Tag: Question Authority

Government, woke

I Have Concerns

I had an epiphany the other day that depressed the hell out of me, so naturally I wanted to share the negativity with y’all. We live in interesting times, as the saying goes. I saw a kid, maybe nine or ten, walking down a neighborhood street. By himself. Wearing a mask. This is what we’ve done to an entire generation – put the fear of Fauci into them to the point that they’re more comfortable wearing a mask when outdoors, alone.

This is already a generation that’s afraid to explore, they don’t drive until forced to, and they’re perfectly happy living with mom and dad forever. They generally don’t work as kids, summer jobs are a thing of the past, and they spend every free waking minute gaming or on their devices. Their relationships are with on-line gamer groups and reddit forums. They are immersed in woke culture, think nothing of announcing their pronouns, and assume M&M’s changing cartoon characters to be less “sexy”, is normal. That company’s official statement was that this is part of their “global commitment to creating a world where everyone feels they belong and society is inclusive.” These young people are already beginning to understand that finding a job or being accepted into a school will be more regulated by Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies than actual merit. Once they do get into corporate America, they’ll need to embrace and celebrate the woke company line if they wish to remain employed and be accepted by peers.

These kids have grown up seeing fear and hysteria propagated daily about masks, lockdowns, vaccines, and health passports being required to shop or eat in a restaurant. They’re being fed a steady diet of “us vs them” rhetoric. Every single day, the idea that government is the solution to everything is reinforced. They saw shutting down business for “the greater good”. They hear that the unvaxxed should be denied healthcare, and only semi-dismiss it as crazy. The “Karen” culture of snitching on neighbors and calling the manager for every subtle perceived slight, grows more common. They post their encounters to Tik Tok to shame those who don’t follow rules.

Here was my epiphany – these kids are going to grow up and run for office in the not-so-distant future. They will be the leaders, CEOs, and cultural influencers for the next generation. And that my friends, worries me. These kids spent their formulative years being told that literally everything is racist. Even their own generation are inadvertent racists who need to make amends. Offensive statutes of Teddy Roosevelt are trigger points, and authoritarian government scientists and “experts” know what’s best for you – do not question or you’ll be labeled some sort of weird right wing anti-science denier. They deeply believe that we only have a dozen or so years left to defeat climate change and that the mere act of drinking out of a plastic straw murders hundreds of turtles. So, when the government decides that a social credit system is in your best interest, who’s going to say no? These kids grew up with government mandates and authoritarianism. They won’t blink an eye and will celebrate it as progress. Want to get into school or land a job? Your DEI score better be good enough.

And as the world rapidly bifurcates further into the haves and have-nots, and the middle class disappears, the resulting labor class will devolve into the undesirable caste. The kids of today, having never done actual manual labor themselves, will find that the need to import cheaper and cheaper low caste workers will only grow. Borders will become mere suggestions at that point (if not already). Production of anything in this country, already struggling, will succumb to juggernaut of China and globalization. We will be a net importer of everything.

Enhanced “patriot act” type laws giving the state full surveillance authority in the name of preventing “domestic extremist acts of terror” will pass the through the congress of the not-so-distant future without pushback. These kids have been monitored and watched from the moment they were born. They were taught to “check-in” with mommy every 10 minutes just going to down the street to play with a friend. From day one, every (data) aspect of their lives has already been mined and sold by big tech. They don’t see the big deal with giving up a bit more privacy in exchange for perceived security.

I don’t see this coming progressive tide stopping. These kids, these future leaders, see it as normal. It would take an absolute massive groundswell of opposition to start pushing back against the current progressive status quo in any meaningful way. You see it in bits and pieces here and there, but not in huge numbers. Will the population grow weary enough of the massive rise in crime and violence to start pushing back against corrupt Soros-elected DA’s and politicians advocating for defunding the police? The older generations might, but I don’t see the up-and-coming generation suddenly rejecting what they’ve been taught – that police and harsh sentencing laws are racist and discriminatory. I simply don’t see the kids of today pushing back against the woke mindset of their peers.

I told you this was going to be negative. I’m not sure I see a way out. What I do see is that the idea of a future “national divorce” is not as far-fetched as I once thought. I don’t see anything as extreme as an actual civil war and separation. Instead, I see a “soft” separation. Some sort of traditionalist vs progressive local and state governments. Like the great migration spawned by the industrial revolution from rural areas to the cities, the next migration will be free states vs authoritarian. The question is – what direction will the migration be?

What’s crazy is that simply typing this already feels like an act of insubordination. Like I’m labeling myself as an alt-thinker. One of the deplorables. I suspect I’m probably on somebody’s watch list for my subversive writing. If I’d told you just five years ago, we’d be forced to produce vaccine passports and ID just to get in a restaurant, you’d have thought me a weird tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist. Back then If I said in five years police will be arresting 9-year-olds in museums for not having their vaccine cards – you’d may have thought, of course that will happen… we elected a crazy right wing, bad orange man who’s a certified authoritarian fascist. But these things weren’t done by the alt-right, but by the progressive liberal left.

And that way of thinking is embraced by the kids of today. They don’t know any better. They have zero historical frame of reference and have been sheltered from birth from everything scary. I don’t see it getting better. This is a war of incrementalism. Tiny little changes, bit by bit, chipping away at what you thought was the status quo, until you suddenly no longer recognize the new normal.

I’m not sure there’s an answer. Every empire reaches their peak at some point. The great American experiment had a good run, but I fear we’re on the downslope. Weak men create hard times, as the saying goes. And our current generation aren’t the most rugged little cowboys. You do the math.

I’m not sure there’s an answer. But you can choose to accept the status quo or not.

Become ungovernable. Be a Contrarian.

P.S. Although I diligently followed the five D’s of dodgeball – dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge, it finally got me. The coof. The covfefe. The virus that shall not be named. The last several days have produced some fun, fever fueled dreams which probably contributed to this avalanche of Debbie-downerism. Apologies. A bit more Tylenol and I’m sure I’ll be back to puppy-dogs, rainbows, and thrilling fitness and diet exploits.

There is a Chinese curse which says ‘May he live in interesting times.’

From a speech by Robert Kennedy, 1966

Confirmation bias

What Did You Learn?

As we wrap up Pandemia year two, you have to ask yourself one question. What did you learn? Well, what is it punk? Sorry, couldn’t resist. On the last day of the year, I’m sitting here drinking my coffee and scrolling through the bottomless pit that is Twitter. And what’s the number one trending hashtag on Twitter at the moment? #AOCLovesDeSantis Why? Because our pal, the mask wearing – vaccine mandate loving – Ron DeSantis hating – Ted Cruz travel critic – and fun loving socialist, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was caught in Miami sipping cocktails in the sun while NYC suffers a massive Covid outbreak, and she was, GASP, completely maskless! And that hypocrisy is the perfect summation of the year.

If you haven’t learned the lesson yet, then you either haven’t been paying attention or have your head so far up the establishment’s butt it may be too late to unplug you. The lesson? It’s time to come worship at the Church of Contrarianism™. Timothy Leary had it right in the 60’s when he popularized the slogan “Question Authority”. You need to be a contrarian. YOU NEED TO QUESTION EVERYTHING. Why? The “experts” are very often wrong. Politicians are wrong AND they lie. The establishment and deep state only care about maintaining the status quo and will go through extraordinary lengths to keep it. The media is ungodly corrupt and is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the state. The Fed, financial institutions, and the markets could care less about the (your) future – only about continually propping up the system to enrich themselves and the rest of the establishment today.

I don’t mean this to sound like a dark, dystopian vision and to imply that we’re all doomed. We might be – but the good news is that this is not new. Politics has always been corrupt. As our friend Mark Twain said way back in the late 1800’s, “Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason”. The robber barons of the same time period manipulated, stole, lied and bribed their way to vast fortunes. They were the Amazons, Alphabet, and Metaverse of today. Pulitzer and Hearst were the vanguard of yellow journalism, collectively shaping the countries opinions (and politicians) to their worldview. There is nothing unique about today.

It’s a clear cycle. Are we simply in the sixth version of the Matrix? (vague geeky reference, sorry) You’re not going to fix it. All you can do is ensure you’ve unplugged yourself from the source. Be a Contrarian. Question what you see. Become ungovernable. Do what you can to hold politicians accountable. Question the conventional wisdom.

Don’t forget, the “experts” filled in skateparks at the beach so kids couldn’t go outside, skate and catch the ‘rona. Surfers were arrested on the beach for surfing… alone. The Michigan governor said you could go to Home Depot, but couldn’t buy paint or garden supplies. The covid virus requires you to wear a mask walking into a restaurant, but you’re safe as soon as you sit down. We need a vaccine mandate because it will prevent you from transmitting the virus to others. Jessie Smollet and Bubba Wallace were victims of hate crimes. The Covington kid and Kyle Rittenhouse are white supremacists. The Fed said the current inflation is transitory and the White House Chief of Staff thinks that economically ’21 “wasn’t all that bad”. The savior of the right, Trump, raised half a billion dollars to “stop the steal”, yet spent only $9 million on lawyers. The Trump machine are grifters just like the rest of the politicians. There literally is no difference between the democratic party and the republican party. The current debt is $30 Trillion. We grew that equally under both parties. The Russian dossier, the “very fine people” hoax, Hunter’s laptop, the Epstein/Maxwell coverups, and the pièce de résistance… the Jan 6 INSURRECTION.

Whew! That was a weird stream of consciousness outpouring, off the top of my head. The point is that what you first read, hear, or watch is rarely the “actual” truth. It takes time and multiple observers to sort through opinion, innuendo, political narratives, and outright lies to uncover the tiny kernel of reality. This is true for the left, right, “scientists”, and social media keyboard warriors. Question. Question everything.

“The science is settled”. “Scientists say…”. “Denier”. “Consensus”. “Experts tell us”. “The majority of people want…”. “The polling is clear”.

Anytime you hear any of those phrases, remember the teaching of the Church of Contrarianism and recite the magic words – BULLSHIT! Something is true when there’s plenty of data and lots of independent parties find the same result and the negative hypothesis is not true. Until then it’s just guessing and opinion.

I’d be ok with opinion and guessing if it was done in good faith. Unfortunately, it rarely is. In the last year have you heard one public official, scientist, or authoritarian figure say, “we were wrong” or “data is indicating something different than we first thought”? Nope. Saving face and politics is way more important than admitting you made a decision without all the data.

It’s all very depressing. But it doesn’t have to be. Join me in the practice of Contrarianism and feel the cowl of the media machine and deep state being pulled away from your eyes. Unplug from the mindless nightly “news” talking heads spouting the same tired divisive crap and you may start to see the two political parties for the hucksters they are. If the Contrarian Church grows large enough, we may be able to wrest some control back from the state before it’s too late. And if not, I can at least sell some T-shirts and perhaps market some Contrarian franchises.

Worst case, unplugging may make you think a bit more. And when unplugged, you’ll have more time to go outside and do real things and have real experiences. Because ultimately, isn’t that what it’s all about? Making real life-memories, and not listening to some internet Contrarian rando tell you what to think?

With that – you filthy animals go out and have yourselves a great and safe New Years! See you on the other side as we wait for whatever new adventures 2022 holds.

In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.

Mark Twain
Government

Snitches End Up In Ditches

While there’s many things that I didn’t expect in the overall handling of this pandemic, one thing in particular stands out. It’s how quickly people turned on their fellow citizens. I’ve often looked back at the history of something like 1930’s Germany and wondered how people could so blindly follow government authoritarianism down a dark hole. I always felt that here in the US we’re such a freedom loving, independent people, something like that would never happen. How frighteningly wrong I was.

Now before you get your panties all in a bunch, I’m not arguing for or against the vax, lockdowns, mandates, health passports, or anything else. I’m simply making an observation about human behavior. The first observations of scary behavior was with the police of Canada and Australia. I don’t know much about either country and how their police behaved before the pandemic, but what they did afterwards shocked me. Video after video of police officers dragging people out of their homes, restaurants, and business for the most minor of infractions. Not wearing a mask. Staying open past a curfew. A church holding a service. Just last week Australian police arrested a man in a park who was completely alone and holding his son in his lap. His crime? Not wearing a mask outdoors. How do police officers become so blinded by authoritarian power that they believe tackling and arresting someone for not wearing a mask is appropriate?

At least that wouldn’t happen here, right? Let’s see… remember the order to fill a kids skate park with sand so it couldn’t be used? Seriously there wasn’t one person when that order was issued who said this is ridiculous, we don’t need to be doing that? Or police officers chasing a lone surfer down the beach and arresting him for violating the lockdown? A certain governor mandated during lockdowns that it’s ok to buy lottery tickets, but you can’t buy paint for your home. The city of New York mandated that you have to show your ID and vax status if you’d like the privilege of dining out. And the entire population just meekly said, ok. Thank you sir, may I have another?

And never mind the police state… look at what’s happened with normal citizen encounters. People are shouting at others if they’re not wearing a mask. Online I see nothing but post after post of virtue signaling outrage, attempting to shame anyone who doesn’t agree with your stance on the vax, masks, lockdowns, etc… Question anything and you’re branded as some sort of hillbilly conspiracy nut. Flight attendants are happily shutting down flights and having passengers arrested because a two year old wouldn’t keep their mask on. How did we get to that?

I don’t know why, but I’m surprised. I’m surprised at how meekly the population just agreed with everything, without question. Not only that, but the amount of scorn and ridicule people are willing to dish out to anyone who even appears to question anything. If the government came out tomorrow and said we need you to start reporting anyone you see violating any public health mandates, half the population would happily be turning in their neighbors and family members as fast as they could. The worrisome thing is that they’d do it and feel virtuous and justified for doing so.

I didn’t think we were so meek as a nation. England and France proposed vaccine passports and there were protests in the streets of tens of thousands… weekend after weekend, in city after city. The largest city in the US imposes a mandate to show your ID just to get into a store and the citizens just rolled over and asked which app they should use?

This highlights for me just how important it is to be a contrarian. To question authority. Why? Because clearly at least half the population will blindly go along with anything the government says. And as history shows, that’s scary. Is mask wearing a hill worth dying on? Of course not. But what about the next edict passed down? And the next one, and the one after that? If we don’t continually remind the state that they serve us, not the other way around… pretty soon you will be nothing more than a servant to the state. You may want to read up on Russia, China, etc… to see how that works out.

The obedient always think of themselves as virtuous, rather than cowardly

Robert Anton Wilson
Government, Politics

You Don’t Need To Know

While there may be some exceptions, for the most part I don’t believe people in power are inherently evil. I honestly don’t think politicians and CEO’s have malicious intentions. I do think that people in power become so wrapped up in their own bubble and authority they lose sight of the big picture.

For example, take the mayor of my little city. At the beginning of the pandemic, public officials were panicking. For that I don’t blame them. The “experts” were publishing dire information and basically we were all going to die. Our mayor never actually made any tough decisions, only echoed whatever the state and CDC did. Three or so weeks after shutting down all private businesses, the grumblings from the citizenry started. The cities economy was cratering and job loses were huge. On several occasions, via an online forum, I asked the mayor what metrics the city would use to open back up? I received two answers. The first was “the city will follow the guidance of the health district, state, and CDC”. The second was “all our data is posted to the heath district’s web site” (it wasn’t).

Two complete non-answers. So either the mayor had no idea, or she didn’t want to be held to specific numbers in a rapidly shifting scenario. Either way, as a person in a position of authority she decided that as mere citizens we didn’t need to know what the governments plan or thought process was. She single handedly shut down private businesses and then wouldn’t be transparent about when they could open back up again. I think it’s easy for people in positions of power to get all wrapped up in the feeling of we’re doing what’s best for the public, so they don’t really need to know the details. Like parents telling a ten year old “because I said so, that’s why”.

The ultimate example is to watch any president’s press secretary give a briefing. Every single word is parsed and nuanced. Nothing is said that doesn’t advance the political messaging. The people rarely get to see or hear anything resembling reality. Are these people evil? No. But they are so caught up in their power and authority they’ve completely lost sight of the fact that they work for us. Or that’s the theory anyway.

The private sector is no different. I’ve been watching an interesting development with a YouTube channel I subscribe to. This channel has half a million subscribers and suddenly was removed from the partner program, which means it can no longer monetize the videos. No explanation, no warning, nothing. The channel creator has no idea why his channel was removed. The worst part is that once removed from the partner program you also lose all means of contact with YouTube. He has no way to actually contact them to try and find out what he’d done wrong. Now, Google is a private company and they can do whatever they want. But it is certainly the ultimate in power and authority when a company has the opinion they can treat their customers any way they want and feels no obligation to offer any explanation. I’m sure they justify it internally under the guise of “protecting” us vulnerable members of the public from something harmful. (see also, Twitter) Irony in full bloom from the company who’s slogan once was “Don’t be evil”.

I have little point to this other than to remind you that you probably shouldn’t accept anything the government, experts, or most authority figures tell you at face value. Timothy Leary in the ’60’s had it right with his slogan “Question Authority”. As this last year has proven time and time again… they are most likely wrong, lying, obscuring, or hiding the truth. But it’s ok – it’s for your own good.

Confirmation bias, Daily Life, Government, Politics, Solving the wrong problem

I Don’t Know, But I’ve Been Told
  • GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out. If you haven’t heard that expression before, it’s an old-school programing adage. Your belief systems are a product of the inputs you consume. Consistently consume information from just one source and that’s what you’ll believe. A recent, annual, survey that focuses on false beliefs broken down by political ideology, gender, etc… illustrates this. The questions ranged from Covid, race, gender, and the climate. Biden voters had false beliefs 61% of the time, while Trump voters were wrong 42% of the time. If you consume your information solely from CNN, MSNBC, Facebook, and like minded Twitter follows, then of course you’ll have a skewed vision of the world. The same is true of Fox, but per the survey to a lesser degree. Take for example the recent expose of CNN by Project Veritas. Oh, you didn’t hear about it? That’s because there’s zero coverage of it on CNN, MSNBC, Politico, and Twitter permanently banned Veritas’ account. Veritas published video footage of a CNN technical director saying the networks focus was to get Trump out of office. “Look what we did, we got Trump out. I am 100 percent going to say it, and I 100 percent believe that if it wasn’t for CNN, I don’t know that Trump would have got voted out. … I came to CNN because I wanted to be a part of that,” Chester stated. He then said, “[COVID] will taper off to a point that it’s not a problem, anymore. Climate change can take years, so [CNN will] probably be able to milk that quite a bit. … Climate change is going to be the next COVID thing for CNN. … Fear sells.” You would think “The most trusted name in news” getting caught talking about pushing a specific social/political agenda might be a story. The fact that it’s not even mentioned by the major outlets speaks volumes. This really shouldn’t be a surprise, but clearly a large percentage of people take whatever the news media says as gospel. Hear it often enough and it starts to become a core part of your beliefs. The goal of the School Of Contrarianism is not to claim what I say is correct. I’m probably full of shit 38.4% of the time according to the latest surveys. The goal is to get you to question. Question everything. Just because some 23 year old “journalist” did a copy/paste of an AP story and then added their own opinions to give the story some “depth” doesn’t make it correct. We’ve gone from the 1960’s Timothy Leary/counterculture slogan “Question Authority” to becoming mindless lemmings of corporate wokeness. Ever see the movie The Truman Show? That’s us today. We’re all stars of the show, only we don’t know it. (P.S, lemmings don’t really jump off cliffs and commit mass suicide. Boom, mind blown.)
  • Speaking of blindly following a narrative, the Biden administration continues to give focus to the cult of global warming. Here’s a good place to start practicing your path down Contrarianism (TM). In the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) the Monthly Energy Review, they report that energy-related CO2 emissions decreased by 11% in the United States in 2020 primarily because of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and related restrictions. Furthermore, U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions fell in every end-use (consumer) sector for the first time since 2012. We had a record reduction in CO2 emissions, so we have the first actual laboratory experiment to see what happens with CO2 in the atmosphere. Remember, reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere is the entire goal of the green new deal that’s supposed to save us from this existential threat. So what happened? Nothing. Zero change in atmospheric CO2. Not even a blip. Meanwhile, China’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Le Yucheng on Friday said, “Some countries are asking China to do more on climate change. I am afraid this is not very realistic”. On Wednesday President Biden’s climate czar, John Kerry, admitted Wednesday that the US reducing its emissions to zero wouldn’t make much of a difference in the global climate change fight. Yet we’re moving forward on a $2 trillion climate agenda. How does this even make sense? As a junior Contrarian, start questioning this sort of crap.
  • The Minneapolis City Council has voted 11-1 to oppose the use of tear gas and other munitions as part of Minnesota’s response to civil disorder. Closing arguments in the Chauvin trial start Monday. I’ma gonna grab my popcorn for this one. I’m sure Minneapolis will come out just fine from all this. A few mostly peaceful protesters and some bad words shouted. It’ll all be good.
  • You should read this letter from a parent who’s pulling his kid out of an expensive private school. We’re creating an entire generation of mindless lemmings (I can’t help but perpetuate this lemming myth). I’m reminded of a meme I saw the other day that speaks truth. “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times”. Sorry for the blatant cisgendering stereotyping. If I’ve insulted your personhood and cosmic aura, I apologize.
  • I decided to install a part on the ginormous motorcycle yesterday. I was going to have the dealership do it, but it kills me to pay someone to do what I’m (mostly) capable of. It took half a day, one trip to the auto parts store for a specialized tool, several skinned knuckles, many four letter words, and watching a how-to video approximately thirty times before I realized there was a specific orientation to get the parts to fit. I should have just gone to the dealership. Do you think I’ve learned my lesson? Probably not. As Forest Gump says, “I’m not a smart man”.

Song of the day: Fatboy Slim – The Rockafeller Skank

Cool, Daily Life, Health, Motivation, Solving the wrong problem

I Had A Bad Day At Work

Cool things, random thoughts, advice, and independent thinking from someone who’s been around the sun a few times.

  • Everyone has a bad day from time to time. For most jobs that’s no big deal. As an RN, a bad day has consequences. Yesterday was one of those days. Nothing bad happened and there wasn’t any one thing that caused it. Just one of those perfect storms of events. Short staffed, a super complex patient, a bunch of last minute discharges and transfers, multiple missing lab results, and some ridiculous bureaucratic decisions from management that make everyone’s life difficult for no apparent reason. The result was that I wasn’t a very good nurse. I barely kept my head above water all day. I’m sure my patients did not have a good experience. I think I stressed out the CNA unnecessarily. My documentation sucked. I was pretty rude to an EMS transport crew for showing up early. I caved in an ate a doughnut someone left in the breakroom (ok, two). Fortunately I have great coworkers and they kept me from drowning. It was one of those days that I drove home almost two hours late due to all the charting I never got to finish during the day, and wondered why I was even doing this job. You start questioning if you even have the skills to be a decent nurse. This morning I casually looked through job openings, wondering if it was time to make a change. Fortunately I have a long break through Thanksgiving to recharge and think critically about what I could have done to make that day go better. I still like the profession… I just worry that I’m running out of the mental energy it takes to operate at such a high focus level multiple days in a row.
  • Shortly after the beginning of the great China Plague, my hospital decided that all employees need to be screened as we enter. At first it was a long series of questions about symptoms, travel, and people you’ve been in contact with. Then they added swiping your badge at the entrance. Next, temperature checks. Now they also have someone entering your name and unit into a database. We’re given a different colored sticker for your badge each day to prove you’ve already been screened. There’s often now a line of employees waiting to be screened so they can get to work. So as a contrarian I have to wonder – with all that cost and effort over the last 7-8 months, has the hospital identified a single employee who may have had Covid and prevented them from entering? Does anyone from management ever ask if the outcome is worth the cost? Or is the appearance of doing something more important?
  • For reasons unknown to me, I’ve become addicted to car crash videos. YouTube collections of crazy drivers and crashes. It’s reinforced several things. First, I don’t trust other drivers. Second, I will never drive in Russia or third-world Asian countries. That’s where 90% of these videos come from. Clearly traffic laws in those countries are merely suggestions. I don’t think you can appreciate the degree to which we’re rule followers in the US until you see how people drive in other places.
  • I’m desperately looking for a news channel. Just plain news. I don’t want opinion, spin, or bias. I just want someone to report the important things that happened in the world today. Why is that so hard? Anyone have any suggested channels or sources?
  • I was talking to a co-worker about food and the conversation sparked a memory from years ago when I lived in San Diego and a favorite post-surf meal. Roberto’s Taco Shop and a Machaca Torta and rolled tacos (hey, I was young and burned a crapload of calories). Research has begun. The quest to make my own machaca has started.

Song of the day: Surf Punks – My Beach (Live at the Whiskey A Go Go)