Cool For Cats

No, not the supermegastar pop band fronted up by Jools Holland, but the fish, catfish. At least that was the hope as I drove to a top secret Texan location.

At first it was pretty slow sledding, with a couple of halfhearted nibbles on my go to worm and not much else at all. Then a boat pulled up, "We've been at it for hours, nothing!" 

I shrugged and cast off again, wondering if the expedition would be a bust. So why not change up the bait? Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Several pieces of shrimp added to the worm and a slow retrieve later, something got fierce on the hook and a fight was on. Then up came a catfish.

And another, and another, and another in a kind of we-love-the-shrimp-worm-combo feeding frenzy. Great result and a fast 45 minutes or so of good action; out went the line, in came the fish, 6 in the end. 

After that things started to quiet down but I wasn't complaining, the sport had been good and it was time to head for home.

Next time I'll bring a cooler and keep a few. Fry those cats up.

Tight lines,

LSP

Aftermath

Friday dawned dark as Llandrindod Wells in June, with thunderheads glowering above. Then it started to rain like a Weston Super Mare Bank Holiday and that continued until we got on the road for Dallas. Such is the apocalyptic nightmare of climate change.

Weston Super Mare

By the time we got to Dallas we were half a million strong, thanks a lot, I35, but the air was crisp and clean and the sky clear and blue. Sorry, Chicago, I know it's not fair but that's just the way it is, you need to pay a steeper weather tax.

A Typical Etonian

We set up for Ma LSP's birthday party, which went famously and didn't stop until the next evening; good work, team, stay at it. And you may not know this, but champagne with a little orange juice is a traditional Cinco de Mayo drink. Some find it goes well with beer, others don't, there's no rule.

Party over, we headed back to the rural elysium of the Compound and got ready to worship on Sunday.

As I type this dispatch from the Southern Front of the War on Weather, Pedro and Maria are powering out Mexican music in the back yard, peacocks shriek, roosters crow, something Mexican's on the grill and God is in His heaven.

Fishing's most definitely on the schedule tomorrow, maybe a shoot too. Can you have too much of a good thing?

MAGA,

LSP

Climate Justice

Some people, say those who live in Aberystwyth, shake their fists at the weather and cry out for justice, climate justice. It's not fair that the climate should attack them on a daily basis with unending rain while a privileged elite live under the sunny skies of Texas. 

Fair? Hardly and if you doubt me, try taking a summer vacation in Borth without an umbrella and a fleece. But seriously, climate justice is about more than sharing the Texan sun with our weather oppressed Welsh friends, it's about "working at the intersections of environmental degradation and the racial, social, and economic inequities it perpetuates."

You see, anthropocentric global warming creates a greenhouse effect in the earth's atmosphere, causing the climate to change because of CO2 emissions. This makes the weather hot, which melts the ice caps and causes drought and catastrophic flooding. And it makes the weather cold, because the sun's heat is blocked by carbon dioxide, bringing on a new ice age. Polar bears are tragically driven schizophrenic by this injustice.

Poor people of color are also harmed by the inequity, as their huts flood and then become frozen blocks of ice. On the other hand, privileged whites, living in mining compounds on the high ground of the Mogollon Rim in Arizona, for example, are spared. 

Such is the perpetuation of economic, social and racial injustice, brought on by the Weather. You can take a course on it at the fabled school of higher learning we call "Cornell."

All this passed through my mind as I drove through the asset stripped streets of this rural Texan haven, while the rain crashed down with southern fury and wildfires raged through the pines of Arizona. What had gone wrong, had we somehow failed to pay our Climate Tax?

Smart people are investing in boats, skis and fireproof bunkers.

Your Pal,

LSP

Time Traveler Exposes Grey Aliens!

A mysterious time traveler from 2030 has made the shocking claim that space aliens from another planet are living here on earth.

Wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, the time traveler, named Roman, told Apex TV that the aliens are called Greys and are typically tall, with bad eyesight, high foreheads and receding hair. 

And while some are already living on earth, Roman says more will come in the near future:

As I said, in your time there are already Greys inhabiting Earth, and whenever they see that it is peaceful for them, they decided to come here in multitudes.

At first we thought it was an alien invasion. We thought it was an attack on planet Earth.

While skeptics dismiss Roman's claims,  truth might be stranger than fiction, with Grey aliens hiding in plain sight.

Lambeth Palace declined to comment.

Ad Astra,

LSP

Beyonce Mass Better Than Clown Mass?

Pastor Jude Harmon of the Episcopal Church's Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, got more than he bargained for when he held a special Beyonce worship ritual at the famously LGBTQ church.

Within hours of the special service devoted to praising the popular singer, pundits were comparing the Beyonce ritual to a Clown Mass.

Jude Harmon, Left of Rainbow

"This is no better than a blasphemous Clown Mass," thundered one outraged Anglican clergyperson, who wishes to remain anonymous, "At least Clown Masses are honestly creepy, this isn't and that's scary." Others weren't so sure.

A Clown

"Clown Masses are deeply offensive," stated a senior member of the clergy, "Everyone knows that clowns at the altar are sinister and off-putting. Beyonce may be a member of the Illuminati along with her husband, Jay Z, but she's not repellently unattractive and frightening. Quite unlike a clown."

Several Baptist leaders were quick to point out that Beyonce's fertility goddess performance at the Grammys was idolatrous. At the star studded event, the pop diva superstar dressed up as the Virgin Mary and a Hindu deity, as opposed to a clown, leading some to accuse her of "immoral syncretism."

Beyonce

Unfazed by fierce criticism, Harmon defended his decision to host a Beyonce ritual instead of a Clown Mass at Grace Cathedral.

"I know there are people who will say using Beyoncé is just a cheap way of trying to get people in the church," Harmon said. "Jesus used very provocative images in the stories he would tell to incite people to ask hard questions about their own religious assumptions. He regularly provoked. We're following in the way of Jesus."

Beyonce And Abramovic, Third From Left

Grace Cathedral typically gets 50 people at its Wednesday evening Eucharist, as opposed to 900 for its Beyonce worship ritual. Known for rainbow riding diversity, Grace Cathedral's Pastor, Jude Harmon, opened last year's Pride "with a reflection and meditation on diversity, inclusiveness and religious tolerance."

Not The Virgin Mary

Beyonce was brought up a Methodist, the Episcopal Church was once Christian. Whether the Beyonce praise ceremony at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, is better or worse than a Clown Mass is something for you to decide.

Don't be shy, be the judge,

LSP

Mass Immigration

Why do our corporate elites support mass immigration from, ahem, developing countries, asks Peyton Farquar at ROK. Good question, and his short answer is "a deadly combo of greed and virtue-signalling."

In brief, mass immigration drives down labor costs and increases consumption while neatly sidestepping infrastructure investment in countries like Angola, Syria or Burkina Faso. Why spend millions building factories there when you can move the workforce here. Bottom line benefit all 'round and handily supported by the Western taxpayer to boot. And it feels good, enter virtue-signalling.

The article concludes with a reflection on the "mind-numbing hypocrisy" of the elites in question:

It is this last reason—virtue-signaling—that most damns our elites. It is one thing to knowingly do great evil. It is entirely another to convince yourself you are good for doing it.

Despite careers spent singing the praises of open-borders, in their personal lives elites distance themselves as much as possible from the diversity they claim to love. The hypocrisy is mind-numbing. By dint of their enormous wealth they will never live in the ghettos, favelas, and no-go zones sprouting across the West. Their children will not attend schools equipped with metal detectors and knife wands. They will never wait in line at 7-Eleven behind a scowling Salvadoran draped in MS-13 tattoos. Most of them will live out their entire lives without ever once having to face, publicly or privately, the odious reality of their treason.

Strong words and you can read the whole thing here. But what happens if the migrants fail to get work, break the welfare state, don't integrate and cause precisely the kind of backlash the multiculturalists are against? 

I'll leave you with a typically alarmist comment from Zerohedge:

Over the next 15 years as socialism dies populations will become tribal. When that happens the blood of immigrants will flow as they are blamed for the collapse...

If and when that point arrives, corporate greed-driven strategy, to say nothing of de facto vote buying on the part of our politicians, will look short-sighted at best.

LSP

May Day!

Well, well, it's May Day, yet again. The Puritans frowned on May Day, go figure, thinking the festivity a a blasphemous, pagan excuse for wanton immorality. And, like red moleskin trousers or the Church of England, it wasn't in the Bible. So they stamped it out along with Christmas and Easter, killjoys.

A Hippy

Still, in fairness to the Puritan sensibility, May Day was doubtless full of unreconstructed, late medieval bawdiness and it never made it back onto the calendar of popular feasts after the overthrow of the wicked regicides. That is until now.

Cheap Red Wine

Hippies have taken over May Day, along with their revolutionary geeknerd cousins, the Communists, and typically don't miss an opportunity to make a nuisance of themselves in otherwise peaceful civic centers. 

A Couple of Commies

The May Day commies throw dialectical materialist duodecimal dice for their NWO rulers and the hippies get loaded on cheap red wine and thieve, it's what they do.

A Typical Bluegill

Here at the Compound things were different. I drove to Clifton to administer Last Rites and followed that up by catching a catfish and a bluegill. 

Aggressive Little Monster

The cat fought hard and at first I thought I'd caught a snag, but no, it was a fierce, aggressive fish. He lived to fight again another day.

Never trust a hippy,

LSP

Ye Gods, I've Caught The Carp!

Unlike Satan, I try to take a day off, on Mondays, and what better way to spend part of that than checking out a new place to fish. It's not hard, put some rods in the bed of the truck, buy some kolaches and strong covfeve and off you go.

I arrived at the top secret Texan objective around Noon, after an intensive bout of front office porch work with the flock all morning, and sized things up. It looked right, smelled right, sage and cedar, and felt right. But would it be right and produce a catch?

Sure enough it did. Right out of the gate fish were tugging and thumping against my complex, scientific lure, a worm on a #6 bait holder allied to a single split-shot weight. Nice and easy does it, and then pull, a fish was on the hook and up came the first of five catfish. Good result.

Remembering that movement is a sign of life, I changed position and gently twitched the almost free floating bait along the bottom, but not for long. Something like Jan Sobieski's Hussars plowed into the hook with the kinetic energy of an ironclad phalanx.

Was it a monster catfish, a Leviathan Bass or something else, perhaps a dolphin? Hard to tell, as the monster of the deep dived, pulled, thrashed and eventually came to the surface. A carp, a huge great carp. Back you go, my friend.

Another even fiercer carp blew up the line again, in just the same spot, and I reeled it in only lose the hook as I brought the beast to land. But so what, we'd battled and one came out the victor. Sorry, carp, you lose this round.

And that was that. Pretty much a fish with every cast and we didn't even have a boat.

Tight lines,

LSP

Beat The Drum

What kind of countryman are you, so-called LSP? All you do is post creepy photos of Barbie dolls dressed up like wimmyn priests.

Hey, I get your dissatisfaction. So to put things straight I put a couple of rods in the pickup and headed for water. Intuition and experience said try the other side of the dam, and that's exactly what happened. 

It was deserted and the river flowed clear. So clear, in fact, that you could see that there weren't any fish apart from a small posse of Carp, guarding the spillway entrance to the once mighty Brazos. Therein lies another tale, but undaunted I set up on the empty grid of the pier and cast off with worms and carp bait.

Within seconds something was tugging at the juicy worm/strawberry dough bait combo. Nice, then out pulled the line  with that steady, mindless-hunger, piscine determination and I snapped the rod up to set the hook. Action! 

Only to pull the hook up through empty water. What was this, a fish without parts that didn't occupy space? No, just a Gar who sensibly dropped the enticing strawberry chummed worm.

Knowing that persistence in the face of adversity is key, I cast off again, expecting nothing but hoping for everything. And there it was, a tug, a dive and fish on in the form of a voracious little Black Drum. I hauled him in.

Next, a decent sized Bluegill; up you come, predator, and back you go to fight again another day. And this little menace was followed by another Drum. Then something big hit the line. 

BOOM. One minute you're waiting there on the pier, looking out over Texas and the fabled Brazos, and the next? Something's charged into the hook like a Trump Train on full loco. Rod double, drag out, fast and furious action. Then up came the fish.

It was a big 'un too, no foolin', and a larger  adversary hit the line at the end of the expedition. Big action from a big fish, which annoyingly snapped the 12Ib test as I brought it up, defeated. 

Then it was time to head back to the Compound, under the light of a shining moon.

Fish on,

LSP

The Sheer Awesomness Of Women Priests

Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful. Ordinatio Sacerdotalis

Are women priests awesome? That's what we've been lead to believe, anything else is simply discriminatory and "weird." Here's Rosie Harper, a UK priestess, arguing in favor of women bishops.

“I would like to take a moment to look at this from the outside in.

“I would like to name the sheer weirdness of a community arguing about discrimination in the 21st century – people out there don’t care enough to be angry but they do dismiss us as weird.

“If we are serious about our mission, and I know this is a very basic point, we really do have to stop being weird.”

Right on, Rosie. If the church is going to get down with mission and fill those achingly empty pews, it'd better get serious about not being weird and consecrate some women. Anything less is an obvious, discriminatory injustice, so much so that society won't take the church seriously.

Leaving aside the knotty issue of the church's interaction with secularist culture, let's focus on discrimination, which is at the heart of the argument. It runs like this: Discrimination is clearly wrong, and not ordaining women as priests and bishops is discrimination, so not ordaining women is wrong. 

And wrong in a big way because, now that we've reached the 21st century, we're really clear about, you know, injustice. So stop being a weird bastion of intolerant discrimination, church, and maybe you'll get some converts. 

Sounds good, right? Stop being an evil discriminator, weirdo. But not so fast, Rosie & Co.

The first bishops and priests were all men, women weren't allowed to fulfill that office, which makes the apostolic setup wrong. In fact it makes it sinful according to Rosie's logic, because it excludes women, which is an obvious evil. And what weirdo put such a  clearly oppressive, wicked, intolerant and unjust system in place? 

That would be Jesus. And if Christ was so blind to such a clear-cut evil, what does that make him? Hardly God. After all, God doesn't sin, but that's exactly what Rosie et al. implicitly accuse Jesus of doing, of setting up a system of ministry that was heinously wrong.  

"If you love me you will keep my commandments," says Jesus. We have to wonder at the quality of the first in the hearts of people who play so fast and loose with the second.

Regardless, ordaining women will apparently make the church less weird and get it on mission. Perhaps that's why the Episcopal Church, and the Church of England have been losing members ever since they tried the experiment.

Or to put it another way, why should disbelievers go to church to have their lack of faith reflected back to them?

Make of this what you will,

LSP