If they don’t cut back on farming, the northern half of the country may undergo slow desertification.  If they do cut back on farming, millions of farmers will lose their livelihoods, and there’s a decent chance the PRC will find itself on the receiving end of popular protests that they can’t contain, threatening domestic stability.

Not that Communists don’t already have the worst environmental records ever tallied up by humanity, but I wouldn’t want to be a minor PRC functionary on this issue in Northern China right now.  Likelihood of getting tossed to the wolves as a scapegoat, increasing…

Big anti-corruption guy whacked.  Shot pattern suggests former special forces guy as the trigger man, which in Russia could mean a faction assassination, could mean a mob figure.

I knew it wasn’t going to be my day.

Woke up with a nasty sinus headache from the chalkboard dust, that I couldn’t manage to shake last night.  (I can’t believe we’re actually still using chalkboards, like this is the 20th century or something…)

And then this stupid son of a bitch decided to camp out on the bridge for 360 and Mayfield, and then threaten to jump.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I don’t want to be the poor s.o.b. to pull off on Mayfield, cross under the highway, and have some 240-pound dude land on my car, either.  And maybe — no, definitely — it’s because I’m just not as wonderful a human being as some of the other folks I’ve met in this terrestrial existence…

but I’ve done the math, and between the disruption this stupid s.o.b. caused while ass-cheek-standing half-on and half-off that overpass arguing with the cops, he has to have messed with about five thousand peoples’ commutes directly.  Both 360 and I-20 were hopelessly snarled.  I-20 backed up for miles (and at 8:30 in the morning, you know how many people that is), and 360 completely shut down.

So he could argue with the cops while standing on an overpass.

If he were serious, he’d have walked out on the I-20 overpass.  Not some rinky-dink, eighteen-foot-six-inch, “I’m bouncing over a two-lane-road” overpass.  What’s he going to do if he does jump, break his ankles?

He’s probably still there now.  Jump, dumbass.  Break those ankles.  Get the hell out of everybody’s way, so the cops can bust you, the paramedics fix you up, and life can go on.

(I’m sure I’ll have a calmer and more reasonable position sometime around 8 this evening when I’m sitting around with a beer, and, yes, I’m unfortunately intimately familiar with the tragedy fatal depression/suicide.  I just can’t help shaking the feeling, having seen the guy, that this is some dude pulling an 8-year-old’s attention stunt.)

It starts to seriously look like the technocrats have just managed to artificially engineer a food shortage… or at least a serious price spike.

Ready the Anti-Machismo Ray!

…needs an overhaul.

For instance, if I were to be convicted of doing what these men were doing, my lifespan in Texas would be measured in heartbeats.

And rightly so.  Sad to say, it’s not even a particularly unknown crime in Hungary — the gypsy community is infamous for it.

Who says we shouldn’t have a death penalty?