Wednesday, March 24, 2021

I just love flying in helicopters




I know how cherished my vacation pics are. That is what I will bestow on my fan base today. Followed by a lengthy opinion piece, an exploration of which watches are the best to wear snowboarding. Give the people what they want! That's what I always like to say. 
 
I feel truly terrible this morning. My buddy and I stayed up and drank last night. Today we are supposed to do the Blue Sky Basin trails. They can be seen just underneath the word "Legendary" in the above picture. These trails are not for beginners, a group in which I like to still count myself. There are only Blue and Black Diamonds there. I have been assured that I have really advanced in the sport, and that I am now squarely in the "intermediate" category, but I know better. I can feel how little control I have over the speed and direction of the board and myself upon it at any given time. I am never very far from tragedy or an airlift off of the mountain. 

But, it all makes me feel younger. Death or disfigurement seems a small price to pay. 


We stayed up arguing politics, which went really well. We are both lifelong liberals, whatever that means anymore. Don't let the Tom Brady, Buccaneers' jersey fool you. Some mutual friends bought that for him as a gift. It is not a political statement. It is the only time that I have ever seen him wear a sport's jersey of any kind. I tried to point out that both liberals and conservatives engage in a lot of bad faith arguments and that contemporary "liberal politicians" have basically become the GOP-lite. This discussion was very thin on facts and detail but heavy on emotion, opinion, even a little harmless conspiracy. 

This is how aging liberals get their kicks, I guess

Liberals annoy me so much that, at times, I have resorted to defending Trump. It brings me a perverse pleasure, specifically when it's an area that is so easy to prove your point. Like the claim of white nationalism in his remarks after Charlottesville. The "very fine people on both sides" claim that many major media agencies reported then and now refer to as a settled truth, confirming Trump's support of white nationalism. Joe Biden, that battery-operated corpse, even cited it as his reason for deciding to run for the presidency. Most people are either shocked or dismissive when they read the entire clip. 

Some are smart enough to realize they've been duped, some others must enjoy it. 

This is not to try and say that Trump deserves defending, at all. He doesn't. I just think it's worth establishing precisely how duplicitous our cherished media outlets can be, and how much politicians knowingly take advantage of this dishonesty. If I can do this at the expense of an old friendship then the taste is even that much sweeter. 

I hope you can hear my sarcasm and perhaps even mild remorse in that last sentence. It is no fun to argue politics with anybody, but definitely not an old friend. They're just not making any new old friends any more. It's only the old, broken-down ones that I should learn to get along with. 

I may need to practice holding my tongue more when Nancy Pelosi is presented as one of the great defenders of liberalism, and the levee that held back the Trump abuses of power.

Uh-huh. I'll just keep nodding my head. Uh-huh.