So Harriet Hageman has stated that she'd join Insurrection Barbie in a move that brings the nation's perilous attachment to democracy four or five steps closer to the brink.
The sad thing is that Hageman, whom I'm sure when she was younger probably would have found this abhorrent, probably means it now.
What on earth happened?
Make no mistake. Save for the last time it was attempted, every act to actually impeach a US President has been, frankly, stupid and ill-advised. This would be the stupidest.
People advancing such causes will regret it. The lucky ones will regret it in this World. The unlucky ones in the next, when they cannot atone for it here. But account for this we all will, including those who are in the stands watching the circus consume itself with horror.
Vulgar.
Missing Titanic sub crew killed after 'catastrophic implosion'
This is a tragedy. May God rest their souls and may the perpetual light shine upon them.
There's something really wrong with diving on what is, after all, a massive grave. Now the wreckage of this submarine befouls the grave.
I've been to plenty of locations where the dead lay, including battlefields. But there's something about this that is simply intrusive beyond all measure.
Governor Gordon Finalizes USDA Disaster Declaration Request
CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Governor Gordon has submitted his U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) request for a Secretarial disaster designation as indicated in a February 20, 2023, news release.
In his letter to the USDA, Governor Gordon noted that Wyoming’s winter season started early, and the culminating impacts of sustained cold, wind, and snowfall have caused significant distress to the livestock industry across the state. Access to traditional winter grazing resources has become dire, as well, because many ranch, county, and BLM roads are drifting shut and, even when cleared, continue to re-drift because of high winds, the Governor’s letter explained.
The Governor’s Office, in partnership with local, state and federal agencies and impacted ag producers, worked collaboratively to determine losses, the timeframe and the geographic scale of impact. Data obtained through the National Weather Service’s event tracking system reveals that 66.5 percent of the time, from January 1 to February 27, Wyoming was under some combination of Winter Storm Warnings, Blizzard Warnings, Winter Weather Advisories, and High Wind Warnings–far outpacing any other state in the lower 48.
Underscoring the need for federal assistance, Governor Gordon’s letter noted, “State, county, local, and individual resources have been deployed and are being shared between entities for snow removal, but there is too much volume and wind to keep roads open and passable to gain access to livestock.” Additionally, Governor Gordon’s administration has been working closely with our local Farm Service Agency office to identify the areas of greatest impact and corresponding needs of the ag community.
This is good news, but it would have been better news if the Governor had declared an emergency two weeks ago and deployed National Guard engineering equipment at that time to assist in rural snow removal.
My daughter is the real ice fishing aficionado in our family. I had some experience with it as a boy, but oddly enough, my father didn't really engage in much ice fishing. He was a dedicated fisherman, so that's surprising. Indeed, he probably was slightly more of a fisherman than a hunter, and I in contrast I am definitely more of a hunter than a fisherman. I know that his father did both, as we all do, but I don't know how that scale balanced. I've really only heard about my father's father in regard to bird hunting, although I know that he fished the streams as well, like we all do.
Anyhow, back when I was young, in the 70s, I recall ice fishing at Alcova, which I'd be a bit afraid to do today, but it wasn't very often. I also recall people parking their trucks on the ice, which I'd never do today. My father chopped a hole in the ice with a spade, which I don't recall anyone doing since that time.
It was fun.
We have a hand auger. Much better than a spade. And little ice fishing poles, which isn't what my father used.
I didn't make it out last year. I hunted geese until the end of January, not terribly successfully, and it warmed up too much to ice fish.
Not this year.
In fact, today, going out by myself, as my daughter lives in Laramie now, I found myself flagged down going in, after I passed the snow plow. A really nice fellow I know, having called him as a witness on the Reservation, and a city councilman, formally one of my kid's religious education teachers, informed me the road was drifted in. I thanked them and pulled off
The dog wasn't pleased.
The dog believes that he's integral to fishing, and that without him, the endeavor will fail. He's very serious about his hunting occupation, and fishing is of course fish hunting.
I pulled off to let him wee. .. okay and I needed to wee too. After that, in spite of being warned, I drove down the road toward the lake.
Oh man, was it ever drifted in.
I went back down the road and met a fisherman from Douglas near the highway. He was waiting for me for a road report. He'd driven a long ways and had a lot of poles, a true ice fisherman. I gave the road report to him. He decided to try Alcova. I decided to try a different high mountain lake.
And yes, I'm not going to mention it.
Before I left for that one, I received a call from my son's girlfriend. She's a dedicated fly fisherman, a rare quality in a girlfriend and one to be seriously admired. My pickup, which my son is driving, she related, had been rear ended in a Laramie blizzard. I have his truck right now as it's having a complete mechanical breakdown.
Turns out it wasn't bad.
Couldn't make that other high mountain lake either. It was also drifted in.
And that statement was true once again for 2022, but for different reasons, a lot of which had nothing much to do with the hunting season itself.
That's because 2022 has been the year of the field of Medicine, or age, or perhaps lifestyle, or whatever, catching up with me.
Self portrait, and a bad one, turkey hunting. I was wearing a coat under this coat, and frankly I don't look like I was feeling particularly well when this photo was taken.
In the Spring I wasn't feeling well, which after much delay and finally responding to a demand from Long Suffering Spouse, caused me to go into the doctor's office, which lead in turn to a prescription for some medicine. I'll spare you the details, but like most medicines and me, I didn't really respond terribly well to them physically. They did their job, but they also made me a bit ill, and made me ill just in time for Spring Turkey Season. I hunted turkeys, as I always do, and I did see some, but I never got up on them (I tend to stalk them, rather than lure them in). I did get a turkey call, which I'd never had before, but that failed to bring any in.
A couple of weeks later, by which times things had warmed up enough to wear my Park Service dress campaign hat, the replacement for my long serving but now lost M1911 campaign hat. I miss the old hat.
I also had the joy, and I won't detail it, of being pretty sick while hunting. Something I rarely have experienced.
It was fun anyhow, but not something for a subsistence hunter to write home about.
That takes us to fishing season, and here too, for one reason or another, I just didn't get out over the summer as much as usual. Indeed, "didn't get out as much as usual" was the theme of the year.
I fished the river several times, and one of the mountain streams I fish. I attempted to take my daughter and her boyfriend down a significant local canyon, where I'm sure there are big fish, but we failed at that. I hadn't scouted the route, and ours was pretty impassable.
I did try something I have not for several years, however, which was fishing from a kayak.
The doctor's visit mentioned earlier lead to a colonoscopy, which I wasn't too quick to get set up. That ended up getting scheduled for early Fall. And that lead to a major surgery in October.
The North American Retriever getting a cool drink from a mountain stream while blue grouse hunting.
Prior to that, I got out for blue grouse, but failed to see a single one. I never made it out sage chicken hunting. I didn't draw antelope, but my son did, and I went out with him. None of us drew limited deer, but my daughter and I went out opening morning and nearly got a couple of really good deer in a general deer area until some fool blasted right by us in a truck, scaring them off. We went back out a couple of weeks later and my son got a nice deer in a very distant area. So at least that was a partial success.
I went out for antelope with my son, and he was successful.
I drew an elk tag, but I only got out twice, once before surgery, and once after.
Surgery put me out of action in a major way for well over a month. When I got back on my feet, only waterfowl was open.
It's been a pretty good waterfowl season, however. The weather has been right for it (lousy) and lots of waterfowl have been in the area. I've shot more geese this year than I ever have before.
I thought about closing this entry out with a quote from Kristin Lavransdottir about Lavran, when he last rode away, or the video clip from No Country For Old Men at the ending with the sheriff protagonist is recalling his father. Instead, I'm just going to note that I still don't really feel up to speed, but I'm putting in for everything.
The bill that may legalize corner cross, SF56, passed:
ORIGINAL SENATE
FILE NO. SF0056
ENROLLED ACT NO. 60, SENATE
SIXTY-SEVENTH LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WYOMING
2023 GENERAL SESSION
AN ACT relating to game and fish; expanding the prohibition for entering private property without permission for hunting purposes to also prohibit traveling through the private property; and providing for an effective date.
Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Wyoming:
Section 1. W.S. 23‑3‑305(b) is amended to read:
23‑3‑305. Hunting from highway; entering or traveling through private property without permission; penalty; hunting at night without permission prohibited.
(b) No person shall enter upon, travel through or return across the private property of any person to take wildlife, hunt, fish, collect antlers or horns, or trap without the permission of the owner or person in charge of the property. Violation of this subsection constitutes a low misdemeanor punishable as provided in W.S. 23‑6‑202(a)(v). For purposes of this subsection "travel through or return across" requires physically touching or driving on the surface of the private property.
Section 2. This act is effective July 1, 2023.
Mountain lion chasing season was established, which I think was a poor idea.
The gun 'em down trespass bill, which had passed the House, died in the Senate., not making it out of committee.
Speaking against the bill as voices of reason were conservation groups and a rancher, who noted that he had dozens of trespassers per year and though the bill was a bad idea.
The person whose thoughts lead to the introduction of the bill, a person who provides church security in Buffalo, admitted that if somebody was dangerous they already did what was necessary to escort a person out, although that really fits into a different category. It perhaps demonstrates why this bill was unnecessary at best.
Sponsored by: Senator(s) Rothfuss and Gierau and Representative(s) Chestek, Provenza, Sherwood and Yin
A BILL
for
AN ACT relating to crimes and offenses; providing an exception to the offenses of criminal trespass and game and fish trespass regarding incidental contact associated with crossing two (2) adjacent parcels as specified; and providing for an effective date.
Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Wyoming:
Section 1. W.S. 6‑3‑303 by creating a new subsection (d) and 23‑3‑305(b) are amended to read:
6‑3‑303. Criminal trespass; penalties.
(d) For purposes of this section, a person does not commit criminal trespass if the person incidentally passes through the airspace or touches the land or premises of another person while the person is traveling from one (1) parcel of land that the person is authorized to access to another parcel of land that shares a common corner with or is immediately connected to the first parcel and that the person is authorized to access.
23‑3‑305. Hunting from highway; entering enclosed property without permission; penalty; hunting at night without permission prohibited.
(b) No person shall enter upon the private property of any person to hunt, fish, collect antlers or horns, or trap without the permission of the owner or person in charge of the property. Violation of this subsection constitutes a low misdemeanor punishable as provided in W.S. 23‑6‑202(a)(v). For purposes of this subsection, a person does not commit trespass under this subsection if the person incidentally passes through the airspace or touches the land or premises of another person while the person is traveling from one (1) parcel of land that the person is authorized to access to another parcel of land that shares a common corner with or is immediately connected to the first parcel and that the person is authorized to access.
Section 2. This act is effective July 1, 2023.
As is probably obvious, that's a Democratic bill and will likely go nowhere in this legislature.
It would seem that some old wars which seemingly were behind us are not.
Once again, the forces of "property" wish to exclude. . . violently.
And once again, they have the legislature behind them.
We recently posted on this item:
HOUSE BILL NO. HB0126
Trespass-removal of trespasser.
Sponsored by: Representative(s) Crago and Washut and Senator(s) Kinskey and Landen
A BILL
for
AN ACT relating to crimes and offenses; providing for the use of physical force against a trespasser as specified; and providing for an effective date.
Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Wyoming:
Section 1. W.S. 6‑3‑303 by creating new subsections (d) and (e) is amended to read:
(d) A person who is the owner or legal occupant of land or a premises upon which a criminal trespass is occurring, or their agent, is justified in using reasonable and appropriate physical force upon another person when and to the extent that it is reasonably necessary to terminate what the owner, occupant or agent reasonably believes to be the commission of a criminal trespass by the other person in or upon the land or premises.
(e) Section (d) of this section does not supersede or add to the responsibilities applicable to the defense of self or another as provided by law.
Section 2. This act is effective July 1, 2023.
Frankly, as this bill is based on what one “reasonably believes”, basically authorizes murder, or could, and probably will be, read that way.
I know Washut who due to his prior career as a policeman ought to know better. I don't know the remainder of them.
This bill, if passed, will get somebody killed.
Let's start with this. What is criminal trespass?
Well, under Wyoming's law, it's the following:
TITLE 6 - CRIMES AND OFFENSES
CHAPTER 3 - OFFENSES AGAINST PROPERTY
6-3-303. Criminal trespass; penalties.
(a) A person is guilty of criminal trespass if he enters or remains on or in the land or premises of another person, knowing he is not authorized to do so, or after being notified to depart or to not trespass. For purposes of this section, notice is given by:
(i) Personal communication to the person by the owner or occupant, or his agent, or by a peace officer; or
(ii) Posting of signs reasonably likely to come to the attention of intruders.
(b) Criminal trespass is a misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment for not more than six (6) months, a fine of not more than seven hundred fifty dollars ($750.00), or both.
(c) This section does not supersede W.S. 1-21-1003.
So, under Wyoming's law, if a person comes up to you, and says "you are trespassing", and you remain, and you really are trespassing, you are guilty of criminal trespass.
And, under the proposed amendment to the law, this would be added to it:
(d) A person who is the owner or legal occupant of land or a premises upon which a criminal trespass is occurring, or their agent, is justified in using reasonable and appropriate physical force upon another person when and to the extent that it is reasonably necessary to terminate what the owner, occupant or agent reasonably believes to be the commission of a criminal trespass by the other person in or upon the land or premises.
(e) Section (d) of this section does not supersede or add to the responsibilities applicable to the defense of self or another as provided by law.
So the new law would be such that Landowner or Landowner's agent could come up to you and say, "get off", and if they didn't, they could use "reasonable and appropriate physical force" to remove you when they "reasonably believe" that you are criminally trespassing.
Seriously, "reasonably believed"?
What if their reasonable belief was wrong?
Several years ago I was on public lands when a couple of goons for a large Natrona County landowner approached me and informed me that I had to leave as I was trespassing. I had a GPS, and I knew I wasn't.
I was also deer hunting and carrying a rifle and a handgun.
Did the goons believe that I was trespassing? I don't know. It's hard to penetrate the minds of saps who take jobs as regulators. Their belief may have been based on what their employer told them. Mine was based on the United States Geological Survey.
I didn't want to bother with it, and I cleared off.
I frankly wouldn't now. Now, I would have told them to pound sand, particularly as they warned me it was a $10,000 fine is I stayed, which was bullshit.
I got my revenge, I guess, by voting against the guy, a long with a lot of other locals, when he stood for reelection for a local office he was also holding.
But back to the scenario. I'm armed. If they were too, and they believed I was "criminally trespassing", and had invoked the element by telling me I was, could they then draw down on me? Would that be reasonable force, as I was armed?
And if I did, would I have been justified in blowing them away in self defense? I wasn't trespassing, and now I'm in danger of my life.
I probably wouldn't. . . but if I were with my son, wife, or daughter and felt they actually might use the weapons? A scared person resorts to violence quickly, and men protecting their families do as well.
And if that happened, would I be found to have acted in self-defense?
This scenario, if this bill passes, will play out just this way.
Now it'll be incumbent upon anyone going afield to pack heat, least some hired moron tries to drive them off land they believe they have a right to be on. And sooner or later some asshole, probably a landowner on public land, or some out of state landowner's hired flunky, will challenge a fisherman, hunter, or hiker and get gunned down, dying for a moronic belief in the absolute nature of property rights that are, in fact, not absolute, never have been, and never will be.
What about the corner crossing case? Even the Game Warden couldn't tell if it was a trespass or not. The landowner's hired traitor to the state believed it was. Would he have drawn down on them?
Those guys were gentlemen in the whole affair. Most people are. I've known of at least one friend of mine who was confronted in such a fashion and kept a rifle on the jerk confronting him, as he was armed. The armed jerk didn't realize that he was about to meet the business end of a .30-30 if he went too far.
Life preserved by a clam reactant.
Not everyone is calm, and not everyone cares either. Some asshat is going to tell somebody to get off some land, and that person is going to stand their ground. Somebody will probably get killed, and it'll probably be the person yelling "get off my land".
Lots of people now days imagine themselves to be Matt Quigly in the final scene of Quigly Down Under, gunning down the baddy. Some have even taken up carrying all the time so that they can affect the visage of Pistol Pete or maybe Yoesimite Sam. Take our recent wholly unqualified interim Secretary of State, Karl Allred, who packed heat on to the UW campus as he wanted to make a point.
Direct link to WyoFile, "Uinta County committeeman Karl Allred reviews documents at a Wyoming Republican Party Central Committee meeting in Riverton in September 2022. Gov. Mark Gordon appointed Allred as secretary of state. (Mike Koshmrl/WyoFile)"
Mr. Allred, seen packing here complete with a handgun that has an extra magazine, may imagine himself freedom's brave sentinel. but if he had to draw that, let's be honest, he'd be lucky to get it around his gut.
Being fat is no crime, but frankly not one person in fifty knows how to use a handgun in combat, and a lot of those are people who would have the high side of the fight if confronted by a good. Pistol Packing Regulators may imagine that they can draw down on a whole passel of criminal trespasser, but the result is far from certain, particularly if they aren't trespassing.
Think that guy can outdraw and gun down a 20-year-old carrying a .357? I don't think it bloody likely.
And FWIW, there's a whole lot of people now who are packing for self-defense, including a lot of young, agile, men, and women, who actually don't have enormous waste lines to clear, and who the goons aren't going to know are packing.
What the crap has gotten into people?
Wyoming was built on go where you want, when you want. The last time somebody tried to change this, it went badly.
But we're right back at that point once again. Property rights, real or imagined, enforced at the barrel of a gun. Indeed, when we fought that battle before, the legislature was on the wrong side of it then as well.
Moreover, any property, including your very own house, that you own, you are merely renting for, at most, the extraordinary short period of your life. You don't really have a moral right to go around bullying trespassers on the open range or fishing stream. Yes, you can call law enforcement, but do that. That's their job in a civil society.
And let's be honest, if we're returning to that day, equitably, turnabout can be argued to be fair play.
A really radical idea that won't happen, but maybe should.
There have been really horrific floods, as we all know, in Yellowstone National Park. Roads in the northern part of the park may be closed for the rest of the summer. Here's a National Park Service item on it:
Updates
Aerial assessments conducted Monday, June 13, by Yellowstone National Park show major damage to multiple sections of road between the North Entrance (Gardiner, Montana), Mammoth Hot Springs, Lamar Valley and Cooke City, Montana, near the Northeast Entrance.
Many sections of road in these areas are completely gone and will require substantial time and effort to reconstruct.
The National Park Service will make every effort to repair these roads as soon as possible; however, it is probable that road sections in northern Yellowstone will not reopen this season due to the time required for repairs.
To prevent visitors from being stranded in the park if conditions worsen, the park in coordination with Yellowstone National Park Lodges made the decision to have all visitors move out of overnight accommodations (lodging and campgrounds) and exit the park.
All entrances to Yellowstone National Park remain temporarily CLOSED while the park waits for flood waters to recede and can conduct evaluations on roads, bridges and wastewater treatment facilities to ensure visitor and employee safety.
There will be no inbound visitor traffic at any of the five entrances into the park, including visitors with lodging and camping reservations, until conditions improve and park infrastructure is evaluated.
The park’s southern loop appears to be less impacted than the northern roads and teams will assess damage to determine when opening of the southern loop is feasible. This closure will extend minimally through next weekend (June 19).
Due to the northern loop being unavailable for visitors, the park is analyzing how many visitors can safely visit the southern loop once it’s safe to reopen. This will likely mean implementation of some type of temporary reservation system to prevent gridlock and reduce impacts on park infrastructure.
At this time, there are no known injuries nor deaths to have occurred in the park as a result of the unprecedented flooding.
Effective immediately, Yellowstone’s backcountry is temporarily closed while crews assist campers (five known groups in the northern range) and assess damage to backcountry campsites, trails and bridges.
The National Park Service, surrounding counties and states of Montana and Wyoming are working with the park’s gateway communities to evaluate flooding impacts and provide immediate support to residents and visitors.
Water levels are expected to recede today in the afternoon; however, additional flood events are possible through this weekend.
Here's an idea.
Don't rebuild the roads.
For years, there have been complaints about how overcrowded Yellowstone National Park has become. A combination of a tourist economy and high mobility, and frankly the American inability to grasp that the country has become overpopulated, had contributed to that. For years there have been suggestions that something needed to be done about that.
Maybe what is needed is. .. nothing.
Well, nothing now, so to speak.
Yellowstone was the nation's first National Park. It was created at a time when park concepts, quite frankly, were different from they are now. Created in 1872, its establishment was in fact visionary, and it did grasp in part that the nation's frontier was closing, even though the creation of the park came a fully four years prior to the Battle of Little Big Horn. There was, at the time of its creation, a sort of lamentation that the end of the Frontier was in sight, and the nation was going to become one of farms and cities.
Nobody saw cities like they exist now, however, and nobody grasped that the day would come when agricultural land would be the province of the rich, and that homesteading would go from a sort of desperate act to something that people would cite to, in the case of their ancestors, as some sort of basis for moral superiority. Things are much different today than they were then.
Indeed, in some ways, the way the park is viewed is a bit bipolar. To some, particularly those willing to really rough it, Yellowstone is a sort of giant wilderness area. To others, it's a sort of theme park.
The appreciation of the need to preserve wilderness existed then, but what that meant wasn't really understood. The park was very much wilderness at first, and some things associated with wilderness went on within it, and of course still do. Early camping parties travelled there. People fished there, and still do. Hunting was prohibited early on, which had more to do with the 19th Century decline in wildlife due to market hunting than it did anything else. This has preserved a sort of bipolarism in and of itself, as fishing is fish-hunting, just as bird hunting is fowling. There's no reason in fact that Yellowstone should have not been opened back up to hunting some time during the last quarter-century, but it is not as just as the park is wilderness to young adventurers from the National Outdoor Leadership School in Lander, and hearty back country folks of all ages, it's also a big public zoo for people from Newark or Taipei.
Since 1872, all sorts of additional parks have been created. Some are on the Yellowstone model, such as Yosemite. Others are historical sites such as Gettysburg or Ft. Laramie. All, or certainly all that I've seen, are of value.
But they don't all have the same value.
Much of Yellowstone's value is in its rugged wilderness. Some cite to the geothermal features of the park, but that's only a small portion of it. And for that reason, much of Yellowstone today would make more sense existing as a Wilderness Area under the Wilderness Act of 1964, the act that helps preserve the west in a very real way, and which western politicians, who often live lives much different than actual westerners, love to hate.
A chance exists here to bring back Yellowstone into that mold, which it was intended in part to be fro the very onset, and which many wish it was, or imagine it to be, today.
Don't rebuilt the roads.
That would in fact mean the northern part of the park would revert to wilderness, truly. And it means that many fewer people would go to the park in general. And it would hurt the tourist communities in the northern areas, and even in the southern areas, as the diminished access to the park would mean that the motorized brigade of American and International tourists wouldn't go there, as they wouldn't want to be too far from their air-conditioned vehicles.
The Dude after the last day of hunting. We finished up with an attempt, unsuccessful, on Chukars. He was tired.
As with most hunters, the season doesn't quite follow the calendar year. For me, it starts sometime in spring when spring turkey season opens up. When that closes down, its fishing season for me, even though my state doesn't really have a dedicated fishing season. You can fish all year long.
Indeed, when my daughter was at home, fishing season started as soon as waterfowl ended in January, with that being ice fishing season. She's away at university now, so there hasn't been any ice fishing recently.
Anyhow, there's turkey season, and then fishing season, followed by sage grouse and dove season, antelope season, deer season, and elk season. This assuming I didn't draw any special tags, like moose, and that would be a safe assumption.
Big game season yields into waterfowl season.
Seasons dictated by nature, the weather, and I guess the game and fish department. A better calendar, however, than one dictated by professional sports or by actuaries.
Indeed, if I had my druthers, which would mean having the extra time, I'd add gardening season and this would effectively be my life. Just the other day a slightly younger colleague of mine spoke about his dreams for retirement (which with five kids, only one of whom is in college, I'll predict will remain a lifelong dream). They involved "travel", and when I mean travel, I mean global travel.
I have utterly no such desires whatsoever. I've crossed oceans by plane more than once and if I never do so again, that's okay by me.
I'm a simple man.
Anyhow, in terms of unrealized dreams, this has been a year of unrealized dreams for me in a lot of personal ways. 2021 won't go down as a happy year for a lot of people, spirit of the times and all, and it certainly won't for me.
I did start off the year with turkey season.
Me early in the turkey season, dog behind me. Yes, the dog goes. The rifle in this picture may have been near its last hunt, as it was stolen this past year. The hat is a heavy duty Park Service dress campaign hat. The year before last my old reproduction, heavy duty, beaver felt M1911 campaign hat, which had become my fishing hat, and then hunting hat, bit the dust and, worse yet, blew out of my Jeep on the same day that the Dude was bitten by a rattlesnake. The jacket is a surplus Swiss Army smock.
For quite a few years, I had access to some farm ground with turkeys on it. That ground sold in 2020 and my access went with that. This meant, of course, that finding a turkey, in the general season, in my region, was made quite a bit more difficult, but that's the way such things go.
I stumbled on an area which in 2019 I was the only one who was hunting turkeys. Even better, early in the turkey season, you have to really hike in. Last time I really did this heavily, in 2019, I was about the only person I saw.
The season started off that way, and I did run into turkeys.
I’m probably the only guy who takes his hunting dog out for turkey hunting, although I'm not hunting turkeys with him. He's hiking. Things have gotten so that I can't go out the door on a weekend anymore without the dog. He won't allow it to happen. This is detrimental to turkey hunting, however.
I did find a turkey at one point, but I was armed with a .22 Mag rifle, and it was in a tree. I frankly didn't have a good enough view of it, from a distance, to tell if it was a tom or not. I passed on the shot, and eventually he flew off.
The next trip, my luck on isolation ran out. When I was up on the mountain, I could hear the motorized ATV brigade down in the valley. Trying to pursue a turkey down a heavily wooded slope, I could hear them coming up. They never saw me, but I sure could hear, and then see, them. I'm sure every turkey in the county could as well. On the way down they passed me, and then when I was loading the dog they went by me again.
Now, like a lot of folks who are gasoline jockeys, they weren't very attune to what they were doing and where they were going. I've had this happen twice this past year (I'll get to the other in a moment), but I was worried for the dog. Frankly, I was highly distracted. I put the rifle on the hood of the Jeep to load him so he wouldn't get hit. When they passed, with the dog in, I got in and started to drive off. I realized, however, that the rifle wasn't in the truck, and I went back to get it.
It was gone. I walked the entire area that day, more than once, and again the next day, and again one more day after that.
I was the only one there, other than them. I'm certain they took it.
And by took it, I mean stole it. It wasn't hard to figure out whose it was.
I've never liked ATVs much as I think they're an insult to nature, frankly, and people abuse them. I see people roaring over the sagebrush with them, and with their asses so welded to them that they just can't seem to get out on foot. It's not all that uncommon for me to find somebody who will state that they didn't see anything. . .
Yeah. . well if you are as noisy as the Afrika Korps, you aren't going to.
I did go back later, but, no turkeys. I did run into them, but I could never get up on them. I'm more than a bit unusual for a turkey hunter in that I stalk them, and I lack a call. Very few people hunt them that way. But when I first hunted them as a teenager, that's what we did, and I'm not patient enough to wait in one spot for a long time.
Then came fishing season.
Now, about that, I’m mostly a stream fisherman and always have been. I will fish other bodies of water, and I certainly do, but that's my focus.
I can't really complain about fishing this year, other than that due to my work schedule I didn't get out nearly as much as I had hoped. And that's something to complain about. Otherwise, my main complaint would be, I guess, that my son was off at school for most of the summer and my daughter had to have back surgery. My daughter is a long time fisherman and my son has taken it up with more earnest recently.
It's an odd deal to look back and realize that in some ways you're repeating your own father's history. He taught me to fish, but at some point I became a fanatic outdoorsman and there were plenty of times that I went out on my own. When I went to school, of course, he was left in that position, and he was a great and frequent fisherman. So he was fishing quite often on his own.
Now I am.
One of the creeks I fished this year, and should have done a lot better in than I did.
Anyhow, before late summer yielded to other concerns, I did get out some, fishing the creeks in the mountains. I reconfirmed a finding I'd make the prior year that a spot I found that looks good is, in fact, not. It also looks like it ought to be populated by bears, and it probably is.
Getting into the spirit of things.
The first bird hunting season around here is blue grouse.
This has been frustrating due to interactions with novice game wardens the past few years who can't quite bring themselves to accept that a person of six decades residence knows more about how to get onto this spot and never touch foot on private ground than they do, having just arrived from California as they have, and seeing the world from a 3/4 ton pickup as they are. When proven wrong, they varied from apologetic in the first instance, to blisteringly aggressive and rude in the second.[1] This year, however, the local chief warden took the matter in his hands and wrote me a note, for which I am greatly appreciative. So I got up in to the high sticks without incident.
Didn't see a single bird, however.
That, I suspect, is because it had been so dry. No water, no birds.
I also ended up doing this by myself. This used to be an annual routine for me and my son, and one year for me my son and my daughter. Indeed, since my son was hold enough to hunt birds, I've never had a bird season where I didn't have him accompany me at least once, but this year, due to university, that was the case. And not only for blue grouse, but for everything, save for fishing and antelope hunting.
Blue grouse here is followed by the short sage chicken season. I'd seen a lot of sage chickens in the summer, but ran into one during sage chicken season. Actually, the dog found it, not me, and I wasn't ready for it.
No sage chickens.
After that, both kids came home, but on different weekends, for antelope.
I managed, for the third year in a row, not to draw an antelope tag, and I'm not happy about it. I like antelope as food. I don't like the fact that my state weights out of state tags more heavily than any neighboring state. I am, after all, a killetarian and I figure that if you live in New Jersey there are deer in New Jersey. Hunt them.
Lots of economic interests don't figure it that way, however.
Both kids got really nice antelope, I'll note.
Deer came after that. I only got out once, although now I can't recall why. I didn't see any deer, but I did get stuck pretty bad in the high country.
Well, that's not quite true. I did get out a second time, but it was marked by the fact that I fractured a tooth, and hadn't realized it, about a day prior. It impacted severely that morning and by the time I was where I was going, I was unbelievably sick. I barely made the long drive home, and during that time frame a storm had come in, and the highway became a sheet of ice. A tooth extraction followed.
And then came waterfowl.
It was a fantastic waterfowl year, the best in years and years. I did do really well hunting ducks and geese, and got to spend some blind time with one of my oldest friends. The only sad note is that due to various things by mid summer things were a bit sad on other score and that lingered as I recalled that my trips out to hunt ducks and geese, with more around than there have been for eons, were again alone.
It was in the late waterfowl season that I had my second vehicular run in of the year, and it was similar to the first. I was duck and goose hunting on a stretch of the river. Up until the last few years, this stretch, which is 7,000 feet high, closes to fishermen because of the weather. Nobody wants to fly fish in 80 mph winds when it's 10F.
That's started to change, however.
For one thing, in spite of the high altitude, it hasn't been as cold up that high recently. It's still really windy, however. On the day I was out there, it was probably around 35F with 80 mph winds.
I'm a fisherman too, but when hunting starts, for me fishing stops. I'm more of a hunter than a fish hunter. My father was the other way around. Anyhow, I sort of figure that guys who have the run of the river from April until late August, can ease up a bit in September through December, and most in fact do. If you see a fisherman on any other stretch of the river from August on, they tend to be friendly as a rule and share the river. I try to avoid them.
On this stretch its different, however, and that's because most of the fishermen who tend to be in this stretch are from the big rectangular state to our south.
Now, I'm not the only waterfowler on this stretch of the river. A few other dedicated guys are dedicated blind hunters on the same stretch. It must be the case that they stake their claim and the fishermen avoid them. I generally avoid the fishermen.
On this day, however, I drove down to a stretch of the river in this area that I knew was empty. I got things, and the dog, out a couple of hundred yards away from the river and then, as the dog was milling about, a Rectangular State SUV came blasting down the two track and nearly hit my dog. Worse yet, they saw him.
What that was about was them getting to the river before me. They probably thought I was a fisherman too, or they knew I was a hunter and they wanted their stretch of river. I hunted it anyway. They knew they'd been assholes as they kept looking back as I walked the long stretch down and the long stretch back. On top of it, they put in on what amounts to a wind tunnel (I knew that) and had no luck.
There was no need for that.
Last year I took up chukar hunting in earnest.
Me chukar hunting. Why am I dressed like I'm in the Swiss Army? Well the reason is that I'm too cheap to buy the quuality hunting clothes that other people do, and I grew use to miltiary style clothing as a National Guardsmen and I like its features, particularly the zillions of pockets. On this day, the wind was bad, and hence hte hood up. Also, I'm wearing GI field pants over Levis for the same reason.
The reason has to do with having run into chukars in a major way in 2020. I knew all the spots they'd been in, and therefore I went back. I got. . . one.
Indeed, I saw them only once.
Another reason that I've taken chukars up is that in the last few years I haven't drawn an elk tag and chukars take me into rough country and I tend not to be very good at it.
I'm not one of those people who run around looking for challenges in life. Indeed, quite frankly, my life had plenty of challenges early on, and I don't need anymore. Frankly, for that matter, I tend to find people who claim to take up occupations because they're "challenging" to be full of bull.
Having said that, I'm completely different with outdoor endeavors. Maybe I do like a challenge, and perhaps that why I'm after chukars.
While not exactly on my seasons, my failures at chukars caused me to try to find out more about them and that lead me to this excellent blog:
Last day of the season. Yep, more unecessary camouflage for the same reason. The jacket is an Australian wind proff SAS smock that an Australian friend gave me, the trousers are U.S. Army pants. I'm wearing a Charhartt coat for wamrth.
Footnotes:
1. In the first instance the game warden followed me out, at my invitation, and in the end relented with "I didn't think that this could be done". On the way, I somewhat worried about him rolling his pickup truck and warned him about a hill, turn and traverse across a dam that's no big deal for a Jeep, but is a big deal for a pickup, but he did it. He probably didn't believe me that this was a way in and out.
Well, in the end, he did.
In the second instance, the warden started off as rude and argumentative. When I explained the road that I came on, he said "it isn't a road", claiming that 4x4s had just created it the past few years.
That claim was absolute bullshit. I looked him up, and he was a relatively recent arrival from California.
I should note that several years prior a different game warden was hugely enthusiastic that anyone had gone to such an effort to get where I was went, which was just a jumping off point at that for a hike in the mountains in pursuit of grouse.
Anyhow, with the experience noted of the two difficult wardens, I actually called ahead for the second year in a row. The first time I didn't get a call back, and then I got the rude warden. I did it again this year and got the regional warden, who was apologetic about his green underlings, and wrote me a note so that they'd leave me alone. I kept hoping to run into them, but didn't. Indeed, coming out of the hills the only one I ran into was on the main dirt road, and he'd just stopped a party of University of Wyoming female ag students who were on some sort of expedition. I stopped, but he just waved me on, which is what I would have done if I were him.
Pope Francis commented on childless couples and pets.
Before I go into that, I'm going to note that one of the things about Pope Francis is that he tends to be incredibly hard to pigeonhole, even though his fans and critics love to go around doing just that. And here we have just such an example. Only weeks away from making it pretty clear that the Latin Tridentine Mass needs to be a thing of the past, as far as he's concerned, and while he's the Bishop of Rome, he says something that's radically. . . traditional.
Here's what he said, in so far as I tell, as I can't find a full transcript of his remarks.
Today ... we see a form of selfishness. We see that some people do not want to have a child.
Sometimes they have one, and that's it, but they have dogs and cats that take the place of children.
This may make people laugh, but it is a reality.
[This] "is a denial of fatherhood and motherhood and diminishes us, takes away our humanity", he added.
Oh you know where this is going to go. . .
Right away I saw predictable "I'm not selfish, it's my deep abiding love of the environment. . . "
Yeah, whatever.
Apparently there were a fair number of comments of that type, as a subsequent article on this topic found that, nope, most childless couples are childless as they don't want children, not because of their deep abiding concern about the environment.
Indeed, tropes like that are just that, tropes. People tend to excuse or justify conduct that they engage in that they are uncomfortable excusing for self-centered or materialistic reasons for more ennobled ones, or even for ones that just aren't attributed to something greater, in some sense.
Not everyone, mind you, you will find plenty of people who don't have children and justify that on that basis alone. Indeed, in the 70s through the mid 90s, I think that was basically what the justification was, to the extent that people felt they needed one. More recently that seems to have changed, although there are plenty of people who will simply state they don't want children as they're focused on what the personally want, rather than some other goal. Others, however, have to attribute it, for some reason to a cause du jour. In the 80s it was the fear of nuclear war, I recall. Now it's the environment, although it was somewhat then as well. I suppose for a tiny minority of people, that's actually true, but only a minority.
Whatever it is, the reaction to the Pope's statement will cause and is causing a minor firestorm. Oh, but it'll get better.
The same Pope has already made some Catholic conservatives mad by his comments equating destroying the environment with sin. And there's a certain section of the Trad and Rad Trad Catholic community that's unwilling to credit Pope Francis with anything, even though he says some extremely traditional things, particularly in this area.
A comment like this one, if it had been made by Pope Benedict, would have sparked commentary on the Catholic internet and podcasts for at least a time. There's no way that Patrick Coffin or Dr. Taylor Marshall wouldn't have commented on it, and run with it in that event.
Will they now?
Well, they ought to.
Am I going to?
No, not really.
I could be proven wrong, but I doubt I will be.
The Pope's point will be difficult for the childless to really grasp. I don't think I became fully adult until we had children, really. People who don't have children don't really know what its like to, I think. And I think that probably includes even those who grew up in large families.
At any rate, I have a bit of a different point, that being my ongoing one about the industrialization of female labor. In no small part, in my view, childless couples in general have come about as our modern industrialized society emphasizes that everyone's principal loyalty should be to their workplace or a career, without question. As put by Col. Saito in the epic The Bridge On The River Kwai, people are to be "happy in their work".
That means that they don't have time for children, they believe, and moreover the children are societal obstacles to the concept that the only thing that matters is career. It's the one place that ardent capitalist and ardent socialist come together. And, as its often noted, particularly by both working mothers and folks like Bernie Sanders, it's difficult to be both a mother and worker, with it being my guess that the more education that goes into a woman's career, the more this is the case. Society, and by that we mean every industrialized society, has no solutions to this, and there probably aren't any. About the only one that Sanders and his ilk can come up with is warehousing children sort of like chickens at the Tyson farms.
It's also a lie, of course. Careers, by and large, don't make people fulfilled or happy, for the most part, although there are certainly individual exceptions. Statistical data more than demonstrates that.
I and Pangur Bán, each of us two at his special art: his mind at hunting (mice), my own mind is in my special craft. I love to rest—better than any fame—at my booklet with diligent science: not envious of me is Pangur Bán: he himself loves his childish art. When we are—tale without tedium—in our house, we two alone, we have—unlimited (is) feat-sport—something to which to apply our acuteness. It is customary at times by feat of valour, that a mouse sticks in his net, and for me there falls into my net a difficult dictum with hard meaning. His eye, this glancing full one, he points against the wall-fence: I myself against the keenness of science point my clear eye, though it is very feeble. He is joyous with speedy going where a mouse sticks in his sharp-claw: I too am joyous, where I understand a difficult dear question. Though we are thus always, neither hinders the other: each of us two likes his art, amuses himself alone. He himself is the master of the work which he does every day: while I am at my own work, (which is) to bring difficulty to clearness.
Pangur Bán, a poem by an unknown Medieval Irish monk.
The Seamus Heany translation, which I like better. It really gets at the nature of the poem:
I and Pangur Bán my cat, ‘Tis a like task we are at: Hunting mice is his delight, Hunting words I sit all night.
Better far than praise of men ‘Tis to sit with book and pen; Pangur bears me no ill-will, He too plies his simple skill.
‘Tis a merry task to see At our tasks how glad are we, When at home we sit and find Entertainment to our mind.
Oftentimes a mouse will stray In the hero Pangur’s way; Oftentimes my keen thought set Takes a meaning in its net.
‘Gainst the wall he sets his eye Full and fierce and sharp and sly; ‘Gainst the wall of knowledge I All my little wisdom try.
When a mouse darts from its den, O how glad is Pangur then! O what gladness do I prove When I solve the doubts I love!
So in peace our task we ply, Pangur Bán, my cat, and I; In our arts we find our bliss, I have mine and he has his.
Practice every day has made Pangur perfect in his trade; I get wisdom day and night Turning darkness into light.
The Values candidates
Jeanette Rankin of Montana, who was a pacifist, and voted against delcaring war in 1917 and in 1941. She's a hero, as she stuck to her declared values.
While I’m at it, I'm developing a deep suspicion of conservative candidates and figures that express certain highly conservative social positions but don't quite seem to adhere to them in their own lives. This coming from somebody who is obviously highly socially conservative themselves.
This comes to mind in the context of "family values", "protecting the family" and the like. I see and read stuff like that from conservatives all the time. So if you are saying that you strongly value the family, and protecting the family, etc., why don't you have one?
Now, some people are no doubt deeply shocked by that question, but it's a legitimate one, and I'm not the first person to raise it. If a person might ask if I seriously expect people to answer the question, well I do.
Now, in complete fairness, all sorts of people don't have children for medical reasons. But more often than that, if a couple don't have them, they don't want them. That's what's up with that. And you really can't campaign on your deep love of the family if you are foreclosing that part of the family in your own lives, absent some really good reason. More often than not, the reason is money and career.
Recently I saw, for example, a statement that a person is deeply committed to family and loves spending time with their nieces. Well, everyone likes spending time, for the most part, with nieces and nephews. That's not even remotely similar to having children, however. Not at all.
I'll go one further on this and note this as I do.
The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones.
Luke, 16:10.
I note this as some of the conservative value candidates, if you look into their backgrounds, have question marks that should give pause for the reason noted above. If a person doesn't keep to their principals in small things, or basic things, why would they keep them on anything else?
One conservative candidate that I'm aware of, when you look up that person's background, was born of an ethnicity that's overwhelmingly Catholic and went to Catholic schools growing up. That person was undoubtedly a Catholic. That didn't preclude, however, the candidate from getting divorced and remarried to another person who was divorced.
Now, that's quite common in our society, but it's completely contrary to the Catholic faith without some explanation. Maybe there is one. I don't know, but it's a fair question, just as it would be if a Jewish candidate grew up in an Orthodox household but operates a delicatessen featuring ham. That may seem odd, but if you are willing to compromise on small things, you'll get around to the big ones, if the small ones also express a deep principle.
If you won't compromise on small things, or things that are represented as elemental to your declared world view, you are dependable in a crisis. On the other hand, if you participated in a faith, and were educated by it, and okay with its elements, and it formed part of your worldview . . right up until you had to do something difficult and chose the easier path. . . well, there's no real reason to believe that haven gotten there once, you won't do it again.
The candidate, I'd note, has been stone-cold silent on the insurrection. From that, you can tell the candidate knows it was an insurrection, but is unwilling to say diddly.
The Primordal Connection
St. Jerome with lion. St. Jerome is supposesd to have taken a thorn out of a lion's paw, and the lion thereafter stayed with him. While some might doubt some aspects of this, St. Jerome's lion is also recounted as having caused fear in the monestary in which he lived, and having adopted the monestary's donkey as a friend.
Back to pets for a second, one added thing I think about them is that for a lot of people, they're the last sole remaining contact with nature they have.
There are lots of animal species that live in close contact with each other and depend on each other. We're one. We cooperated with wolves, and they became dogs as they helped us hunt. Cats took us in (not the other way around) as we're dirty, and we attract mice. We domesticated horses, camels and reindeer for transportation. And so on.
We miss them.
One more way that technology and modern industrialization has ruined things. Cats and dogs remind us of what we once were.
And could be, again.
Warped legacies
An awful lot of what the Pope is tapping into has to deal with the combined factors of moderns forgetting what, well, sex is for, and what its implications are, and that root morality and human nature remain unchanged. There are probably more generations between modern house cats and Pangur Bán than there are between your ancestors who were waking up each morning in the Piacenzian and you.
Which takes us to men, behaving badly, and everyone turning a blind eye.
And, of course, Sex and the City.
She is fiercely protective of Carrie Bradshaw and livid that she and everyone else at the show has been put into this position, It is not about the money, but rather her legacy. Carrie was all about helping women and now, under her watch, women are saying that they have been hurt.
Sarah Jessica Parker on the scandal involving James Noth.
M'eh.
A note from Wikipedia regarding the series:
When the series premiered, the character was praised by critics as a positive example of an independent woman in the vein of Mary Richards. However, retrospective analysis tends to place more emphasis on the character's repeated and often unrepentant infidelities, with many critics instead viewing her as narcissistic.
Carrie was about helping women? Well, excuse me if that was deluded.
Scary legacies
This news item came out the same day, I'd note, that Ghislane Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking. And by that we mean procuring underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein.
Eew, ick.
Connection? Well, none directly.
Or maybe. More narcissism and obsession with unrestrained desire, or lust.
It sort of seems that you can't unleash this without it oozing out as filth sooner or later.
On Maxwell, because I tend to get my news by reading, I'm left perplexed by how a person says her first name, Ghislaine. I have no idea. I heard it on the nightly news the other day, but the spelling is so odd, I immediately forgot how to pronounce it.
Boston Marriages
Some recent headlines from the ill historically informed press department:
What is a Platonic life partnership? These couples are breaking societal relationship norms
And:
Platonic Partnerships Are On The Rise, So I Spoke To These Friends Who Have Chosen To Live The Rest Of Their Lives Together "I don't think our love and commitment together should pale in comparison to romantic love."
Oh my gosh! This means that people don't always default to acting like their characters in Sex In The City or Sex Lives of College Girls!
Could this be a new trend?!? Oh my oh my, what would it mean.
Well, maybe people are just defaulting back to normal, but we're unable to grasp that as we've been steeped in seventy years of Hugh Hefner pornification of absolutely everything.[1] This isn't new. Indeed, we've dealt with this here before in our Lex Anteinternet: The Overly Long Thread. Gender Trends of the Past...
post. Let's take a look:
But there is more to look at here.
Another extremely orthodox cleric but one of an extremely intellectual bent, and who is therefore sometimes not very predictable, is Father Hugh Barbour, O. Pream. I note that as his comment on same gender attraction in women was mentioned earlier here and came out in a direction that most would not suspect in the context of a "Boston Marriage". Father Barbour did not license illicit sexual contact, i.e., sex outside of marriage, in any context either, but he did have a very nuanced view of attraction between women that's almost wholly unique in some ways. Like the discussion above, but in a more nuanced form, it gets into the idea that modern society is so bizarrely sexually focused that its converted the concept of attraction to absolute need, failing to grasp the nature of nearly everything, and sexualized conduct that need not be. Barbour issued an interesting opinion related to this back in 2013, at which time there had just been a huge demonstration in France regarding the redefinition of the nature of marriage.
Katherine Coman and Katherine Lee Bates who lived together as female housemates for over twenty years in a "Wellesley Marriage", something basically akin to what's called a Boston Marriage today. Named for Wellesley College, due to its association with it, Wellesley Marriages were arrangements of such type between academic women, where as Boston Marriages more commonly features such arrangements between women of means. Barbour noted these types of arrangements in a basically approving fashion, noting that its only in modern society when these arrangements are seemingly nearly required to take on a sexual aspect, which of course he did not approve of.
Hmmm. . . .
Men and women who don't marry have always been unusual, but the sexualization of everything in the post Hefner world has made their situation considerably more difficult, really. Society has gone from an expectation that the young and single would abstain from sex until married to the position that there must be something wrong with them if they are not. This has gone so far as to almost require same gender roommates, past their college years, to engage in homosexual sex. I.e, two women or two men living together in their college years is no big deal, but if they're doing it by their 30s, they're assumed to be gay and pretty much pressured to act accordingly.
Truth be known, not everyone always matches the median on everything, as we will know. For some reason, this has been unacceptable in this are as society became more and more focused on sex.
At one time, the phenomenon of the lifelong bachelor or "spinster" wasn't that uncommon, and frankly it didn't bear the stigma that people now like to believe. It was harder for women than for men, however, without a doubt. People felt sorry for women that weren't married by their early 30s and often looked for ways to arrange a marriage for them, a fair number of such women ultimately agreeing to that status, with probably the majority of such societally arranged marriages working out. Some never did, however.
For men, it was probably more common, and it was just assumed that things hadn't worked out. After their early 30s a certain "lifelong bachelor" cache could attach to it, with the reality of it not tending to match the image, but giving societal approval to it. In certain societies it was particularly common, such as in the famed Garrison Keillor "Norwegian Bachelor Farmer" instance or in the instance of similar persons in Ireland, where it was very common for economic reasons.
People didn't tend to assume such people were homosexual, and they largely were not. Indeed, again contrary to what people now assume, except for deeply closeted people or people who had taken up certain occupations in order to hide it, people tended to know who actually was homosexual.
Taking this one step further, some people in this category did desire the close daily contact of somebody they were deeply friends with, in love with if you will, but that need not be sexual. Love between women and love between men can and does exist without it having a sexual component. Interestingly, it is extremely common and expected when we are young and up into our 20s, but after that society operates against it. People form deep same gender relationships in schools, on sporting fields, in barracks and in class.
Some of those people won't marry, and there's no reason that their friendships shouldn't continue on in the post college roommate stage.
Well, society won't have it as everything needs to be about sex, all the time. Haven't you watched The Big Bang Theory?
Apparently Salena Gomez has a bleeding rose tattoo. I don't get that either, but I'm sure that piles of ink will be spilled on it.
Footnotes:
It would be worth noting here that early on a female researching on Hefner's early publications noted how much of it was actually in the nature of barely disguised child pornography, with cartoons particularly depicting this. This lead to an investigation in Europe, and the magazine rapidly stopped it, but it's interesting in that the magazine was so debased that it not only portrayed women as stupid, sterile, top-heavy, and nymphomaniacs, but also underage.
The impact however had been created, and by the 1970s the full on sexual exploitation of child models was on. As debased as society has become, it's at least retreated from this.
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