neatimes.com

Monday 9 June 2025 12:35:54 PM CST

Thursday 5 June 2025 10:39:02 PM CST

Dvorak's Ninth is probably my favorite symphony ninth or otherwise. I like Beethoven's Ninth but for some reason I like Dvorak's better. The subtitle is I guess because he wrote it while he was in the New World. He got a gig here for a few years and wrote it while he was here. Don't have all of his or about anybody else's symphonies. Just whatever I heard on radio liked it. Those stilted accents were a bit of a problem. Wondered for quite a while who WC was until I figured out they were trying to say Debussy. Some good stuff there. Other Dvorak I like is the 7th symphony and the Slavonic Dances for some reason. You like what you like. I like Bach's organ music but I like organ music. Just as I figure that if Paganini were reincarnated in the 20th century he'd trade his Stradivarius for a Stratocaster and some Marshall stacks. Similarly if Bach were woke up he'd probably grab a vintage Hammond. If he was here while the great Jon Lord was here they could have some epic jams. I suspect that in the future some examples of the the sixty-eight or so types of metal will be classical music. The old stuff will still be around too and if civilization ends and there's no electricity it will still work if the instruments and printed music survive.

The Google AI thingy says that August Dvorak (inventor of the weird keyboard that bears his name) was distantly related to the composer. Augie had a nephew named John. John was a pretty famous computer pundit - that they'd call a tech pundit or maybe a tech influencer today - and I used to read his columns in PC Magazine and he got about everything wrong. Sometimes I suspected he did it intentionally.

OK Chris, what we got?

Yeah, Left Memphis. Cop gets caught shoplifting. I haven't been in a DG in a while so dunno hot they staffed. Used to be you'd be doing good to see one employee but anyway they got cameras and they got him. He was with a woman and in the pic she's wearing what looks like an Army uniform. Doesn't say if she's actually military personnel or not.

Edmondson is over in Crittenden County near Left Memphis. Back in the day when Slick Willie infested the presidency and the govrenment handed out money to any city that wanted it to hire cops. 100,000 new police officers was the campaign promise. Some little places like Edmondson got the money and hired a cop to run a speed trap. Only problem the cop there was stopping people outside the city and writing tickets. One day he was issuing a citation and an old guy happened by and stopped and told the victim that they was outside the city limits and the cop was out of his juridsiction. Cop beat the old man to death.

Well, actually he beat him into a coma and he died a few days later in the hospital. Arrest warrant issued for the cop and he fled. I was a year or more afore they caught him and tried him and he was acquitted. No riots though, black cop beat an elderly white man to death and all.

The SPLC is a hate group. Hate groups decline but their influcence grows? How does that work. White supremacists - the goto bogeyman - are so scarce the government uses actors and creates organizations to try to recruit actual white supremacist terrorists but they rarely get one. Sometimes a mentally deficient guy comes along and they use him for something like the fake kidnapping of the Michigan governor. Actual hate groups - mostly the anti-Jewish terrorists - may be more influential or seemingly so. When Harvard sponsors one of the biggest ones that's up there in some kind of influence.

Pretty slick waiting for the ones that actually do show up and if they're released just arrest them when they come out. Judge tries to obstruct arrest the judge. And anyone else that interferes.

Dunno how much of that street graffiti is left. I saw a St. George mural where the wall got stuck by lightning which was pretty funny. I believe some have been paved over and the enthusiasm for restoring them seems a little short. Five years is a long time to keep anything like that going

Friday 6 June 2025 10:52:12 PM CST

Not much going on in Arkansas. At least not much being reported. That basketball coach from Forrest City that was a former Arkansas basketball player. That's Razorbacks not Red Wolves. Apparently didn't go pro. Most of the gory details of his adventure in Wynne are here. That's a fairly new outlet that does some digging instead of just them little pieces the other have.

Left Memphis got its first homicide of the year. Surprising it took so long but the fact is there ain't a while lot of killings in Left Memphis. Forrest City neither and they ain't had one in Wynne yet. Believe the last one was the prom night shootings that they ain't started trying the accuser perps yet.

Forget what that cancer moonshot was all about. President Puddinbrain probably don't remember either. He probably don't remember threatening people that didn't take the slab jab about how his patience was wearing thin. Trying to remember if that was before or after the red Nazi speech. Don't know and don't care. Final justice will be coming for him soon enough.

I remember the U.S. coercing the white government in South African to give up. Big American companies like IBM were threatened with dire consequences if they didn't pull out if they didn't comply. South Africa in those days had the same kind of immigration problem the U.S.A. did - people from other countries trying to get in. Not any more.

The DOJ dropped it's oversight of the Memphis police department. I suspect we've seen the last or close to it of opportunities for riots because a white cop shot a black perp - fewer white cops not put themselves in situations where that can happen. The big one in Memphis was black cops beat a black man to death for no apparent reason.

Saturday 7 June 2025 11:32:34 PM CST

If I was gonna do any kind of crime I wouldn't do it at a massage parlor. Those places are automagically gonna be under suspicion for something or other. Drugs and prostition for starters. Dunno that much about how that stuff works but would guess that the victims were the ones being trafficked and prostitution was the service. 22K in cash don't sound like a lot but maybe it gets removed regularly so they don't lose a lot in one bust?

With the Pride Month thing coming up some Jonestown folks getting ready. That's just for the month - they got tons of days and some weeks they get proud. Several weeks and a whole bunch of days. Even got on on the Labor Day weekend. Wonder if they got something on Memorial Day..... yep.

Once the opportunity to slaughter millions of chickens and run up egg prices went away (20 January of this year) we don't hear much about bird flu. Dunno if it fizzled quicker than monkeypox or not. Wonder if those overseas schools have the billions in taxpayer money that Harvard has. And it looks like several years of weather disasters await us. That will be the several years of the Trump administration during which weather disasters will be reported whether they happen or not.

Sunday 8 June 2025 09:12:03 PM CST

A few drug offenders got hauled in by the Wynne police department. That was three peoples in two incidents - seems a woman from Forrest City and a couple the day before. Had another pair the other day and from the last names being the same you might figure a married couple but you never know. Some women named Dakota but in this case it was a man and the woman's name was easier to figure but coulda been two wimmen.

Arkansas AG announced some arrests in organized retail crime in Jonestown. No names or origin so how many were from Memphis is unspecified. Them stealing spectacles from th Wal-Mart vision centers looked like organized with them hitting places in Jonestown and Paragould and stealing large quantities.

Monday 9 June 2025 09:12:03 PM CST

Police chief up in Hardy got arrested. Nothing surprises me any more except people if they can't control their selves don't consider the consequences if they get caught. Why them kid porn nuts carry around their phones with it, got computers full of it at home.

Finally got the most recent body out of the Wolf River. over in Memphis. Does the Wolf River Arun in to the Mississippi? Check the google.... yep, sez it comes out near Mud Island. Wonder if the Mud Island monorail is still functional.... nope, the attempt to revive it in 2018 and remains so.

I agree that trade schools may benefit but they already are without getting government money. People are figuring out you learn plumbing or electricity wiring or engine mechanical stuff you can spend a couple of years learning it at way less that it costs to go to college and you making six figures in no time. Start your own business if you like and you got the big house and nice cars and no debt student of otherwise unless you go real big on the house.

China has bigger things to worry about than it being harder to get their agents in. They were in trouble before the tariffs kerfluffle and even with the product flowing smoothly it can't be interrupted even for a while. I see they were trying to get a covid thing going the other day but whether that was for internal control or thinking they could export it again idunno.

You want working people to have kids - that's what I'd like - you don't tax them to where they can't afford to. You want parasites to have kids that's already happening. Keep shoveling the food stamps out to the Section 8 denizens and Medicaid pays to pop out the babies they'll have more offspring than you want. More than I want for sure.

Okey-dokey, signing off for me and Chris. Gonna take about two or three weeks off and trust President Trump go keep the American Renaissance moving. My next assignment - which I did choose to accept - is classified. Need to know and you don't need.

Damn quiet out here, scare me if I wasn't used to it. Quiet of the tomb under open sky. The only sound was an occasional aircraft flying lower than most air traffic. Under twenty thousand feet, I guessed. During daylight I could clearly make out the outline enough to see the engines were under the wings, unlike private or corporate planes. Something like 737s or A320s. The sound arrived as they were about overhead, figure two or three seconds for it to get there, they're about fifteen thousand feet. The regular air traffic is better than twice that. What are they doing? Not many of them, probably ten or less in a day, twice that at night. I have no idea, or why I had a string of Blackhawks flying past almost every night, right at midnight. Half a dozen to a dozen or more, one line a few miles north and the other to the south a little closer. The only army military installation is a couple hundred miles away, more like three. The line to the north curves around and converges with the ones to the south. Only about five thousand Blackhawks in existence, and even if the Army had all of them they couldn't be doing this over every little town near the middle of nowhere. And then occasionally one would stop and hover quite a while, or make a sharp turn and go somewhere else. Looking for something? What's out there? I should take a look someday. It's well inside our territory, even if no lines have been drawn. Officially or otherwise. I'd heard one of the jets fly over about half an hour earlier but the night was quieter than usual. I grew up a few miles from here, on the family farm. The home place as we called it. Dad had bought several pieces of land that had a house or two on them. If they were in good condition he would have employees live in them. Good deal for them since he didn't charge rent and we had someone with an interest in the farm staying there. Theft and vandalism was a constant problem even back in the seventies and having someone around discouraged it. The home place was the small farm Dad had bought after the Army was done with him in fifty-three. Four hundred acres more or less, a pretty good size for the time. By the time he retired he had a little over eighteen hundred acres and was renting almost that much. But he saw the writing on the wall and bailed out at a good time. With the land all paid for and a heap of money in the bank and the goverment sticking its nose into more stuff with ever year that passed he decided it was time to retire. Just the rental income from the land he owned was considerable so he started a little business servicing farm equipment. It was more of a hobby than anything else, but it made some money and he put himself and Mom and Kyle and me on the payroll so we had medical insurance and something paying into Social Security. If everything went wrong and we lost it all we'd still have that. Of course Social Security would have gone bust long before that, but I hadn't figured on it happening in my lifetime. I didn't figure on a lot of things. Born in 1964 I wasn't old enough to get drafted and go to Vietnam, and after that was over things didn't look to bad for a while. It wasn't like they got bad real suddenly. The late seventies were ugly but there was a correction but it was to be the last one. Probably the tipping point was somewhere in the nineties, but we still hoped things would turn around. They didn't. By 2025 we knew we were screwed but not how badly. Those who said elections had become irrelevant were right - they put another puppet in and the opposition gave up. The part that wasn't in prison anyway. The old Jan 6 gulag had a couple thousand occupants by the 2024 election, and while the ones who objected had the good sense to stay home and keep their mouths - and keyboards - quiet there were still regular arrests, sometimes with a fancy raid and people getting shot but mostly with people just getting a knock on the door at night. So a lot of people weren't home anymore, more or less permanently. I was one of the ones with good sense. By the time things went completely south my official existence was pretty sparse. At sixty-four I was a few years from being able to collect my full Social Security payment and I wanted it as a matter of principle even if I didn't need it. It was now going to one of the two banks the real me did business with. I rented an apartment in Sheridan under my real name and outfitted it like an old retired man's apartment - minimal furnishings and the stuff you'd expect to find in a harmless old geezer's apartment. It was also outfitted with practically undetectable surveillance gear, better than the feds had thanks to Patrick. He has connections with the Atlantis people and while I'm not sure about some of the stuff he tells me it works. It will even detect the government stuff if they ever plant any, but so far I don't seem to be on their radar. My mandroid identity is another matter. His name is Cole Barrett, and owns a small estate a few miles south of Sheridan. Forty acres on state highway 364, surrounded by farmland with patches of forest here and there. Where I'm standing on the back deck of my small ranch house watching the helicopters. Cole Barrett, like all mandroids, exists only on paper. And in the streams of electrons and photons and microscopic particles and the even smaller electronic circuitry wherein all data about everything resides. Except for the data that the government doesn't know about. It's ironic that the surveillance state that knows all and sees all doesn't see the most important things of all and at the same time sees things that don't exist. Like mandroids. For over forty years the virtual people have been created and added to the real people in the databases and as long as all is in order only of a warm body is required will a problem arise. The only reason the a warm body would be required is if you're being arrested. Precisely why mandroids exist. Cole Barrett was created when a social security number was issued to a baby that was never born. He's only thirty-two and I'm sixty-four but they'd need my warm body to notice and that isn't going to happen. Because they're not going to arrest me. Try maybe. Sixteen years after Cole was created he got a driver's license - that was a little trickier but there are ways in some states - and got a job. The employer didn't exist any more than he did, but it paid income and social security taxes on its phantom employees and provided information to banks and credit card companies so Cole could do business like a real person. The apparatus was large and complex and cost a lot of money but it was worth every dollar. My real name - the one Mom and Dad gave me in 1964 - is Justin McKinnon. Since I own Cole Barrett - courtesy of my position in Winterhill - I also own the estate where I watch the night skies. Nocturnal skywatching is a way to unwind after work. During the day I'm pretty busy in conversations and conferences with my colleagues in Winterhill's main security arm. After 2200 or so it's pretty slow but I'm not ready to sleep yet, so if the weather permits I walk around outside and look at the sky. Only tonight I'm looking at ground level. There's not much traffic on 364 in daytime, and I've seen only two vehicles pass since I came out. Both tractor-trailers, not what I'm looking for. I had a flask of E&J vanilla brandy in the lower right pocket of my old M-65 and some Good Times cigars in the other and was in the mood for both a smoke and a drink. It was getting chilly. Best way to get them to show up is light a cigar. Having a smoke interrupted is mildly annoying even if I do smoke cheap cigars. Not the smelly kind men smoked when I was a kid, stink the place up and annoy women especially. Quite a few women I know enjoy one occasionally. I lit a 4K black sweet and got it going smooth and took a swig of E&J. I used to smoke high-dollar cigars - aluminum or glass tubes and fancy wooden boxes, probably just because I could. Same with whiskey. I still can but the simple pleasure of a flavored gas station cigar and a decent brandy is more me. It takes probably fifteen minutes to smoke one of the sticks, and sure it wasn't five before I saw lights over on the highway. It wasn't my connection though, and I was down to the place where I let the cigar go out and just enjoy the taste of the wrapper. There were two vehicles, as Zeke had said there would be. That was a good sign, not I was expecting trouble. We'd made the arrangements for the meet less than four hours ago, if anyone heard them they were unlikely to understand. The drive from the highway is about four hundred yards, giving me plenty of time to look them over with my night vision binoculars. The vehicles were right, two crew cab Ford F-150s, the light group above the windshields on both. As they approached the three center lights flashed A-X-E in Morse, twice. Good, but I moved back behind the nearest tree as they came closer, holding the M1 carbine at port arms. The trucks stopped, engines idling and lights on. The lead truck was about twenty feet away and I doubted the occupants could see me. The driver side window of the leader opened and the driver lit a cigarette. He blew smoke in my general direction spoke. "Starhawk says hello." "He couldn't make it?" I asked. "He had a flat on the way to the rendezvous. He'll be along shortly." "Which tire?" "All four." "OK, come on over." I had recognized Grant's voice and the signals were right but you can't be too careful. Not that anyone was likely to get the drop on Grant Wilcox. He dismounted from he truck, holding the grab bar behind the window and stepping on the running board even though he hardly needed to. Grant is six six and probably not over one-eighty and at twenty six has the flexibility I don't. He's seven inches taller too. He was wearing a double shoulder rig with what I knew were Glock G40s in 10mm. I liked tens, having bought one of the original Brens back in the day. I was younger and got excited about new guns more readily. Not that I don't like old ones - the carbine I'm holding is an Underwood from WWII. I don't imagine domestic industries will be tooled for making weapons for WWIII, which looks to be coming. Not that I don't have a new M1, paid twelve bills for a new copy because I could. Twenty years ago the originals were going for little if any over a hundred in the gun shops. I eventually accumulated a half dozen of the handy little things, and the price for those these days is a lot higher now than what I paid. I moved from behind the tree as Grant approached. The clouds covering the thin slice of moon had parted and I could see him more clearly. He looks like a young Sam Elliott, mustache and all. And some of the voice - I figure that'll happen as he ages. "Roger's riding shotgun with me," he announced, "and we've got Maria and Marcus in the back seat. Tanner and Jason are with two boys from G section in the other vehicle. We've got pickets both ways out on the highway. No sign of any followers." "How are our guests?" I asked. "Good. They spent a couple of days together, while he was in the the safe house at Chattanooga. We left them with a small detail and a couple of domestic staff. He seems pretty calm, considering what he went through."