(Illustration: ‘Lazy Sunday Afternoon‘ by funkymarmalade found here).

Late Sunday afternoon here on California’s northern coast — it’s well past dark-thirty on the eastern seaboard where a massive winter storm is grinding halt to normal life.
Here the weather’s crystal clear, a bit on the chilly side out in the breeze, but nice and warm if a body could find a wind-break, and it’s supposed to be that way until the end of next week.

Lately, been too frustrated to post much as the news is also like snow storm Nemo, cold and a shitload of the same.
And that storm is a hard-charging whopper: At its height, the storm heaped snow on Connecticut at a dizzying rate of 4 to 5 inches an hour.
Most likely, folks on the upper Atlantic coast understand the serious ugly of climate change — Hurricane Sandy just three months ago, and now Nemo on the same path with the same horrifying result, only with snow this time.

The same old story with me and Internet Explorer — I’m an adaptable person, though, and have figured out how to use this piece of shit as best as can be tolerated and handled, but the concept is all wrong for something as swift and ingenious as the Internet.
Much more clicking is required with all the boxes sprouting open at every turn and all the dead-end search results –just a pain in the creative ass.

The big news here in California is the Christopher Dorner case — the ex-LA cop who’s been the subject of a massive manhunt the last four days, and now there’s a $1 million reward for information leading to his arrest.
Cops down south are pretty jittery.
Dorner, however, appears to be a gun-control advocate. In his huge Facebook manifesto entitled, “Last Resort,” there’s some scribblings denouncing the ease in getting firearms in this country.
A highlight via HuffPost:

Why does any sportsman need a 30 round magazine for hunting?
Why does anyone need a suppressor?
Why does anyone need a AR15 rifle?
This is the same small arms weapons system utilized in eradicating Al Qaeda, Taliban, and every enemy combatant since the Vietnam war.
These do not need to be purchased as easily as walking to your local Walmart or striking the enter key on your keyboard to “add to cart.”

One has to say ‘yeah,’ to that, but coming from that particular horse’s mouth?

Meanwhile, total not-cool-nerd Lindsey Graham kept up the Libya facade rant this morning on CBS’ ‘Face the Nation,’ vowing to block all of President Obama’s picks to head the DOD and CIA — Graham’s just being a bitch about it:

“We know nothing about what the president did on the night of September 11th during a time of national crisis, and the American people need to know what their commander in chief did, if anything, during this eight-hour attack,” Graham said on CBS.
…
“I don’t think we should allow Brennan to go forward for the CIA directorship, Hagel to be confirmed to secretary of defense until the White House gives us an accounting,” Graham said, adding, “What did he do that night?
That’s not unfair.
The families need to know, the American people need to know.”

No one gives a shit — expect maybe Graham and John McCain, who himself was on Fox this morning, probably his 12 trillionth straight Sunday-morning talk show appearance. Why, oh why, do they keep having these assholes on every freakin’ Sunday — the same old, old-assholes?

And without many people paying much attention, a new head honcho of the Allied war in Afghanistan took over this weekend, and without much fanfare, even from the Afghans.
Via Reuters:

General Joseph Dunford took charge of the International Security Assistance Force from Marine Corps General John Allen, who ended a 19-month tour that was arguably one of the most difficult periods in the war, now in its 11th year.
“Today is not about change, it’s about continuity. What has not changed is the will of this coalition … What has not changed is the inevitability of our success,” Dunford told a crowd of foreign and Afghan officials in an aging gymnasium at the barricaded ISAF headquarters.
Senior military officials, including Dunford and Allen, sat on a dais covered with an Afghan rug as a band played the U.S. and Afghan national anthems and a color guard presented the flags.
Several hundred guests were seated in chairs on the floor of the old basketball court.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai was absent from the ceremony despite receiving an invitation from ISAF.
A spokesman for Karzai declined to comment.
General Martin Dempsey, the highest-ranking U.S. military officer, said later he thought the level of Afghan representation at the ceremony was appropriate.

Nonsense with the “…inevitability of our success,” in this horrible, misguided and over-worked war.

And, of course, somebody hacked George Jr.’s e-mail thingy and spread open some of the way-former president’s latest gig — simple artist. The Smoking Gun has the pix, and the whole tripe just scares people, or something.
The UK’s Guardian has this:

There’s always something disorienting about those moments when you’re suddenly reminded that presidents, ex-presidents, prime ministers and others are people, with inner lives and vantage points, who take showers and stare at their feet in the bath.
This jolting realisation is all the greater when the leader in question is Bush.
We spent years, after all, trying to fathom what was going on in there: nothing much at all?
Terrifying messianism?
Criminal incuriosity?
All manner of Oedipal hang-ups?
Pictures of Bush in the bathroom don’t answer that, of course.
But like any self-portrait, they inch us towards empathy.
They invite us to imagine that being inside Bush’s head is something it’s possible to imagine.

Just imagine that as scary — and a way-micro inch toward any form of empathy at absolute all.

And that’s just a splash for a Sunday aternoon — it’s hard and frustrating to work up a post nowadays.
But I do love it, despite the oft-pops starting with the letter, “F.”