U-pick, U-shoot and then U-sleep

On October 12, 2025October 12, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

Today’s Fun Family Time included a two-hour drive to an apple orchard up in Michigan; my wife’s side of the family has apparently been doing it as a yearly thing for forever and just decided to invite the out-of-towners this year.

I don’t know if you’ve ever used an apple cannon. I can tell you that after firing $10 worth of apples out of one, I’m going to find a way to build one in our back yard. The apple cannons were absolutely the highlight of the trip; I discovered to my consternation that despite apples generally being among my favorite fruits, when rotting apples is the only thing I can smell in a given location, it’s going to leave me feeling a bit ill, so I was fighting off a shitty mood for most of the afternoon and just mostly trying to keep a smile plastered on my face. The apple cannons totally fixed that problem.

(Also, Christ, there’s nothing that can reduce people to ‘splosion- and cannon-loving Americans faster than seeing someone hit a target with an apple at 50 yards. Wow.)

There was also a large corn maze. Despite having grown up in and spending most of my life living in Indiana, I have never been in a corn maze, and I still haven’t, because the three of us figured we were going to get lost and decided not to make the time investment. I figure you want to do a corn maze when you have time to get hopelessly lost and not when you want to be home before it’s dark.

Then once we got home, in accordance with our most ancient traditions, all three of us retired to separate rooms to recharge and not speak to each other any more, and I fell asleep under a pile of cats, which is why this post is just going up at 9:00 PM.

Tomorrow is not a day off officially, but I took one anyway. I’ve been pretty good about attendance this year and upon realizing that the wife and child would both be home, had a “fuck it” moment and called in a personal day. Hail Columbia, or whatever.

Michigan Renaissance Festival, 9/14/24

On September 14, 2024 By Luther M. SilerIn Photography1 Comment

Holy shit.

On Michigan

On March 9, 2016March 9, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Politics4 Comments

First of all: Wow. Polling actually is a science, guys, despite how much people like to gripe about it, but crazy shit can and will happen anytime measuring people happens. And hooooly shit did they get Michigan wrong. Congratulations to Senator Sanders on the big win. A combination of facts and wanton speculation follows:

How have I lived in Indiana and Illinois for my entire life, visited Michigan frequently during that time (I have a fair amount of family up there) and I don’t recognize their state flag? Also, that’s a crazily complicated state flag.
Independent voters were about a third of both the Democratic and Republican vote. On the Republican side they mostly voted the same way the Republicans did, but there was a clear split on the Democratic side– registered Democrats voted for Hillary by about the margin predicted by the polls, but independents went 71-28 for Bernie. That right there is probably the difference.
You may think “Oh, he’s going to gripe that the real Democrats voted for Hillary now!” Nope. I’ve said “Them’s the rules” to enough Bernie supporters this election (and, notably, to a ton of Clinton supporters in 2008) and now it’s Clinton’s turn. Them’s the rules. Independent voters get to vote in Michigan. Deal widdit.
I felt like Bernie won the debate on Sunday night, but didn’t think it was a blowout victory, and his worst moment (“Whites don’t know what it’s like to be poor”) was worse than her worst moment (hemming and hawing about fracking.) That said, it clearly created some serious momentum for Sanders. I do think the independents were what propelled his win, but he also did much better than previous states among black voters (30%) and he won solidly in Dearborn, indicating that Arab & Muslim voters are choosing the candidate who hasn’t been killing their relatives back in the old country recently. There are a lot of “OMG Arabs voted for a JEW!” articles floating around; they’re dumb and presumptuous– as if every Arab is automatically an anti-Semite. It’s not hard to understand why the Muslims might choose the more dovish candidate, guys.
CNN appears to not have polled on when people decided who to vote for, which is too bad. I’d love to see how much of a break toward Bernie there was among late deciders, and how many there were.
All that said, and while the win is certainly a reason to celebrate for the Sanders fans among us: Sanders is now farther behind than he was last week, because he never bothered to go to Mississippi at all and Clinton ran up the score something scary there. When Bernie Sanders gets beat in the 17-29 age group by 62-37, he’s gotten clobbered, and while winning Michigan is definitely a good thing, he won close, and the delegates are awarded proportionally. Even if he ends up closer in the big three states on the 15th, or even if he wins one or two of them, he’s still got 200+ delegates to make up before we worry about the superdelegates.
Shut up about the superdelegates. If he manages to generate enough momentum that he closes that gap (and I still think it’s virtually impossible) they’ll come around. Same thing happened in 2008.
Hillary’s campaign, while mostly well-oiled, has shown the occasional tendency to panic. She should probably try her damnedest to reign that impulse in this week, and make sure all of her spokespeople keep their damn yaps shut and don’t say a bunch of dumb shit either. If Lynn Forester de Rothschild is still alive, tape her mouth shut and drop her in a ditch somewhere until after the primary is over.
(Fact: two of her three most assholish surrogates from 2008, Harriet Christian and Geraldine Ferraro, actually are dead.)