh. And you’re right! If you’re not careful, things could get very, verrry complicated. And fast.
(Not that I’d know anything about that from personal experience, of course… ahem.)

Last edited 6 months ago by Jambo99
Greg

Thanks Jambo…interesting comment.

Greg

Love the story. It has been decades for me also since I experienced that gaze from an attractive woman. Thanks for bringing back memories. Beautiful created art by the way. I would love to manifest one of my own, but as you knew, it would be too complicated to pursue.

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