busted flush

Dear Editor,

My friend is near the end of a card game and about to bet the farm on a busted flush. Is this wise? What could the next move be after this hand has been played?

Yours, TM

ps this is the hand.

Dear TM,

I think your friend may be exaggerating their hand. I suspect it is more like the one I illustrate?

If so then maybe take up a different occupation.

The card hand is too much like the one Wild Bill Hickok was playing at the time of his demise. Dead Man's Hand, I think they call it.

Yours, Editor

Dear Editor,

Thank you for the advice.

I now look at my friend's cards more closely and realise they were not quite as I explained.

The actual cards are shown below. Is this any better?

Yours, TM

Dear TM,

No.

Yours, Editor.

Brazen.

It's more than a month since I checked the brexibabble but it seems to be roughly where it was before, save a few sidebar embellishments.

Except for the ground rush effect, of course.

According to the note from Attorney General Geoffrey Cox, Mrs May's revisions don't really change anything on the sealed Withdrawal Agreement.

Notice though, that it is somewhat buried within a 'However' at Point 19. The pound has started to fall again. The whole shebang is more about Tory politics than 'the good of the people'.

It should be game over, but continued fact distortions are appearing from all sides. Some are brazen lies.

Mrs May thinks there's still all to play for with her last minute twists, and a few of the schemers with big money and power outcomes from this will continue to tilt the board to their advantage. Where there's muck there's brazen brass.

shopping. locally.

Great idea to create our local shops' loyalty initiative.

I'm in.

Get the card, enjoy our local and often unique shops.

Create some offers and find a way to make it available to visitors enjoying the area for a few days.

I'll still need some specialised items delivered by post, like the new water filter, but for other shopping a stroll around the loveliness of Topsham is highly recommended.

shopping in America bloopers 1 and 2.

There's some differences shopping in America. A striking one is the use of plastic bags. I'm used to the UK 'bring reusable bags' and a recent expedition to a wal-known chain created a "stop right there!" moment.

A problem seems to be that the plastic bags supplied are actually quite small. Additionally, in supermarkets the cashier or a cashier assistant packs the shopping for you.

They use a gazillion bags. Sometimes one or two items only in the bag. I requested a couple of items to not go in bags (washing detergent, fabric softener - the sort of things that come in big packaging).

So then, I push my trolley to the store exit.

"Excuse me!" called an official. "What are those loose items?"

I'm looking confused.

"Show me your receipt"

I did.

They hunted through to find the suspicious items which hadn't been bagged.

Yes, I'd bought them! Problem over and haveanice day.

My arguably bigger blooper was on the return flight. I usually travel with fairly minimal hand luggage. For complicated reasons on this occasion I'd a bigger hand luggage bag - though still within airline guidelines etc.

I was also pre cleared to use the fast lanes at the airport security. None of that remove belt, shoes, laptops out business. Excellent except for one thing.

My luggage came up for inspection on the screening belt. I knew it was almost empty, a few electronics, a fleece, an empty backpack, a couple of magazines.

"Anything sharp inside?"

"I don't think so"

Unzippered and inspected. All good. Then the package I'd forgotten.

A brown bag, containing a box with about 1 kilo of white powder in it.

Oops.

The outer packaging was wiped with one of those special lint cloths and then placed into an expensive looking trace detection machine.

"Ha!" smiled the security guard. "Pancake Mix. Great choice!"

We'd visited Cracker Barrel earlier in the day. They do a great pancake mix and whimsically we decided to bring some home. I'd remembered my 'hand luggage' was relatively empty and threw it in when we got back to the car, oblivious to the potential problem it might create later.

She placed it back in my bag.

"Enjoy your flight"

Blow your harmonica, son

A lazy day by the pool today after yesterday's time at the Outlet Shopping Mall. I finally got a replacement TravelPro Crew case as well as a chance to see wild alligators basking by the side of the water running through the mall.

In the evening we came back and watched some American television. More alligators and swampland as we saw the sentencing of charge dodging Paul Manafort creating the first occasion where someone has been part of the election committee for a current president and also gone to jail.

Curiously, Manafort's recommended sentence for money laundering, tax dodging, witness tampering and so on of 19-24 years was awarded at a mere 47 months, minus the 9 that he's already served. 3/19ths = 16% of the recommended minimum sentence.

Judge Ellis commented about the 'otherwise blameless' Manafort, conveniently forgetting Manafort's time as a lobbyist and strategist for brutal warlords, helping swing elections in their favour.

Although it didn't have anything directly to do with Russia, the Judge's statement after sentencing ambiguously pointed out that this trial was not about Russia. It was said in a way which Trump will try to use to dodge allegations of collusion.

I suppose this is a white collar crime by one of the Washington elite, so when the judge said the recommended sentence was excessive, he was maybe thinking about his own future as well. Alligators? Who knows? Who knows if any shadowy small hands were operating anything?

We'll see what the second set of guilty charges generates and whether it runs parallel or consecutive.

We also saw that Mr Cohen has decided to sue Mr Trump for not continuing to pay his defence bills, which was laughably part of the deal, at least until he changed to become the equivalent of a state witness. Cohen has also indicated that even his testimony to the court was 'adjusted by the small hands of someone high-up in the White House. No alligators here either?

That's just two of the myriad daily developments on the evolving topsy trumpy world here. I drive past signs like the one above every day at the moment. In local news there's been another big car smash on the nearby main road and a further single person school shooting. I actually drove past another car crash today, where someone had spun their car off the road and down into a ditch. They looked shake but alright although it'll take a truck to get the car out of the hole.

I'm again reminded of that old Freak Out album by Frank Zappa. Trouble every day. Same as it ever was.

Well I'm about to get sick
From watchin' my TV
Been checkin' out the news
Until my eyeballs fail to see
I mean to say that every day
Is just another rotten mess
And when it's gonna change, my friend
Is anybody's guess

Listen to it right through to the harmonica. I'm going back to the pool.

cranes by the pool

Passive television consumption over here doesn't provide any updates on the UK. There was a picture of a London street and a couple of policemen, captioned London and a sentence about an IED discovery. That's about it.

Instead, the news here is either Trump related or local. As well as several shootings there have been numerous car crashes. I've seen the aftermath of more crashes here in a few weeks than in a couple of years back at home. The speed limits are generally lower, but there's a mix of speeders and stressed family motorists that seem to make for a particularly dangerous mix.

I've noticed a few roads that I prefer not to use, particularly in the evening because of flagrant speeders. I'm used to US driving/right on red/4-way stops/school bus protocol/the under and overtaking mentality and so on, but the lack of defensive driving and non-existent merge courtesy requires adjustment.

I've had a few emails from various groups about the state of Brexit. Nothing seems to have changed except the deadline is closer. Maybe the Tories will somehow shove it through, although I assume they are probably lying by omission about the next several years of renegotiating everything. A new feeding frenzy, with some revised players. Bad for all normal folk.

A different feeding frenzy around here was after the grass had been cut. A couple of 4 feet tall sandhill cranes took a shine to the area just outside the lanai of the pool. It's one of my tick box items, to be by the pool when there's cranes, herons or egrets around.

finally flipped?

We were over here for the original run-up to the Presidential elections and it is notable how much airtime that took on US TV channels.

It's still the same, with almost no other news on the main channels and the evenings filled with analysis of the latest speech or alleged wrongdoing of the so-called President.

It's reached a level that warfare has a term for: containment theory. When the situation is so complicated that no-one can understand all of the moving parts.

Individual pundits know about their piece of the jigsaw. There's the Cohen trial and even whether Trump was considering a pardon in return for loyalty? We know that didn't happen.

There's Manafort, who looks more grimy by the day in TV reports. Now trying to dodge a 24-year jail sentence because the investigation wasn't supposed to uncover his particular line of mis-deed.

We get the liars in court, the ever-increasing supply of pay-off cheques. There's the inflation of net worth of that man to help secure bank loans. I'm sure I could get a better loan if I added $4 billion to my apparent wealth.

Then there's the stuff that hasn't really surfaced. Mueller's investigations into Russia. The role of Felix Sater on the same floor of Trump Tower as Trump.

We've just had the rambling two hour speech by Trump to his supporters. The Washington Post counted 109 falsehoods in the speech. The so-called President is starting to use obscenities (mild by UK standards) to pep up his run at the next election. I can imagine the new red hats already.

In other news we saw this Mercedes wagon flip over and burst into controlled flames. Metaphor time again?

red shoulders

I've spent a part of the day lazing in the pool, looking towards the blue skies. A few fluffy clouds and every so often a hawk or two, wheeling through the sky.

I've decided they are red shouldered hawks. They seem to have the right plumage and should be a relatively common, yet interesting, raptor around these parts.

I've seen them dive too, fast but controlled. One of them swooped in for some close contact with something at a house a couple of doors along. Interesting that as it did so a chorus of smaller birds could be heard.

I've no idea of the outcome, although I suspect it was bad news for one of the lesser inhabitants.

The floating in the sunshine means that I've also adopted similar red shoulders, although I've been using the SPF30.

the smoking check isn't the main game, which is much bigger

Being in the USA, it was compelling to watch some of the House Oversight Committee questioning of Cohen yesterday, although there were several aspects that presented curiously to a Brit.

The most obvious point was that this wasn't the main game. Cohen has another set of hearings in Southern Circuit New York which will be where he reveals more about his role as a fixer and threatener for Trump. Cohen managed his delivery with a theatrical accuracy during the whole proceedings.

It gave the Representatives that interrogated him a chance to vent their displeasure, but Cohen was still able to rebuff most of what was thrown at him. He's already admitted to being a liar, cheating taxes and so on, so the mainly Republicans making accusations about this were at least partly wasting their time.

Clear that their reason for this is to try to show the general public that Cohen can't be trusted.

It's another part of a Trump gameplay. Like having a big whiteboard with placards displayed in the open hearing. Extreme showboating. Astonishing.

Trump used Cohen as a fixer for 10 years. They had offices on the same floor. Cohen knew Trumos coded way to issue orders. Nothing direct. The fixing included paying off women, but also a multitude of threats to many people who Trump didn't like, or didn't want to pay or for any other reasons.

A classic move would be to avoid the final payment on a construction deal. A nice round third of the contract value, perhaps?

A quick look at Trump's asset statement from 2013 is itself quite revealing, showing an additional $4 billion of Brand Value added to the statements. That's an amount that inflates apparent value for attraction of new loans.

Cohen will save the best stuff for the New York hearings, where he could also negotiate a Section 35 partial pardon from the three year sentence he currently faces.

Cohen is certainly a slippery operator, but on this situation seems to be taking the view to bury the president in a hail of allegations. Trump will call it Fake News, many Republican voters won't even care. Cohen may get a reduced sentence and then will sell book rights, movie rights and beyond.

Hakuna Mutata

This time I decided to try using the iPhone for some wildlife pictures. Completely unplanned, I thought there would be new challenges because of the need to somehow zoom without any optical glass assistance.

Above is a young giraffe, although my pictures of a rhinoceros were blurred and unfit to publish,

Still, here's a dozy lion and the profile of a lioness. Easier to take these, because the creatures were not moving about. Here's another one, although it does show that the iPhone's zoom is maybe not suited to this kind of task.

Well, I may not have achieved pictures of all of the big game specified, but I somehow didn't expect my little iPhone to shine at this particular task.

Still, no worries, as they say. It's our problem-free philosophy; Hakuna Matata.

one small step

A fun trip to NASA today. It's years since I was last here, but I still have the tee shirt. This time it was interesting to see how much the private sector has added to the activities around the complex.

There was the inevitable SPACEX presence, which is the Elon Musk initiative and gets plenty of news about its progress.

Here's a picture I took from their main launch facility, which is the updated old launch pad used by the main NASA missions to the moon and for the space shuttle. The concrete blast trenches were big enough to contain the power from a Saturn 5 rocket, so this is seriously rugged construction.

Towards the main entrance to NASA, there's also a couple of blue buildings. Blue Origin. That's the Jeff Bezos project. Not quite Amazon, it is by the Amazon founder and is actively using the Cape Canaveral side of the launch site. That's the part still under USAF control, rather than NASA.

Not so much to see, but still plenty happening.

The big events of the past are well featured inside NASA's halls in this still live facility. Last time I visited here the space shuttle was still active and we saw one on its way to the launch facility.

Now my picture shows Atlantis is in a museum. It has clocked about 126 million miles on 33 separate missions spread over 26 years. Impressive stuff and it is the real deal.

That is just scratching the surface of this impressive site. We shouldn't forget the moon landing or the many other incredible advances through the technology of space missions. Here's my photo of the giant leap and, yes, I've added a polo shirt to my collection.

ybor the cigar city

Time to visit Ybor City just northeast of downtown Tampa (itself once nick-named as Cigar-City).

Ybor was founded in the 1880s by Vicente Martinez-Ybor and other cigar manufacturers and was populated by thousands of immigrants, mainly from Cuba, Spain, and Italy.

There's still a mixed vibe of Cuban-Italian-Spanish and a few cigar stores still hand-rolling some of their products.

The city was unique in the American south as a successful town almost entirely populated and owned by immigrants.

The neighbourhood had features unusual among contemporary communities in the south, most notably its multi-ethnic and multi-racial population and their many mutual aid societies.

The post depression decline in cigar sales created a corresponding slide for Ybor until the 1980s, when an influx of artists began a slow process of gentrification.

We've visited before and the area around 7th Avenue has continued its development into a bohemian night club and entertainment district with many old buildings were renovated for new uses, although this time I noticed a few had indeed emptied again.

Things don't really kick off here until well into the evening, after the last bus has passed through the centre of the district.