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Sparky needs to tighten up.

Señor Piglet has to shed some weight.  When we talked about it, he kept patting my belly and smirking.  I can’t help thinking he was making some kind of point.

Today, Sparky weighs 29.8 lbs.  He was 25.1 lbs on January 18th, 2023, when he moved in.

Blue Buffalo Wilderness High Protein Natural Senior Dry Dog Food recommends 1 1/4 to 1 3/4 cups per day for a 16 to 25 lb dog.  Sparky gets 1 1/3 cups per day, with typically three treats.  He always seems hungry.  We have to try something different.

The first three ingredients in Sparky’s dog food are “deboned chicken”, “chicken meal” and “dried chicken”.  That’s good, but the next four are “oatmeal”, “barley”, “brown rice” and “potatoes”.  Dogs are opportunistic, but that isn’t natural food for dogs.  Sparky needs fewer carbs.

The Blue Buffalo dog food has a bunch of vitamins and minerals, so he needs to keep getting that, but not as much.  We are going to try 2/3 of cup of dog food, and a hard-boiled egg, with half in the morning, and half in the evening.

My eldest sister gave me two stainless steel bowls.  I made a bowl-holder for them.  Sparky’s little breakfast looks quite paltry in the large bowl, so I added two croquet balls.  The balls should slow down his eating and let him scrounge for his food.

The pair of bowls look like this:

Should I add a third croquet ball to further improve Sparky’s dining experience?

Sparky will eat all of the crickets.

 

UC Riverside: Good grub

Well, Sparky might eat crickets, but I wouldn’t ask him to.

More than 2 billion people regularly eat insects — on purpose. They’re a great source of protein for communities around the world and some are considered delicacies reserved for special occasions. And it’s entirely possible that eating bugs could become more common in the U.S. too.

This topic comes up regularly.  The 2 billion people who regularly eat insects on purpose, do so because they are poor.  This only becomes common in America if we have to repay our federal debt.  That’s currently running at $100,000 per person.  Imagine if the USDA changed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to just provide poor people with a bunch of crickets.  Democrats would only go for that if White men were the only people on food stamps.  At least give them some chickens to turn the crickets into eggs and meat.

Sparky and I aren’t poor, so he isn’t going to be eating crickets and meal worms, but why isn’t that ever suggested?

Pedigree dry dog food is a third the price of Blue Buffalo.  Sparky eats too much, but that still isn’t very much.  Getting the good stuff costs an extra twenty bucks per month.  The first ingredient in Pedigree is corn, the second is unspecified meat and bone meal.  The bag says “Grilled steak & Vegetable Flavor”.  Natural grilled steak flavor is the 15th ingredient. 

In the US, $16 billion dollars is spent on dog food.  Dogs need protein.  Crickets and meal worms are an efficient source of protein.  Why do the articles never suggest adding bugs to dog food?  If insects are considered to be meat, then they could already be in there.  Crickets wouldn’t even be in the top 10 list of disgusting things Sparky puts in his mouth.  He ate a stink bug once, and instantly regretted it.

Jaguar is ruining it’s brand.

Jaguar ad implores the audience to “live vivid”. 

More like livid.  That’s what Jaguar owners, car guys and British people are.  Livid, as in furious, angry or enraged. 

Livid also means “darkish, purple color” or black and blue, like a livid bruise.  Which is what Jaguar will be left with after nobody buys the new models.  To make it worse, Jaguar is pausing their manufacturing to retool to build the new EV models. This is the new Jaguar concept car.

The EV market is rough.  Tesla sells half of all EV cars, with customers generally preferring hybrid cars to avoid the problems that come with a battery-powered car.

Jaguar is owned by Tata Motors.  Tata is a large, diversified Indian company.  Tata bought Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) from Ford for $2.3 billion in 2008.  JLR has performed well for Tata, but with this Jaguar re-branding, that may change.  Land Rovers sell well, and if that brand isn’t ruined, Tata can survive the death of Jaguar.

Here is the Jaguar ad that will kill the brand.

Sparky is getting too big for his britches. 

Sparky is getting too big for his britches.  Not in the “putting on airs” sense.  I encourage him to be a confident boss.  No, he is just getting too big.  Sparky doesn’t have any britches, but now that I’ve got a sewing machine, if I made him some britches, he mustn’t be splitting the seams.

Sparky gets Blue Buffalo dog food because he likes the wolf on the bag.  I went to the Blue Buffalo website to review the ingredients and nutritional profile.  They have alligator meat listed.  It’s not an ingredient in the flavor Sparky gets, but if I can figure out which recipe has alligator, we might switch to that.

Sparky just told me not to bother.  He isn’t nuts about eating alligator, but wouldn’t mind a pet turtle if I like reptiles so much.  Since I’m looking, he says that a switch to recipe with rabbit or raccoon would be good.

BrainDead is a TV show for our time. 8/10.

BrainDead is the TV show to watch right now.

This show aired in 2016, just as Trump was locking down the Republican presidential primary in 2016.  It is political satire done as horror science fiction.  It’s all played as a light comedy.

The horror/science fiction premise is that alien bugs come to Earth in a meteorite, and infect people by climbing into their skulls.  The bugs eat part of the brain and can control the person.  Nothing is very graphic, and even when someone’s head explodes, it is in a cartoonish way.  When a person is in thrall to the bugs, they act pretty similar, but with different objectives.  The alien bugs have strengths and weaknesses, so the horror/sci fi works well.

The political satire comes in because this occurs in Washington, D.C. as politicians are infected.  The show doesn’t have a Left/Right agenda.  The message is that politicians are unprincipled cynics more interested in winning power without an obvious ideology.  A governmental shutdown occurs, with both sides trying to get funding for their interests in order to come to an agreement. 

Interestingly, the action all takes place amongst the House and Senate, along with federal agencies.  No president is explicitly revealed, but background visuals suggest it’s Trump even though it was produced while the presidential primaries were underway.

BrainDead has a great cast, with Mary Elizabeth Winstead portraying an assistant to her senator brother who is investigating the alien bug infection.  It’s a light, fun TV show for a time when everyone is all serious and hyper-engaged with the recent presidential election.  I’d give it a 8/10.  It’s currently showing on Amazon Prime.

Where did all the 2020 mail-in ballots come from?

A good friend called “bullshit” on my suggestion that the 2020 election was shady.

In a kidding-not kidding way, he diagnosed me as having had a mental breakdown.  My experience bringing automation into heavy manufacturing plants required me to develop a thick skin.  I take no offense, and interpret my buddy as not kidding about his actual puzzlement at my election assertion.

Continue reading

Which presidents talk to the press?

This article is interesting because the numbers aren’t what I’d have guessed.  The graph lumps press conferences in with interviews, but the article provides more detail.

Biden hid from the press, but I wouldn’t have guessed that Reagan wasn’t out there more.

I got on this track because, “The White House press corps is already “exhausted” at the outset of the second Trump administration.”

It’s never appealing to hear people complaining about their jobs, but it is appalling to hear grumbling from the White House press corps.

Being a part of the White House press corps is, I understood, a prestigious position for a journalist.  They really aren’t going to like it when bloggers and social media influencers are given press passes.

The White House press corps was derelict in their duty to inform Americans about President Biden’s frailty and deteriorating mental health.  They should be ashamed.  

In an alternate time-line, the corporate press would have reported on Biden’s condition, Dr. Jill would not have insisted upon a second term, the Democratic Party would have held a legitimate primary, the world would not have learned that Kamala Harris was dumb and unprepared, nobody outside of Minnesota would be familiar with Tim Walz and some other Democrat would have run for president against Trump. 

The election result may have been the same, but it wouldn’t be as embarrassing for the Democratic Party.

 

Movie: Can’t Stop the Music is 4.3/10.

Can’t Stop the Music is the movie that featured the YMCA music video, so I decided to watch it.  The movie is on Youtube.  It has an IMDB rating of 4.3.  It is bad, so I’m watching it in German to avoid the painful dialogue.  Even though it takes place in NYC, it is a fascinating depiction of the disco era. 

I notice so many things that were common then, but we don’t see now.  Like:

  • Valerie Perrine
  • Steve Guttenberg
  • Bruce Jenner
  • 10 speed bikes
  • roller skates
  • pay phones
  • Guys with a bunch of tech, but no computer
  • Giant home audio speakers
  • Dance clubs filled with White people
  • Dance clubs with no cocaine or Ecstasy
  • Three-piece suits
  • Arabs dressed like sheiks
  • High and tight gym shorts
  • Tube socks
  • Plaid sport coats

The movie is a fictionalized origin story for the Village People.  The 4.3 rating is about right.

The “Leatherman” does ride a chopper motorcycle, so maybe I was close with the Eric Von Ripper association.

Back when The Village People and Bruce Jenner weren’t queer.

Caitlin Jenner recently posted this YMCA video because he shows up in it.1

I’d never seen this music video before, and that’s surprising because I was a fan of The Village People.  I even bought the Macho Man 8-track.

At the time, my oldest sister told me that one of the Village People was gay.  She was being informative or mean-spirited, I don’t know, but I found that difficult to believe.  Like, what are the chances that a construction worker, soldier, Indian chief, policeman, motorcycle punk2, or cowboy, would be gay?

Turns out, the chances are about a 100%. 

Apparently only the cowboy and Indian were gay, but teh gays sure liked that song.  

1 The subject and pronoun don’t match in that sentence, but that’s not my fault.  This human was the man, Bruce Jenner, at the time.  I didn’t make up this stupid linguistic fur ball. 

Along the same line, I don’t apologize for using “queer” in the title.  The politically correct, “LGBTQIA2S+”, is intentionally unwieldy and absurd.  Anyone attempting to stay current with the label is bound to be wrong because any letter can be added and the new members of that group will be furious.  The Q is in there, so they can’t be too offended that it applies to all of them.

2 What I thought was a motorcycle punk, is the “Leatherman” character.  I thought the character was similar to the Eric Von Zipper character in the beach movies of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello.

I may seem astoundingly unsophisticated, but that’s what it was like before the internet.  There was no way to look anything up. 

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