Catching up in the big world and my small one

Still sick. More than two weeks now. Whatever you do, don’t catch this thing.

It may also be that springtime is complicating matters. I don’t usually get hay fever, but Old Blue looks like Old Green every morning thanks to its daily dusting of yellow pollen, and I’m wondering whether things that normally wouldn’t bother me are affecting me now because my respiratory system is already sensitized by the virus.

Whatever this is, please don’t catch it.

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I finally found a dose of OTC meds that knocks the symptoms down maybe 50% while only reducing me to stupid and dry-mouthed, no longer brain-dead. That’s something.

And today I trimmed out the back door, which means I can soon get down to one of the most pleasant of all DIY tasks, shingling the wall. Fun to do. Looks great almost from the first course. And I can pick the task up or put it down any time. My kind of job.

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Meanwhile, out there in the big world …

Kit Lange (Perez) has a thoughtful piece on “Two tactics being used against you on social media.”

Books could be written on that topic. Investigative reporters could spend years plumbing the depths of how “they” — the ubergovernment and the deep govocracy, probably helped along by outfits like the Southern Poverty Hate Law Center — use our ‘Net postings to build dossiers on us. And how they use their postings on our fora and comment sections to provoke and undermine us. Kit’s only touching on a couple of things. But her points are well-taken.

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This Vox essay on “The smug style of American liberalism” has been making the rounds.

IMHO, it’s overlong and repetitive. But it makes absolutely valid points about how “liberalism” became synonymous with snotty elitism and social justice pecksniffery (the very opposites of anything actually liberal, of course). Most salient point: The snottery was always there, but when the left abandoned the working class or the working class abandoned the left, nothing remained to hold the arrogance and contempt in check.

The “right” may have Donald Trump, but fundamentally the “left” is in a whole lot more perilous shape.

The most remarkable thing about the Vox piece is the source: Vox’s lefty credentials are as good as anybody’s.

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Did you receive yesterday’s email alert from The Zelman Partisans? Two fine articles in it.

The first was a classic by MamaLiberty (a piece I’d have been proud to write myself). Check the original out here.

The second, a new one from the prolific Carl-Bear Bussjaeger, looks at the question of whether Obama could regulate firearms out of existence. Ha! You know the answer to that one, but Bear’s last line says it with a hammer blow.

I’m prepping this blog Monday night, before Bear’s piece posts to TZP. But it should be there at the top of the TZP blog by early a.m.

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While the news is neither as good nor as dramatic as it sounds: A Colorado town’s entire police force resigns. (H/T MJR)

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Finally, the 100 greatest Hollywood movie quotes of all time. I think they got it right on about 90 of them. Some of the 10 that just missed the list are better.

I don’t recall seeing one of my favorites, though. From The Wild One. A woman asks rampaging outlaw biker Marlon Brando, “What are you rebelling against?” He shrugs: “Whaddaya got?”

At least that’s how I remember it from when I was 14 and ready to rebel against whatever ya got.

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Now it’s back off to my bed couch of pain many sneezes, with plans to rest up and be ready to nail shingles by the time you’re reading this.