News Cycling

     I'm so tired of a news cycle that consists of "Crazy/extreme politician does something crazy" followed by "Mass violence and/or war crime," followed by "Crazy domestic politician clashes or communes with crazy foreign politician" replaced by "Crooked politician gets caught and/or commuted" followed by "Crazy politician(s) rattle sabers" followed by "New fighting in [site of long-term conflict]," on and on, all of it a sameness and very much in the mode of our always having been at war with (or in) Eastasia or Eurasia.

     Call me soft and sentimental, but I want a news cycle with headlines about curing cancer or an HIV vaccine (which we almost had, until the Feds decided to cut the budget and spend whatever was left on trainee plumbers), about Moon landings or progress on self-sustaining, controllable fusion reactions.  Not "Economy tanks because some nitwit pulled the wrong cord."

Two Questions

      If you are one of those people who believes hypocrisy to be an especially damming sin, I have two questions for you.

      Please read and answer each one to yourself before proceeding to the next.  Be honest.

   First Question:
      Do you believe it is important to respect and obey the laws of our States and nation?


   Second Question:
      Do you always drive at or below the posted speed limit?


     Man, some mornings I just hate having to look in the mirror....

NRA Meltdown

     The current mess the NRA is in alarms me.  I've been following it at a bit of a distance, and it appears to be a multi-level failure, based on the mistaken belief that the organization was an endless "cash cow."

     NRA is often accused by opponents of "leveraging fear" in fundraising, as if that was somehow wrong; donations to the Electronic Frontier Foundation go up when online freedoms appear most under attack; the American Civil Liberties Union is quick to issue press releases on abuses of Constitutionally-protected rights and lo, this affects their take.  Surprise, people donate when causes they support are under threat.

     Get a Republican in the White House, especially if there's a GOP majority in the House and/or Senate, and NRA donations dwindle.

     After eight years of President Obama's support of antigunners, however hollow, NRA executives and their deeply-entwined ad agency were fat, happy and overly complacent.  The fight was on!  Until late 2016, when suddenly it wasn't.

     It is clear the rot had been building for awhile.  Now the pool of dollars was shrinking and however you care to characterize the tussle between Wayne LaPierre, Oliver North, ad agency Ackerman-McQueen (to which PR had been hugely and expensively outsourced) and various factions of the Board of Directors, one thing stands out: they're fighting over money.

     Gun rights ain't in it.

     Ack-Mac never gave a flip about the Second Amendment, and why should they?  They're an advertising agency; caring about anything but the bottom line is a huge drawback in that line of work and the way you keep an ad agency toeing the mark is to ensure that getting your message across is crucial to their income.  Instead, Ack-Mac was given a great deal of freedom to determine what the message should be, and the end result was more than a little inward-looking and self-serving.  And out of touch with a lot of the membership.

     NRA's executives, meanwhile, isolated from much of the hurly-burly of messaging and outreach, appear to have relied on what Ack-Mac was telling them, and on having a compliant, bloated Board of Directors that could be counted on to rubber-stamp whatever the leadership wanted.

     Nobody, save a few members of the Board, was listening to the membership. 

     When the money started to get tighter, pretty much everyone reacted to save their jobs and didn't look to survival of the organization as a whole.

     Until Chris Cox got the axe, I was mainly just watching.  Watching in no little alarm, but figuring NRA would weather the storm and emerge, leaner, meaner and with a renewed sense of mission.  I'm starting to doubt that.  Wayne LaPierre's got the survival instinct of a cockroach -- and is just as much of a team player.  Whoever he's got to push overboard to stay in power, he will.  Board members who have spoken out publicly are finding themselves kicked off of committees -- pardon me, not invited to continue serving.

     Is it going to continue to be the National Rifle Association, or is it just hanging around to keep a few people living in the style to which they'd like to remain accustomed?

     2020 is coming.  Bloomberg's pockets are deep.  There's a even chance we're going to have a Democrat President in the next go-round, and the odds aren't much worse that he or she will have a (slim) Congressional majority as well.  If the NRA isn't focused in their core mission by then, it's going to mean a lot more than an executive or three losing their phony-baloney jobs.

     NRA's going off the rails and I don't know know how to fix it.  The people who can do the most, soonest, are in Fairfax, Virginia.  It's time they got to it.

Trick Question

     In the upcoming elections, there's a Public Question on the Indiana ballot:

     "Shall Article 10, Section 5 of the Constitution of the State of Indiana be amended to require the General Assembly to adopt balanced budgets for state government that do not exceed estimated revenues unless a supermajority of two-thirds of the members of the House of Representatives and two-thirds of the members of the Senate vote to suspend the requirement?"

     Hey, sounds pretty good, right?  Sure -- except Art. 10, Sect. 5 currently reads:

     "No law shall authorize any debt to be contracted, on behalf of the State, except in the following cases: to meet casual deficits in the revenue; to pay the interest on the State Debt; to repel invasion, suppress insurrection, or, if hostilities be threatened, provide for the public defense."

     It just says No.  Unless there's fighting in the streets or it's a penny-ante loan, N O.  There's no supermajority-sure-borrow-money exception.

     We should keep it that way.  Vote NO on the Public Question. Our Legislature had that kind of power once, and bankrupted the state.

In Fact, Not Like A Good Neighbor

     My car insurance is affordable -- I "bundled" it with the loan-required homeowner's insurance when I bought Roseholme Cottage, in fact, which meant changing from the extremely responsive insurer I'd had for many years to another and larger outfit.  I didn't think it would be much of a change; my coverage was the same and after all, insurance is insurance, right?

     As it happened, I was driving a succession of Hyundai Accents at the time.  People kept hitting them.  It's a small car, with a somewhat generic shape; perhaps other drivers thought it was farther away than it was.

     The first wreck was on my old insurance.  They offered what they called "concierge" service, which is basically hands-off: you give up control of things like what body shop gets used and where your rental car comes from and in return, you get zero hassle; they get you in a rental ASAP and your old car goes away to be fixed or totalled.  It was great!

     The next wreck was on my new insurance.  Let's call the company "Agricultural Prison."  They say they're your good neighbor.  They're more like paranoid Mrs. Kravitz across the street.  First question from them was "Where do you want it taken?"

     "A body shop," was, as it happened, not the answer they were after.  When I pointed out they dealt with a lot more body shops than I did, and that I would happily accept their judgement,* they demurred.  They didn't want to "endorse" any particular shop; they wanted me to "make my own choice."  Because after an accident, who doesn't want to be spending time researching auto-body shops?

     Car rental was equally burdensome.  The rental company's agent turned surly when I told him the name of my insurance company; the insurance company promised to fax him required documentation but he wanted my credit card and approval on file, and I went along because I was working swing shifts while moving into Roseholme and I needed a car, quickly.  Twelve hours later, I got an angry call from the rental company -- where was the insurance documentation?  They wanted it or their car back, stat!  It was early in the morning and I had just got off work; I was on a short turnaround with only ten hours between shifts and I needed sleep desperately.  I pointed out they had my credit card, I didn't have time to sort this out and they could just change the terms to an ordinary rental until we sorted things out.  Two hours later, while I was asleep, two of their minions took the rental car, dumping my toolbag (with about a thousand bucks of specialized hand tools inside) and briefcase on the front porch and hammering on the door before zooming off.   I called the rental company and got a lot of backtalk; I worked my way up to the regional V.P. and after a lot of trouble, got an apology and a much nicer rental delivered to my door after that day's work.  The insurance company had dropped the ball and the rental company, with a long history of being ill-treated by them, had acted with an excess of haste and zeal.

     For some damn reason -- it's bundled with my homeowner's policy, after all -- I stayed with the insurer.  I should have dropped them like a stinking hot rock with leprosy.

     Fast-forward to yesterday.  The first thing my auto insurer told me was that I should "work it out with the other person's insurance company myself."  When I pushed back, they claimed they were trying to save me the $500 deductible, because "you might not get that back for up to a year."  They were a little reluctant to help even after I told them $500 was a small loan to make if it meant I didn't have to spend hours on the phone sorting this out, but they set me up with a rental and made arrangements to have my car taken to their inspection center.

     Well, I thought they'd set me up with a rental, delivered to my work.  They told me to expect a call from the rental company.  When that didn't come, I called the rental people myself.  They knew from the claim number that I needed a car, but didn't have my phone number and didn't know I needed it delivered.  And -- whattaya know, the local rental office was closed already.

     I'm just a little bit annoyed.  This company is the shoddiest bunch of second-rate slackers I have encountered, and they're consistent about it. It's been ten years since their first poor performance and they're not doing any better this time around.

     They aren't there like a good neighbor.  They're more like acne or hemorrhoids.
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* My mother was an insurance adjuster for years and did a lot of auto work during that time.  The adjusters know which shops do good work and which are rip-offs, and while they are paid to not spend any more than necessary, they're also paid to retain you as a customer: a good insurance adjuster will get you a good value-for-money on car repairs -- oh, nothing extra, not a bit, but if they're honest and good at their job, the repairs will be be good and honestly priced.  Contrarily, "Agricultural Prison" insurance is cheap and understaffed, and if they can avoid one of their adjusters getting involved, they will.  And pocket the savings.

I Got Ripped Off

     As ripoffs go, it was small one: ordered more Chemex coffemaker filters though Amazon, and it's not an item they stock; you have to buy from one of the little suppliers who sell through Amazon.  This has never been a problem -- until "Kitchen Eco."

     As of today, they have eight reviews, all one-star; the earliest is from 7 February and the most recent is from me.  They all say the same things: fake filters.  Not the right ones.  Too small to be useful.  Counterfeit box -- too small, multiple misspellings.  And wouldn't you know, now there's nothing in "Kitchen Eco's" virtual storefront on Amazon.

     I've ordered some filters directly from Chemex.  Shipping is costly but the per-box price of the filters is lower and it works out to a lower overall price.  They'll be awhile arriving; Tam is out right now on an urgent mission to our nearest Chemex stockist, in hopes they'll have one of three versions of the standard, chemistry-lab type filter that fit our coffeemaker.*  Yes, it's extra effort.  They make such great coffee that we think it's worth it.
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* In the event of an emergency, I'll do a batch of coarse grind and get out the vacuumatic -- almost as good but tricky to get the proper strength and clarity.  (Spellcheck suggests "traumatic" in place of "vaccumatic."  Hey, it's not that difficult.

"Creeper Culture"

     A precise label eludes me.  On the one hand, you've got TV talent with remote door locks, pervy doctors, and film directors or producers who have taken the "casting couch" cliche to boggling extremes; on the other, you have doddering, clumsy or juvenile types who sometimes put their hands where they oughtn't.

     Both are bad but surely there are different levels of badness, and different appropriate responses?  Often there is a drastic power imbalance inhibiting the right response to low-level creepering -- if your boss or a county judge pats your bottom, you're a lot less likely to give them hell (cold stare, shocked comment, a good slap) for it that you would a random guy in line at the five-and-dime; and once they've gotten away with the low-level stuff, some of  them don't stop there.

     In all the denouncing and firing, I notice a few who might've have been shoved towards proper decorum if they'd been backhanded by their chosen victims early and often; others seem, at least in hindsight, to have been utterly predatory, as set on their path as a shark. Many of the latter appear to have exercised a predator's judgment in their choice of prey, going after the weakest.

     Some kind of tipping-point has been passed; a series of high-profile arrests (Jerry Sandusky, Larry Nasser, Jared Fogle) may have been the earliest signs, followed by accusations against Bill Cosby and the UK's Jimmy Saville.  Or maybe we just passed some kind of "critical mass" of women in management -- nothing personal, guys, but I have been on the receiving end of too many "I'm sure he didn't mean it/he's just a diamond in the rough/think of the team" chats with managerial higher-ups, men who simply can't (or won't) conceive that such misbehavior was seriously meant.

     Things have changed.  It's too early to tell if this first big shift points to greater concern for such things in workplaces generally, or if it will trail off in tabloid-headline trivia.  I'd like to think the good old-fashioned withering glare, stern comment and stinging slap will stage a comeback in response to creepy comments, worrying situations and wandering hands.

This Is Why They Sell Pepper Spray

     It's one reason why they sell the stuff: Bloomington's got a serial flasher and he's chasing after young women. The prime suspect was already out on bail for a similar crime here in Indianapolis in February.

     A little behavior modification would go a long way in reducing such crimes.  Averse conditioning in the form of pepper spray, for example; if there was a one-in-four chance of being pepper-sprayed, and if we let flashers learn that via experience, it'd do a whole lot to reduce the number of such incidents.

     College students, young women in particular, consider carrying pepper spray: small, portable, non-lethal -- and used judiciously, it contributes to the betterment of society.  Flashing is a crime of intimidation, usually committed against women, and it is best stopped early, before the flasher goes after bigger thrills.  A reminder that such behavior is intolerable would go a long way towards correcting it.  It is unlikely to do them lasting harm and may prevent injury to others and a long jail sentence for the perp.

     Won't you please do your part to help?

Ascension, Final Review (SPOILER WARNING)

     So, they wrapped it up, and almost -- almost! -- redeemed the series in the final scene.

     There's too much "stuff" there and not enough narrative glue to hold it all together; the story is too hastily told.  The anachronisms and science blunders are thick and fast in the final episode, but if you're willing to go along, the cast does their best to sell 'em and it's a fun ride.

     It's only later, when you step back, that it starts to get disturbing.  While the cast is even more diverse than a 1970s cola commercial trying to teach the world to sing, in the end only amoral, heterosexual, blue-eyed blondes of steely determination win out; anyone who doesn't fit that mold is swept aside as casually as a child spits off of a bridge.  Total surveillance of people is questioned -- but never seriously challenged.  A corporation -- government contractor? -- that kills off no-longer-wanted employees is accepted matter-of-factly and absolute control is presented as being vindicated by the results it produces.

     In short, it's as if the Nazis were making SF films.

     This could have been a good mini-series; it could have been the beginning of a series.  But it went off the rails in details, in story, in loose ends and in overall tone.  It's still lushly set and well acted; the cast really puts you on the huge starship even though the scale is inconsistent.  This miniseries makes me itch for a video editor and a lot of free time -- you could probably make a decent hour-long drama out of it, or even two hours.  I'm just not sure you wouldn't still be stuck with a Leni Riefenstahl film when you were done.

"Leaving A Loaded Gun In The White House"

     Reason magazine, on the growth in Presidential power during Mr. Obama's two terms.  Remember when the media was telling us what a crime it was, the way the most recent President Bush had expanded the powers of his office?  Well, surprise, the reporting might've slackened but the trend never did.

     Thus, this article.

     I dislike the extent to which both sides bend discussion about the Presidency toward discussion of the man holding the office.  On the big things ("Am I gonna be able to afford lunch, or will my money be worthless by noon?" "Will WW III break out this year?" "Can I call our Congressman a ninny?" "Is my place of worship going to be shut down?"  "Hey, is that a drone, and is it shooting at me?"), it really shouldn't ever be about the man; the President's power is supposed to be strictly limited.

     Supposed to be -- ask the Cherokees how well that worked out under Andrew Jackson, look at Woodrow Wilson's re-segregation of a merit-based Federal civil service, and those are just the easy examples.  But even at that, even while the worrying edge cases were canaries in our national coal mine, Joe and Jane Average were safe from Presidential whim.  I'm doubting that's true any more. 

     And it's not the man, it's the office; each president picks up what his predecessor has left in the way of power and authority and, being human, looks to find new ways to wield it, clever ways to expand it, to do the things he truly thinks will be Right and Good, or at least Expedient.  If you don't want a chimp with a hammer roaming the halls, they only way to prevent it is to keep hammers and chimps strictly separated, with a system of checks and balances to ensure they remain so, and we didn't.  Our Federal government didn't.  War Powers Act, Patriot Act -- remember them?  These are the kind of bricks that build a king.

The Aggressive Vine In Question

     I wasn't entirely accurate on the leaves, they're a little saw-toothy and tend to grow in pairs:

     The smaller ones are about 3/4 of an inch long, call it 18mm if you lean that way.  Any ideas?  The stem grows lots of fine, aggressive roots on a vertical surface, and it makes long horizontal runs just under or just above the soil.  The stem gets brittle as it grows larger.

Mass Shootage: I Don't Care What The Media Thinks, I Don't Care What The Perps Think

     I'm not even very interested in "how."  And I am certainly not interested in the various pundits emoting over how "guns kill more people than terrorism," which is patent nonsense; it's like saying "Cars kill more people than running:" one is a thing, the other an activity, and guess what?  $ACTIVITY often involves use of or interaction with $THING.  You cannot extract meaningful numbers from that.

     Nor do raw numbers tell the story.  We have a very large population as countries go, and if you use raw numbers to compare anything that is an activity done by people, you're going to find the United States, India and China near the top of the list. Per capita, the United States does not have the most mass shootings; this country is number six.  Still nothing to be proud of -- but we also have way more guns per person than Norway, Finland, Slovakia, Israel and Switzerland. (Perhaps we're better, saner people than they are?)

     And will someone please explain to me why it is a half-dozen people -- who just happen to have skin darker than a paper bag -- can be killed in Chicago (etc.) by person(s) who are also dark-skinned, and it's treated by the media as pretty much routine -- but when victims are pale and/or when killers are pale or cops, suddenly it's a much bigger deal and rates national attention?  (The murdered TV reporter and photographer in Virginia apparently count as a "mass shooting" now, but if it's four dead African-American punk kids on the South Side?  Nope.)

     In the present mess in California -- California, with the highest Brady antigun rating of any state! -- the ijit news media still wavers between "workplace violence," $GENERIC_MASS_SHOOTING and -- flinchingly -- Not-So-Sudden Jihadi Syndrome.  Gosh, remind me, would you, just what organization it was that promised large-scale violence here in the U.S. in the wake of the attacks in Paris?  ...Not Black Lives Matter protesters, not the NRA, no, it was...  C'mon, one of you has the answer, NBC?  CBS?  CNN?  New York Times? Do any of you know who....?  --Thought not.

     Nope, it's All Gun Control, All The Time in the national news media.  President Obama promised to do all he could to push for more gun control and look, what a co-incidence, he's got himself mass shooting after mass shooting (no matter how much each one must be tortured to fit the mold) and he wants Strict New Laws to restrict the law-abiding.   'Cos you know, fiftyish midwestern spinsters who own guns are exactly the problem, and must be stopped.  Or, realistically, more likely to comply.

     Yeah, that?  Don't count on it.

"Nothing Good Happens Away From Home After 9:00 p.m."

     ...Or so the old saw has it.  Criminals often prefer the cover of darkness, so why oblige them?

     On the other hand, there's plenty to do hereabouts after dark, 99.9999% of it well within the law.  It's that 0.0001% that's the problem.  Last night at 11:00 p.m., three fine upstanding young choirboys in hoodies and bandannas* held up Binkley's, a nice little restaurant/bar on College Avenue, a reasonable bike ride away from Roseholme Cottage.  It's not the first hold-up in Broad Ripple and odds are it won't be the last -- any time you have a nightclubby district, you get predators -- but it was one of the boldest, right out of Pulp Fiction: they walked in, ordered everyone on the floor, and cleared out wallets, purses and the cash register, then exited.

     Nobody hurt, no shots fired by the robbers -- or, alas, at them.
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* "Hoodie and bandanna," the 21st-Century version of the striped sweater and goofy domino mask worn by robbers of yore.  Great.

Dead Leader Films: Then vs. Now, Us vs. Them

     2004: Team America: World Police is released.  North Korea's high and mighty whatever for life Kim Jong-Il never commented publicly, though his government did ask the Czech Republic to  ban it.  They refused, somewhat dismissively.

     2006: some Brits produce Death Of A President, a mockumentary about the assassination of George W. Bush.  It wins the Prize of the International Critics at the Toronto Film Festival. Senator Hilary Clinton, no fan of the then-serving President tells the press, "I think it's despicable. I think it's absolutely outrageous. That anyone would even attempt to profit on such a horrible scenario makes me sick."
     The U. S. Federal government does....nothing.  There is no computer hacking of the studio that made it, no drone strike on writer, producer or director, and Senator Clinton's comments are typical of the most violent reaction out of Washington.

     2010: the Red Dawn remake, with Red China cast as the aggressor, is about to be released.  Leaked copies of the script find their way to the People's Republic of China, which complains in state-rune newspapers.  MGM goes through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Studio suddenly decides the film would play a lot better in the PRC if they weren't the bad guys.  At least, that's what MGM says.  Lots of post-production later, the invader is now North Korea.  Released in 2012, film does not do well at the box office.

     2012: Innocence of Muslims, a 14-minute film clip, is released on YouTube and is blamed for widespread rioting in the Middle East by people already much inclined to anti-U.S. rioting.  Murder and misplaced apologizing ensue. 

     2014: Sony prepares to release The Interview, a film about the assassination of the North Korea's leader, gets hacked by claimed agents of same, backs down.  Some cinemas attempt to replace The Interview with Team America: World Police, a plan which is nixed by Paramount.

     ...Sudden Spinelessness Syndrome?  Norks tired of being the bad guys?  (Yeah, well -- shoe fits, donnit?)  Film studios continuing their spiral into nebbishy irrelevance?

     Whatever.  This doesn't look like where we came in but the picture is getting terribly dull.  Hey, didja hear the one about the auteur who turned a charming (and relatively short) fantasy novel for children into a film trilogy with huge, bloody battles between orcs, elves, humans, dwarves, hobbits, dragons, wizards and whatever else he could throw into it?  Or the SF film that tossed science out the window in favor of fancy images and the Transforming Power Of Love?

     I'll try to barf quietly.

Geez

     Tried to leave work on time and two pieces of software crashed.  One didn't matter, and we fobbed around and got the other "fixed," more by luck than skill.

     Great, all done, go home, sleep, finish split shift from 9 p.m. to midnight.  No?

     No.  Boss calls, wants logs from a different computer issue, proceeds to tell me stuff that doesn't jibe with what I understood the last time we grabbed the logs, and continues to do so after I have called up the actual memo and am reading it.

     Hey, boss?
     Don't overestimate how bad I need the money.  You've been losing people; you've even lost a couple who still collect a paycheck.  What's one more?  Nothing to you, as near as I can tell, so why should I care?
     Sincerely yours, another cheap piece of meat you won't bother to replace.

Giant Underground Sucking Sound

     The shade* of H. Ross Perot snickers as the struggling homegrown American meth industry withers under competition from cheaper Mexican-cooked meth.

     You could not make this stuff up and be believed, period.
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* (Yes, he is still alive.  That doesn't mean his shade can't snicker.  And a literary construct is way less likely to sue.)

And On And On And On

     Towards what or in service of what, I dunno; it just keeps rollin'.

     "Shots fired on the East Side" took on a slightly different meaning last night, after a rebuffed masher in a car struck and injured the young woman he was pestering when she ignored him: as the hit-and-run creep drove off, a bystander took a couple of shots at him.  While it's generally not legal to shoot at a malefactor who is leaving, police were remarkably silent on the topic, focusing instead on the lowlife scum who injured a young woman. There's a moral here about the wages of criminal creepitude, and I can't help but hope this serves as an instructive example to creeps everywhere.

The Government Wants To Help Veterans With PTSD -- By Putting Chips In Their Brains

     Massachussetts, still and always the cradle and grave of freedom!

     Who doesn't support stuffing circuitry inside people's skulls to ensure they only think Goodthink?  MIT's got a grant to dust off the 40-year-old research (PDF) and get it running.  From the horse's, er, whatever:

     Darin Dougherty, a psychiatrist who directs Mass General’s division of neurotherapeutics, says one aim could be to extinguish fear in veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. Fear is generated in the amygdala—a part of the brain involved in emotional memories. But it can be repressed by signals in another region, the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex. “The idea would be to decode a signal in the amygdala showing overactivity, then stimulate elsewhere to [suppress] that fear,” says Dougherty.

     Where's that line to sign up?

     Also, consider,  “The idea would be to decode a signal in the amygdala showing overactivity, then stimulate elsewhere to [suppress] that fear,” and ask yourself what other military applications there might be for fear-suppressing brain machinery.

     It's a helluva a world.  I may have another 30 or 40 years in it and I've stopped looking forward to them.  Fearless brain-wired solders are only one of the more obvious little clouds on the horizon.

You Know What Would Make Me Happy?

     I'll tell you what would make me happy: the entire United States Congress and all of their staffs, out of work and lined up at highway exits, panhandling -- and getting darned little except the occasional thrown nickel.

     Sure, it's cruel, arbitrary and unfair, but hey, "as ye sow, so shall ye reap."  'Scroom.  Down to the last and least of 'em.  Time for a new and less-entrenched band of crooks, nitwits and schemers.

No, No, No

     ...See, when something's askew, wrong, ill-fitting?  It does not jibe.  Now, if someone can't hack the patois, if they're not hip to the sprach, unable to doubletalk and befuddle The Man, then -- and only then, my brother, my cousin, my no-relative-of-mine, may you say that they do not -- cannot! -- jive.

     But I should'a knowed you'd hone right in on that, no doubt as a part of your constant homing of your linguistic skills.

     Pfui!  Next person pulls one of those, I'm gonna throw my Unabridged at him.  'Salright, I've got a spare -- 'cos "Two is one and one is none," and a goodly number of persons, many of them in possession of keyboards, appear to be well down in the negative numbers.

     Look, there are plenty of common spoken contractions and slang terms you may sensibly use in writing, especially informal writing, but there are other spoken usages that are just plain wrong.  The people who use 'em have never seen the correct versions and probably don't read much other than cereal boxes and the sports pages, lips moving as they do.  Don't let them haul you back down into the crab bucket.