new language announcement

Hello, all!  I'm back.

Or as we say in Govro, Kajxo a xutis!  Mi renaidekar! (pronounced: KYE-sho ah TOO-teese.  me REH-nah-ee-deh-KAHR)

You may well be asking "What the heck is Govro?" Well it's a new language project, started by yours truly :).  I've devoted a whole other blog to it: http://govroanesperantoalternatie.blogspot.com/2015/11/kajxo-tutis-kaj-bonaida-to-all-and.html in case you're interested (and if you're not, you won't hurt my feelings, lol).

Anyhoo, Not much of any import has happened since last summer.  It seems that the people who run Lernu (the Esperanto learning site online) are not the tolerant liberals they profess themselves to be.  Let's just say, when you have to resort to locking someone out of a forum because of their political and religious beliefs, you are not the lover of tolerance you tout yourself as being, and leave it at that.

I am again living alone; roommate finally took the hint and moved out.  I don't think he was too dumb to realize what was going on; he just didn't have anywhere else to go (he finally did find another person to dupe).  So, I'm back to my severe budget crunch, which includes eating as cheaply as possible, which usually translates as no meat.

Of course, here in Iowa, where pork subsidies are a way of life, it's not too hard to buy pork.  A pound of ground pork (not sausage) is usually a third of the price of similar-fat-content ground beef, and ham is relatively cheap, so there is all that.  Once in a while, like yesterday, there's a great deal at Aldi's (a no-frills grocery store):  I got an 8.5 lb bone-in ham for $7.34!  When all was said and done, there were fixin's for about 7 dinners and 4 or 5 lunches with tons of leftovers expected.  Add all that to the deals I get at the local Amish store (e.g. a 6.8 lb bag of navy beans for just under 6 bucks, which will probably last me about 3 weeks) and living on a food stamp budget isn't as hard as the Welfare Industrial Complex would have us believe.

As most of us are well aware, the Iowa Caucuses were this past Monday.  No, I didn't go.  Why?  Well, being a Libertarian, there was no need for me to go.  My candidate gets chosen at our convention later in the spring.  I guess you could say the convention IS the Libertarian caucus, but every state Libertarian Party picks their candidate at their conventions instead of a primary election, not just Iowa and New Hampshire.  Frankly, I don't like the idea of the caucus, at least not for picking the candidate for president.  A primary election, as done in the other 48 states, has a much better chance of getting a more representative result of the voting process.  Of course when it comes to the two major parties (or The Party, if your opinion goes that way), that's probably not such a good thing.  I have yet to hear any Democrat and more than a scant handful of  Republican cite "what's best for the country" as the reason for the voting choice they'll be making.  For Bernie supporters, I've noticed (of course this is all in my own experience) it's almost entirely "what's in it for me??"   I just can't help but wonder how popular he'd be if he were NOT promising "free" college and "free" medical care and "free" this and "free" that.  I honestly don't know if the John Doe American Voter is greedy and selfish or just plain stupid.  Where do they think all the money for this "free" stuff is going to come from?   Oh, sure, Bernie SAYS "start making the super rich pay their fair share" (they already do and then some), or "end corporate welfare" (I agree with him in this regard), but in reality it's going to end up coming out of every taxpayers pocket, eventually.