Lost in the Bozone

The Three Sided Brain

2012-01-27T07:42:00.001-05:00

The get er done, nose to the grind stone Left Side Brain Guy inside who is large and in charge at the bike shop does not network well the other guys who hang out riding the pine and waiting their turn.

There's creative, random loose dog Right Side Brain Guy wanting to fly fancy free. He's in charge of setting our mind free, unhooking the leash, and giving our creativity a good goose. When he's out and about, where we end up is always in doubt.

And thankfully, or maybe just by default, in charge of locating some balance, of course Fence Sittin Brain Guy hovers in the middle, his grip tenuously holding on right and left. A path of least resistance kinda guy, he'd rather be stretched out on hammock or couch ideally with a remote and beer close at hand.

The three of them are more often than not at odds and not in sync. For any of them to make an impact, it takes at least a team of two, sometimes all three.

When all three want front row and center and none of them will back down, it's a three for all, every man for himself. Those moments can become quite frantic, mildly manic, everybody speaking at once and together, till they top out near the din of a small stadium. It can get down right ugly in there. "Quiet down guys. One at a time ferchrisakes!"

Yeah, as soon as I begin thinking numbers, dollars, and calendars, Creative brain Guy begins to sulk and mope in the corner. Shuts right down. Or tries to anyway. Some days I can kick him in the butt enough to help get creative with dollars, numbers, and calendars. But I would say Creative guy doesn't think much of Get er done guy's anal retentive ways. And always having their back, Mr Natural in the middle's insisting it don't matter, get it done, don't get it done, bottom line is tomorrow waking up again.

Keep it 'tween the ditches...........................

Greed

2012-01-25T13:07:00.002-05:00

A post on Major Conflict got me fired up. Rather it was a comment on the post that did -

"What's wrong with being greedy?"

The comment needs no context to tie it into the post. It is a stand alone question from a commenter I would expect no less from. We have traded comments more than a few times on Major Conflict .

Immediately I ripped off a 500 word reply blasting greed and the nasty side effects that usually accompany it. Feeling better, I sat back and re-read what I had written. I immediately deleted it. So I responded instead -

"Before I can answer that I need to know what is right about being greedy."

I generally hate answering a question with another question, but I felt that in order to point out what was wrong with Greed, I needed to know what was considered right with Greed. I was raised to believe greed was not a favorable trait in a human being. I was raised to believe that it is one of our traits we should attempt to keep at bay. I took it for granted that when I caught myself being greedy an appropriate amount of guilt should be self inflicted also.

I really did try to think of something positive to say about greed. Anything I came up with always fell short in that successful greed always seems to end up with winners and losers. And that is fine if we are talking sports, card games, or horseshoes. But when it is greed out in the real world that affects real people in tangible ways, greed tends to have a detrimental effect on some to the benefit of others. In a social order structure application, I saw no long lasting benefit to greed.

I could almost agree that when applied to a Life or Death situation, survival type scenario, greed could be understood as a needed tool. But that in no way makes it good. It makes it necessary. The greed we normally associate the word with is wanting more than one needs. Pulling out Websters right now, I will look it up. Sometimes the ritual of opening a book can bring some clarity.

"Greed - excessive desire for getting or having wealth; desire for more than one needs or deserves; avarice;cupidity"

No clarity, no positive support for the notion of Greed by our man Webster. Hmm.

So rather than continue to beat my dense noggin against this quandary of mine, I would ask anyone out there who is most likely much smarter than I am, what, if anything is good about Greed.?

Seriously. I really cannot think of a thing.

And if there is nothing good about Greed, then all I can come up with is everything is wrong with Greed. Unless of course over the top self interest can be considered good.

Later...........................................................

Ending Up With What We Deserve

2012-01-24T15:57:00.002-05:00

Watching this year's Republican circus of clowns fight tooth and nail with each other over the right to take on Obama Man in November has been both entertaining and enlightening. Entertaining because this particular cast is anything but the normal boring button down wing tipped crew the Right usually fields. Oh we have our token Brooks Brother rep as played by Mitt. Classic handsome banker type who has nice teeth and an almost squeaky clean bio.

Any other year in the past, he would be a lock by now. But the Right has become dissatisfied with playing the game it has always played. It would seem they are intent on pushing the fringe policies of their side to the front to draw a line in the sand. And it it is a hard line in the sand. A wishy washy candidate is not what they want. At least that is my perception at this point.

My enlightenment is not over something that has just happened, but what seems to happen every election. People end up electing people not based on their stands, but on their electability. The sheep follow the momentum from one contest to the next. The closer to the end of a particular campaign, the less the core values of the specific candidate matter. Can he/she win?

No wonder our political process is so screwed up. As individuals we espouse certain views and initially look to candidates who embrace similar takes. But as a campaign winds up and then down, we shed our hardline attitudes and look to the candidate who we think has a fighting chance to beat the evil candidate from the other side. In the meantime, our moral and ethical base is shoved into the shadows as we get caught up in the frenzy to win at any cost.

Is it any wonder we are lead by a group of flip flopping liars?

And even with this, call it a re-enlightenment and re-confrimation of what I have always felt, I come back to the one kernel of truth I embraced over 40 years ago - We end up with the government we deserve every time. So don't blame Obama. Don't blame Bush. Blame yourself for wanting to win at any cost.

And just to make it clear, I blame myself more than anyone else. My recent decision (the last two election cycles) to vote for anyone other than a Republican is a perfect example. I know I am compromising my own personal set of morals, but I just cannot help it. My opinion that the Right in recent years has almost always led us wrong has become ingrained.

This by no means is an indication that I think very highly of the Democratic leadership. It is more that I think they are the lesser of the two evils.

Later....................................................

A Tale of Two Bitter Colts Fans

2012-01-23T13:08:00.001-05:00

"Have we not suffered enough?! What have we done to anger the football gods in such a way that they send the (expletive) Patriots to us for Super Bowl XLVI?!"

That quote is from an Yahoo Sports online article written by Eric R Me, an obviously sore loser Colts fan. Suddenly my intense almost and maybe even fanatical adoration for the expletive Patriots comes into focus.

I used to be a Colts fan. Back when they were the real Colts and not the pretend Colts they became when Irsay packed up the team and slithered out of B-more in the middle of the night. I knew I would never again root for any team using the label "Colts". Not even my old little league team in Florida if they happen to be still there as the "Alert Heat and Cooling" Colts. The name is dead to me. You can thank Mr Irsay for ruining what could have been a life long relationship. I even once defended the Colts in a parking lot drunken brawl with some Miami fans outside Memorial Stadium in 1973. And so what if I had my ass handed to me that night. I stood up for my Colts.

Even when I finally settled down with family, house and debt up the wazoo here in Maine, I remained true to my Colts. I was forced into rooting for the Pats that fateful night in March, 1984 when more than a few moving trucks hit I-70 West. It was not just being a jilted fan, but part of my livelihood had once been derived from the Colts. The moving company I worked for when I lived in B-more used to handle all their moving needs. I can remember more than a few moves from Summer training camp in Westminister, MD to Memorial Stadium. I am sure Don Conklin of Advance Moving and Storage would have refused the job, or his crews would have. So Irsay called in some out of town outfit to do the dirty deed in secret.

What fries my ass is somehow Indianapolis now gets to claim all the classic games played by the Colts when they were truly great under Johnny U. The name should have stayed in Baltimore. At least when Cleveland moved to Baltimore, Modell was forced to leave the Browns name and legacy behind. So nyah nyah Mr. Eric R. Me. Sit there pissy in front of the tube on Feb 5th and watch my Pats sully your field, your locker rooms, your town. And even if my (expletive)Pats lose, I will still have my victory knowing they went to the big show and your team didn't.

Which brings me to yesterday's gladiators and how both games were contests of wills and luck. Probably the best pair of championship games I have ever seen. The Pats manned up and played the game the Ravens brought with them. So what if it came down to a missed field goal. Both teams played ugly old school football. And it ended as many from back in the day did - the last mistake. The following game between the Giants and the 49ers was almost exactly the same. Smash mouth pummel them hard and see who is still standing. And finally it too boiled down to - the last mistake. That's the kind of football I was raised on.

It should be a Helluva Super Bowl this year, no matter who wins.

I promise I will come back to earth after February 5th. But be forewarned, I feel more football posts sneaking up on me.

Later...........................................

A Newt Education

2012-01-22T14:32:00.012-05:00

With the Blogosphere lighting up all over with posts about Gingrich's recent victory in South Carolina's Republican Primary, I thought I would join the fray and add my two cents worth.

But then I thought I wouldn't. He won. Who cares? Let's move on.

Instead, I decided to attempt to distance one of my favorite critters from the bad influence of a poor excuse of a Presidential candidate. But first I needed to educate myself on Gringrich's namesake to make sure one was of a higher moral fiber than the other. I had no need to educate myself on Newt, the politician. His mug and comedic behavior has been around for years. But the real Newt, well, I learned there was more to know than a quick run through at Wikipedia.

First of all, I always thought Newts and Salamanders were the same thing. Apparently they are and they aren't. Depends on who you listen to or what you read. But after exhaustive searching that must have eaten up at least 30 minutes, the consensus of opinion is that Newts are a type of Salamander, or more correctly put, like I was some kind of science guy, newts are part of the:

Kingdom - Animalia
Phylum - Chordata
Class - Amphibia
Order - Caudata
Suborder - Salamandriodea
Family - Salamandridae

What this tells me is Newts are kissing cousins of Salamanders who generally hang out in different neighborhoods than their more wider spread relatives. But you would not be wrong if you mistakenly called one the other or vice versa. They realize they all look alike to white folk. They don't foster any hard feelings though. They know we humans are about as numb as they come when it comes to Salamanders and their day to day existence.

First of all I have to say it was quite a relief to know that I had correctly identified Sammy (pictured above) as not a Newt, but as a Salamander. To be exact, Sammy is a Mole Salamander, and even more specific, he is a Spotted Salamander. His kind live in the moist underbelly of Nature. Sammy lived under the stone porch in front of the house. It is possible he is still alive, but with Garter snakes being one of the few critters who see him as food, I don't hold out much hope. I took this picture 2 years ago coming up in April. He made no appearances this last year, so I guess he is now just more fertilizer somewhere in the yard.

I had hoped to draw some real life comparisons between Newt the Pol and Newt the amphibian. Unfortunately all I could come up with is they are both from the same Kingdom and both it would seem are slimy to the touch. I know the slim on many Salamanders is toxic, and I am guessing the same goes for Newt, the pol. However, this is where the two part ways.

The Newt of the amphibious kind lives it life straight forward and free from duplicity and sleazy dealings with the critters in its neck of the woods. It hunts, eats, fornicates as only amphibians can, and does its best to propagate the species.

Newt the Pol unfortunately is not an amphibian, but a lesser animal known as Homo Sapien-bloviatus-ahmda-coolest with the biggest erectus. The bloviates of the Human species are found wherever man has planted roots and crapped in the woods. They make sure their presence is known by trying to prove they are the smartest men in the room. Although the bloviates can be female, most it would seem are male. I understand it has something to do with a compensation issue based on the size of their reproductive glands.

Newt, the salamander carries no such baggage. They know they are what they are and use what they were born with and are satisfied.

Being a Bloviate, Newt, the Pol has over the years managed to push hypocrisy from the cellar of human ethics and turn it into an art form. He professes to have his regional populations interests at heart, yet time and time again, it is proven, Newt is only interested in Newt, and we should be too. Why? Well of course - he is the smartest man in the room.

Later Gator, I have a football game to watch....................................

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TV Ears Saved My Marriage

2012-01-21T16:02:00.000-05:00

The ad assured me that at least for one happy customer their marriage was now back on track to be the domestic bliss envisioned that fateful day however many years ago this aging wife stood wearing white, looking up at her Prince Charming while one of God's conduits blessed their union.

Just what were these magical TV Ears that had that kind of power to keep the bliss in domestic cohabitation? I read further than the gotcha headline and learned that Dad had a hearing loss. So he would turn up the volume on the TV so he could hear. Meanwhile his family suffered because they were still blessed with perfect hearing. It was destroying the family not being able to happily enjoy TV together.

I read on. Over one million satisfied customers. Better Business ranking of A+. And to really set the hook - Proudly made in the US of A.

Awesome.

Of course, the new and improved models are a bit smaller now, looking like those hokey ear pieces handed out on airplanes years ago. I should probably anty up and get a set put in the mail for me. I, or rather my lovely wife and daughter have told me I am going deaf. I think it is more they are just becoming overly sensitive to sound. I hear fine. Turn it up to wow I say. I will say though, if I did buy a set, it would in no way save my marriage. That ship is on its own, sink or swim, through thick and thin, for twenty years it has teetered on the rim. Personally I like living on the edge even though one day my long suffering wife will probably push me off. TV Ears will not save me.

Later....................................

It's About Respect

2012-01-20T14:38:00.003-05:00

YELLOWDOG GRANNY (YDG) commented on my post about forgiveness - "judas fucking priest..save me from Christians". I often do not understand why some comments stick with me past the initial enjoyment of the first read through. But some do. Her's definitely did.

Then a day or so ago, I mentioned this hanging comment to a fellow I know is a serious church going man. His, "he was positive he was on target", knee jerk response - "It means you are seeking God's guidance but do not know it yet." Everything in Life has religious significance to this guy. He is the poster child Christian YDG wants someone to save her from. Me too for that matter.

This morning I followed a series of news links and ended up watching this excellent video called "Why I hate Religion, but Love Jesus".

This young man nailed my feelings about organized religion with his spoken word piece.

His line " Religion is like perfume on a casket" really caught my attention. The guy takes the practice of religion to task while letting the viewer know in no uncertain terms that his faith in God is unshakable.

This guy and my local religious bud have quite a bit in common. They are devout in their faith and not afraid to wear that faith on their sleeves. I have to respect that. Where they differ however marks the point where Christianity and I part ways. My friend insists that organized prayer and group faith is the way to go. In the video, the young man points out so well why organized religions have created more problems than good Christians are willing to admit.

It's the group grope thing that bunches my panties. The well meaning words the group profess to follow, but fail to live up to. Immediately when I bring this up, I can hear the whining about how I am picking the few bad apples to illustrate my point. Most of the Christian world is inclusive, tolerant, and kind. That I am a person who considers most people good until proven otherwise tells me this is so. The majority of Christians and their various congregations are probably inclusive, tolerant, and kind. Just as are the majority of the Muslim faith. What I have a problem with is the fact that they have allowed their "bad apples" to run free and present the worst image possible of their particular slant on God.

A quote by Edmund Burke comes to mind:

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing",

And another glitch in the organized belief that religion is somehow evil free pops up. None of the leaders will admit their particular religion has the capability to harbor Evil within its ranks. They turn a blind eye to the Evil foisted on the World from their side while pointing fingers at the Evil on the other side. And both point fingers at the side that has no belief.

Sitting in a pew on Sundays does not a good man make. Nor does kneeling daily in the direction of Mecca create goodness in a man or woman. What makes people good or evil comes from inside of each one of us. All our faith can do is offer guidance. It is up to us to pick our individual paths. So kneel with the gang. Pray for forgiveness. But please while you are feeling righteous, please remember what goes around comes around. How you treat and even view others will more often than not be rewarded in kind. It's about respect. Not getting it, but giving it.

Keep it 'tween the ditches..........................................

Crowd Control in a Small Maine Town

2012-01-19T10:46:00.002-05:00

First I guess I need to toss in some personal perspective gained through personal experience. I related this tale before, so for those of you who have suffered through it before, I will try to be brief, but will probably fail.

The year - Spring, 1969. The setting - Library of Congress. Actually it was what happened after the Library of Congress that this pertains to. A group of students from my military school were visiting the Library in DC. We were all done up in our military best as we had to present a positive image of the school. So we go through the tour, some of us interested some of us not. But everyone was interested in the 3 hours of free time we were to be given once we finished our obligation of being dutiful and studious students.

So we are let loose for some free range time in the federal triangle. Some of us followed the ~~suggestions~~ orders to use our time wisely by visiting the cultural riches of the Smithsonian. Some of us did not. Some of us wanted to find trouble. Some of us did.

It so happened that on this particular day one of the many Anti-war demonstrations was in full bloom on the steps of Congress. Not a huge demonstration, maybe 10,000 people or so. It appeared there were also several thousand police kickin around to keep a lid on things.

Curious, the crew of K-dets I was with decided to check out the demonstration. We walked up to it from the south side near the lower steps. We could hear the speechifying, the hollerin, and hootin, but some tree cover blocked our view of the podium set up on the steps. We did not know it, but we had entered the Gay section of the demonstrating crowd. All around us were guys carrying signs and holding hands. Signs that read "Gay Pride" or "Gays Against the War". I saw for the first time in my life a man kiss another man. Awesome stuff I tell ya.

While we were rubbernecking and making quiet teenaged remarks about the Gays, the police apparently had decided that the demonstration had gone on long enough and right then was the time to break it up. I turned around and saw a line of police in riot gear elbow to elbow walking steadily towards us pushing everyone in their way towards the Capitol. When they were about 100 feet away, their ranks broke as they formed smaller groups of three or four officers. They then began to single out arbitrary people and pummeled them with their riot sticks. They used words like "Faggot", "Homos", you know the drill.

This should have been our clue to leave. For everyone but me it was. The two fellows I was with beat feet. Being brain dead and quick to anger, I headed towards the cops shouting at them to stop beating these defenseless people. Big mistake.

One cop looked over at me and headed immediately in my direction. We exchanged words. Harsh words. All I remember just before he began wailing on me with his stick, was him saying something like, "You should be ashamed of yourself. You are a disgrace to the uniform." The light went on and I understood. The cop had mistaken me for a real soldier, not the pretend one I really was. It took another cop to stop the beating.

We worked out a deal, or rather they told me they would not arrest me if I left the area immediately and they better not hear anything about what happened. Having some sense finally pounded into me, I agreed and gimped back to the bus and hunkered down until everyone was back and we were on our way back to school. Riot sticks create some really cool bruises.

So we finally get to my point.

It appears that the paranoia police have over handling large crowds has seeped into the mindset of the local police in Sanford, Maine - the town I have my bike shop in. I am not sure why they feel the need to acquire weapons that are used to control crowds, but they obviously feel that crowd control is a weak link in their quiver of tools to keep the peace. Either that or their performance on the gun range is so poor, they need non lethal weapons that they can use to hit the side of a barn without worrying too much about accuracy.

The Sanford PD is being trained in the use of the Taser Shotgun. Its range of 100 feet ensures the officers do not have to be up close and personal when quelling the huge crowds of one or two irate spouses they run into on a bi-weekly basis. And with it's multiple charge hit, anyone close is sure to go into convulsions as the 500volts surge through their body for 20 seconds. Plenty of time to sneak up on them with the cuffs.

I'll admit it has to be a scary thing facing down an ugly crowd. But if I was a Sanford resident, I might be asking them why my tax money was being spent to buy rounds of ammo that cost $99 each. Hell, it would be a whole lot cheaper just to use some buck shot and take them out at the knees. But then the question is, when was the last time a crowd larger than four or five people even formed in Sanford? I'd say this was a solution looking for a problem. And Sanford to my knowledge has not found this one yet. But apparently they are looking forward to it.

Later ..............................................

The NFL, Hookers, and Serial Killers

2012-01-15T15:31:00.001-05:00

FOOTBALL WARNING - If you don't want to suffer my crazed football fan remarks, observations, and opinion on the current NFL playoffs, then skip this first part.

Last night I got home from the bike shop tuckered, beat, just plain tired and worn out. The first divisional game of the day between the 49ers and the Saints was well into the 2nd quarter. I sat down on the couch and immediately knew I was in trouble. Uh oh. Better pull out the Rally Rocker or I'll pass out and miss the night game later I really wanted, no needed to watch. Without me in focused attention, my Pats would somehow find a way to lose in the post season for the fourth time in a row. It was absolutely imperiative I be awake so my positive vibes could travel from me through the dimension such waves travel and settle into the collective Karma of the New England Patriots.

So I sat up, got up and went to the fridge. Gearing up and reving up for such an important human event, I needed sustenance...........Ah Good - three 12 oz Papsts and one Shipyard. I cracked a Papst and headed back into the living room. Found my Rally Rocker and moved it front stage and center. Sat down and watched one of the best five minutes of football I have seen in quite awhile.

Though the Saints never panicked eventualy catching up and then for a moment or two surged ahead, San Francisco was not going to be denied. The Saints were out. Shit. I was sure the Saints were headed to the Super Bowl. Oh well, guess it is a good thing I am not an oddsmaker.

Ate some supper. My wife's fish dish as we call it is one of my favorites. The evening is moving along just swell. Full but not uncomfortable, I move back into the living room with a fresh beer just in time for kick off down at Gilette Stadium. The Pats received. This made me nervous. All year they had been kicking off first. I need not have worried. 3 minutes later they scored the first of the six touchdowns they would notch on their belts this night. They put their foot on the throat of Denver early and never took it off. Tebow found no help from above. The Patriots Defense shut him down hard. The boys with the big pants finally came to play a complete game. Hope they keep it up.

2nd Part

Seems the Republican docu-comedy thinly veiled as real life serious business has just had more comedy added to make sure the laughs don't stop any time soon.

Apparently the employees of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch , Bar and Brothel near Carson City, Nevada have decided to throw their Double D support behind Ron Paul. I always wondered what hookers did when not on the c.........uh job. It only makes sense when you think about it. As libertarian a candidate who has ever come down America's pike, Rob Paul would be a natural draw for the folks who derive their livelihood pushing sin and damnation. Evil loves no rules. ...........Hmm........... Now that I think of it, Evil seems to love rules too, what with it hiding so well under the label Good. And now that I really think about the notion of Good and Evil, well, hookers don't even enter my equation even though they must certainly rub the righteous the wrong way. And we all know it is Evil to rub the righteous the wrong way.

And then on the other side of this great land with it's waves of grain and apple pies cooling in kitchen windows from Omaha to Wichita, it appears the Right's favorite whipping boy, good ole Mitt, is now being attacked as a serial killer. Stephen Colbert, the dark dark horse Republican candidate for President has launched an attack ad aimed at Mitt and his tenure as head dude at Bain. I am not sure I followed Colbert's logic very well, but then I don't follow the Right's logic that well these past few decades..

Which brings me full circle back to where I began...................Football. Something tangible with rules everyone follows. There is a beginning, an end and sometimes great drama in between. Politics never ends because it never began. It was always here and fuckin with my mind. No matter what good sense dictates, the pols, they love to embrace that which makes no fuckin sense. Maybe if the NFL made the rules, we could all have a beer sit down and root for one team instead of booing them all.

Anyway, that's the way it is today..........I gotta go....more football to watch.

Dropping Trou and Forgiveness

2012-01-14T08:46:00.001-05:00

Micah 7:18-19
Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.

I guess outgoing Gov. Barbour of Mississippi has been reading from the wrong sections of the Bible lately. He recently created a shit storm in his state by falling prey to that outdated Christian weakness so many of his kind now successfully resist. Like homosexuality, forgiveness is one of the many weaknesses many good Christians will do their best to distance themselves from because through the magic of modern day Christo-technology, they know that forgiving is a weakness and gays are made not born. And gasp and oh my, here is one of their salt of the earth brethren caving to his weakness and issuing pardons to convicted sinners throughout his state. The World has officially come to an end in Mississippi.

It matters not that of the roughly 200 people he pardoned, 180 were already out of jail and had been for some time. What do the fine citizens of Mississippi think is going to happen? That all of sudden now that these previous felons have clean records, they will immediately become criminals again, run amok robbing, killing and raping? Get a grip Mississippi. It's not that big a deal. And good on you Governor.

And in the meantime 10,000 miles away, Marines show their disrespect for their dead enemies by urinating on their corpses. War is ugly and this is just another facet of its ugliness. But Dana Loesch, a rising blob of stupidity on the Right comments that she not only condones their behavior, but would "drop trou and do it too" if she could. And again another brain dead cheerleader sitting safe and sound in her comfortable digs back home supports bad behavior by representatives of the US.

Dana Loesch. How is it I have missed her all these years. She personifies the twisted logic that has the Right by the short hairs. She ardently believes the founders all considered Democracy a gift from God and that we were meant to be a nation of Christians. Either she conveniently forgets or never even bothered to find out that many of the founding fathers were Deists. Their belief in God went only so far as "he got this thing going, it is up to us how we run it."

Of course the notion of Deism is out of favor now.. You are either a god fearing freedom loving Christian, a freedom hating Atheist, or even worse a Muslim. Pray our way and be free. Pray your way and we will put our boot on your neck. It boggles my mind that we even would think A god who was capable of creating what we have would even be slightly concerned over the petty bullshit we do in his name. The dude's got a Universe to expand. We are just not that important.

Just some randomness on Saturday morning before I hit the bike shop for another day of retail and repair.

Later.................................................

Screwin the Pooch

2012-01-12T19:52:00.002-05:00

Well it is snowing now. Must be 7 inches of the stuff out there. I just finished blowing it off the drive. Sure hope it turns to rain like they promised before too much more snow begins to fil in where I have dug out. Rain on top of even a small amount of snow leaves things very untidy once a daylight thaw commences. Then it re-freezes and before you know it, the drive, the walk, all become rock hard irregular avenues that can be hazardous to the infirm or inattentive. I am not infirm yet, but the inattentive problem has plagued me my whole life.

I really was going to go to the bike shop today. I have been very dedicated this year so far. But well, I decided to wait on the snow so I could blow the drive once and be done with it. It did not let up until 2:00 PM. By the time I had cleared the snow, it was 3:00 PM. If I hustled, I could be at the shop by 4:00 PM. Firing up the pick up and driving with other lunatics on nasty roads for two hours of retail time just did not seem worth it. SO I have rationalized and decided that screwin the pooch those two hours will have more payback than fielding calls that start with, "Oh, are you open?"

And what better way to screw a pooch good and proper than to screw it out here in the internets for everyone to see? The only better place is Congress and well, I am just not in their league. Or maybe it is that they are not in mine.

I have perused the National and World news swirling and twirling around me today. I decided it was just another installment of the same old same old. So I looked locally. All I could find today was some clown being arrested for beating up on three teenagers with the butt of a pellet gun on one of the trails we use to recreate on. One of the teens ended up in the hospital. His buddies I imagine had to check their shorts. And since the Einstein who whipped up on them was caught sitting in his car at the end of the trail, any future titillation is not happening.

The big news remains this piss poor excuse of a snow storm. I can almost hear a statewide sigh of relief. We expect the ground to be snow covered and now that it is again, we feel like Life is back on a normal track. Now bitchin about the weather will have a point.

Later..................................................................
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New fiction up at BoZone Too - "Broken Man"

BA Flys Home From Texas

2012-01-10T10:39:00.003-05:00

Yesterday had one focal point for me. To pick up my wife at the airport in Manchester, NH cleanly and on time. She was returning home from a reunion weekend with one of her high school buds who lived in Del Rio, Texas. BA ( I call my wife BA because well she is a BA when she gets her back up) - Anyway BA left Del Rio at 6 something AM central time. She landed in Houston, collected herself and took a train to another terminal to catch a flight to Newark, NJ to connect with a flight, that if everything fell into place, would end with wheels down in Manchester, NH at or in vicinity of 3:45 PM, Eastern Standard Time.

Long day of travel for my wife and a long time for me to stay focused in order to successfully pull off a wife pick up at the airport. Both of us were under pressure. I certainly was as I have been known to be as many as 5 minutes late picking her up in the past. You want to see BA put her BA suit on, be late. SO when she told me to keep my cell phone close and goddammit, turn it on this time. I slept with the damn thing shoved in my jockey shorts set on vibrate,,,,,,uh nevermind .... you get the picture.

BA is a very organized woman. I am a very disorganized man. That we have somehow managed to survive in the same house for over 30 years now, well, I am still trying to figure that one out. BA does not suffer fools well. But for some reason in my case, she issued me a free pass. Although she sometimes forgets and I end up wounded and beat up after walking into her field of vision. But I'm used to it. I just pick up my battered ego and put it back on.

Okay so the stage is set. All the players are in place. The wife with the hair trigger attitude. The clueless, yet lovable husband, and a supporting cast made up of indifferent and oftentimes malevolent airline industry people. Of course anything that could go wrong ..........did.

At just shy of 10:00 AM I get a phone call. She has not even boarded the plane in Houston yet that was supposed to have already left. Apparently bad weather in Dallas kept the crew there and it would be twenty minutes before they were in the cockpit of the plane BA was to take to Newark. BA finally gets on the plane and wouldn't you know it, the crew brought that bad weather from Dallas with them and the plane sat on the tarmac for 2 1/2 hours waiting for the thunder, lightening, and rain to move along little doggie.

BA calls me from the airplane and lets me know she will be missing her connecting flight in Newark. She has no clue when she will be in Manchester now, but she knows it won't be by 3:45 PM. So relax Mike, she'll call when she gets to Newark.

Relax? Riiight. I start sweating bullets as I consider what kind of wife I will eventually pick up. The loaded for bear wife who will lash out and make the drive home a true misery? Or will miracles happen and somehow she will have gone through some kind of bliss as she crossed one time zone into another. Or maybe she will find a way to get drunk and all I'll have to do is pour her into the pick up.......Nah - it's going to be misery.

Around 3:00 PM the phone vibrates and I pull it out of my jockey shorts. She has landed in Newark after being seated on a plane for 6 1/2 hours for flight that should have taken 3. She is eerily calm on the phone. She says matter-of-factly, " The next flight to Manchester is 9:45 PM and I won't be there until 11:00 PM."

Stunned at her calm demeanor, I have nothing smartass to say and say okay keep me posted. 20 minutes later she calls back. The flight is now leaving Newark at 11:15 PM and she won't be in Manchester until 1:00 AM. Again the voice talking to me that is stuck and will be stuck for 7 more hours in Newark, NJ is calm. She tells me to get some sleep, I'll need it. She then cuts me some slack and says she will call as she is getting on the plane. I can leave then. Her 1 1/4 hour flight and my 1 1/2 hour drive will almost be good timing.

Get some sleep? Sure thing. I've been here before when her trip had gone off without a hitch and well, I think I still have some scars. I lay down and try to sleep and all I see is my wife's angry face and it's looking at me. I considered loading a few belongings up in the pick up and driving south to the Smoky Mountains and becoming an eccentric hermit living in the burned out trunk of a storm downed tree.

She calls around 11:45 PM. I hit the road by 11:54 PM. Conditions are clear and the roads are empty. I land at Manchester at 1:15 AM. My wife has been there for 25 minutes.. Uh Oh....................

But oddly her 22 hour bad day thumped all the anger right out of her. All she wanted was a bed to stretch out in and please drive sanely.

Yes Dear............................................................

Eight on the Eighth

2012-01-08T14:55:00.004-05:00

It is January 8, 2012. My small part of the world has been turned on its ear. We should be up to our keisters in snow and the trails in the woods should be too nasty soft to ride bikes. Yet today eight of us went out and busted off some solid trail miles like it was late Fall before the first snow of winter. I have only had to pull on the cold, cold weather gloves once this year.

By this time in January I am lucky if I have ridden once - usually a token ride on New Years Day. As of today, 1/8/12, I have 5 rides under my belt. Not token rides, but good efforts on real dirt............ There just is absolutely no snow out there. Oh, some white shit is still tucked away under trees and in the deep shade, but my trails are clean and damn fast because they are frozen.

Strangest winter I have ever experienced in Maine, and I have more than a few behind me now. I understand the mild conditions in the US can be found everywhere this year. I saw videos of kids kickin back on swings in Chicago and at least one was barefoot. Strange shit I tell ya. Maybe the Mayan Gods are giving us one last good run before they turn the lights out come December 21.

Before the New Year hits us, I accept that there will be snow. I expect it and even hope for some. The New Year kicks in and I want nothing more to do with the white shit. By January 2nd I am ready for Spring. That said, I am ready for Spring, but will hope it stays cold enough to finally give us some seriously good ice riding. Hopefully the snow does not come with the cold.

I won't hold my breath...........................................
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Some new fiction over to BoZone Too

~ Chicago Likes Things Tidy

~ Turn Left and Look Up

~ Lying Truth - Indie Ink Challenge - 100 Words

Bye Bye Bachmann, Bye Bye

2012-01-06T09:39:00.005-05:00

So Michelle has decided to pack up her righteous indignation, shelve her assault plan on the White House, and deliver us from the constant barrage of lies and fear mongering she has punished us with this last year. Officially she has not "dropped out", rather she has "suspended her campaign". What that means is she can continue to legally raise campaign money and spend it however she wants. The closest thing I can compare it too is paying a player to sit on the bench. Well done Michelle. You have your cake and you still get to stuff your face with it. And you claim it is Obama who is solely responsible for ruining this country. Riiiiiiight.

I notice that it has only been a few days since the Iowa Caucus, and already Ron Paul has faded from mainstream media view. Apparently the talking heads have decided the Republican contest is now down to a choice between Romney and ~~Frothy Man~~ Santorum . Poor Ron just can't catch a break. His finished a close third and yet he is back where he started - no one wants to pay him any respect. Something tells me they should.

So let's see if I can make some sense of this musical chairs routine we got going here. When someone's earlier favorite prematurely ejaculates and rides off into the sunset, which Republican stud left now gets their undying and in Virginia signed for loyalty?

I would guess many of Michelle's fans will now throw their considerable weight and weak intellects behind ~~Frothy Man~~ Santorum. I would also guess Ron Paul will benefit as some Bachmann Tea Partiers are not just foaming at the mouth God strike us dead fundies.

Newt is likely to benefit from some trickle down support from ex-Perry supporters. But I think most will gravitate to ~~Frothy Man~~ Santorum. But again, I see more than a few beginning to follow the Ron Paul bus.

Hmm and double hmm.

What seems to be unfolding before our very eyes is the classic election year disintegration that usually afflicts the Democrats, with their many splinter groups splintering and running 211 different candidates for President. Call it the Naggin Nader Syndrome. Ron Paul is quietly sucking up frustrated loyalists from the camps that have packed up and gone home. He may not do as well in New Hampshire or South Carolina as he did in Iowa, but if I was a betting man, he will do better than any of the "experts" think he will. Only time will tell if he wants to disrupt the party machine and continue as an independent after the Convention. His previous track record would tell us he will cave and fall back into lock step solidarity with the Republican Machine. But...............maybe this time he is really pissed and will refuse to fall in line.

Anyway, just some thoughts this morning on where I see the mess that is the Republican campaign for President.

Later.......................................................................
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Image from Matt Dorfman's News

New fiction up at BoZone ll

My Take on the Iowa Caucus

2012-01-04T08:33:00.001-05:00

So the cream is finally struggling its way to the top. Of course I offer my sincerest apologies to cows everywhere for using this comparison of the Republican Presidential race to dairy products of any kind, even clabber, which I might add is delicious if prepared properly. I would have used the tired shit floats analogy, but then I have resolved this year to be on my best behavior when commenting about politics. We'll see how long that lasts.

Romney's landslide victory of 8 votes over ~~Frothy Man~~ Santorum has to give him a warm and fuzzy feeling about his standing among the core of his party. Even if they hate him, they will vote for him if it means there is even a snow ball's chance in Hell of ousting that loser in the White House right at the moment. Oh Happy Day.

For his part, Santorum is ecstatic to the point of speechlessness. Let's hope he stays that way. Don't hold your breath however. You know he won't hold his.

In the meantime one Texan goes home sad and rejected. Another Texan feels good about coming in third, and the whacko from Minnesota is still trying to figure out what happened. Finishing next to last is not so bad I guess. Just imagine where she would have finished had she not spent so much time in Iowa. The word is her seat in Congress is a lock if she wants it. Her campaign lackeys insist her focus is on running for president. That's the spirit Michelle. Spending time jousting with windmills is so much more important than representing your district in Congress.

Newt left in a huff, an angry and petulant spoiled little brat. Mumbling something about New Hampshire would be his because he was the only real conservative who did not lie. Okay so I made that last part up. But let's face it, Newt is such a blowhard who's ego dwarfs the combined egos of the rest of his opponents - is there any other way for him to react? He is doing this country a favor by offering to run it for us. We should be grateful. I'm sure he looks at it that way.

And even though Jon Huntsman did not run in Iowa, he still got 745 Iowans to give him a thumbs up. He is concentrating on New Hampshire and asking the voters there, " to upend conventional wisdom and hand him a victory on January 10." Hmm. The term "conventional wisdom" seems an oxymoron coming out of the mouth of a Republican candidate. But I guess if running on policies that have been re-looping like an old 8 Track tape these past 30 years is conventional, then I guess there is some wisdom in there somewhere.

Next up for the All Republican Comedy Revue - New Hampshire. Be there or be square.

Later.......................................................

Poor Michelle

2012-01-02T21:30:00.001-05:00

"If money is the issue, I wish it wouldn't be," she said. "I don't think money should pick the president."

I feel pretty confident Michelle Bachmann would not have uttered these words if she had the money she does not think should elect the president. But since she does not shoulder the same heavy campaign purse many of her opponents in Iowa have, of course she would wish money did not elect the president.

She is right. How deep some candidate's pockets are should not determine the outcome of an election. But to hear her whine about it makes me chuckle. The political system in this country has been corrupted by money for years. Our pols spend more time it seems sucking up to big money than doing the jobs they were elected to do. Especially the Congress men and women of the House of Representatives, of which Michelle has been a member now for more than a few years.

What is sad I think is that we can tell how a specific campaign is going by how much money they are pulling in or not pulling in. This is a better barometer than any poll one might try to use. Like business, money follows success in politics also. If we don't like this system, then why have we not changed it? Oh our leaders have wrung their hands and complained about it, but when it comes right down to it, their lack of any meaningful campaign reform indicates they like things just the way they are. Even more so I suspect with the recent SCOTUS decision defining money as an odd extension of free speech.

So Michelle take your "pity me , I'm poor" party back to Minnesota. Maybe you should be concentrating on finding enough cash to get your sorry ass reelected to Congress so you can continue to be a waste of space on the taxpayer's dime.

Later......................................................................

AARGH!!!!!!!

2011-12-31T23:49:00.001-05:00

On a day as dreary as today and given its somewhat noteworthy position near the edge of the year, I should have been reflecting on past mistakes, future endeavors, or at the least contemplating my naval. Instead, I chose to attempt one more time to do two things that have been consistent in their refusal to bend to my will.

It all started with Twitter. I have had a Twitter account I guess for a couple of years now. In that time I have tweeted twice, have 4 followers, and I am supposedly following two others. Obviously I have not gotten into the Tweeting thing. Either that, or my existence on this planet is much sadder than even I thought it was. So this morning I decided I would take one more hesitant step into the 21st century and figure out how Twitter works.

Simply put, I failed. Whether it is a mental block or that I am just the dumass I have always suspected I am, whatever it is about Twitter, it just does not compute like most of the buttons on the cable remote don't compute.

Interlude- Now that one thumb is pounded numb, let's take that hammer and pound the other thumb numb also. Looking like another Homer Simpson kinda day........................

Completely frustrated and pissed off by 7:00 AM, I chose to not just prolong my agony but somehow I managed to intensify it. I decided to upload my image into two different sites so that instead of some cute little graphic next to my comment, a picture of me pops up. Avatars are their name, and fucking with my head is their game.

Seems these sites have very specific rules regarding how big an image can be before it will accept them. I knew that going in, but no matter how small I made an image, the red line of rejection popped up, "Your image must not exceed 6 KB..................

Or as I interpreted it, "Hey Dumass, this is the sixth time you have tried to cram ten gallons of shit into a five gallon bucket. What about the first five rejections did you not understand?"

So instead of my traditional trip down memory lane on this New Year's Eve, I offer only a traditional replay of my war with the present. It is an ongoing battle that each year finds me losing more ground.

So I guess my message for the new year would be:

Try not to lose too much ground this next year, but don't agonize too much of you do. The ground you will lose is probably not worth the effort to hold onto it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR FOLKS !!!
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A Spirit Driven Interlude

2011-12-29T22:04:00.002-05:00

Words pour free as Guinness draft at an Irish wake. Some words, phrases , crusts of thought savored harsh and slow. Others tossed back quick. The writer sits hunched, crunched and through slitted eyes manages to make some sense. His story slowly taking form, not a word he wasted. No back tracking, he never second guessed.

A grand tale of love, heartbreak and sorrow spreads its wings. Author, author why do you hesitate? Is the moment so precious or is that a tear in your eye?

You know you must finish, button it up clean it up, and put it up ...........for others to see. Yet the writer is still life, his fingers hover waiting for that pleasure filled last line to settle in his mind.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, yes please pour yourself another drink, maybe a finger or two. Two cubes of ice in a small glass is all Jameson asks. Or maybe some sour mash straight from the steel flask The local spirits tonight want control. They will not be denied.

Ah Yes. That's better, best, but please save the rest. For later gator, before you hit the road and lay down your head on a familiar bed to dream tales you will never recall...................... even in jest.

Good Night Irene.....................................................
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New fiction up at BoZone ll - "Dreams Do Come True"

Life in the Slow Lane

2011-12-28T16:16:00.004-05:00

I get so wrapped up in the silly details of my life sometimes, I don't notice the little things, the small events and efforts made by others that make my part of the world so special to me. Today rather than put my nose to the grindstone here at the bike shop, I pulled one of my classic "Here physically, but not in spirit" routines. I searched the local sites for news worth reporting to the larger world outside my small corner of Maine.

Predictably newsworthy events that might cause waves elsewhere were in short supply. We locals tend to go about our business, go home, and cuddle up to Jeopardy or ESPN with a cool drink or maybe some local herb of the smoking kind. We mind our own business for the most part and expect others to do the same.. Southern Maine is not a hotbed of controversy or extravagance. If one is under 30 and single, life here is boooooring. If one is married with children, it is still booooring but a much saner and safe environment than many other locales I can think of.

In the news locally

~ Some fellows from Massachusetts were busted in a house located in the town next to mine. Apparently they were using the house as a marijuana growing operation - only visiting it for a few hours a week and then going home to Mass.

And once again the State will spend stupid amounts of money prosecuting a crime that should not be a crime. I hope the governor is happy.

~ An old family from the area worked out a deal with the Rachel Carson Preserve to sell them what might be the last 2.5 miles of unspoiled ocean beach in southern Maine. I have always chuckled that Mainers call their shore line beach as it is made up of 90% rock and 10% sand. But I guess it's a beach if the water stops there and the land begins.

Even though the family had been treating the property, known as Timber Point, with conversation in mind for years, they made it official and now a little bit more of nature is allowed to do it's own thing in its own time. As the article states, "soon the No Trespassing signs will come down and the Rachel Carson Preserve Signs will go up. Chalk one up for nature.

Interesting enough is the unique twist Maine puts on areas kept as natural habitats. Hunting and fishing will be allowed according to state law. I think that is fine. Completely banning humans from enjoying our natural beauty in a myriad of ways is not our style. The nesting bobolinks, the snowy owls and other threatened species will still have their woods and the hunter their game. There are critters, who left to their own devices, would ruin the property as quickly if not more quickly than Man would. Deer being one of them.

~ I only found 12 deaths recorded since December 12th in the York County area. York County is almost as big as the state of Rhode Island. Only one person was under the age of 70 and all were of natural causes. No murders, no rapes, a smattering of break ins, and one State Trooper getting pulled over for a DUI on the Turnpike was all I had for sensational footage to share. The cop is on administrative leave pending the outcome of his trial.

~ And finally - it seems a good friend of mine - a raging liberal of the first water and a mover and shaker in my town has teamed up with another leftist commie type and proposed that the Town of Acton draft a no Nuclear Weapons statement to send to Russia. Response of the local Wingers has been predictably hilarious. Frankly all of them just make me smile sometimes. I can just imagine Putin opening up a letter from some crusty Mainers telling him they will have nothing to do with any notion of nuclear war. Somehow, I do not see this proclamation making it past the proposal stage. As one Winger stated, "Maybe the enviro whacko ought to propose some maintenance for the town hall instead." God loves small towns. He has to or he would not make living in one so comical.

Not a lot of excitement to report, but then it is winter. Wait till the folks from away come back. They always jazz things up.

Later..................................................................
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Some new fiction over to BoZone ll - "Rudy"

Another Christmas Tale - T 10 - Capstone

2011-12-24T03:42:00.005-05:00

James knew today would be different the moment he opened his eyes and stared up at the cardboard ceiling of the box he had called home the last few days. James did not dwell on the occasional and inconsequential buzzing of the what might bee's. Existence and survival depended on more mundane matters. Scavenging a meal and hitting tourists up for enough change to score a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 sweet wine were his daily concerns. The feeling something new was headed his way faded before he crawled out of that appliance box.

James began his daily schlep over to the Salvation Army kitchen up on Congress St. The sensation something was out of sync returned just as he turned up Front St and onto it’s ancient cobblestones Portland kept in place for the atmosphere they added to the city's Old Salt working waterfront motif. Down on Commercial Ave. the fish houses were opening their doors hoping to off load big catches for the fish mongers to filet..

James slowed his gait on the slick, rough cobbles and wondered how today would turn out differently. ** The uneven roadway caused him to stumble and fall to his knees. His hands took it hard when he threw them out to save him from a face plant.. On his hands and knees now, James picked up the hand that took it the hardest to check for damage. Stuck to his wet grimy palm was a gold ring. In the center of the ring in the middle of his palm, a well planted shard of glass began to seep blood around it's base.

James sat back on his heels. He ignored his knees as they sucked up snow melt left in the cracks and crevices between the cobble stones. He picked the ring off his hand and pulled the glass from his palm. Blood began to flow freely for a second or so and then stopped. James hated the sight of blood, Hyperventilation kicked in He was almost up to full tilt chest heaving just shy of redline when behind him a shadow blocked out the sun and left him in dark shadow.

"Got a light?"

James flinched and quickly pivoted on his soaked knees. Instinct kicked in and he unconsciously pocketed the ring in the deep side pocket of his raggedy jacket. The bright early morning sun blinded him. The silhouette repeated, "Got a light?"

James leaned hard to use the dark figure as cover from the sun. One of the derelict Santas a local shelter hired to cheer up the kids with no homes stood in front of him with an unlit cigarette in his hand and a disgusted look on his face.

"Come on dude. Got a light or not?"

“Uh yeah, sure do.” James eyes narrowed. He could smell a faint wisp of Boone’s Farm Wine. Nothing brought him back to the here and now like the aroma of a freshly opened bottle of rotgut wine. “But it’s gonna cost ya.” James’ eyes traveled down from Santa’s face to his left pocket trimmed in fake white fur and settled on the top of the bottle of wine.

Santa followed James and looked down at the bottle. “Sure why not. Let’s step over there. He thrust his cigarette in the direction of an alley that ran behind some historic district townhouses built of old brick and accented just right with granite stones. Tucked away out of sight, Santa handed James the Boone’s Farm Apple wine. James handed Santa his last pack of matches. Both satisfied with the transaction they spent the next ten minutes passing the bottle until it was drained dry. Santa tucked the empty bottle in his pocket for later redemption, nodded to James and stumbled down Front St towards the waterfront.

James stepped back out onto Front Street. The wine he drank on no breakfast churned acidic and harsh as it mixed with his stomach half full of bile. He belched a short wet just shy of vomit gurgling burp followed by some coughing and hacking up of phlegm, finally finishing when he spat out a disgusting cobby green wad. About seventy five feet away a man in a perfect red dress suit turned and looked at the ratty figure who had appeared so rudely breaking his concentration.. He frowned and wrinkled his nose, then returned his attention back to the pavement. Slowly he walked with his head straight down as if searching for something unfound. James turned up Front St to finish his hike to the Salvation Army kitchen for some breakfast.

Mr Red Suit stopped and looked at James making his way up the street.

“Excuse me sir.” James kept walking oblivious.

Louder and adding an ahem to give his request some substance, “AHEM! Uh Excuse me sir.”

James looked at the man with vacant indifference but dropped back into reality and slowed his progress once his eyes focused on this perfectly dressed man in a red dress suit, red and white patent leather shoes topped with a white beard and silver hair reflecting the mid morning light.

James stopped. Again, Mr Red Suit attempted to get a conversation off the ground. “Excuse me young man, I seem to have lost something precious to me.”

"Uh well, I’m trying to make it to the Salvation Army kitchen before all the grub is gone. “ James took a few steps towards the man. “What did ya lose?”

“ A ring………A small plain gold ring.” Red Suit looked directly into James’eyes. James’ right hand inside the deep pocket of his ratty jacket gripped the ring.

The man in the red dress suit stepped up close to James, his eyes boring right through the young wino. “It wasn’t worth much, maybe a couple hundred bucks or so. But I would so much like to find it. You see it’s the Ring of Transition. It was given to me many many years ago when I was just about your age.”

All James heard was “a couple of hundred bucks or so”. His grip on that ring tightened. It dug hard into his hand. He looked up into the man’s face. “Sorry, but I gotta go. Don’t want to be late up to the kitchen or I won’t get seconds.. Hope you find it.” James turned to leave.

“I’ll buy you breakfast.” James stopped in mid stride and rotated on one foot to face Red Suit again.

“I’d rather have a bottle of Mad Dog. I can eat for free, but the booze, well the booze ain’t free.”
Red Suit sort of smiled. James thought it looked more like a frown. Red Suit spoke. “My name is Nicholas and this right here is why I will only buy you breakfast." He was pointing to a small pin on the lapel of his perfect red dress suit.

James leaned in to get a better look. The pin stated simply “Do it Sober”.

That’s right young man, I used to be you. I’ve been sober now…………………” . Nicholas looked up to the clock tower on Congress Street searching for his memory. Without looking down he continued as if someone up there was listening. “Been sober now 87 years. “

James had heard this born again AA crap before. To avoid any follow up drivel from Nicholas about how James should clean up his act, he blurted, “Okay some breakfast. My choice, and I’ll help you look.” His fingers once so tightly wrapped around the ring relaxed and he began to do his best imitation of a sincere search.

For an hour the two of them walked up and down Front Street. At least six times to make it look good, James asked Nicholas if he was sure he had lost it here. Finally Nicholas grabbed James by his upper arm. He grabbed the arm that was attached to the hand that held the ring. James tensed and looked at Nicholas. “What?”

“Young man, we both know I lost that ring on this street.” Nicholas was looking bemused.. He grabbed James by both shoulders, bent his head down and looked the derelict in the eyes. “It doesn’t matter though, the ring has been passed and that is all I was here to do. My replacement has been chosen I’m sure you’ll do fine.”

The ring in the deep side pocket of James’ ratty jacket began to warm in James hand. At first it just simmered, but soon James could not hold it. He looked at Nicholas with widening eyes.

“Better put it on son or it will burn a hole in that ratty jacket. You can’t refuse.” Nicholas’ gentle smile made James feel safe. He slipped a pinky into the ring, and as if the man in the perfect red dress suit had never been there, Nicholas disappeared.

James could not fathom the changes coming over him. He stood in the middle of Front Street on the erratic cobblestones and looked out on the harbor ¼ mile away. The wind had picked up. Waves of notable size raced across reflecting the late morning sunlight in millions of dainty bright flashes. The flashes became streaks of light.coalescing as one and coming straight towards James…………………………………. James blacked out.

James had no idea how long it had taken him to, out of the blue, realize where he had come from and what he had done in the life he lived so long ago. The first time an inkling of his previous existence crossed his mind, he was seated at the head of a broad wooden table. Seated around the perimeter were twenty small men wearing mostly green or red hats. Two wore yellow hats.. They all looked older than God and they were all looking at James..

The elf closest to James on his right looked at his boss. Nudging James' elbow, he said, “Chief! You okay? You were saying? You lost it there for a minute. Focus Chief, focus.”

James looked down the long table. He sat quiet for another moment and studied each face looking at him. He remembered why he was there. “Okay Jasper, where were we? Oh yeah, You were about to give me an update on the production line punching out Teddy Bears. You gonna make the quota on time?

Jasper nodded. James said , “Okay what’s next guys? Let’s go. Let’s get busy. We only have another six weeks before I fly.” His attention however was elsewhere. James was thinking of Nicholas and where he might be. It pleased him to think of Nick kicked back beach side, a cool drink in hand and enjoying a beautiful sunset. Unconsciously James began to turn the small gold ring on the pinky of his right hand.
~*~

Happy Holidays folks.

The Capstone - T 10's weekly All Prompt review

When:
Weekend of 12/24 & 12/25/11
The Rules:
(1) Use the week's prompts to write a single story
(2) Take ten minutes to write your story; write whatever comes to mind; improvise!
This Weeks Prompts
Monday, On location: The beach at sunset
Tuesday, Take it away: I knew today would be different...
Wednesday, Words, Inc.: table, ring, glass, wine
Thursday, The plot thickens: People staring up at a building
Friday, Free for all: First time Friday
Additional Prompt - Seasonal - Xmas-ie

Some post story notes
~ First draft – approx 1750 words
~ For once I actually kept somewhat within the plan I had when I began.
~ This one took awhile. Quite awhile.
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The Missed Anniversary

2011-12-23T18:06:00.003-05:00

Last week I remembered that my 7th year anniversary with this blog was coming up. I thought it might be nice to write a post on that date making note of the auspicious occasion. As I am the only one in charge of keeping track, it is so very typical that I blew it. I have regularly forgotten more important dates than this one. My wife's birthday comes to mind. Two years in a row I blew it. The second one is still brought up as ammo by her when she needs to take me down a peg or two. My daughter's birthday, more than a few wedding anniversaries and even my own birthday several times have been lost in the clutter I call my mind. Unless someone mentions I missed them, I often do not notice for a week at least.

But over the last couple of years my track record has improved. Wishing to keep up the good work, if only to satisfy myself, I checked my archived posts and I could have sworn the 7th anniversary fell on December 23. All week I had planned to say a few words and maybe have a shot of Ezra Brooks to celebrate.............................Well I'll still have the shot. I'm due anyway.

The anniversary was three days ago. Now I know how my wife feels. Okay, so I really don't. But I have at least an inkling of anticipation disappointed. As it turns out the anniversary ended up being what it should have been anyway. Just another day on the planet.

7 years is a long time. Not a lifetime, but a decent chunk of time. Certainly worth noting if nothing else. What may be of more significance are the number of posts I have published. This will make post #1046 once it goes out on the air waves. Think of the bandwidth I have consumed. Think of all the wasted hours typing words that have had no real impact on anyone but myself..

The point originally, the initial reason I began this blog was to write and hopefully become better at it. 1047 posts indicate that I did write, and the over 5000 comments I have received tell me I at least had someone's attention some of the time. And while I have no good reason to pat myself on the back, I will anyway for one reason and one reason only. I have connected and had conversations with people all over the world. That in itself is worthy of a back slap.

To everyone out there, thank you for sharing your time with me. May all of you be well and maybe before the New year take a moment and appreciate just how awesome this Internet gig really is. Thanks for stopping by.

Peace on Earth........................................................

The Tea Party Mentality

2011-12-23T07:21:00.004-05:00

Growing up in a politically aware conservative family, I was taught to consider the Left a bunch of loose dog lunatics who had no cohesive message. According to family elders, the Left was comprised (Now this was in the 1960s) of commies, anarchists, and racists (Dixiecrats). While the Right was a more gentile civilized group who honored loyalty and unified effort. The Right wore suits from Brooks Brothers and hung out in board rooms, country clubs, and the many yacht basins found on both coasts. The Left existed in the ghettos, the mills, and dark dirty dives where they conjured up their traitorous mischief over bottles of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. The lines were clearly drawn, Everyone it seemed was happy with this arrangement.

Then the Negroes finally found a unified voice and began loudly complaining about their station in Life. Their efforts to that point had been erratic, hit or miss, no real leader had consolidated their message. Martin Luther King and his coalition of bright angry blacks declared the current delusion of quiet peace and tranquility I call "Father Knows Best Era , Chapter One", was not going to continue.

Suddenly the Left erupted. Civil Rights marches were now making room for white guys and gals with New York accents. The racist Democrats of the south and the Commie Democrats from industrial America found themselves doing battle with each other. Add in the stupidity of the Viet Nam War, and my family's observation that the Left were nothing but lunatics seemed spot on.

I find it amusing that the Left is now seen as limp wristed cowardly peace loving appeasers. I remember when many carried guns and actually used them at least as implements of intimidation instead of using them as part of some protest uniform. Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the SDS and a host of other less well known groups actively used violence to get their point across. The Tea Party of today is but a comical parody of the real badasses of the Left from back in the day..

Once the Civil Rights Acts were passed and enforced, once the Viet Nam War was headed for failure, suddenly a huge void of issues resulted. The new radicals of the Left were not out of steam, but it seemed they were out of topics. No, this just would not do. They reached further into their bag of injustices to address and pulled out new ones. Environment, Women's rights, Gay Rights, and some just general we are still pissed off about this or that issues. It seemed the only issues they really wanted to push were their anger issues.

America stopped paying attention. This country entered what I call "Father Knows Best Era, Chapter Two." But while the issues of the left had been successfully blunted by complacency and neglect, on the Right, resentment from having their asses handed to them some years back festered. Under the radar of mainstream America new radicals rose. Only this time, they came from the Right. Minute Men, Oath keepers, white supremacists, and again a host of smaller groups formed and grew over displeasure that America had shifted to far to the Left.

And so it goes, back and forth, up and down, the pendulum, the teeter totter, the winds of change all move in response to the perceived movement of the other side. Most of the time, the rest of America sits in between mildly amused, maybe somewhat pissed, but we get on with our business hoping all of them will go away.

Seeking validity and over the top patriotism drive the anger on both sides. Neither the Left nor the Right seem willing to acknowledge that in the long run the other side wants a better America. Instead the fringes rhetorically and categorically relegate each other as losers and lose touch with the rest of us sitting confused in their dust.

Later..................................................................
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I posted another short fiction piece over to BoZone ll - "Till Death Do US Part"

Two BoZones Are Better Than One

2011-12-22T11:35:00.002-05:00

I recently decided to make use of one of the blogs I created quite awhile ago. It is Lost in the BoZone, The Other Dimension. I created it solely to own the Name "Lost in the BoZone" on Blogger. This "Lost in the BoZone" is actually HTTP-ed "The File Cabinet". I changed the name almost immediately after coming up with "The File Cabinet" I then posted to it for 4 years before I decided to claim the name I was using by registering it with Blogger. Rather than swap everything over because I'm a lazy bastard at heart, I just let the new BoZone sit and gather dust while I continued to poison the Internets from The original BoZone. It's all damn confusing and it really does not matter. The point is I now plan to utilize "BoZone , the other dimension" to hold my fiction. Specifically the longer fiction. I will continue to use this blog for most of my posting.

I am doing this because I am an untidy person. A pig pen of the first water. This blog is unruly, unorganized, and frankly trying to make sense of the archived posts pushes me inches closer to insanity every time I dwell on the past crammed in erratically without rhyme or reason. I relish my unruly disorganized life, but would like to find a tidy home for at least some of what I write. That's where the other dimension comes in. I don't want to live there. I like living here. Call it just a storage locker I rented for free that's down the road.

There will be no bells and whistles. No spiffy gadgets, gee gaws back linking, forward linking never linking or even currently linking. Just words and maybe an image to go with them. Of course knowing my tendency to erraticism (is that even a word?), I promise nothing past the end of this post. Who knows when the urge to add a gadget might cross my mind.

When I post something there I will link to it from here at the bottom of whatever post I wrote that day. Visit if you want. Comment if you want. Or just pass on by and get on with your day..

Later.................................................
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To kick things off - Flash Fiction Friday Cycle #60 challenge is up at BoZone ll - "Compatible"

Can Kicking and Stupid Women

2011-12-21T09:41:00.005-05:00

Michelle Bachmann was asked this morning on NBC's Today Show why she was in Iowa instead of doing her job in Congress fighting the good fight against Obama and those evil Democrats over the temporary extension of the payroll tax cuts. Her reply was telling and so typical of the current mindset of the Right.

She blamed Obama for Congress not doing its job. Yet she is wasting time running around Iowa instead of doing the job she is getting paid for. She said and I paraphrase, "Why go back to DC when it won't do any good?" Right Michelle, that's the spirit. Getting votes is so much more important than actually governing.

Who created the impasse now crippling Congress? In my view and I suspect the view of a growing number of Americans is that the Republicans are seen as the problem. Obama has backtracked so much trying to coddle the stupidly stubborn Republicans acting like two year olds, he is looking more like a conservative than the liberal he has been labled by the right. Boehner has lost control and the dumasses of the Right have the party by the balls.

Sure the two month extension is just kicking the can down the road. But because her and her bonehead party have created this stalemate regarding a more permanent solution, the can once again absolutely needs to be kicked down the road. If the extension does not go through, it will hurt her party much more than it will hurt Obama or the Democrats.

Later.........................................................................

How Congress Works Today

2011-12-19T19:10:00.031-05:00

Rapidly changing events unfold with such speed, by the time unintended consequences rear their ugly little heads, the unfolding events have moved on to other events emerging faster than the consequences can keep pace. Negative results begin to logjam, becoming entwined and more complicated as they fuse together out of sight until eventually events not even on anyone's radar force them to panic mode and they back pedal in often fruitless effort to address what has already happened, thereby weakening their readiness to deal with the next catastrophe on the horizon.

Instead of stepping back to take the broader view, and spend a few minutes catching their breath, they quickly look to their respective ideologies for excuses rather than allowing time for common sense to seep to the top. Distracted and fooled into thinking all of these unfolding events are not inter-connected, they address each as individuals rather than as the mob that has really shown up at their door.

Evidence that things have gotten completely out of control emerges when they fall back on the blame game hoping that by doing this they will escape or not be held accountable for having screwed up in the first place.

A period of Blame Time begins. Nothing is accomplished, nothing is done. The only proof they even acknowledge the problem is by their cowardly retreat from it and blatant refusal to own the events they themselves put into play maybe not even that long ago. As expected, Blame Time, as it always does, turns out useless solutions while using up precious time and resources.

Many ,if not all of them now enter Catatonic Time. Evidence of it displayed when they put one thumb in their mouth and the other up their ass. This period often results in a brief moment or if we are lucky moments of calm, even as those overwhelming events still whirl around them out of control. It is but the eye of the hurricane and those still aware know what comes next.

Time to go on vacation.

Later..................................................
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Image from Redmond Library

The Best Fight Ever

2011-12-18T20:12:00.007-05:00

So I'm abusing the Hell out of google last night and searching out information or images on anything that pops into my mind. Yeah I know. Get a life or something close, but what the hell, it beat sitting numb and dumb in front of the tube.

I google my name. I google my brothers names. I google my mom's name, Hell I go through the family one member at a time. Nothing new really. Then I googled "Charlotte Hall, images". Jack pot. I am looking at images, old and new, of the area that was named after the military school I attended in southern Maryland back in the 1960s. There are few school buildings standing now. They were in tough shape when I went there. After the school closed about 1976, they fell into disrepair and most were razed when the property was turned into a Veteran's home.

One of the buildings still there has been restored and is apparently one of the finest examples of American Gothic architecture in the state of Maryland. When I had to use it, it was just a church. It is called the Dent Memorial Chapel. It was built in 1884.

The picture that caught my eye was the chapel staged behind a string of happy cyclists enjoying a spanking brand new bike path that now cuts across my old campus. Seems fitting I guess considering what I ended up choosing as my vocation. The picture also brought back many memories, good and bad, of my three years ~~incarcerated~~ attending the school.

Instead of dwelling on my life spent mostly in other parts of the campus, I focused on what impact Dent Chapel might have had on me at that time. A minute or so into considering it's importance I realized any impact was not from the religious activities for which it was built. It was a place we were forced to spend two hours every Sunday trying to not get caught sleeping as the most boring Episcopal priest in the northern hemisphere did his best to make us want to swallow our M-1s as soon as we got back to the barracks. Juvenile delinquents and God do not make for an engaged and stimulating morning.. Neither the preacher nor his non-volunteer flock came away with any satisfaction other than being glad to be done with it one more time.

Dent Chapel was more of a haven. It was an extra building left empty most of the time and used to plan mischief in secret, carry out mischief in secret, or hide from others who hoped to carry mischief out on you. As an underclassman, I would sneak cigarets in the bushes that surrounded it. I would sometimes go in and play forbidden games of chance with friends. I can remember at least twice hiding there to avoid the unavoidable hazing a new cadet always received. I discovered soon though hiding only put off the inevitable and I stopped running to the Chapel. It was easier letting them have their way and getting it over with than fooling myself that by hiding I was somehow winning.

And it was the first place I almost got laid in. My date to the military ball was fine with the hot clumsy teenaged foreplay that should have ended in momentous ecstasy. She had no problem teasing my naughty bits. Unfortunately she drew the line at spreading her legs on a pew in the house of the Lord. Me, well, I was hard pressed to understand her point of view. I was not happy about it but we left and went back to the dance. The heat of the moment left with us, uh well her heat dissipated quickly and because mine did not, I was rewarded with what was probably my first case of severe blue balls of more than a few to come in my immediate future. Every boy needs at least one or more encounters with the blue ball syndrome. It teaches them discipline. I was harshly disciplined that night.

I also remember the longest fist fight I ever had or would most likely ever have taking place behind the chapel one frigid night when I was a Senior. Mike Lawson, whose birthday happened to be the same as mine and whose name tended to stick him close to me when we were all too often sorted alphabetically, - well Mike decided that dark cold night he had had enough of my bullying. I had tormented him for three years. It was not like I had a size advantage. He was actually bigger than I was. I just had better jive ass punk-ness and a bigger chip on my shoulder. I deserved the beating he tried to give me that night. It was long over due.

I was minding my own business in my room in Keech Hall. Someone knocked on the door. I opened it. Mike cold cocked me and knocked me down. We tore up the room until my roommate came back from the head and kicked us out. We took it outside and fought until neither one of us could pick up our arms or even get off the ground. The epic contest seemed to last forever. Nobody won the physical battle, but Mike won the day. As we shook hands, I said to him, "All I ever wanted from you was for you to fight back." We got along fine from then on.

The next day at formation, the Skin ( the commandant) asked me to come to his office once we were dismissed. I always liked the Skin. He was a hard man, but always tried to be fair when discipline was handed down. He was well aware of the ongoing animosity between Mike and myself. I knew our meeting would be about that. Hell, my face was all the evidence he needed. I knew Mike had not snitched. He may not have been a fighter but he was a three year survivor at Charlotte Hall. One of the cardinal rules was never snitch on a fellow cadet. Get labelled a snitch and your time there would be miserable.

The Skin asked me who had beat my face in. I told him it was a disagreement between friends. He said it was unbecoming and against regulations for officers to fight and if he found out about it there would be Hell to pay. He looked at me with hard eyes. But then he always looked at us with fierce intensity. He then asked me if Lawson and I had finally buried our hatchet. I assured him we had. He dropped his eyes, picked up a pen as if to start some paperwork drudgery and curtly said, "Dismissed". It was not until I had safely traveled 50 feet from the Armory that I let out a sigh of relief.

Mike fell back into his peaceful ways and finished his last year quietly and honorably. I continued my battle with civilization and not three weeks later was busted down from 2nd lieutenant to buck private for going AWOL. Was that four days away worth it? Shit, I can't remember. So I assume it wasn't.

I don't think about my time at Charlotte Hall as much as I should I guess. The three years I spent having civility pounded into me had a dramatic impact on my successful transition from punk loser to productive citizenry. I entered Charlotte Hall a very angry young man and left still angry, but with a realization that anger does you no good if used inappropriately. Mike taught me that anger appropriately focused can do some good.

Keep it 'tween the ditches............................................

Pro-Life vs Pro-Choice

2011-12-17T20:53:00.023-05:00

The article that fired me up. From Right Wing Watch

First some history to tie this post in with my own past.

My girlfriend my freshman year in college (1970/71) became pregnant. I won't go into the nuts and bolts of her decision to abort, but let's just say, I chose to support her decision, no matter what she came up with. It was my first exposure to the world of Planned Parenthood.   At that time the Feds had yet to weigh in on the controversy of abortion on demand. It was still in the hands of the individual states. Roe v Wade would not happen until 1973. Maryland was a state that allowed abortion.

Up until that time I had no opinion regarding abortion. I was 19 ferchrisakes and male. I did not walk or deny my responsibility. I went with her to doctor appointments, appointments at the local Planned Parenthood offices, and held her as she agonized over what to do. Neither one of us were ready to be parents and she knew it. I was impressed that the first choice offered by the Planned Parenthood people was to help her decide to carry the pregnancy through full term. It was only after they had made sure her decision to abort had been thoroughly tested by the alternative of delivering a live baby did they direct her to the right people for the abortion. I was disappointed she chose to abort, but I supported her decision anyway.

Over the following two years, I became a go to guy for coeds who found themselves in the "family way". I had no other qualification other than having been through the process myself.   Of the maybe five women I chaperoned through the process, only one chose to keep her baby. But not one of them made their decisions without being intensely counseled by Planned Parenthood first. The counselors' first option was never abortion, it was what was in the best interests of the woman with Reality as the driving force. They made sure all options were laid out.

Here we are 40 years later and the controversy of Abortion is now not an issue of choice, but an issue of political identity many would have us believe defines one's moral compass.................Bullshit.   I resent that it has become nothing but another political bat many use to beat up the other side. Both sides use it and abuse it. But none more than the Anti-abortion crowd. Their holier than thou righteous indignation has created so many successful lies and false accusations that violence has resulted. Doctors have been killed, Women stalked and harassed. Clinics bombed. If anyone should be ashamed of themselves, it is the people who sanction this type of activity while hiding behind the notion of "being a Christian" and justifying the means by seeking some debatable ends. They have no remorse. It sickens me.

I do not like abortion. I also feel it is not my place to force this view on anyone. A decision such as this is uniquely personal and should be respected over and above any other view.   Forcing unwanted pregnancies through to full term by legislation is in my mind the worst kind of assault on a person's individual rights.

What about the rights of the fetus? Yeah, what about them? I struggle with this question quite often. That I cannot come up with a satisfactory answer only tells me I have to allow each individual the right to determine what those rights are for themselves. No law will ever resolve that question other than to impose sanctions and penalties for crossing some arbitrary line created out of nothing but the opinion of some wishing to impose their will on the rest of us.

Later................................................................

Who Runs the GOP?

2011-12-16T20:40:00.029-05:00

I was sure the GOP was on a steep downhill trend back in the 1980s. I figured it would hit bottom sooner or later and they would begin to show signs of sanity again. I guess I need to have more patience. But let's face it, thirty years is an awfully long time to watch a party continue to fall. Maybe there is no bottom because they are hard into a an ideological free fall into a pit with no bottom. Maybe it is the proverbial corner and being painted into it by their own rigid set of ideals. Whatever it is, the GOP have definitely become slaves to an unrealistic agenda and are now tools of fringe ideologues whose oars only intermittently hit the water in smooth strokes. Those intermittent strokes of sanity seem to be less frequent each day the presidential election inches closer. Their panic boldly displayed as they have begun to turn on themselves in ugly public displays more common among bickering Democrats.

One British writer, Jonathan Freedland, contends it is Fox News who has turned the GOP into what they are now. He offers up a compelling argument devoid of the passionate partisan claptrap that usually accompanies such claims. One quote by David Frum, former speech writer for George W Bush is telling :

"Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us – and now we're discovering we work for Fox."

If a Liberal said this, it would be passed off as more predictable ditto head lackey rhetoric from the Left. But in the article, Freedland quotes more than one "conservative" voice regarding their concerns over Fox and its influence over the GOP agenda. I won't rehash his article here. But take a look, it is a very interesting insight from someone who sits outside the fray.

For years I have loudly whined about the two parties we have controlling our lives. I have indicated that I would love to see the two party system self destruct. ...................Hmm...............Now the phrase " be careful what you wish for" comes to mind. Now that one half seems intent on destroying itself, it looks like they are determined to take us with them. I should have seen this scenario coming, but I did not. I was so full of my righteous indignation, I only wanted it to fail without regards to who was hurt and how much damage would result.

So I sit here watching the system I grew up in suffering serious tests to its viability and instead of being pleased, I am sad. I know no matter what the fallout is, those creating the havoc will most likely come out smelling like roses and the grunts on the street will pay the price as we always do.

Later................................................
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Image from Rivenrock Garden Cactus Blog

The Drudge Retort Report

2011-12-15T17:47:00.003-05:00

I have been under the weather these past few days. I missed quite a bit of what is happening out there in the big world. So I punched up the Drudge Retort - The site set up to counter the Drudge Report. The headlines are always written to catch the eye and several did.

Chris Wallace contends that should Ron Paul win the Iowa Caucus, it is not a victory for Paul, but a defeat for the Iowa Caucus. Hmm. Ron Paul gets no respect even when he polls with serious numbers. I hope he runs a Ralph Nader style candidacy.

Some Fraternity at UVM in Vermont put out what I assume was an internal poll with a question about who the respondent would rape if they could. I just do not know what to say here. Talk about way past acceptable. Even in my most decadent sexual fantasy, rape has never come up. Some midget strippers and a trampoline once, but never rape.

Apparently 30% of the Texans responding to a recent survey believe humans and dinosaurs co-existed.   Before I get all anti Texan here, I would like to know what percentage of the population even know what a dinosaur is. And to be fair, from the IQs I have run into over the years in the many places I lived, I am guessing a sizable portion of this country's population would be inclined to believe Fred Flintstone really lived in Bedrock.

Proof or at least another item in the news that would lead one to believe that Texas is not the only state harboring people wearing serious blinders would be the concern over Evolution by the head of the Hart school district in Kentucky. He contends that Evolution is being taught as fact in Kentucky.   It is not fact in Kentucky according to him. Apparently he failed to notice that no where is it taught as fact, but as theory. I guess he can't tell fact from fiction.

**Mitt Romney has inspired another American institution to step up and show their patriotism. Apparently the KKK has adopted Romney's new slogan " Keep America American". Mitt should be playing to his strengths instead of trying to capture the weak minded members of his party. A talk with Perry before he came up with this one might have come up with a better one - "Keep Straight America, Straight American". That would have at least brought a larger demographic into the tent of stupidity the GOP seems to be constructing of late.**

And so it went. Another classic day of minor insanities popping up across the land. And in the meantime folks like me do our things and try to keep the stupidity from completely ruining our days.
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Image of Dinosaurman from Objective Ministries - Apparently dinosaurs and Man coexisted peacefully with each other around 2000 BC. I did not know that.   Upon further investigation however, there are those non-believers who think this site is a hoax. I found Dr. Paley's arguments compelling. I mean come on. Any animal we "peacefully coexist" with seems to end up extinct or on our dinner table. And I am guessing that herding dinosaurs must have been a lot tougher than oxen. So it was probably the smart thing to do to hunt them to extinction rather than waste time trying to corral them. Although the Objective ministries contend they died off during the Great Flood. Guess we couldn't build a big enough boat for them.

So of course I looked up Noah's Ark. There are differing opinions on how big it was, but a popular guess has it 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high.   Wow, that's big. They could have crammed in a few dinosaurs I think.

Later.................................
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** After the fact correction - Not only did I misrepresent Mitt Romney and the KKK with this paragraph. I now find out that the slogan was not adopted by the KKK from Romney, but he was accused of adopting it from them. But according to the apology issued by MSNBC, the slogan has been used more than a few times by any number of groups. Let me add my apology for getting it so wrong also. I blew it.

Read the rest of the story here

The Green Leisure Suit - Part 2 - Pink Tony Lamas

2011-12-12T19:46:00.065-05:00

I liked yesterday's memory so much, I decided to take off with it some. There's truth, twisted truth, and flat out made up truth in what follows. Oh, and I changed it to 3rd person . Figure I can get a lot of mileage out of a wild weekend in Texas. If memory serves, I had a few back in the day. Hope you enjoy it.

"Yank".

Byron has the bathroom door open a bit. Lazy Eye Sue and Yank don't hear him.

Louder this time, "YANK".

Yank sticks his head out of the shower. "What ferchrisakes? Just what do you want?"

"Motel manager's out here. Says we got fifteen minutes to vacate, then he calls Dallas PD. You two get out of there. We gotta go."

Lazy Eye Sue and Yank look at each other, then bust up laughing as they get out of the shower. Only one towel hangs on the rack. Sue looks at Yank, then looks down at herself. She grabs the towel and hands him a wash cloth.

"What am I supposed to do with that?"

"Dry off. Not like you got much left to dry anyways." Her good eye settles south of his waist.

She smiles, opens the door a crack and looks out. She shuts it quick, holds her mouth to stifle the laughter trying to escape.

"Yank, I think we're busted. One of us is in trouble." Her one good eye bores into the young driver she picked up last night..

Yank opens the door a crack. Standing in the motel room door, A middle aged dude stuffed hard into a green liesure suit is jawing at Byron . He can't quite make out what Leisure Suit is saying. The traffic noise out on the four lane drowns him out. Yank can tell he's upset. Every other word or so is emphasized when he jabs a finger in Byron's direction, Pink Darlin's direction or Yank's direction hiding behind the bathroom door. Each finger poke makes his green pot belly jiggle.

Byron's in jeans and no shirt sitting at the table built for maximum wobble Days Inn calls a desk. He has his head in his hand and looks to be suffering some pain. Leisure Suit yapping in his ear can't be helping. Pink Darlin is sitting up with her back against the headboard, a sheet pulled over her naughty bits. Her pink boots sticking out for all to see. She doesn't look quite awake yet.

Byron must have heard the bathroom door open. He turns in the chair and looks at Yank and rolls his eyes. "Yank, you go out for ice again with no clothes on? Mr. uh what was your name again sir? Oh yeah , Mayfield. Mr. Mayfield here says some folks up the row there caught you at the ice machine buck naked." Byron tries real hard to say this with a straight face, but he can't. He loses it and starts shaking, his effort to remain serious falling apart with each word.

Yank turns and looks at Lazy eye Sue. "Yeah Yank, you did.. Left the room with nothing but an ice bucket and a smile. Came back the same way. But the bucket was full." Then she loses it also.

It took the four of them some twenty minutes to collect themselves and their belongings. The whole time, Leisure Suit stood legs spread, hands on his hips outside the open door silent and staring hard into the room.

Byron and Yank have been living out of their suitcases long enough to know you can't check the motel room enough. Byron's rule was always check for forgotten items at least three times.

Pink Darlin and Lazy Eye Sue had gone to get Pink Darlin's Caddy. It was parked out back of the motel. Pink Darlin had not wanted any of her co-workers spotting a company car sitting outside of a Days Inn not two miles from company headquarters. In the meantime, Byron and Yank began to pile their gear outside the motel room. Leisure Suit says nothing. He watches. When Byron and Yank step into the room a third and final time to make sure nothing is left behind, Leisure suit follows them.

"What you boys after now? The towels?"

Yank turns to Leisure Suit. "No, just checking for the third time. It's the rule you know." Byron looks at Yank and smiles. Yank has learned something since he hooked up with Byron.

While Byron and Yank check under the beds and toss the sheets, Leisure Suit follows them. "Boys, I'm gonna have to insist you pay to clean this mess up. This goes way beyond acceptable use of the room. How many people were here last night anyways?

Yank looks at Leisure Suit. "Just the four you rudely disturbed this morning.".

The motel manager puts his hands on his head and turns around one more time. "Uh, I guess $100 cash oughta keep me from dialing the police and cover the extra cleaning charge." His gaze has settled on the table designed for maximum wobble Days Inn calls a desk. Byron's bong is still sitting there. He follows up with, "And you don't get back your room deposit for the week you ain't gonna stay here."

Yank feels that chip beginning to grow on his shoulder again. The two of them had put up $75 each for the week they would be in Dallas waiting for the Bowie tour to kick into gear. They had only been there one night so he begins some mental arithmetic and then stops. Leisure Suit has them by the short hairs and he knows it. He looks at the motel manager sizing him up. Byron grabs Yank's arm. "No problem Mr. Mayfield." He turns to Yank. "Pay the Man, I'll grab the bong."

Glaring at Leisure Suit all done up in his Disco King finest, Yank pulls out his trucker wallet secured to his belt loop with a chain. He opens it, digs into the center and pulls five twenties. He tosses them on the bed. "Let's get out of here"

Byron picks up the bong. "Hold on, can't haul the bong in my truck with water in it. It always spills". He then tips the bong and slowly pours out the stinking juice adding one final stain to the thousands of stains already living on that indifferent carpet.

Yank and Byron walk out. Leisure Suit stares at the new stain.

~*~

Now I feel better. A kind of conclusion or maybe a logical starting point for the rest of the weekend. This story ain't over.

Pink Tony Lamas

2011-12-11T20:47:00.012-05:00

I'd just about given up on Country music less than thirty years old. Relegated my red neck listening time to tunes I grew up to, danced the Cotton Eye Joe to, hopped and kicked up my heels to back in the day of hanging in honky tonks with big butted women. And then while poaching tunes from my kid's computer I discovered Trace Adkins. Suddenly I was transported back to Dallas, Texas 1977..................

Byron turns to the big one wearing the white cowboy hat and pink Tony Lamas. She's got a Lone Star longneck in each hand. He tips back his Gus model Fine Palm Double S Cowboy hat with the horse hair band and looks her up and then down. With her boots on she has to be a half foot taller than Byron.

"Darlin, you got an ass on you like a Forty dollar steer."

I grin stupid cuz we been there holding that bar up awhile and I know Byron's half way to shit faced when he pulls out that line. Full on shit faced if he actually uses it. Pink Darlin looks at me, smiles at Byron and sets her beers down on the bar. She grabs the two of us and we all stagger out to the dance floor.

Next morning I open the one eye not stuck shut. Laying twix and between us two scrawny truck drivers was our big butted Pink Darlin still wearing her Pink Tony Lamas but nothing else. I sit up and gaze across our motel room. On the table designed for maximum wobble Days Inn calls a desk, a bottle of Jack lays tipped over in a pool of it's previous contents. The precious brown liquid drips down onto the indifferent carpet adding one more stain on top of a thousand other stains. I double check myself and yeah, I'm naked. Struggling to my feet, I lean in hard so I can stagger around the bed. Byron is laying on his stomach with his head hanging off the edge of the mattress.. Under his dangling open lips, a healthy deposit of drool adds another stain to the collection of stains on that indifferent carpet. Pink Darlin is on her back, mouth open and the most god awful racket is coming out of her mouth. I figure a woman with lungs that big is bound to make some noise, so I move on. Byron looks like a child laid out next to her.

Mingling stenches of hooch, sweaty sex and dirty bong water make my stomach gurgle. It performs a small flip, immediately followed by a bigger flip telling me I better hit the head and make it quick. Vague memories of giant Tex Mex burritos wolfed down between the bar and the motel cause me to grab the trash can with the plastic liner on my way to the can.

Focusing on the agonizing pleasure of purging the sin I relished and wallowed in a few hours ago, I don't notice the shower running. I'm busy. When the water turns off and the curtain opens I pull my head out of the trash can. Then I remember. I wipe my chin and I grin. It's Lazy Eye Sue, Pink Darlin's bony sidekick. Her one eye is focused somewhere over my head and to the left. The one that counts has a twinkle in it when it looks at me.

"Looks like you could use a shower Yank." Lazy Eye Sue turns the water back on and I jump in.

~*~

Yeah, not much real shit kickin music after 1983. Course I was married by then. I had to give up Honky Tonkin and carousin to music that goes best with copious amounts of beer..........and big butted women..

Trace Adkins- his original "Hony Tonk Badonkadonk"

Trace and Souja Boy - a remix bound to irritate the red neck in everyone. I kinda like it.

_____________________________________________

This embellished memory is but brief taste of that two day binge. It would be another 36 hours before any of us calmed down. Layovers like this were common experiences for SHOWCO drivers while they waited for another Rock n Roll tour to go out. I was twenty five and single. Every waking moment not driving I spent looking for a good time.

Pink Darlin was a mid level manager at Mary Kay Cosmetics and drove a company Cadillac. It was Pink. I never once saw her without something pink on her person - maybe some earrings, a pin, those damn pink boots. Pink was part of her life day in, day out. Her and Lazy Eye Sue became our good friends. After that weekend, I didn't have to stay at Days Inn when I was back in Dallas.

Keep it 'tween the ditches................................................

Where's the White People?

2011-12-10T22:37:00.042-05:00

I ran across the video below over to Reality Zone. It is a report on the current state of affairs in Motown. What struck me while viewing it was not the financial trouble Detroit is having. That has been an ongoing problem for like forever. It was the video itself.

The news voice, a pleasant sounding woman with a Brit accent, tells us the population back in the hey day of American dominance in the auto industry was around two million. Factories churned out cars, mills baked and bent metal, and Detroit existed happily as a show piece of American economic power.

Now the population of Detroit hovers around 700,000 and is close to being declared DOA. The video is shot as the current residents go about their day. There are moments in the city council room. There are moments at the bus stops, there are shots of pedestrians on the streets.

Maybe I missed it, but I saw absolutely no white people.............until a snippet was inserted of the recent Dodge commercial exalting some high end cruising gas eater. Who is behind the wheel of this over priced petroleum guzzling machine as it winds through the byways and highways of Detroit? Yeah, that's right, a white guy looking all cool and hip with his hand draped at the wrist over the top of the steering wheel.

The white people have left Detroit. That says more about where this country is headed than anything else I can think of. Those who could leave have left. Those who can't leave are stuck with the mess left behind.

And to add insult to injury, this video was put together by al jazeera. So this image of an America in decline is being downloaded, uploaded, reloaded throughout the Muslim world. Not the image we want to project when we visit their part of the planet with our guns, tanks, and ammo. The smart ones in our enemy camps know that all they have to do is wait and we will burn ourselves to the ground. Can anyone say Ho Chi Minh?

Later...................................................................
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Top image from Dark Passage

Labels

2011-12-09T20:04:00.006-05:00

People love labels. We humans seem to want to label everything. We put labels on clothes, on pillows, on ourselves and on other people. We do not seem to care if the labels we assign ourselves or each other fit into the definition of what that label originally meant. We do not seem to care what someone else labels themselves if we have decided on a label for them we like instead. You are not a Conservative, you are a Fascist. You are not a Liberal, you are a Communist or maybe a socialist. Seems those two have become unfairly and inextricably entwined with each other because like our joy at mixing metaphors, we just love mixing labels.

Take Libertarians. I have nothing against Libertarians. The problem is I have never seen one. I have never talked with one. I have never run over one. I have conversed with people who claim to be Libertarians. But it always seems that their belief system falls a tad short of the definition of a Libertarian. But they have solved that by conveniently splitting up the notion into a smorgasbord of varying and watered down versions of the original.

Most of us have no clue what these labels originally meant, because all of them seem to be malleable ideals that can be manipulated to mean anything we want them to. I have given up trying to sort out what someone is other than their sack of ideals hangs left or hangs right. They can call themselves or me anything they want, but what they are does not usually or comfortably fit within the parameters of the label they have chosen.

I won't pretend I am any better than anyone else regarding labels. I can label with the best of them. But what I won't do is label myself, as it seems I always get it wrong. I prefer to go through life being whatever anyone claims I am. I admit that I tend to be labeled a Liberal Loser most of the time. But there have been times when my liberalism was not enough for the crew I was hanging with and words like Winger were flung in my direction. I have been called an Atheist, yet I believe in a higher being or committee of beings. I have been called a Yankee when in the south and a Reb when in the north. It seems everyone knows what I am but me. And that pisses me off.

I am not pissed that others label me. I am just angry I cannot seem to get comfortable in anyone's camp, religious, political, or civic. Not a single group out there makes me feel at home. Never have and I assume never will. I grew up that way.

I'd love nothing better than to be a liberal, but well I think owning guns is fine and I still view Goldwater kindly and the over the top Left wing agenda of PC can really chafe my naughty bits.

Being Conservative would be nice, but the kind of false Conservatism being foisted upon us currently does not work for me. Remember my fondness for Goldwater.

I once considered being an anarchist. I even had long winded discussions with a self avowed anarchist who did his best to live up to the label. My problem is I do not have the optimistic view of human nature it would take to get behind Anarchy. I believe in private property. I believe in the rule of law. If for no other reason to control the loose dogs like me and much worse that walk the surface of the planet. Most of us need boundaries beyond which there should be serious penalties for crossing. Grant you I think most of our self inflicted boundaries are unnecessary. but there needs to be some. Regardless of what people might think, we do not live in Utopia. So Anarchy is out.

What about Libertarianism you say? Wouldn't that fit the bill? Nah. Because then I would be lumping myself in with a group that has no clue what they are either but came up with a label just because they needed one.

All this self recrimination, self examination and self flagellation is but beating a dead dog. It is a waste of time to anguish what I am when what I think I am, others always have a different opinion. But I think I have finally figured out what I am and whether others see me this way I do not care. I am from now on and even before, a card carrying Contrarian. At least I will be as soon as I print up some cards.

The card I hand out will have printed:

Religious Freedom

2011-12-08T20:44:00.008-05:00

So yesterday I blogged my disdain for those who would inject specific "traditional values" into our lives whether we wanted them or not. Again I feel the need to offer up some kind of counter to my previous post. Neither side of this debate is guilt free when it comes to wanting to shove their values down our throat.

The Tim Tebow hoopla. I don't care one way or the other about Tim Tebow. I wish him well unless he is playing my Pats, then the gloves are off. But I have no opinion of him wearing his faith on his sleeves, under his eyes or his tendency to drop to bended knee and thank the almighty for that touchdown pass. He has the right to do so, period.

I find his on the field religious displays no more obnoxious or less obnoxious than some of the other silly crap NFL players pull. The end zone dances, the chest thumping, the over the top WWF type displays of manly behavior make me smile. Guys can be such idiots. Tim Tebow included. It's part of the show.

I watch football to watch football. The extraneous displays I usually pay no attention to. Why can't the whiners of the secular kind do the same? They tolerate the jive ass stupid dances. They scream their support when their line backer thumps his chest after a sack. Why all the panty bunching over a guy who wants everyone to know he is a God fearing man like my neighbor and the forty foot cross he erected in his front yard?

Like it or not, Tim Tebow's and my neighbor's right to broadcast their faith is equal to someone's right to not remove their hat when the flag is raised or lowered. If we are going to insist on calling ourselves a free society, then we need to tolerate harmless and personal displays of that freedom. Tim Tebow may have another agenda by broadcasting his religious beliefs for all to see. And maybe he doesn't. Regardless, it is nothing to get upset about.
________________________________

An afterthought and a good reason why I have no right to criticize jocks for stupid ball field antics.:

I was fiercely opposed to the war in Vietnam during my college days. I was also a jock who played lacrosse for Towson State University in Towson, Maryland. One of our games conflicted with a huge march on DC some 60 miles away. Sad that I could not go, I decided to show my solidarity with the cause by wearing an anti war head band around my lacrosse helmet.during the game. My coach shot me dirty looks, but said nothing and even played me. As I was mostly a defensive middy, my specialty was going in and beating the crap out of the opposing players. I lived to hit.

So here I am wearing a headband that tells everyone I am into Peace Love Dove Groovy Man and by the second half I have already been penalized a couple of times, Cost the team one and a half minutes. Thankfully the team we were playing were chumps and couldn't score. There was one middy on the other team who was better at illegal checks than I was. He had gotten more cheap shots in on me than I had on him. He had not been caught and I had. I was some pissed off. With ten minutes left in the game we are completely away from the play. The ball was being nancied back and forth between some wimpy attackmen. This guy chokes up on his stick and jabs me hard in the stomach knocking the wind out of me. No ref saw it. Once I gathered myself and enough air in my lungs, I went after the guy, swinging my stick and beating the bejesus out of him. The ref did see that. I was ejected from the game and well, my nickname on the team from then on was "Peace".

Traditional Values

2011-12-07T20:30:00.058-05:00

Tom Harper over to "Who Hijacked Our Country" wrote a post about Obama and his Presidential condemnation of world wide gay discrimination. Pop over to see what it's all about. I have another bone to pick regarding something I read in his post.

The catch phrases used by one side to beat down the other side get very old after awhile. I would think the firebrands would hire someone to freshen up the rhetoric. Of course the political suitors have no regard for the intelligence of their audience. The audience apparently does not mind. So why should I whine about it? I guess it is because every time I hear certain words in certain combinations over and over again I get a little irritated which can, if I am exposed too many times within a short enough period of time, make me go slightly bonkers and rip off a rant here instead of stomping out back to my neighbor's house with my chainsaw to cut down that damn 40 foot cross he erected to let everyone know he is a God fearing man.

Just how is it we have allowed a certain segment of the population to define what our "traditional values" are? Because we just do not care. It is easier to hitch a ride on a bandwagon than to think for ourselves. Traditional Values are not some specific list cast in stone we should all bend our will to. Traditional Values change with ethnicity, religious background, regional background, the list is endless. Yet, there are those who would have us believe that the values they cherish should be ours because God likes them.

Here is the list from the Traditional Values Coalition

Promoting religious liberty and a free society;
Uncovering wasteful spending in Washington;
Championing Judeo-Christian values in the public square;
Protecting traditional marriage and family as the cornerstone of society;
Securing the Constitution against the growing threat of Islam and Shariah law;
Defending human life from its earliest moments to natural death; and
Ensuring the economic security of future generations of Americans as a moral issue.

Their first goal is a righteous goal. But then several values that follow do not fit. They want to promote religious liberty, yet it appears that only pertains to Jews and Christians. They claim to want to live in a free society, yet would limit who can marry who. In my opinion, the "Traditional Values" crowd are a bunch of self serving hypocrites whose only "tradition" has been for years to attempt to impose their set of values on my life through legislation.

Tradition has its place. I respect the value of tradition as it applies to how we form our moral codes. But to insist that one groups traditional value system be used govern the actions of a population as diverse as ours, it will only create division and anger. The co-opting of the term is but another way a certain political population is seeking to control us. And frankly I think much of what is on their list of values is counterproductive to our health as a nation struggling to keep up with the rest of the World. Focusing on them only takes time and effort away from tasks that are so much more important.

But this crowd and the GOP who adopted their platform have spent the last year wasting precious time and resources introducing:

44 bills on abortion
99 bills on religion
71 bills on family relationships
36 bills on marriage
67 bills on firearms/gun control
522 bills on Taxation - most which were to reduce taxes
445 on Government investigations

In the meantime, we have a population struggling harder each day to keep afloat, find work, and make a reasonable effort to find a comfortable life. Not much in the above list comes close to really addressing the immediate problems our country is facing. There's your traditional values at work. What a joke.

Later........................................................................
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Thanks to Tom Harper and YELLOWDOG GRANNY for firing me up

The Haunted House

2011-12-06T19:27:00.036-05:00

A man of means and importance dies unjustly and what happens? Legends begin, lies become facts, and things start bumping around in the night.

Many ghost stories we read about are the creations of writers who wish to entertain us through fictional renderings of the terrors we all think up from time to time. But many ghost stories are born from factual events.

Such is the case of a Great great great great , not sure how many greats - Grandfather of mine. He was legally hanged on trumped up charges in 1788 and not long after locals began to claim his ghost still wandered the family home he had built. It is a real house that once had a husband, a wife and 12 children pass in and out on a daily basis. Eventually though, the saga of John Roberts lll overwhelmed it's reality and it joined the ranks of local legend in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia.

Naturally a well built house such as this one was not going to sit empty. Many families lived there over the years. I am hoping to find out if any relatives other than John lll lived there.

Every so often another tidbit is added to the legend.

~ Things in the house rearrange themselves overnight.

~ A man passing by supposedly heard a voice say, "This house is haunted".
OR - He wrote this as he approached the house, "Its Haunted they say."

~ Workers fixing something in the attic claimed to have felt an icy breeze envelope them and it was not winter outside.

~ Some residents have claimed to hear footsteps from time to time.

Of course no legend or ghost story would be complete without flat out fabrications like:

~ John Roberts was hanged in front of his house by an angry mob and buried beneath the hanging tree.

~ John Roberts had mixed ground glass in with the flour he sold to the American Soldiers.

~John Roberts actually escaped through a tunnel in his basement.

And so it goes. Classic tricks from the house haunting bag of tricks. Truth becoming what we make it out to be.

The house, somewhat modified, is still there and people live in it. The picture below shows it as it was in the year 2000.

Later..............................................................

The Traitor or "Respublica v. John Roberts" - A diifferent perspective - Kinda

2011-12-05T19:34:00.044-05:00

First of all I would have rather been related to John Roberts, the pirate. And I guess it is possible there is a connection. He came from Wales and my family came from Wales at the same time he was an up and coming Pirate of fame and ill repute. Apparently there were too many Roberts in Wales. It must have been damn confusing.

Instead of the pirate I have to settle for having a traitor to the Revolution in my past. Hardly as romantic as being related to a pirate who dies with his sword in hand and veins in his teeth. But then my relative was hanged*. That's kinda cool. It is also very cool that according to one historian, Williard Sterne Randall, it was the trial of John Roberts that caused Benedict Arnold to go public with his opposition to the radical Whigs and their lust to go after Tories. Had he not publicly supported clemency for the Loyalists, his name may never have been inextricably entwined with the word "traitor".

They say History is the final judge of an event, a person's legacy, of anything that happened too long ago for any live witnesses to corroborate or deny. I think that is bullshit. I have now read many articles and treatments of this first trial of treason by Americans of the Revolutionary War. Each one seems objective and uses the same facts from the public record, but they come up with differing conclusions. How is that the final judgement?

It is not. It just reinforces my contention that history is up to the eye of the beholder. So in fairness to whoever might consider being fair a noble endeavor, I offer a slightly different twist on my namesake John Roberts lll.

Once I found the first couple of historical perspectives on my relative John Roberts lll, I felt that there was enough evidence to suggest he had been treated unfairly. I still think he was, but now I wonder if he might not have asked for what happened to him.

I already gave you the background in the post, "The Traitor". John Roberts lll was a successful miller and landowner in pre-Revolutionary Pennsylvania. He was a Quaker so he would not take sides in the unpleasantness that made up the Revolution. He was hanged* as a traitor. My first version has him an unwilling ally of the British. According to the new information, true or not, he did indeed throw his hat in with the British. A calculating man, he went with the group he saw coming out on top.

The events and circumstances of the Revolution were not the simple tale we were forced to memorize as children. No war is ever that simple. The only indisputable things of a war are the physical events that happened. The reasons and repercussions are a matter of opinion by those who interpret the events after the fact.

To really begin to understand the possible reasons of why my umpteenth great grandfather was hanged*, I needed to look into the politics of the time.

The revolution did not enjoy universal support from the colonists. The support varied depending on which colony and which area one might visit. Unlike the leaders in Massachusetts and Virginia who had secured political control of their colonies early on, Pennsylvania was a different story. Leading up to the Revolution the Penn political party enjoyed political control. Being mostly Quakers and very wealthy, they were not so quick to embrace the Revolutionaries. Ben Franklin, also a Quaker, was the only leader from their party who jumped on the rebellion bandwagon. He worked tirelessly to usurp their strangle hold on Pennsylvania.

The lack of support for the Revolution in Pennsylvania caused the Whig radicals to import help from outside to bring the Keystone State in line with the goals of the Rebellion. Once these out of state thugs had control of Pennsylvania, they were ruthless. Initially, there was no representative governing body, just a council that issued edicts and then proceeded to act on them. Loyalists were gathered up, their properties confiscated, and many were jailed.

More than one rendition of what Roberts did and did not do to deserve being the first traitor legally hanged* agrees he was a willing ally of the British. He was indeed a volunteer who made money off the British supplying them with food, clothing, almost anything but the weapons of war. I could argue that he was certainly not the only colonist to do so. The Rebellion hardly enjoyed unanimous support. But the fact is he was singled out and hanged* for a variety of reasons. Consolidating political power. Initiating the rule of law in what could only be described as a land void of law at the time. And I would guess that his wealth was coveted and dispersing it among the relatively poor Whigs was but another spoil of war. Add into this his Quaker religion and it makes sense the mostly Presbyterian Whigs found themselves justified to take what they wanted.

So it seems that no matter what is put down as the final judgement of a man, the story is never complete with all the pertinent facts and forces that cause a man to hang by the neck until dead. John Roberts also helped American prisoners while he was in Philadelphia, providing food and blankets and moral support. He turned himself in after the British left Philadelphia without having to be hunted down. He thought his actions were just. Many people of influence thought he was being railroaded. Even Judge Thomas McKean, who presided over his trial sought clemency. Only 2 of the 12 jurors found him guilty the first round. Only upon being told that clemency would be sought by the court, did they change their verdict. All for naught. The Whig thugs in charge needed an example to restore order and create fear in standing against the new republic. They hanged* him and confiscated his property. It was only 4 years later once the dust settled, the State of Pennsylvania tried to atone for its sins by giving back to his widow some of the vast property Roberts had accumulated over the years.

In his final verdict, Judge Thomas McKean told John Roberts:

"You will probably have but a short time to live. Before you launch into eternity, it be¬hooves you to improve the time that may be allowed you in this world: it behooves you most seriously to reflect upon your past conduct; to repent of your evil deeds; to be incessant in prayers to the great and merciful God to forgive your manifold transgressions and sins; to teach you to rely upon the merit and passion of a dear Redeemer, and thereby to avoid those regions of sorrow – those doleful shades where peace and rest can never dwell, where even hope cannot enter. It behooves you to seek the [fellowship], advice, and prayers of pious and good men; to be [persistent] at the Throne of Grace, and to learn the way that leadeth to happiness. May you, reflecting upon these things, and pursuing the will of the great Father of light and life, be received into [the] company and society of angels and archangels and the spirits of just men made perfect; and may you be qualified to enter into the joys of Heaven – joys unspeakable and full of glory!"

So see. Nothing historical is as it seems two plus centuries later. Nor is it so clear as to be straight forward when it is happening.. Always question the "official line". Many times, it is not how it went down.

Later.............................................................
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* Edit on the proper use of "hung" and "hanged" - courtesy of one of the Pig Brothers.

The Traitor

2011-12-04T18:36:00.107-05:00

Rummaging around my ancestral past has gotten very interesting.

My middle name will now be a constant reminder of my relationship to a traitor in my past. My middle name will also remind me that Life is not fair, it never has been, nor will it ever be.....fair. Life is a crap shoot and no matter how covered we think our bases are, events can combine to ruin anyone's day.

Of course like so many tales from 335 years ago, the truth or facts are often muddled as they pass down from one family member to another. But the facts of this story are indisputable. Only the reasons are muddled and mysterious. It is a fact that 3 signers of the Declaration of Independence tried to get his death sentence commuted. And some years after he was hanged until dead, his wife had what property that had not been sold returned to her and she was provided with a small pension courtesy of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I assume this was the government's way of saying, "Oops, we screwed up. Sorry about that."

This part of my journey into the family past began with the picture above. It is photograph of a pen & ink drawing one of my forebears, Charles Hamlet Roberts drew of the Roberts Mill near Philadelphia. He drew it at age 17. Kid had some talent.

I grew up with this picture hanging prominently in whatever house we lived in. It now hangs in mine. Hanging on each side of it are photos of my Great Great Grandfather Spencer Roberts and my Great Great Grandmother Elisabeth Taylor Roberts. From what I can gather, Spencer might be the traitor's grandson. I have not been able to fill in the void of about 60 years between Spencer and the traitor. But Spencer ran the Mill, a strong indication of direct lineage.

I googled "Roberts Mill, Pennsylvania". One link lead to another, lead to another until I eventually found the following story.

In yesterday's post, I mentioned that one set of ancestors, the Spencers, had set up shop in America in the mid 1600's. The Roberts also settled here in the 1600s. 1682 or 83 to narrow it down. John Roberts left Wales and acquired a sizable piece of land directly from William Penn who essentially owned Pennsylvania at the time. Penn was a well to do Englishman and a Quaker. He envisioned creating a Quaker paradise out of the sight and mind of the intolerant attitudes and laws of England. Religious freedom it seems is what brought the Roberts to this country. Making money was what brought the Spencers. Regardless, both considered America as their way to a better life.

John Roberts built the second grist mill to be erected in Pennsylvania. Once he had it running, he built a solid business through hard work at the mill and farming his rather large land holding. He had one son, John Roberts ll who took over when he died. John the Second was not a healthy man. Less than a year after he married, he died. Four months later John Roberts lll was born

John Roberts lll was the prosperous one.. Under his stewardship, the family business blossomed. He acquired more land, more mills, farmed more land, ground more grain, milled more lumber, and the Roberts became one of the wealthiest families in Pennsylvania at that time. Naturally success like that created frictions with neighbors, competitors, and any number of people who would covet what John lll had built. Add in the fact that he was a Quaker and it follows that he might have made enemies.

During this time of business expansion, the Colonists were becoming more dissatisfied with what many considered the overbearing control of the King of England. They revolted. Everyone knows or should have an inkling about this war. If not, then go back to school ferchrisakes. Many of the Quakers tried to stay out of the fray as a main tenet of their religion was refusal to participate in war.. They were anti-slavery, did not believe in drinking alcohol, and swearing oaths was out of the question.

John lll was fed up with marauding British and Colonial armies sweeping through his area and taking what they wanted. I am guessing being a businessman, he figured they ought to pay for what they took. So he heads to British controlled Philadelphia and petitions the commander there to ante up or stop taking his shit. He was pressed into service by the British and forced to guide some of their patrols as they went on foraging missions. He did not volunteer and was released from their custody when the British left Philadelphia.

The British finally surrendered at Yorktown, went home to England leaving a mess behind for the Colonists to make sense of. The tumultuous period right after the Revolutionary War was full of sleaze bags among the new Americans taking advantage of their own. John Roberts was accused of being a Tory by a man he had had a land dispute with. He was arrested in a sweep that rounded up over a hundred people. Only he and one other man were actually held for trial. I am not sure about the other guy, but my namesake was hanged on November 4, 1788. Hanged even though almost a thousand people had signed clemency petitions including American military officers and three signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Immediately after he died, much of his confiscated land and properties were sold secretly to several of his "competitors" from the same area. Eventually some of it was returned to his widow in 1792 along with a small pension to help carry her through to her death.

And this is what I learned yesterday about my family in between bike tune ups and phone calls on a typical off season Saturday screwing the pooch. The Internet is really a great tool for a fool like me.

More to come................................................

Lost Treasure

2011-12-03T14:13:00.035-05:00

Maybe it is that I am no longer young and numb, having worn out the young leaving just the numb. Maybe it is because I find myself less connected to the Present world as it spins by me. Or maybe it is because two people, one on the west coast and one on the east coast independently contacted me within two weeks of each other. Both were inquiring about my family's past. Regardless, I find myself becoming fascinated by the chain of events and people who participated in them creating the flow of history that has me playing a bit part here in Maine some 350 years later.

First it was my cousin on my mom's side. I opened my email one morning and there was "Ancestry.com" notifying me that I had been added to a family tree - the Faulkners of San Francisco. I located my cousin whom I had not seen for over 25 years and set him straight on a couple of family miscues on the tree. He had my grandfather right on my father's side but not my grandmother. He also had questions regarding what I might know about the Faulkners as passed down from my mom. Unfortunately, I had precious little as it turned out.

Then yesterday, a journalism student from Pennsylvania contacted me through the Acton Library. She was researching my grandfather, Dr. Robert Shuter Macrum of Sewickley, PA who had died in 1913 at the age of 45. A professor had taken her class to a cemetery in Germantown, PA and told them to pick a headstone and do a biography. She picked my grandfather's. Again I was not of much help other than supplying her with some images and a few kernels of history I had managed to collect by just being around family gatherings at the right time. I actually learned more from her than she did from me.

It appears that one branch of my family has been here since the mid 1600s and were original lessees of land from William Penn. It also appears I have noble Brit blood flowing in my veins and she found a history dating back to the 1000's. That's 1000 years ago. My mind is blown now.

I found out two of my ancestors died in the Neshaminy Flood of 1683 that swept through Bucks County, PA. Their two sons, having been orphaned, were sent back to Barbados to live with relatives until they came of age. One at least returned to try and reclaim his family's land. He had two sons and died in 1705 in or around Philadelphia. He bequeathed his two sons the princely sum of 20 pounds apiece once they reached the age of 21. They had a long wait. They were about ages 4 and 6 when he died. Apparently he was a merchant of some kind as the rest of his will was about dispensing with a barrel of rum, some bolts of cloth, beads and other valuable commodities of that era.

I am now bitten with a new quest. We'll see if I have it in me to chase down more of the history of my family. I supposedly have connections to the very area I live in now through my mom's family. It will be interesting to look into.

Later....................................................

Crotch Face Revisits Blogging Etiquette

2011-12-02T08:10:00.016-05:00

I figured it was time to ~~reaquant myself~~ bone up again on the current do's and don'ts of blogging just to see if anything had changed. I googled "Blogging Etiquette" and surprise, surprise, it is still a go to subject when one has nothing else to write about. Not that I have nothing else to write about. Other folks have nothing to write about. Me, well, I can pretty much write about anything, even crap I know nothing about. Like Blogging Etiquette fer instance.

Of the 4.6 million hits that pertained to or mentioned Blogging Etiquette, I visited I guess maybe 5. More than enough to realize that change has happened but nothing really new other than the good form one should practice when Facebook Liking, Tweeting, RSS-ing, and using permalinks. Nothing to do with me I thought. I don't tweet, I don't like Facebook, and what the Hell is RSS and permalinks anyway? If I don't know about them, they must not be a problem.

I only began this investigation after once more fielding some wonderful comments on my timeless post "Wingers with Woodies", the post that keeps on giving. Apparently some of my recent visitors to that post have not read or maybe comprehended some of the basic rules of civilized interactions we bloggers of experience have come to take for granted.

If the basic rules I just re-read are to be followed, it is bad form to call the writer of the post a "Crotch Face" or "Mac-scum", or one of my favorites, "Idiot". As I don't mind being called anything, I understand that many people out there get all flustered when being assaulted with abusive language. So when I visit someone's blog, I do try to fit in with the ongoing atmosphere. If it is a no holds barred blog, I hold no bars. If it is a polite, don't want to piss anyone off blog, I keep my ever ready nasty comments to myself. With this in mind, I have to say that no one who made derogatory comments on the Winger post was out of line. I started it and deserved every comment I received. I can swim with scum or dance with the civilized folk. And based on my profile picture, I can understand someone confusing my face for a crotch. And as to being an Idiot, well, I proudly go where smarter men fear to tread.

With all this information and data sifted, collated, and parked in the right spots, I continued my investigation into what polite bloggers do. I especially liked the one hint - "Do not be afraid to delete a derogatory comment. It is your blog and a derogatory comment can often undermine the conversation from more on topic comments."

"Hmm", I thought and looked at the ceiling. I noticed one of the ceiling tiles was cracked and uh, oh where was I? Oh Yeah, "Hmm", I thought. "It is indeed my blog. I can do anything I want." I choose to leave the nasty comments because they point up just how insane people get when one of their heroes is slighted. If I am going to post obnoxious posts, I should be stand up and publish obnoxious comments also. To only let the choir sing would be dishonest. If I pissed someone off then I should let everyone know it. It's the least I can do.

Keep it 'tween the ditches.......................................

Anonymous Said

2011-12-01T09:41:00.000-05:00

Below is a comment posted to my "Winger With Woodies" post yesterday. I wrote the post almost 2 years ago. I liked this comment so much, I thought I would share. The comment is not even close to being on topic. But I assume whoever wrote this feels much better now. I live to serve.

"How do you know a liberal is lying? Answer - when their lips are moving! Those on the left have no class, none, nada, zip. Your blog is just another pile of garbage designed to appeal to the senseless mob. You are in a word - pathetic.

Dana Perino has more class in one strand of her blonde hair than you and those like you could ever hope to accumulate in your pathetic lifetimes.

Ugh, you all make me so sick. WHy don't you all fly down to Cuba and hang out with your fellow leftists. While you're there, check out the poverty, the homelessness, the depravity, and the helplessness. That's what the left would like to bring to the USA. While you're there, check out the void between the have's and the have-not's in Cuba. You bitch and whine about income gaps between the rich and the middle class here, wait til you get a load of the divide in your commie mate's backyard.

Food for thought, loser. While I will readily condemn you for your ignorance, Dana Perino never will. She has too much stuff for the likes of you. You don't deserve her benefit of the doubt."

How should I react to this? I mean, how should I respond once I stop laughing. This person was obviously serious. And if not, they did a damn fine job of imitating the "Free Republic" Freeper persona. I used to dice it out with mental giants like this back in the day of newsgroups in the 1990s. Any thin skin I may have still had was beefed up by that experience.

So is snarky and sarcastic the way to go? Or do I treat this comment seriously and address the specific complaints and accusations? Or maybe I should point out the fact that the comment has absolutely nothing to do with my post? Hmm. What to do? If nothing else I should thank them for giving me something to post today.

I'll come up with something.

A Great Man's Downfall

2011-11-30T09:40:00.002-05:00

I think I have finally figured it out. It had been bothering me for quite awhile. But after stumbling upon the photo to the Right, the pieces began to fall into place.

First some background.............

He was raised to be a good Conservative in a family whose Conservative values stretched back through the years more than a few generations. His family affluence provided him with the nurturing atmosphere of privilege and he wanted for nothing. All that was expected of him was to go forth into the World and do his best to, as historian Gregory Schneider put it, "Defend Western civilization from the challenges of modernist culture and totalitarian governments".

He went to all the right schools, met all the right people (Conservatives of course), married, had children, and proceeded to find his place in the World. It was determined fairly early on he had no nose for business. What else was there for a good Conservative to put his mind to but politics. After all, the way had been paved by his family and their years long involvement in National politics.

He started out small in a big state. His success there impressed the movers and shakers entrusted with bringing America back to its roots of God fearing Conservatism. They saw in him a chance to turn around 8 years of Liberal sabotage at the hands of a semi pink philanderer. They pushed him, prodded him and through creative vote counting courtesy of his brother, managed to place him at the helm of the USS America. May God shed his light on thee.

So what happened? Why, with all the pedigree, all the support, all the connections, did this once fine Conservative become a pariah in his own movement? Instead of decreasing the size of government, he allowed it to grow. Instead of pinching pennies and keeping the deficit under control, he invaded other countries and spent money like a good Democrat. Oh he tried to keep up appearances by appearing somewhat dim and disconnected like many of his peers seem to love. But something had happened behind the scenes. Some insidious moment, some Left Wing influence, some evil from the progressive side had infiltrated his soul.

When I came upon the above photo, I figured it out. He was seduced by one of the darker evils from the Left. He became an avid cyclist. He didn't just ride a bike for the positive polling a kodak moment on a bike might bring. The man fell in love with riding a bike. And to make matters worse, he did not stop at the almost okay anal retentive roadie stage, like so many of his peers seemed to think was acceptable. He became a mountain biker. A type of cycling whose roots go directly to the hippie dippy pot smoking whackoes of Marin County in California. It is a known fact that all mountain bikers either smoke pot and think war is stupid, or they have smoked pot in the past and don't mind if others do. Even if they support war now, at one time, they did not. In other words, mountain bikers embody the worse kind of Liberalism - Live and let live. They have been known to get drunk or stoned and ride naked. They will often pull off the trail to share a doob and a clif bar. They use terms right out of the 1960s and 70s - Dude, Stoked, Gnarly - all words of subversion, every one.

So folks and whoever else might catch this, please find in your hearts some compassion for this man. What he thought was but an innocent diversion and healthy activity was actually a commie conspiracy to undermine his efforts to turn back the clock to when America was greater than even it thought it was. Forgive him his fall from grace and understand now how sneaky those Liberals really are.

Another Grey Morning in Maine

2011-11-29T10:14:00.000-05:00

With so many bummer categories and incidents of human stupidity fighting for my attention, I just could not choose a single one to get pissed about this morning. I decided I would not get pissed. Instead I ripped and burned some music from my daughters old computer which I am using while my steroid infused electronic personal assistant is in rehab.

My daughter used this computer during her Grad school days at UNC. Once out of UNC, she delegated it to the parental warehouse here in Acton. Her laptop and Ipod became her conduit to the World. So I sit here occasionally looking out into the grey morning and listen to music I am not familar with. I gave up trying to weed through the music for music I might like. I just picked something, ripped it, burned it, and put off any decision regarding quality for a later date. I have always operated on the idea that there is no such thing as bad music. Music is either music I like or music I don't. And even if I don't like it, I respect it enough to include it in my collection. I never know when the urge to listen to Tammy Wynette or maybe Guy Lombardo might swing by.

Right now I am listening to Incubus. Specifically the album "Morning View". Very nice. Seems to fit the greyness that has enveloped Acton, Maine this day. But then a grey morning is always a good music day. The right tune can make the grey go away or turn it black. All depends what one might be looking for.

Bright sunny days on the other hand place more specific demands on the music I pick. I have to be in a very shitty mood to punch up Morrisey or some of his Life sucks musical brethren on a bright sunny day. My favorite bright sunny tune ever is Delibes' ballet, "Sylvia". Unfortuinately I do not have it on disc. All I have are the memories of what the overture did to the hairs on my neck, to the guts inside me, to the energy source that makes me me. It has been at least a couple of years since I placed it on the old turntable and played it. I will have to score a good orchestral rendition on CD.

So this is my day so far. Sitting here tuned in to music I do not know and trying to put off facing the rest of the day. To that end, I have searched out the Overture on the Internet. Once more, Good can still be found out there when one takes the time to look for it.

Enjoy.....................................

And then this..................

The 4:00 AM Rube

2011-11-27T17:02:00.011-05:00

I blame not really being awake yet..............Yeah that's it, I was not quite awake when the free offer of a $250 gift card floated across the Boston Herald web page. Geez, I had not even finished my first cup of coffee. Anyone who knows me and even those who don't, should at least assume I am less than useless without at least 2 cups of Joe in my system first thing in the morning.

When I am coherent and my brain has all two cylinders churning their normal 200 RPM's, I don't fall for those gotcha moments that lurk behind every website waiting to pounce on naive and stupid Internet travelers. But half awake, my guard was down and when the flashing large font "You have been chosen to receive a $250 gift card from Walmart - Just fill out our short survey" page opened, almost on automatic or maybe seduced by the flashing lights and weakened financial situation I find myself in most days of the week, I punched it up.

So I just lost 30 minutes of my life answering questions and refusing to take part in the "special offers". For a buck or less, I could lose weight, whiten my teeth, get my credit score sent to me daily, join any number of shopping clubs, get repair insurance, car insurance, life insurance, and pet insurance. There were offers for free pet vitamins, human vitamins, and pills to keep me hard now that Life was getting soft. For free I could sign up to replace hair where it no longer grew, remove hair where it grew now and never did before, or just get some chemical stripper that would remove hair with some kind of hygenic "scorched earth" process.

Like a stroll down the midway of a second rate carnival, I had hawkers and snake oil salesmen assaulting me from every side. All of them promised me a life free from drudgery, toil, and shame. I assume the ladies would once again find me attractive, the men would stand in awe, and animals of all kinds would heel and obey once I had paid for the secret commands.

That first cup of coffee finally settled into my system. I woke up enough to understand what was going on. All of these free offers were only free for a short "time trial" and please give us your credit card number so that in 30 days, we can charge you umpteen dollars a month for something you didn't want or need but because you were a bonehead at 4:00 AM, we now own your sorry ass.

I quickly closed all windows and hunkered down behind the desk..................Let me know when they're gone.

The Unsympathetic Hero

2011-11-26T20:19:00.000-05:00

All it took was one small cough. I felt the twinge and knew immediately I was going to.................drop to my knees. You see I have been there, done that so many times in the last 25 years, I know better than to resist. My only problem was I had organized the trip and marketed it to enough people that I felt obligated to go. Besides, I had not been to a "Turkey Burner Ride" in years and I wanted to ride with my kid again. Screw my back. I would be okay once we started riding, right? Riiiiight. Sure, anything you say.

Of course, before I could ride, I had to drive for an hour and a half. That meant an hour and a half of extreme discomfort, my legs were gonna be in pain, the knot in my back would grow to the point that once I hit the parking lot at Massabesic Lake, I would be a crumpled and twisted old fart who probably should have stayed home. Yeah right. The number of rides I have left is growing shorter. So screw my back, I'm going for a ride.

This was the 17th Annual Turkey Burner Ride sponsored by a tight knit cycling group called FOMBA (Friends Of Massabesic Bicycling Association). For 17 years they have had this event the day after Thanksgiving. I have seen as many as 700 people there and as few as a couple of hundred. But rain or shine, they still show up. It is a pay to play event with the money going to a local Rescue Squad.

The first eight or so miles was rolling flat double track with some connecting pavement. I was doing fine. Then the group of four I was with landed at the Hot Chocolate Stop.Two hundred yards down the road was the split where the Heroes went right to taste 15 miles of single track and the regular folk went left to finish back at the parking lot. Sadly, I had brought heroes with me. They went right. Having ridden the single track there before when I used to be heroic, I knew I was in for it. I was not disappointed.

My situation was not helped by the fact that on the day previous, Thanksgiving, I imbibed in more beer than I am used to, ate more sweets than I am used to, and stuffed food of the Thanksgiving kind down my throat like there was no tomorrow. So with an extremely sour stomach, achie head, and a back that was in a constant state of spasm, I entered the single track.

It got interesting right out of the gate. The trail was called the Long Trail. I assumed that it was so named because it never did end. Okay, yeah it ended, but it seemed like it took a life time to unfold. And while it was unfolding, I managed to use body english to my dis-advantage. Every technical spot I would un-weight one wheel or the other, twist this way and, ouch dammit, twist that way until finally back close to where we began this torture I was ready to have someone dig a hole, kick me into it, and maybe cover me with dirt. It wouldn't matter, I would not have noticed either way.

We had our pants full about 17 miles into the total of 27 miles available that day. I hung in and managed to finish with a smile on my face. As I was wolfing down an excellent roast beef sub at some deli somewhere close to our departure point, I realized a painful day in the woods on my bike beat a painful day on the couch, hands down. And I had the opportunity to spin my wheels along side of my daughter's wheels. That alone made whatever discomfort I endured well worth the trip.

Keep it 'tween the ditches.................................................

Send in the Clowns

2011-11-25T21:02:00.000-05:00

Seems I missed some excitement. My NewsMax feed filled me in on what has been happening during the last 24 hour news cycle.

~Obama Man "forgot" to thank God in his weekly radio address devoted this week to Thanksgiving. The conservative tweeters are all a flutter. More proof he really is a Muslim born in Kenya. Everyone knows those Muslims are Godless losers who really worship at Satan's feet.

~ Michelle Bachmann demanded and received an apology from NBC for being insulted as she stepped onto the stage of the Jimmy Fallon Show. Apparently the Godless band played a few bars of Fishbone's "Lyin Ass Bitch" as she walked on stage......................Hmm..................Yeah it was tasteless and all, but if anyone owes anyone an apology, the people of Minnesota owe this nation an apology for electing her in the first place. Her public record however does indicate the song was more of a tribute than a slight.

~The most recent dimwit from Texas, Gov. Perry, is insisting Leon Panetta should resign as Sec/Def in protest over the automatic 500 billion dollar cut in Defense that will go down because the Congressional ~~Stupid~~ Super Committee failed to do it's job and suddenly the cuts that Congress set up will go on automatic. But according to Perry it is Obama's fault. Perry's light burns brighter everyday as the vacuum in his head increases.

Actually, I guess I did not miss much in the last 24 hour news cycle. Just more of the same clowns doing what they do to entertain us.

Later....................................................................

Thanksgiving Eve

2011-11-23T10:41:00.000-05:00

It is the day before Thanksgiving. I would call it Thanksgiving Eve, but for some reason we only allow ourselves two Eves, Christmas and New Years. Regardless, it is the day before Thanksgiving and I sit here in front of a replacemnet computer we had in a box. My recently beefed up, tweaked and highly tuned monster computer pulled a hamstring and is on the inactive list until the team doctor looks it over. So much for more power.

It is 4:20 AM. Snow is beginning to stack up some outside. They were calling for 4 to 8 inches in our area and well, after the last fiasco of getting 20 inches when only 8 inches were predicted, I am not going to be optimistic they got it right this time either. Any hope this very odd warm Fall is going to continue much longer fades with each new inch on the ground.

My daughter came home for Thanksgiving. Instead of our usual 3 person quiet family get together, we will be walking down Sam Page to Brendan and Susan's place. Along with 15 other people, we will sample dishes from all over the neighborhood. We were told to bring appetizer and dessert. I voted for cheesy bars. Bobbi shot me a look. She had other plans. As I am not expected to help make anything, I was not expected to even voice an opinion. I scooted back to my man cave and let her alone.

It is now 10:30 or so AM. I have successfully removed my second snow pile of the season from the driveway. Thankfully the repairs I made to the snow blower at the end of last year seem to be working out. The machine is a beast once again. Only 7 inches this time. So I guess for the 2011/2012 snow season the local meteoroligists are batting 500.

If nothing else, try to forget the madness going on out there and have a gut busting pleasant Turkey Day.

Keep it 'tween the ditches........................................................

United in Disgust

2011-11-21T17:27:00.000-05:00

I have been attempting to keep my mouth shut about the OWS phenomenon. As many people are, I am somewhat confused about their specific objectives. I am guessing they have some, but apparently with the "movement" scattered all over the nation with no clear leader at the head, objectives can be regional gripes that have nothing to do with Wall Street, but more about the final straw closing of the last Widget factory that packed up it's stuff and moved to Asia.

I am a strong supporter of civil unrest when it is warranted. Rioting just to riot like after your favorite team won or lost is stupid and I have no sympathy for some drunk who gets his head bashed in after torching someone's Dodge Pick up. But activities like OWS intrigue me. Along with the recent rise of the Tea Party, we now have two political populations who have decided that this country is not the place they either remember or they do not like the direction it is headed. In that respect, the two, the Tea Party and OWS, are untied by a shared disgust with the status quo.

The age old boys club that has ruled as one but pretended to be from two different neighborhoods is extremely nervous. This makes me smile. This makes me grin. To use a tired word coined and almost ruined, the Establishment is being assaulted. This time not from the just the Left, but from the Right as well. Both sides have legitimate gripes once one takes the time to weed out the bullshit slogans, soundbites, and fictions fabricated and pushed as truth. The Power structure made up of government and the private sector should be on everyone's shit list. Between the two of them they tossed leadership out in favor of pocket lining or securing a stranglehold on the reins of government. Instead of leading us, they have been bleeding us and now they are being shoved into the light of day from both sides...............About time.

Later..................................................................

Dave's House

2011-11-19T21:34:00.001-05:00

So I was checking some pictures I snapped of my friend Dave B's dooryard. Every hunting season, his barn is the barn all the cool locals use to hang their kills prior to hitting the butcher shop to be turned into edible chunks of this or that. This year so far I have counted at least 6 deer, one huge moose, and Water District Dave told me he saw a bear hanging there for a day. Everyone wants to hang their game at Dave B's.

I like Dave. He lets my circle of riding friends use his property to access the trails off the railroad bed out behind his place. Off and on I have tried to get him into riding bikes, but well, it ain't happening. Dave likes to putz around his yard making sure it is well kept, planting huge gardens and of course hanging as many deer as possible during hunting season. Once in awhile I see him strolling up or down Main Street with his significant other. Nice folks, just not into cycling.

I took a few quick shots of the couple of small bucks hanging from the trapeze contraption he has hanging from his hay bale lift. They all came out my usual a tad out of focus, but good enough to make any point I wanted to about Dave, the hip local hunters and life in my small parcel of Maine during November of any year you would care to check.

While deciding which image to head my post about Dave and his deer hanging dooryard, I noticed in the small window next to the barn door, this moose skull staring out towards Main St. I copied the image, cropped it, and what you see at the top was the result.

I am never sure what draws me to some images over others. This one grabbed me for several reasons. The out plumb variety of lines, the rough texture of being slightly out of focus combined with the old barn wood and window. Or maybe it was shape of the skull behind the grid which was wrapped in a contrasting border that interrupted out of plumb verticals. Whatever. I just liked how it turned out. I am sure in the scheme of artistic effort, it rates somewhere between Ho and Hum. I say this because I showed it to Keith when he swung by the bike shop and he said something like, "Cool". It was a lukewarm "Cool".

Once I decided I liked it I had to play with it. Soon I had 5 or 6 copies of it in various shades, light treatment, shadowed hard, or saturated with colors to bring out whatever other cool looks I could drag out of it. After all my dubbing around with it I think I like the original and the sepia one to the left best..

I most likely have used up about all the interest you might have regarding this kodak moment. I figure I ought to close by treating you to the original image I cropped it out of. So enjoy or not. If nothing else, it is a small piece of the reality I live with here in southern Maine. Some things are timeless - Hunting Season in Maine is one of them.

Sugar Plum Fairies, Flags & the Last Commie

2011-11-18T13:14:00.009-05:00

The Sugar Plum Fairy of St. Charles, Missouri has been fired. It's comical on one hand and a sad statement on the other about how tight folks' butts are getting in some parts of this nation. Add in the recent refusal of a bakery to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple tying the knot and I wonder if we are not slipping back into the "Good Ole Days" like so many folks seem to want. The good ole days that also had hidden in the shadows, the bad ole days. Apparently from the two stories, some want them included as well.

Then I read that viewing the US flag can cause one to vote Republican. I have been wondering what the cause was. I knew it had to be something simple and direct. So I stared at one for an hour. Seems a change has come over me............................

I punched up a profile of Canada put together by the BBC. Maybe it was my computer, but all I got was a blank page. I don't think it was my computer. BBC obviously has nothing to say about Canada. Even after reinstalling the Queen as the head of their country, Canada still can't get any respect from the Brits. It's understandable they get no respect from the US. They're our next door neighbors. At least they ain't rowdy and out of control like our neighbors to south are. But man are they boring. Booooooooring. No riots. No drug killings. Just a bunch of ice drivin, tree choppin oil drillin hockey watchin fools who like better beer than we do.

I did not punch up the BBC profile of the US. Now that I have stared the flag down and become a good American and all, I knew anything some wannabe Euro trash media outfit might come up with would be a pack of lies and innuendos. After all, their own history books tell the story of the revolution all wrong. We kicked their wanker butts and some clown with a Sir in front of his name tries to tell me King George lll had other fish to fry and finally just got tired of us "Colonists". Yeah right. Then he goes on to compare England's handling of "the Colonies" to our commie ass kickin crusade in Viet Nam. Shoot. Where does he come up with this crap? We kicked butt in 1776 and again in 1966. As long as more of them die than us, then we win. Right?

I noticed the last Munchkin died. Though I finally grew up to be a burly bad ass American male who had to fight the chicks off with a stick, when I was wee small the Munchkins gave me nightmares. Maybe it was their outfits, their smaller than normal stature, but I think it was their swarming ways and funny voices. Like some surrealistic minature lynch mob all dressed the same, they would surround me and ..........anyway, I figured out why they made me nervous. I think they were all actually commie plants. As evidence, the last Munchkin was not born here. He was from Ucrania, Slavickastan, one of those hammer and sickle countries over there on one side of Europe or the other. Pink as the day he was born.

Maybe now I can sleep at night.
_____________________________________

Not sure where this came from. But stare at the Stars & Stripes for an hour without blinking and see what it does to you.

Change

2011-11-17T13:34:00.000-05:00

I have recently attempted to re-immerse myself into the Blogging World. Now that winter is closing in and my shop has slowed to a crawl, I find my mind has dumped much of the business related concerns and stress. This has left a hole. Left an opportunity to work what's left of my mind on other pursuits.

So I have begun to reacquaint myself with many of my old blogging friends and locate a few new blogs I will visit again in the future. One thing I have noticed after being MIA most of this year is how much slicker and hip many of the blogs I visit have become. The contrast is stark when I always come back to this humble and dusty place I call "Lost in the BoZone". Well with the exception of Randal's blog. His is as dusty and retro grouch as mine is.

As I stated in my last post "Retro-Grouching", I hate change as a rule. I have learned to almost accept change I have no control over. But where I dig my heels in is change where I can have an impact in keeping it at bay. My life is riddled with events and phases where I carried the "Fight Change" banner to levels of useless, just being contrary to be contrary heights of stupidity. My dad always contended that calling someone "hardheaded" was just a nice way of calling them a moron. He refused to call me hardheaded. It was moron or nothing.

So I recognize the issue of being out of the current blog fashion loop. And yeah, my blog could use some gusseying up. But if I am gonna change anything here, I will have to go through a period of agony first. What ifs, what mights, and is it even worth the trouble type anguishing. When I have satisfactorily worn out all the what might be's, I will enter the phase of "forget it and hope the urge goes away". Or maybe it should be called the "if I don't think about it, it doesn't exist" phase.

If the issue or supposed improvement is important enough for a variety of or even a single reason, it will refuse to let me forget it. It will nibble at my coattails, rub back and forth between my legs, or maybe toss a claw filled paw at some dainty body part. Even ole dogs and hard headed fools will take notice if it's painful.

Knowing my tendency to fight change just for shits and giggles and also knowing that eventually I will cave once I have absorbed enough self loathing and critical self recrimination, why don't I save myself and the World at large a lot of trouble by just jumping on board right out of the gate?

I have thought about this and well, altering a life long habit would entail ....yeah that's right, it would mean change. Hmmm. Think I'll forget about it and hope it goes away.

Keep it "tween the ditches....................................
______________________________________________________

If you got this far only after reading the above post, then you realize the image has nothing at all to do with the written words. I thought I'd throw Randal a bone, er, or maybe create one for him.

Retro-Grouching

2011-11-16T07:59:00.001-05:00

So I don't like change. A lot of us don't like change. Even though we all know change happens, many of us still resist. Some even go so far as to wish the past back in our lives.

Lacrosse Sticks - I am still pissed they got rid of the all wooden lacrosse stick. The transition happened back when I was playing the sport in college. All of a sudden the pain I was inflicting on opposing players was cut in half when they forced us to use the wimpy flexible plastic cradle. My favorite check was immediately rendered null and void.

Bicycle Technology - There are entirely too many "innovations" for me to rant about. Suffice it to say I still contend many were useless lily gilders while a very few truly enhanced the cycling experience.

The DH in Baseball - I don't care if it has made baseball more exciting for some, it rubs me the wrong way. I have no respect for players whose only claim to fame is being a DH.

GPS devices in cars - If you are going on a trip, know in advance the route to take. And yeah, sometimes getting lost can be fun too. A friend loaned me his TomTom once for a trip south. I punched in my destination. The gizmo did what it did and planned my route. I then proceeded to go the way I had been for years anyway. I loved hearing it complain followed by, "Recalculating, recalculating" until it had figured out a new alternative route based on the turn I just missed or made that was not part of the original or new program. I even took one detour out of my way just to really piss it off.

Electronic locking doors and windows - I know at some point I will have to own a vehicle with these devilish devices, but so far I have never owned a vehicle with them. There's a satisfaction I cannot describe when I manually lower or raise my own window, or use a real key to unlock the door to my pick up.

Which brings me to this Blog, computers in general, and the speed at which our culture is forced to embrace change before we got used to the last change.

Blogger has been in my face about trying out it's "new format". Blogger is never really in your face, but they are quietly insistent. So rather than grouse about it before the fact like I always do when being force fed change, I switched yesterday. Besides the whole look changing, toolbars gone missing or moved, and way more choices than I will ever use, it is basically the same I guess. Bottom line is I figured it out and will hopefully see this post successfully posted. But I don't have to like it to use it. So I won't..........like it that is. I hereby invoke the General Principles rule from my retro-grouch bag of rules.

Why the Hell is our world in such a damn hurry? We ain't going anywhere.

Post Ride Reflections - Part Deux - 200 words

2011-11-15T09:59:00.000-05:00

Aging muscularity whines, cries, refuses to work as ordered. Minor waves of pain float in, float out, their focus on specific body parts come out of nowhere and last only long enough to leave a slight taste of their passing. Cursing the limitations age has imposed yet vehemently repudiating time and its supposed toll, he fooled himself one more time and set course for another trip down memory lane. Snubbing the soft caress of virtual travel, he just had to pound out the miles declining to admit he is not what he used to be.

Done now, he sits on a bumper, the ground, or maybe a nearby picnic table and reflects. Every physical piece and part screams at him in anger. Yet he notices that amidst their incessant complaining, his mind is crystal clear focused on this specific moment of Life and how delicious it tastes.

He looks up. Across the parking lot, across the street on the sidewalk, an old codger shuffles along with a walker. One step, two steps, stop. Push the walker forward - now repeat. The rider smiles. Being that guy may yet be in his future. But not today. Today he can still fly.

She Punished the Hard Right Out of Him

2011-11-13T19:34:00.001-05:00

You know the type. A bit worn around the edges from more than a few hard miles. Dresses on the trashy side and pops her gum between sentences. If you look too close early on, you might try to skip out on her. But you are a stud and you're horny. No last call wench is gonna throw you off your game. Her and her sharp curves and bony lookin spine. You've taken on tougher women than this. You showed em...........

Well stud, how'd it go anyway? You're lookin a tad worn out, used up, thrashed good and proper. Looks like you been ridden hard and put away wet.

What's that? Can't hear you. Stop mumbling ferchrisakes. Did you have your way with her or what?

Oh I see. She was a handful huh? Early on even..........what? Speak up man, you're mumbling again. Weren't expectin her to be so rough right out of the gate? Jeez dude, she's from Biddeford. Genteel ain't part of their culture. If you wanted romance first, you were in the wrong town. Shoulda stayed home.

But go on with your story once you've hacked up that second lung. I'll wait....................So you were hoping for some warm up lovin, ease into the rough stuff foolin around. And what happened, she came right at you, all up in your face twistin here rollin there, showing you dirty bits and naughty parts best left covered. And what's that about her holes? Holes you would have just as soon missed, but she insisted and well, you are a stud, so you tried to oblige. Notice I said tried bub. She's out there right now laughin at you and the puny equipment you brought with you.

Well fella, all I can say is when you go to Bid-fud, you gotta takes the brassy broad as she comes. Try to go with her flow, but for chrisakes, stay on top. She will bury you hard if you give her half a chance. And from the look on your sad sad what did I just do face, she had you down on your knees begging to be set free or at least have it be over..............Hope it was fun for a little while anyway.

_______________________________________

I would tell you to get your mind out of the gutter, but I did take you there. These were my post ride impressions, dreamed up as I laid delirious trying to relocate my ability to move any muscle I could after being spanked hard on a trail ride today down on the coast. They may not have tall hills, but they know how to punish. It has been a long time, at least a couple of months, since I have felt this used and abused after a ride. But she left me grinning. Between cramp spasms that is.

Figured I would pull the classic stereotypical male crap and assign sexual overtones to the ride. Cuz, I gotta say sometimes there is no better way to describe a ride.

Later I hope to be present and accounted for in front of the tube to watch my Pats try to break out of their funk. I won't hold my breath. Passing out may be unavoidable.

Later.........................
___________________________________

The image of the woman with the Balitmore Doo is from "Female trouble", a movie by John Waters.

The image of the stunt rock is from the area I rode today, but not part of the trails we suffered on.

The D Word

2011-11-10T09:47:00.018-05:00

I was flitting around Right Wing News the other morning, trying my best to balance the objectivity or lack thereof in many of the different news sources I check on any given day. To their credit, Right Wing News is an equal opportunity basher of its own.......to a point. As long as it is a bonafide card carrying conservative type doing the bashing. I was somewhat surprised to see so much Romney bashing and not so much Cain bashing, even though there was some. The right wing is all huffy over using the politics of personal destruction with regards to the latest sensationalizing of Cain's alleged sexual misdeeds.

Their undeserved righteous indignation is one reason I have lost so much respect for the Right. After all, they are the ones who took what everyone agrees publicly is a low blow tactic and raised it to an art form back in the 1990s. Nobody uses the politics of personal destruction better than the Right. And these clowns expect me to take their shock seriously at having a newly anointed favorite son run through the same mill? Right.

Then I noticed an article written by I am guessing an in house writer for Right Wing News. "MSNBC Discusses North Carolina’s Forced Sterilization Program, Avoids mentioning The D Word". The "D" word in question is Democrat.

There was a shameful period in our history that seems to never see the light of day much. That period during the early part of the 20th century when Eugenics was all the rage. Eugenics was a popular theory that believed poverty, promiscuity, substance abuse and a host of other undesirable activities were inherited traits. And a great way to nip these bad habits in the bud was forced sterilization. 31 states dabbled in it back in the day. North Carolina was one of them.

Okay fine. Another chapter of our past we would just as soon forget. Lumped next to our treatment of Indians, Blacks, Asians during WWll, muslims now, and a host of other nasty things that come with being a country with history.

What I find amusing is the gist of William Teach's article is that he takes MSNBC to task for not including in their treatment of this, the role of the Democrats. He states, and I am guessing he is correct, that back in the early 20th century, most statehouses in the South were lead by Democrat majorities. He does his best to tie in blame to our current version of the Democratic party.

I can hear all the Winger faithful now, "Yeah, what about that you lily livered liberals. You castrated thousands, you and your better world idealists."

While Mr Teach calls MSNBC on the carpet for not including Democrats in their treatment of a bad period in our history, he himself is guilty of the same thing. If he is going to be completely fair, he should mention that the southern Democrat of yesteryear is the southern Republican of today. I know, I watched the South switch sides starting right after the Civil Rights laws were enacted, picking up steam in the 1970s and finally turning red in the 1980s. I have found mindsets tend to remain the same even when labels change. So Mr. William Teach, I would be cautious of trying to tie the modern Democrat to shit that happened decades ago when many of the people responsible most likely spawned many of the people who make up your core audience.......eugenically speaking of course.

Later...........................................

The Aftermath - Vote 2011

2011-11-09T10:07:00.000-05:00

I timed myself from the time I got out of my truck to when I returned to my pick up to continue my morning commute. It took me exactly 2 minutes, 48 seconds to vote. That included the 75 feet of walking to and from the Town Hall. I love it when I have the whole thing figured out. I don't stand in the booth with my figurative thumb up my butt wondering what the Hell, or who the Hell to vote for. Of course the list of check marks I had to make was only four, so that kept my in booth time at a minimum. But this time I went in reciting my vote for the four, "Yes, No, No, Yes." I did not even close the curtain. That might have taken a second.

Well I was pleasantly surprised that Mainers even showed up to vote in this truly off year election. And that 35% of the registered voters did show up made me proud. After all, it could have been a typical ho hummer vote. Not many people to vote for, just referendums.

We also made national news. So I guess there's that also. Seems the state GOP was accused of slipping out there for public view an attack ad that insinuated that if we voted to retain voting day registration, it would somehow allow Gay Marriage to sneak in the back door. Rachel Maddow highlighted this egregious and sleazy effort to taint the vote on an issue totally unrelated, voting rights.

I found the ad funny actually. What the Hell were they thinking? What a stupid ad to take out a few days before an election. Anyone who was scared of gays was already scared and the ad was only preaching to the choir. And anyone who was not scared of gays and might actually consider them no different from anyone else, was either going to be offended, or like me laugh their ass off. But then in recent years I have really enjoyed watching the Right or the Left shoot itself in the foot. Based on that, I thought the ad was great fun.

Both Casino questions were shot down. This surprised me. I was positive Mainers were in a weakened state and ready to grasp at the stop gap economic stimulus that gambling brings. What with so many states already pushing gambling, any that we put in place would just be diluting the available dollars. Who is going to travel 400 miles to gamble in Maine when they can take a short ride and do it in their own back yard.

The redistricting schedule referendum narrowly passed. This puzzled me. It seemed to me to be the one question with the least controversy. So once more in my life I enjoyed voting with the majority. Makes me wonder a little where I went wrong.

Later..............................

Election Day - 2011

2011-11-08T07:47:00.000-05:00

It is election day. Not one of the important election days they try to tell me. We are not "electing" anyone other than some local yokel positions. The state wide part of the election are four questions. The first one is a referendum on a change in election law passed by the Republican majority earlier this year. Two are regarding the establishment of more casino type operations in a few locations in the state. The fourth question deals with the schedule of redistricting of our two Congressional Districts. Apparently the elected officials can change the map but they cannot change the schedule without voter approval. Seems kind of bass ackwards to me. But then most laws seem that way to me.

I am ambivalent about gambling. If people want to gamble, go for it. I just think it is a stupid activity that produces nothing but often shifts money from pockets not very deep into pockets already so deep they have no bottom. At least it is in your face money changing and not sneaky bullshit like what goes down with Wall Street type money changing.

The voting question is the one I am interested in. Seems the Republican majority in Maine's capital decided to jump on board with the national GOP and they jammed some election reform down our throats. Whining that the same day registration Maine has had for at least 4 decades was open to be taken advantage of by voter fraud. Even after the local GOP tried to dig up fraud from our past, they could only find two cases in 38 years. Of course this was enough to raise a major alarm and the result was they changed the law to force any unregistered Mainers to register at least two days before election.

Sound familiar? Of course it does. It is one of the many policies being fed through the national GOP system to their underlings at the local levels. The stated reasons are up for debate as I am convinced it is just another way to limit the vote. Republicans always do better when the turnout is lower. To support my contention, the money flowing in to defeat this recall question is coming from several of the Koch Bros favorite shell PACs.

It was floods of outside money that shot down Gay marriage in Maine. It was outside money that helped our current idiot governor to be elected. It seems that no one wants to leave us Mainers alone to decide things on our own. I am sure the same thing is happening elsewhere. Wisconsin comes to mind. Ohio, jeez, the deep pockets have their fingers in every state election. And we allow it to happen.

Whatever the result of this "not so important" election, Maine will deserve what it gets. If for no other reason than we were not paying attention.........or we were. Wonder what the turnout will be?

Later........................

Free Range Time

2011-11-06T03:42:00.000-05:00

It is a sure thing I did it to myself. Let it eat at me and build until my destiny was fulfilled by my own dire predictions, my own negative waves.

The Time Change. Forward, back, it makes no difference. Both mess with my mind. It takes me three maybe four weeks to get my biorhythms dialed into the change. I hate the time changes so much, I bet I have some other posts about it already. Some things a man never gets tired of whining about.

My big jewel store clock on the office wall tells me it is 4:34 AM. About my normal waking time in recent months. The clock on the computer, which apparently never forgets to move the hours around when scheduled, well that damn clock is telling me it is 3:34 AM and I should still be in bed sawing Zs and catching flies. Once again, the damn government is not considering my individual needs, making excuses like it's for "the greater good". Yeah right. I know what it is. One more back door way to subjugate us and make us bend to their will. Evil bastards.

And people ask why I make such a big deal about the time change. "Suck it up dude, it's happening whether you like it or not." Oh yeah? Well, I'm not going to put up with this blatant form of torture, which I might add is just shy of waterboarding on the scale of what torture is worse than another. No I am damn well going to be like Indiana and create my own time zone based on any capricious needs I may have at any given moment. Call it Free Range time keeping. Screw the government goons and their arm twisting ways to make us conform.

From now on when someone asks what time is it, "Well now just what time would you like it to be?...........Uh, you say you hope it is around ten o'clock. Well this is your lucky day, it is indeed around ten o'clock. Hell it might even be exactly ten o'clock if that is what you want it to be. Or four o'clock, maybe even seven-thirty.....whatever blows your dress up. Because you see if you are within eye shot of me and I am within eye shot of you then you are in the CRUM Time Zone. Time does not rule the CRUM Time Zone. The people in the CRUM Time Zone push the buttons and make Time bend to their will. The time is whatever you want it to be."

If pressed for further details, as if this was not enough information, but well, some people have to be led by their noses before they get the gist of a something, - anyway if pressured to expand on what exactly CRUM Time means, I would say, "CRUM Time means you can never be late. You can never be early. You are always on time because time is decided by you for you."

I know what you are thinking. Wouldn't it cause major havoc and mayhem if everyone was on CRUM Time? Okay so there are some bugs to work out. No great idea was ever hammered out overnight. I will say this. If everyone was on CRUM Time, this world would slow down to a pace I might be able to keep up with.

Later..........................

My Blog is Not a Dog - But It Somtimes Smells Like One

2011-11-05T21:54:00.004-04:00

Just when I think I am a fairly intelligent adult male who has at least a smidgeon of a clue, I run into ideas, treatments, explanations and descriptions of the Universe and its contents that lose me after about the first five words. And once again humbled, I am crushed under the reality that there is always someone faster than me and there are definitely many people smarter than me. Boatloads of people. Cruise ship size boats in flotillas of people smarter than me. Their talent, their way with words, their charisma if you will, prove that I hover somewhere just above imbecile and well under, not even in the same ball park with Einstein.

So do I hang with the metaphorical "ugly chicks" just to make myself look better? I would like to think I don't. But then that conclusion is not one I am apparently intelligent enough to make. I am constantly reminded of my unintelligence by the right wingers who swing by my Dana Perino post "Wingers with Woodies". Everyone who visits these days has nothing complimentary to say about me.

I have been at this blogging thing a long time, closing in on 7 years now. If my blog was a dog, that would make my blog 49 years old in blogger time. Often my blog smells like a dog, but it is no dog. In the historical lifespans of blogs created, lived and died, my blog is ancient, older than old, like that ancient tree found out west that was alive before Jesus wore short pants. I found some information based on opinions, loosely wrapped around facts that if a blog makes it one year, it is ready for medicare.

In an effort to raise up my image in my own eyes at least, I floundered around the saved blogs in the back of the saved blog box I keep in this computer. I wanted to find blogs that made mine look good. Sadly, I only seemed to save blogs that are at worst my equal, with most of them at least several steps up the blog ladder.

One odd blog I found had me momentarily stunned. It was written as if written by a seriously deranged college professor for some high brow magazine that only the 50 people in that field could even slightly understand. It is called Communications from Elsewhere. The lead in description just below the title reads and I quote - "Deconstructing Surrealism: Neostructural theory and predialectic desublimation".

My first thought was, "How did this get in here?" My second thought was, well, I really had no second thought as I was still reeling from the complete state of clueless-ness I found myself in. Then I remembered. This was a great site. The blog owner is poking fun by creating Text Generators that will through computer magic create essays and other word related fun by punching a button. The result is nonsense that reads initailly like seriously high minded stuff but is more like the answers I used to come up with in blue books come finals week. Gotcha!

Check it out, it is great. The text generators are in the sidebar near the bottom on the right.

Anyway, back to looking after the dog.............................................

The Clown Complex

2011-11-04T20:20:00.000-04:00

I just got wind of a new tax being proposed. The Tax Wall Street tax. A tax rate of 3/100ths of one percent of any trading done by Wall Street. That works out to a paltry 3 pennies on every $100 worth of trading. Seems like chump change except the article insists the tax will stuff between $700 billion and $1.2 trillion bucks into the National Treasury over the next 10 years. The article goes on to claim it will amount to about a dollar a year more for anyone who has a 401K retirement type fund that uses investments to grow the fund. The real pockets picked will be the traders who use computers to flash money back and forth to each other.

I say go for it. Smarter people than I are for it. Warren Buffet, one of my favorite rich guys, is for it. So are several economic heavy weights. The problem as I see it is that it is a tax and worst of all it comes from the evil Democrats. Those two things will surely cause it to fail as Republicans are unable/unwilling to consider any form of governance that is initiated as a tax or comes from their hated opponents from across the aisle. All they want to do is pass useless empty gestures like re-affirming our national motto - "In God We trust". Apparently it is more important to make sure Obama knows what our motto is than to actually govern.

In the meantime, Morning Joe just stated that he has been hearing more and more from his conservative connections that many would rather lose to Obama than support Mitt Romney. I was wondering why the less than zero candidate Herman Cain was doing so well. Now I know. They are staying on their side of the ideological line come Hell or high water. In the meantime, the country limps down the drain.

So to you, the leaders of the Republican and Tea Party clown complex, I bestow on all of you, my bonehead award for this week and retroactively every previous week for the last 100 or or so. And just to save myself some trouble, consider the bonehead award yours for the foreseeable future. You are doing way more damage than good to this country.

When you stop acting like pouting children and act like adults, maybe I will re-visit my decision. But you have a long way to go before I will think kindly of you again.

Later..................................

Black & White

2011-11-03T11:21:00.024-04:00

And yet another ghost from Herman Cain's past rises up to haunt his so very busy present.

Where have I seen this, experienced this, noticed this same scenario playing out on the national political scene? Just what is so familiar about a black conservative trying to land a job at the top of the national political heap who is also suddenly embroiled hard into allegations of sexual misconduct in their past?

Like a broken record, or maybe just a recurring theme, I remember the first black conservative who was up to his ass in controversy involving alleged sexual misdeeds. His name was Clarence. And he somehow managed to skirt the damage and now sits large and in charge on the bench of the highest court in the land.

Sadly, Herman Cain, well, let's call him a Thomas protege of sorts, anyway, Herman's fate is not in the hands of a political majority, his fate rests on the tide of public opinion. Herman has no legal safeguards, no loopholes for lawyers to come up with. He can only say he did not do it and it is up to us whether we believe him.

The pundits on the Right immediately cried foul, using the "R" word and laying blame on the sleaze bags on the Left. As it turns out, Herman's recent troubles were actually stirred up by a fellow member from inside the elephant brigade. One of his opponents within his own ranks was to blame. Desperation has caused the normally loyal Republican field to go after each other like they were Democrats. Beating Obama has become that important. Sad really.

I tried to look at these two without any focus on their shared racial background. I tried to ignore the idiots on both sides who blatantly are playing this up with racial overtones. Yes, I tried to shit can the race card.

But I couldn't. Is it because I am an almost 60 year old white man? Hmmm.......... Personally I do not think so. I don't like either man, but not because of their race. They both start off in my negative column just based on how far to the right both claim to be. Thomas is inherently an unlikable person based on his public persona. And Herman, well, he's a politically clueless neophyte. And I have no interest in placing a politically clueless anyone in the White House. Add all this together and race does not even come into my equation.

Those on either side who would try to heap white guilt on me for even bringing this up should be more concerned about how their blatant exploitation of the race card will be viewed.

But this is about race and what both sides are trying to do. Many Republicans are desperate to show their party as being non racist. Backing Herman Cain is an obvious way. The Left is trying hard to make aware to the public that this is but a ploy to get their vote and in the heart of the republican doctrine racism stews and brews and tarnishes everything the Republicans try to put forward.

If there is one thing I have found after 59 years on the planet is that racism knows no political, religious, or geographical boundary. Racists exist everywhere. And if we are honest with ourselves, no matter our color, we all have had some unkind thoughts, or painted with broad brushes our opinion based on racial stereotypes. What differentiates a hard core racist from the occasional racial generalization is what we say and do publicly. If I think like that, then any white guilt anyone wishes to heap on me is a waste of time. I hold my head up and know that once I figured things out about the time I turned 16, I have treated anyone I met as MLK would have me treat them. Character not color.

Later...................

New fences

2011-11-01T21:03:00.008-04:00

I forget what these people are called. They have a name and a specific description of what they do to deserve the name. I am sure I have the note somewhere handy near the top of all the useless information I store haphazardly within the confines of what pretends to be my mind.

Futurists? ........... Maybe.

Regardless, I am fascinated by the interaction of random events and socio/political/economic evolutions and revolutions that combine to create whatever present we are living at any given time. I have the deepest respect for the people who can pick out the under the radar current events and affairs that will matter at some point in the future.

Yeah, it's easy to say that everything matters. There is no one thing or several things that create by themselves the flow of the future. But there are turning points, tipping points, and points of no return. There have to be. We decided they existed, so there it is.

What brought this up for me was when I read an article on California sex offenders. Not the settled down sex offenders, but the ones who are homeless. Apparently because of "Jessica's Law", no sex offender can live within 1/2 mile of a school, park, or playground. I guess limiting their living choices has caused a sharp increase in the numbers of homeless sex offenders.

It seems that the state of California decided that in order to make Halloween safe for the kiddies, they would round up all homeless sex offenders in a central location during those prime trick or treating hours.

I won't get into the ethical aspects of this round up. Lord knows, "Law & Order - SUV" has beaten the subject to death. What I wondered was how the cops were going to do it. I mean if they are homeless, does that not mean their whereabouts is unknown?

Apparently not. All convicted sex offenders in California are required to wear GPS tracking devices. Corralling them was easy-peasy.

Again, though the subject screams for it, I refrain from commenting on the ethical aspect of this. What my mind thought of first was George Orwell. And then Anthony Burgess. Both Brits who saw this coming many years ago.

I then thought of our planet's population recently hitting 7 billion.

And naturally the first thing that popped into my mind was the notion of smaller government and how stupid is that notion. By necessity, government intervention in our lives has to increase along with the increase in population. More people means the various governments will do what they feel is necessary to organize and direct their individual populations. If they don't, then regime change is inevitable, whether instigated internally or externally. And what is a government's first priority? No, it is not its people. It is its own survival.

In order to keep the teeming masses in line, various agencies will try different methods. Slavery, the Inquisition, and death camps during WWll are but a few of the methods thought up by governments to control their people. Fences, walls, and incarceration all are devices a government will pull out if it feels its survival depends on it.

Now that humanity has evolved to the point where we are not collectively as dumb as we look, governments are being forced to come up with more subtle ways to keep us in line. It seems we are now hard into a period of history where the focus will be to subjugate us without most of us noticing until it is too late. And even for those of us who do notice, the efforts will be understated, misstated, and appear on the surface a good idea at the time.

The Patriot Act stands out as the perfect example. The dry running of obligatory GPS devices for a small segment of the population is another.

So the next time one of the snake oil sales men from DC claim they are for "smaller government", do not believe them. It will not happen. Anyone who claims it is possible is either lying or an idiot. You cannot corral a growing population with smaller government. But you can possibly do it with "different government". And that is I am afraid where we are headed.

Later.........................

For What It's Worth - Revisited

2011-10-31T09:26:00.000-04:00

I read a rant by an angry Wall Street worker in response to the OWS protesting going on around the country. Typical in your face, no holds barred rant that must have made him feel better once he got it out of his system. Been there, done that myself.

The man made some valid points. No, he does not owe any of the protesters anything. Yes, I have no doubt he works hard for the paycheck he takes home. But then he steps off the edge and opines on just what the OWS protesters are made up of. Liberal union commie losers who never worked a honest day's work in their life. He then goes on to claim that all unions, teachers , firemen, police, etc. are nothing but safe havens for lazy do nothing hacks who suck off the hard work he and his brethren produce day in, day out. He finishes up with the legend he has built in his own mind that without traders, we would all be in a world of hurt. And finally he whines about fairness and how he is getting the raw end of the deal.

Fairness has nothing to do with it. But perception does.

The wealthy have been perceived as uncaring greedy bastards who are sitting on their wallets while the country goes down the tubes. Rather than investing in our future, they are investing in each other and not sharing in the good fortunes they continue to reap in. The OWS protesters are pictured as rabble rousing leftists intent on bringing down America by destroying the economic stability of our great nation. They want something for nothing. Both sides have allowed emotion to to taint their image of what the other side wants. A great Buffalo Springfield lyric comes to mind - "Nobody's right if everyone's wrong".

The man and I will agree most of the OWS movement miss what is really happening in my opinion. When the peasants get pissed off enough, they always take down the rich. There is no right. There is no wrong. It is what has been happening for as long as one man was perceived as having more than another man.

What we are seeing now is just the beginning of what could turn into down the road, a correction that will redistribute wealth in the end. How it is redistributed will be up to how the players end up dealing with each other.

Later............

In Your Face Shapleigh

2011-10-30T08:42:00.000-04:00

I was watching the early storm results after the Nor'easter that just swooped through our region. Channel Six up to Portland reported snowfall amounts for the towns hit hardest. A list was placed on the TV screen. The accumulated amounts varied greatly, with some areas just getting a dusting. As I read the list, I noticed the town next door, Shapleigh came out on top with 17".

"Harumph.....Where's the Acton results? I bet we beat those clowns over to Shapleigh. They think they're just so special."

But Acton was not even on the list. Grumpy now, I went about my morning. Brewed some coffee. Drank some coffee. Looked out the window at the instant winter that came overnight. Drank some more coffee and waited for daylight.

About 7:30 AM my wife found me. "Hey, I just saw Acton's snow fall results. We got 20", the most reported in the state so far.

Now flush with victory, my day just got better.....................and then I realized.......................I have to go outside and clear that 20" of snow off the drive and walkways.

Suddenly and instantly without so much as a warm up storm, I am hard into winter and it is not even November yet. But that does not bother me. I have bragging rights when next I meet some flounder from Shapleigh......Nyaah, Nyaah, Nyaah.

Number 2,615,064,392

2011-10-29T18:02:00.000-04:00

I ran across a link/story regarding the planet's dubious honor of now having 7 billion humans roaming around its surface. It is one of those interactive sites that will tell us where in the numerical order of humans inhabiting this rock one falls. According to the BBC article, I am the 2,615,064,392nd person born on this planet. When I was born in 1952, there were not even 3 billion people. Now, 59 years later, there are 7 billion of us taking up , taking over, and eating up space. The UN agency in charge of counting humans insists that by 2050, we will be dealing with 10 billion people.

Wow. 7 billion is a lot of people. 10 billion people is even more insane.

I will admit that this more than doubling of the planet's population since I was born pretty much went unnoticed by me for the most part. Oh, I knew we were crowding each other out a bit, but here in Maine, there is still plenty of room. Maine has a density of 41.3 people per square mile. Or to put it another way, every person in Maine has 15.5 acres of land around them. Or could have if we spaced everyone just so.

The World's population is much more crowded. Taking everyone into account and excluding Antarctica as livable space, there are well over 130 people per square mile crammed together on this planet. Using fuzzy math I figure that by 2050, this figure will climb to around 170 people per square mile.

I am not even sure why I bothered to write about this. We all knew we have been creating humans faster than we destroy them for years. I thought it was whacked when we hit 5 billion and now that a couple more billion have been packed in, it is almost anticlimactic. So what if for every 33 deaths, 100 brats are spit out to take their place. What that means is somewhere in neighborhood of 400,000 people are born everyday while only 132,000 people die.

Regardless whether my math skills are up to the task, there is no denying we are going to stress our planet even more in the coming years. Of course, there is always that go to hope many secretly harbor and we could experience a species decimating event of some kind. A plague, a series of natural disasters, or maybe another war to end all wars. But barring that, I am afraid my daughter will have to get used to sharing more of her air and space with more people than I did.

The above link has some very sobering predictions about what Life will be like if we continue our wanton consumption. There is a crisis point coming. Or at the very least some kind of correction I am sure. Whether we instigate it or the planet does, Mankind is in for some rude awakenings in the not so distant future.

Later.............................

The Decade of Odd

2011-10-23T08:23:00.000-04:00

It has been an odd year, this year of our Lord, 2011. Odd for me and most likely odd for many others also. But then I should be used to odd. Life started getting seriously odd in my little world right after 9/11. Maybe it was just me, but I felt a change in this country, an unnerving if you will of this country's confidence in itself.

So with a decade of odd behind me, I should be used to it and not even bat an eye when another lunatic escapes from their fringe and makes some kind of impact on the rest of us. It is as if the fringes of our national personality have switched places with the mainstream. The average idiots like me are now not in charge. Nor are we what would be considered mainstream, but have now been expelled to the fringes. The extraordinary idiots have taken over control and now their agendas are pushing ours out of the way.

But have the whackos from our fringes really taken over? Or have we allowed the fringes within ourselves to take control? For whatever reason or reasons, have we begun to let some of our inner demons out into the real world?

A free society can only function effectively as a group if as individuals, we dampen our extreme views and rein in our most fanatical inclinations. But then I guess, a free society can only handle a certain amount of internalizing anger before it has to go through a period of purging.

Cycles. It is all about cycles. And right now is the end of one and the beginning of another. How we handle this unsettled time between the two will define where we go from here. Will reason catch back up with us? Or will we continue to beat each other senseless by forcing our personal fringes onto each other? Will this decade of odd turn into a generation of odd?

The Doomers and the Gloomers tell us this is it. It's all over in a short while. Or in the case of some, it was supposed to have happened already. But so far, the end has not happened contrary to many unfulfilled predictions in our recorded past. No matter what comes at us, somehow we have dodged the bullet. Given our historical tendency to screw up a good thing and then recover, I would say the odds are in our favor. That somehow, we will figure things out and move on into the rest of this century.

In the meantime, maybe we should all try to cut each other some slack again. It works for the most part. What doesn't work is what we are doing now. But then every society has to blow off some steam on a regular basis.

Later.........................

Discontent in the GOP Playground

2011-10-22T09:05:00.001-04:00

It has to be tough to be a Republican these days. The internal strife, the back biting, the lack of any leaders with a clue must be driving the few "good" Republicans bonkers. It used to be the GOP would not allow it's members to go after each other like siblings in the back seat during a long trip across country. The best the GOP has to offer are acting like, ....oh my Gawd,.....Democrats. Everyone knows Democrats are loose dogs and have no self control. The GOP was above the fray. Republicans always offered up a united front. They could disagree with each other, but only behind closed doors. Solidarity above all else.

But it has all changed. Just watch a couple of minutes of any GOP debate. Close your eyes and they sound like Democrats.......... Okay, maybe evil Democrats. The tempo and pissing on each other shoes surely is the same standard Democrats jump right into when they debate each other. It used to be Democrats wore their feelings on their sleeves and Republicans kept them in the closet. Not anymore. The GOP is now proving to be whackier than any Democrat I know of. I never thought I would see the day. I am positive my mother, her father, and any dead relative from the black Republican side of my family are turning high RPM circles in their respective graves about now.

Every day, the front runners hoping to capture the Republican privilege to go head to head against Obama open their mouths and shove not one foot, but sometimes both feet hard into their mouths. And what is even funnier, many of them have not even a glimmer of a clue they have done it. But when caught and forced to acknowledge their mistake or conflict of ideology, they weasel out by lying, claiming their words were taken out of context, or that what they meant to say was not what came out of their mouth that day. And then quickly, they spew forth a statement that completely reverses the position they had taken sometimes not even hours earlier. They are so desperate to capture the favor of their base, they will say anything and not even realize what they are doing.

This internal girl fight would be true comedy except for the fact that the GOP has lost any interest in actually helping this country out of its current situation and are focused only on defeating Obama, no matter the cost. They are acting like toddlers in the throes of the terrible twos where no matter what mom says, all they have to say is "No". And in the meantime, the rest of us pay for their self absorbed focus on defeating Obama no matter what.

The current state of the GOP illustrates perfectly what I have said all along about the leadership of both parties. The interests of the party come way before the interests of the nation. They only care about us when it comes time for them to ask us for our votes.

Later.......................

Taxing Simply

2011-10-19T10:08:00.001-04:00

Okay, so a fellow I know pointed out to me that Herman Cain's whacky 9-9-9 plan does not impose a 30% sales tax. He is right as far as it goes. But Herman Cain has already admitted his plan is really a stepping stone to the Fair Tax plan proposed back in 2007. That plan would abolish most taxes, replacing them with a 23%(some are convinced it is really 30%) national sales tax. My friend's response was "What's wrong with simplifying the tax code? We all end up with more money in our pockets."

Hmm............The notion of condensing our tax code into one basket that will only cost us 23% (30%)of every dollar we spend does on the surface seem simple - spend less, you keep more. To a nation trained to make their mind up from 30 second soundbites and clever catch phrases, I can see why this idea might have some support.

Being prone to the same trap of relying on catchphrases and soundbites, I remembered my wife , the accountant, and her feelings about changes in the tax code. Paraphrased, her pearl of wisdom goes -

"Whenever the word 'simplify' is attached to changes in the tax code, two things happen. One the code becomes even more intricate and two, millions of accountants get richer. There is no simple tax code, just different tax codes."

Armed thusly to whatever teeth I had in my head, I visited the fair tax plan website for more information.

I am not a gifted analytical thinker. I am not gifted with much other than the ability to breath. So imagine my befuddlement when I visited a link provided by Fair Tax and attempted to understand the pros of this plan as written by Paul Bachman and others. Just the highlighted intro had my head spinning.

And while I am not a great analyst, I do have a knack for getting the gist of a thing. After reading through as many pages as I could handle before my eyes rolled up into my head, I realized my wife was correct. This plan may be simpler than the hodge podge cornucopia of taxes we pay now, but not by much, if at all.

First of all, this whole tax plan, like any new proposal is based on assumptions. The assumption is that people will not change their spending habits. We will still over consume as we always have. Okay fine. But will we? And then there is the fact that assumptions are created to paint the rosiest of pictures or the most dire of consequences. Depending on which side of the economic fence you sit on, take your pick.

This tax is still a tax and many people will still do their damndest to avoid paying it just because of what it is called. Which brings me to another assumption of the plan I don't understand. Somehow, this fair tax plan will reign in the trillion or so dollars spent that avoid the current sales taxes in play presently. Huh? My assumption is that current trillion dollars of lost taxable money will grow instead of shrink.

Another claim I have heard is the IRS will no longer be needed. Okay so I did not hear it from the Fair Tax site, but advocates of the plan have made the claim. Come on people, any tax plan will require goons to twist the arms of those of us who would skip our tax paying duty. They might change the name, but there will still be federal agents of some kind knocking on our doors if the government feels we are ducking our responsibilities.

One of the complaints about this national sales tax is that it will punish the poor. The Fair Tax Plan people have an answer for that. It is called a "Prebate". The government will issue checks preemptively in amounts that will cover the purchases of the poor up to the poverty level. Right. As is the case when the government decides what a level is, they come up with a broad brush answer that does not take into account what the poverty level is in a given region. So I make another assumption and assume that "prebate" will often fall short. And the fact that money will be spent before money is taken in seems like more of the same voodoo economic madness we deal with now.

I will say that the "Fair Tax Plan" and even Cain's "9-9-9 Plan" are at least proof someone is trying to come up with alternatives to what we all agree is an overly complicated mished and mashed tax code. But neither of them are even close to being what I would call "simple". And from what I read, the potential pitfalls that might and probably will happen will punish the most vulnerable among us first.

In my mind if the financial wizards are intent in re-creating our tax code into revenue based on consumerism, then why not just let us allocate our tax dollars in the same manner - pay into those services and government efforts we feel represent our interests.

Say everyone has to pay oh, Hell, for arguments sake any number will do, say we all have to pay 15% of our income to the Feds. But we can break it down into whatever area we want. That way we could support and change government services with our choices. Personally I would allocate all my 15% the first few years to education,infrastructure and job creation. Defense can pound sand. DEA can pound sand. Congress can pound sand. Maybe if some of these departments have their funds cut by angry citizens, they might just deliver in the future a better government. Let them compete for my tax dollars just as I compete for the dollars my customers may or may not spend in my store.

Realistically, I know this would not work out. But in my opinion, my plan is as worthy as either the Fair Tax Plan or the even shakier 9-9-9 plan. All are pie in the sky ideas that have no real place in the real world. We do not live in a simple world. And sometimes, simple solutions are not the answer.

Later..............................

Tipping Scales

2011-10-18T09:57:00.000-04:00

There seems to be a direct correlation between our recent economic downturn and the recent consolidation of wealth among the richest one percent of the population. I read an interesting op/ed by Robert Reich (Worked in three administrations) regarding this trend. He says and I quote:

"In the late 1970s the richest 1 percent of Americans received 9 percent of total income and held 18 percent of the nation’s wealth; by 2007, they had more than 23 percent of total income and 35 percent of America’s wealth."

His op/ed is about how the conservatives of today are not conservatives but regressives. I will let you read his take on this as I have something else on my mind.

It would seem odd that as the richest one percent gathered and consolidated more wealth, our economic position began to show cracks. This transfer of wealth went unnoticed until it finally collapsed under its own weight. And even then, our leaders propped up the transfer of wealth so more of the wealth could move from Main St to the endlessly deep pockets of Wall Street. In the meantime our wages went down, our hours were cut or just disappeared.

It seems obvious to me this is not a healthy situation for the majority of Americans. Yet, these same robber barons have convinced a sizable chunk of the folks affected that what they are doing right in front of us is "good" for the nation. Some of us even embrace the recent hot tax plan 9-9-9 that will by almost every account I have read only take more from the poorest of us and put even more money back in the pockets of the sleaze bags who have been pillaging our economy. I gotta say, a national 30% sales tax on top of the state sales tax would kill my retail business.

Okay fine. Perspective, political slant, ideologies. But the fact is, the richest of the rich have been quietly tipping the economic scale more and more in their direction. And I guess this is fine if one believes that power consolidated in fewer hands is a good thing. Because we have now become a country that judges power on how big our paycheck is. At some point, once our pockets have been completely picked clean, they will go to work on restricting the diminishing rights like voting, right to negotiate labor contracts, and who we pray to as a nation.............. Uh, oh yeah they already are.

Keep it 'tween the ditches.......................

Torturing Children

2011-10-17T10:24:00.000-04:00

I am sure I have mentioned this before. If not here, I have voiced my opinion bluntly many times to the small fry who wander in and out of my bike shop on any given day.

It is the 10th visit to make sure the bike part they lust after is still in stock and they have finally scraped together enough money to purchase the part. If I am feeling evil that day, I play the "change game" with them.

Barely able to look over my counter, a grubby little tacker will place both hands on the counter, one hand clutching tightly the money he has been able to scrape together by hook or crook to walk out with those Odyssey pedals he has been lusting after the last month or so.

"How much are those pedals?" He knows full well how much, he has asked me the same question the last nine times he visited.

I refrain from being snarky and I evenly say, "$16.95 and a little for the governor for a grand total of $17.80."

When the kid places several crumbled bills on the counter and asks me, "Is this enough?" - My evil side takes over. The little punk should know whether he has enough to pay for it. Now it is time for me to pass on some education.

I gather up the balled up money and begin to separate it. A typical wad will have way more than the pedals cost. A ten, a five, and some ones would be the typical combination.

"Well young sir, it appears you have, uh, how much is here?"

The kid looks at me as if I had just asked him the capital of Mongolia.

"I don't know. Is it enough?"

"I don't know kid, you tell me. The pedals are gonna set you back $17.80. Is there enough here?"

Again a blank look. Then, "My mom gave me this money and said whatever it was I just had to have better not be over $20. I guess it is $20."

"Guess? How old are you kid?"

"Um, I'm 11. Why?"

"I don't know, but I was just thinking 11 is a tad too old to not be able to add a few bills together. How many ones are there?"

The kid moves them around and whispers, "Five."

"So far so good. Now add this to the five. How much is five and five?

"Ten."

I take the five and the ones and set them next to the ten.

"How much is ten plus ten?"

Immediately I get one of the classic eye rolls kids toss out when confronted by an adult intent on making their lives miserable. But he hesitates and looks up at the ceiling and maybe begins to twitch his fingers like he was counting. His eyes brighten and he looks at me. "Twenty, there's twenty dollars there.", he says triumphantly.

"Very good. Now the question to you is, is twenty dollars enough to cover the $17.80 you owe for the pedals?"

The eye roll is replaced by two small eyes glaring, wishing I was dead. But the lust for the pedals outweighs the frustration of dealing with a math quiz out in the real world, so he might say something like, "Yeah, it's enough."

If I am feeling particularly evil that day, I will collect up the five, the ones and the ten and put them in the cash drawer and hand him his pedals. I will offer him no change. I hope to shake loose some kind of defense response, some clue they have a clue that they deserve some change back.

To be fair most kids will tell me they deserve some change. For the ones who actually begin to leave, I stop them. I don't rip off kids. I prefer to torture them.

Now the real fun begins.

"Okay so I owe you change now. How much change do I owe you?"

Nine times out of ten, I get no answer, just dark sullen anger. So I continue the lesson with, "Come on kid, you should be able to count change if you are going to carry money. Trust me when I say there are adults out there who will take advantage of you. Think now, how much change should you be getting back?"

Some kids get angry and will tell me that this is not school and they don't have to do math problems. I agree wholeheartedly but finish by saying they are just asking to ripped off. I will try once more to engage them in the game. If they refuse, I hand them the change without comment.

Some kids rise to the occasion and will do their best to figure it out. I will work with them until I feel they have gotten it or they have at least given it their best shot. It will be these kids who will be running the world and bossing the kids who refuse to learn. There is nothing wrong with not knowing an answer, what's important is seeking the answer.

I used to be shocked by this inability of the local youth to count money. I would like to say counting change was taught to me just as I stepped out of the womb, but the reality is I just know my parents made sure I could count money long before I hit kindergarten. I grew up assuming everyone could count money. Apparently not.

Later.....................

Tangible Worth

2011-10-12T23:00:00.158-04:00

A couple of days ago I tore off a few sharply written words regarding a couple of less than impressive examples of American leadership. Mixed into the rant was this statement, "....the fine folks wearing wing tips and Brooks Brother suits who shuffle money around but produce nothing of tangible worth."

I was referencing the working inhabitants of Wall Street, the movers and shakers who control the flow of wealth as it moves in, out and about this country. Off and on yesterday, I thought about that line. Was I being unfair to these buttoned down tight asses in $1000 dollar suits when I accused them of producing nothing of tangible worth? Or was I just jealous that they had more than I did as Herman Cain claimed anyone who criticized them was?

Fair is fair, so I tried my best to conjure up a viewpoint with their perspective in mind. I am sure many, if not all of the financial wizards and their gang of spreadsheet lackeys, are positive that without them this country would be in chaos and nothing but a larger version of the Sudan. After all, they are charged with the stewardship of all our wealth.

I then considered the notion of wealth and what exactly it was. I have never really considered wealth in any terms that did not incorporate the idea of money along with it. It appears I have been successfully indoctrinated to believe that wealth without money is nothing. Thousands of years ago Man invented money to facilitate commerce more expediently and now money has replaced the actual products it was meant to represent. We came to value money more than how many cows we have in our barns. The financial class has fooled us into believing protecting the representative (money) of our wealth is more important than protecting the physical, touch it feel it, eat it wealth. Are we stupid or what?

Following my own path to enlightenment or the usual deeper befuddlement, I attempted to get my head around the phrase "tangible worth". What made something tangible? Could something be tangibly worth more than something else? Certainly assigning the sliding scale of a monetary system quickly and logically creates relative values in most cases. But is that product or service ~~really~~ tangibly worth the value someone has placed on it? And should I believe something is worth more than something else just because it has a higher price tag? Is a pair of Gucci shoes more valuable than a pair of work boots? It is because we perceive it is.

Looking at tangible worth from a strictly capitalistic slant, whatever the market is willing to pay is the tangible worth of that product or service. Okay fine. Why then has the storage of money combined with the shifting of stored money from one coffer to another become more valuable than the products or services whose purchases originally set the stored money into motion? Again I say, are we stupid or what?

I understand that money is used to initiate the physical process of gathering and distributing wealth through investment. However, it seems today, more money is generated by keeping it out of the physical world and just moving it around inside a virtual circle of bank accounts and investment portfolios. Less of it is used to actually buy things or employ people. It stays off Main Street and is kept under lock and key in the exclusive club known as Wall Street. How can this kind of activity be of any tangible worth other than in the small economic circle it loops around in? It is nothing but virtual worth and we have been fooled into believing there is some kind of intrinsic value to our economy because these fancy pants are getting filthy rich by passing money off to each other. It is a massive ponzi scheme that is carried out legally. Is it any wonder it failed? No. What amazes me is we handed these clowns more money to do it again. Are we stupid or what?

I'm sorry, but wealth derived from a shaky concept is not tangible in any way I can think of. It is more like some fantasy game that creates virtual worth. The only true value being in our minds, not on the dinner table or parked in the garage. Until such time the money changers decide to stop sitting on their over stuffed coffers and actually return that money to the real world in the form or investment, purchases, or taxes, they have done nothing of tangible worth. And it is a crime, or should be that they have been allowed to hoodwink us into believing their chosen profession is even close to being as critically important as, oh say, picking up the garbage, growing the food, fixing the roads. These activities have tangible worth and are considerably more valuable to our nation than shifting paper money from one account to another.

I'm going to bed. My head hurts....................

Words of Encouragement – 100 words

2011-10-11T21:02:00.008-04:00

The grey understood the edict forbidding contact of any kind. They were to leave no clue of their presence in this part of the Great Beyond. The grey knew well his race's failures in the past when they exposed themselves too early.

The grey still bristled. Some encouragement should be communicated. Some signal that would let them know they would prevail. Instead he had to watch them suffer…………… But did he?

“I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together” – just silly lyrics thought up while on LSD Lennon insisted. “They mean nothing.”
______________________________

Image from Dreamstime

The Most Recent Anti - American Americans

2011-10-10T22:44:00.000-04:00

What a great country. And I mean it. Not so much because we thump our chests and say it is so, but more because we are still in business in spite of ourselves. Our founding fathers landed some serious beginners luck when they created what is shaping up to be an idiot proof system of government. So far the wheels are still on the bus, but every day at least one or two of the boneheads in charge do their best to flatten the tires by pruning more rights from the shrinking quiver we still have.

A couple of tidbits that illustrate my point:

"U.S. Drug Policy Would Be Imposed Globally By New House Bill"
Apparently the Einsteins running the House Judiciary Committee have come up with another useless weapon in the "War on Drugs". If their bill makes it through Congress, any US citizen who buys a joint or a gram of hash or even discusses the possibility of scoring said substances while on that 6 day, 5 night tour of Portugal could be jailed here in the US once they deplane at Kennedy. I am guessing that running our lives here is not enough for some of these clowns. They want to make sure we mind our P's and Q's when overseas. And at the same time jam our notion of law down the rest of the planet's throat. What a bunch of cocky and arrogant assholes. Rep Lamar Smith of Texas - you are a class A ugly American and if anything cries out to be tagged "anti-American", your recent sponsoring of this bill would fit nicely into that category.

Rather than admit the "War on Drugs" is the prime catalyst creating the violent crime associated with drug use or abuse, these idiots want to continue to expand a failed policy. There is no way to legislate stupidity. For Lamar Smith apparently, punishing it is a satisfactory alternative.

And then there is the new Republican golden boy, Herman Cain calling the Wall Street protesters Anti American because they are carrying signs that disparage the fine folks wearing wing tips and Brooks Brother suits who shuffle money around but produce nothing of tangible worth. As he puts it, to be Anti-Wall Street is to be Anti-American. But go ahead and preach to your brain dead choir that Wall Street is somehow just shy of God on the ideological barometer that determines the difference between Good and Evil.

Capitalism is not an ideology, it is an economic system. Sadly however, you and the big money interests you represent have managed to convince too many of us that the idea of money is interchangeable with the ideal of freedom. In my opinion you sanctimonious jerk wad, the activity of peaceful protest represents what is great about America, not the money changers of Wall Street. Economic power only supports Freedom when everyone, not a select few are invited along for the ride.

Rep Lamar Smith and Herman Cain - you two get my Anti-American awards for this week.

Later........................

Taking the Test

2011-10-04T20:28:00.000-04:00

I was putzing around the Internet this evening when I came upon a teaser headline on the "Drudge Retort" - "Poll: What does GOP mean?" I found out that barely 51% of Republicans polled knew the answer. I chuckled and moved on. One site led to another and the next thing I knew I was on the Christian Science Monitor site taking a written version of the US Citizenship test given to eager immigrants wanting to become citizens in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

The test took awhile. Each question was on it's own page and well, I almost dropped it mid stream. I carried on til the end just to see if I had what it took to be a US citizen in the eyes of some bureaucrat hunkered over US facts and figures in some dusty cubicle over to Foggy Bottom.

Apparently I passed with flying colors. In order to gain a passing grade one must get 58 of the 96 questions correct. Using only my porous brain pan to find the answers I got 93 correct. One of the wrong answers I cry foul on. It was a trick question. Another one I just flat out blew. And the third, well, Not sure why I got that one wrong. I was thinking 1787, but I punched 1789.

So I could have passed the test. Does that mean anything other than I have a decent working knowledge of how our country was set up and has run since the beginning? No, not really. This test does not ensure that I am a good citizen or even a bad one. But I guess if I was a just landed immigrant, it would indicate that I have enough interest in this country to at least study for this test. A place to start.

I looked up some US statistics regarding the numbers of legal immigrants entering this country. I had made some assumptions that were not supported by the figures. I assumed that immigration was down, but lo and behold, we legally allowed 1,042,625 foreigners to move here in 2010. The World is still knocking on our door even though the mythical streets of gold turned to potholes many many years ago. I guess as bad as I sometimes think it is here, I could be someplace else and in a much worst life situation.

Which just reinforces the notion I should be grateful for what I have and not angry about what I don't have.

Later.....................................

An Encounter Down to the Hardware Store

2011-10-02T10:38:00.001-04:00

Tom Roberts pulled up in front of Sunnyvale Hardware. His mind was hard into figuring what pieces and parts he needed to fix that antique lamp his wife had been pestering him about. He almost walked right over Jedidiah Ridley who was bent over by the shovels stacked up carelessly near the front door.

"Jeezum Jed, ferchrisakes what the Hell?"

Jedidiah straightened up. In his hand was a True American #12 feed shovel. Shiny new aluminum, light as a feather and it had one of those new gee whiz poly carbonate grips. Jedidiah turned and squinted in Tom's direction. "Just pickin up a new shovel. Thought I'd try this one..... Seems plenty rugged"......He turned the #12 shovel over and looked at the back side, "Um, I don't know though, wish it were straight out flat." He spun it back to view the top. "She is a light one though."

Tom looked at the shovel and nodded. "Yep, got one of those last Spring. The ole steel one Pepe used in the barn finally shit the bed. They's nice, but they wear out quick. Guess it's the aluminum.... jes don't hold up to real shovelin."

Jedidiah set the shovel blade on the ground and leaned on the handle. "Well sir, I ain't gonna use it in the barn. Need a new road kill scoop. That old flat snow shovel I bought a month ago jes ain't working out."

"Why's that Jed? Not rugged enough for that occasional moose you sometimes run over?" Tom grinned and shook his head.

Jedidiah snorted. "Funny man. No, the flat shovel was fine for scoopin, but not so good for cookin."

"Cookin?" Tom's eyes opened some as his mind created an image of Jed holding a shovel full of dead possum or squirrel over an open fire.

"Yes sir, cookin. Seems they don't make a straight clean shovel no more. All of them are either plastic or the metal ones come with some kinda anti stick coatin that bubbles all up and sends up a real stench when I hold it over the fire........Makes the meat taste funny."

What Happened to Being Bored?

2011-10-01T11:01:00.000-04:00

As it turns out, September, 2011 is now officially the highest grossing month of the year down at the bike shop. This is certainly good news as it helps to put me in a better position financially to weather the slack sales of winter. This is also a very odd turn of events in that September is traditionally the month the door to summer begins to close. My previous best September grossed only 25% of what I brought in this September.

What does this mean? My best months historically are April, May, June. September has never been more than a meet expenses and maybe pack a little away for October. I am a tad unsettled and mildly disturbed about this.

Being true to my nature however, I would not be happy unless I was able to find something about this month to bitch about.

For 20 years, this bike shop and the one I owned previously enjoyed or suffered a predictable flow of business over the course of a year. The season slowly winds up in late February, builds a good head of steam in March, and then settles into a dull roar for April, May and June. July is often a cruising month. Sales flatten out some, but business remains brisk. August is when the winter wind down begins. And by September, I am usually ready for a break. I got no break this September. Not one day at the shop this past month did the words,"I'm bored, would someone, anyone at least call with a wrong number or try to sell me some insurance?" No, every day in September was another high RPM day just like the previous 180 of 2011.

A man gets used to his life panning out in predictable ways. And while stepping outside of a comfort zone is one thing, being forced outside of it is a whole other matter. If this unpredictable flow of events continues, I may just have to find something other than boredom to whine about this winter. And I was so looking forward to it too.

Oh well.............

Johnson Closure

2011-09-09T10:02:00.001-04:00

By the time you read this or at the least when this post self publishes thanks to the black magic that makes computers and the Internet work, by that time I will be somewhere between here and there on the superslab, trying to fit in with other southbound buggies as they head for home, the beach, their parents house or in my case some wedding 500 miles from my home.

I managed to not leave New England these last few years. Massachusetts was about about far as I ventured. This trip to Maryland will be my 3rd visit in the last 4 months. Beginning to feel like a recurring nightmare. Like the road will always be part of my life. I just can't escape its clutches.

Spent my first 28 years on this planet on the road. First as a little tacker tagging along behind my military ole man. Then because I had been born to it, I knew no better. Hit the road behind the wheel of the big rigs and pounded a million or so miles out before I smartened up, came to Maine, parked my ass in the woods and settled down. The World did fine without me. Well, maybe not fine, but it sure didn't miss me.

I was hoping to spend my last decades off the road and parked on my bike or comfortably reclined in my local barco-lounger with a cold beverage instead of cussing and fussing while other road warriors did their best to run me into the ditch. Just not in the cards I guess. Huffing exhaust fumes and dodging blown up truck retreads seems to be my destiny.

But what am I doing here? This was supposed to be the upbeat post that countered the previous angry man posts. I was aiming higher than I could hit I guess.......which reminds me of the best toilet graffiti I ever read.

Some years ago I walked into some public toilet in some unremembered truck stop in the outer reaches of America and scratched into the graffiti proof paint at face level:

"Your hose is too short

Your pump, it's too weak

Stand closer to seat dude

Or you'll piss on your feet."

Unconsciously I edged closer to the ole American Standard urinal and then laughed out loud. All the gnarly trucker dudes lined up next to me silently taking care of their own business looked at me at the same time. In my hurry to leave and take my red face out of there, what should have been a routine johnson closure turned into a very painful johnson snagged three or four links into the zipper. Well, you just don't follow up a belly laugh with a scream and leave with your dignity intact.

Not my best moment. But most definitely one of my most painful.

Later........................

2011-09-08T21:47:00.001-04:00

Okay I admit it, I have a burr under my saddle, a hair across................I guess I have just about had it with the Right blaming our current economic woes on Obama. First of all I have a fundamental problem blaming any one person, political group, or a specific alignment of the stars for the mess we got ourselves into. This economy is a group grope and the only ones we should be blaming are those who now waste time placing blame instead of coming up with ideas on how to solve it. Republicans are so busy saying they are not interested in hearing Obama's ideas on job creation, yet do I hear anything but the same old tired solutions that have not worked yet come out of their mouths? No, they seem stuck on the idea that lowering taxes and cutting spending is somehow going to magically turn this floundering economy around.........Right. It seems odd that after all these years since the implementation of the Bush Tax Cuts, our economy has been nose diving steadily ever since. And somehow more cuts are going to right the ship? .............Right.

I agree we should actively look to cut spending and taxes where feasible, but to do so without looking at the long range effects right now is flat out stupid. Trickle down economics has never worked. Why we keep thinking the rich and famous are going to give up more money if we give them back more money is foolish. The lords of the private sector want to make money at both ends. That is their economic model.

But since the Right is so Hell bent on fixing blame, let's just put some perspective on it. 8 Trillion dollars of the 14 Trillion dollar debt was run up under Republican, read Right side of the aisle, administrations. Based on their own blame the guy at the top tendency, they should be placing blame on the doorstep at their own leadership. But as it is with whiners and complainers, it is always someone else's fault. Or in matters with political stinkery wrapped up in them, it is always the Left's fault. A lot of things are the Left's fault, but they do not own all the blame or even as much blame as the Republicans for this economy. But they both share blame for why it is getting worse instead of better.

Let's use Gov Rick Perry's new Texas model as our example of what a new Republican economic policy might look like. The recent ongoing wildfires there are a perfect example. Prior to these wildfires, the great state of Texas cut state funding for voluntary fire response by 75%. They saved a sizable bundle of cash on some ledger somewhere and made the books look better. Now that their fire response capabilities have been cut back rather dramatically, Gov. Perry is whining about the slow response of the Feds in bailing his tax cutting stupid ass out. Rather than admit that maybe cutting their own fire fighting appropriations may have contributed to the less than timely response to fighting the fires early on, Perry wants to blame Obama. And If I am not mistaken Obama has made sure he got the Fed response moving as fast as possible. He certainly responded much faster than Bush did when Katrina hit. Classic Right Wing logic. Look out the window for someone to blame instead of first looking in the mirror in front of them.

See, this is what happens when I let the political bile build up to dangerous levels. I lash out. But I did see a great bumper sticker the other day on a thrashed mid 1990's Ford pick up - "I'm Too Poor to Vote Republican."

That about covers it for me.

Later........................................

What Goes Around Comes Around

2011-09-07T10:40:00.001-04:00

Now that the brain dead Tea Baggers of the Right have successfully taken political rhetoric completely into the gutter these past few election cycles, I find it hilarious they now seem so shocked to be getting their own style of rhetoric thrown back in their face. The Right Wing Tea Baggin blogosphere is absolutely aghast the liver lillied Lefties would stoop so low. What a bunch of hypocrites. You morons set the stage, the example, the tone. What did you expect? No backlash whatsoever? BTW , the image is from 2009 at one of your hoe downs. Yeah, you folks are real class act alright.

Eric Bolling of Fox News was righteously indignant regarding Teamster president Hoffa's comment "Let's take the Conservatives out in November". I especially enjoyed the video where Bolling whined about Media Matters calling him and Fox out for selective editing. He said he listened to Hoffa's remarks again saw no "selective editing." Well dumb ass, maybe you should not listen to the same clip over and over, but maybe the whole speech. Or at the least the complete comment.

And of course Ann Coulter pipes up on some Fox panel of idiots and all she can do is criticize Hoffa's teamsters for representing "useless Kindergarten teachers". When called on this by one of her panel mates, she does not back down. Public sector workers are useless she contends, especially teachers.

Part of me says let the Tea Baggin whackos on the Right have the steering wheel. Let's just put America on a faster downward spiral than we are already in. Maybe hitting bottom sooner than later is better than this slow prolonged fall from grace.

But then I remember, "Oh yeah, they are idiots and I know we would only suffer more if they had the reins." Tea Baggers and their ideas will not put us back on top. That boat sailed years ago when their corporate sponsors found China. All they can do is knee jerk us into a worse situation than we are already in, what with their panties so bunched over stupid crap like transgender dancing, Creationism, making sure Gays cannot get married, and putting God back into the Constitution as they know the founders wanted. And in their minds, this will satisfy their odd notion of Freedom. That by restricting other people's freedoms somehow makes us all more free.

What I see coming at us is a uniquely Americanized version of a culture in decline. The basic model is there with the trends mirroring the declines of many cultures before us. Letting Tea Baggers have their way will just force us to re-set sooner than later. But then I again remember, they are idiots.

Later.......................

Worn Out Welcomes

2011-08-31T04:03:00.000-04:00

I sometimes wonder what welcomes I have worn down, worn out over the years I have stacked up behind me. Blissful and ignorant, my Younger self stretched the limits of more than a few relationships, friendships. Blithely, and with no concern for what my actions might cause in others, I forged ahead with my agenda whatever it was or might become. I meant no harm, but invariably I still hurt some feelings over the years.

My Older self would like to imagine any pain I may have caused to be minor hits like we all take as we beat our way through the jungle from the cradle to our graves. I would guess that it is normal my older self would skim over the unpleasant times and dwell only on the good ones.

But would that be honest? Memories collected to make my youth look like some 1950s sitcom may be by themselves true. What about the filler, the moments and times in between I would just as soon forget? Rough times and ugly moments also left scars, imprints on what I was, what I became. I am nothing now but an accumulation of moments, good and bad.

Facing up to all of them is difficult. Some dark times I can only remember in pieces and parts. A facial expression…… Eyes filled with pain staring me down…. The way I felt when another's words cut me like a knife……. A ten second slice remembering my physical escape after hurting someone deep………… Or the ten seconds watching their backside fade into the sunset after they wrenched my guts out.

Remembering the pain can often leave me feeling better in the here and now. Even though I will sometimes wince internally when certain memories pass by, I notice now that I have come through them all without being bitter over the hurt caused me and only minor pangs of guilt still linger over the pain I caused in others. My list of regrets is actually rather short. And that makes me feel good.

Ya Gotta Wet it!

2011-08-19T10:14:00.001-04:00

I picked up this pre-owned CD for exactly $8.97. How Bull Moose Music determined that exact value, well, I guess it doesn't matter. With my frequent buyer card, I paid maybe $6. I bought it because any CD with a title that incorporated the word "Copulatin" and of course "Blues"........Well, how could I resist? Old school Jazz and Blues from the 1920s and 30s, maybe some from the 1940s. I dunno, they are old tunes, great tunes, and damn filthy tunes.

I'm not into porn sites, dirty mags, or XXX videos rented from the back room down to Don's Videos on Rte 236. But sing me a smutty song and I perk right up. I think it was my exposure to all the dirty Irish tunes my brother brought back from College in the early 1960s and managed to recall perfectly no matter how shit faced he was. Or maybe it was the heavy doses of Hawaiian music when I was but 5 years old watching nubile native girls move their hips in unnatural and sinful ways at the King Kamehameha Club while my parents got exuberant and sloppy, stumble back to the car and barely make it home on mixed drinks had to make an impression even on a small fry like I was. Music and sex were inseparable from then on. Even when I wasn't sure what sex was or could be.

And now, well, I'm still not sure. Music and sex are momentary instantaneous ecstasies I never feel when involved in day to day, one foot in front of the other drudgeries dealt with until I can come home and..........................Crank it............. or ..... Wet it.

Either one will blow my dress up.

Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child - A Retrospective

2011-08-18T09:49:00.000-04:00

Trying my best to sidestep, skip over, or avert my eyes from the overwhelming amount of news items pointing up just how stupid our leaders are, I settled in on a news item regarding a Christian Fundamentalist couple who beat one of their children to death with a plastic pipe for mispronouncing a word.

There ya go Mike, something real yet bizarre. Right up my alley.

Seems this deeply religious couple got the idea from a fundamentalist group advocating corporal punishment as one of the many go to tools for parents to use in raising their children.

Don't get me wrong here. Or well, get me wrong, or get me right. You'll process what I write however you like.

I am ambivalent about corporal punishment. Corporal punishment that stops short of being outright abuse that is. However, there are two problems with corporal punishment.

1 - It is too easy for it to get out of hand when being implemented by an adult with anger control issues.

2- Used on the children that really deserve....well, it just doesn't work. I know. I was one of those children. Logic and grounding worked better on me than a good smack. Limiting my access to the free world made me think more than twice about screwing up in the future. All hitting me did was make me angrier.

I am old enough to have lived through corporal punishment when it was indeed a normal way to deal with punks and punkettes of the small fry kind. I personally felt the sting of various and legally sanctioned blows to my body as trouble making was all I wanted to do when I was young. I really enjoyed pissing off adults. And often, their anger took the form of a paddle, a rubber hose, a belt, or in the case of my dear departed mother, a well placed slap up side my head.

Thankfully, both of my parents had their anger mostly under control. I was never hit unless I deserved and then expected it. My dad stopped pulling out his belt about the time I was in fourth grade when I was in one of my "I hate Mom" periods. I remember it well. I had done something serious enough that Mom said, "Wait until your father gets home young man. Go to your room." I sat in my room reading a book calmly waiting for the "punishment". By that point in my life, I actually looked forward to a few butt smacks with the belt. It beat being grounded.....Hands down.

So Dad comes home after a hard day at the office. I hear a heated discussion downstairs. "I don't know what we are going to do with that boy. You have to take care of it. I am at my wit's end." Mom is so angry, she passed it off on Dad. So Dad comes upstairs and begins "the ritual".

"The Ritual" always went down the same way. By the age of 8 I knew what was coming. First "the talk". Then came the rationalizing for the punishment. Finally, the 3 or 4 smacks with his belt. I muster up some tears and it was over. Easy Peasy. Life went back to normal.

Only this time I don't cry. I sat back down on the bed next to my father and glare at him. He looked at me for a moment and said something to the effect, "Well, I guess the belt is not going to work anymore, is it?"

Still glaring at him, I say, "Nope." So ended the physical punishment handed down by my parents. Oh, my mom still got some blows in, but they were wake up and pay attention blows that came out of the blue. Attention getters and nothing I would consider abuse.

I still had to contend with the publicly and legally sanctioned corporal punishment dished out in the various schools I attended prior to college. Besides the numerous wrist slaps and back of the head wake me ups, I was beat with a paddle in two different schools in Florida. The vice principal at John Hanson Jr High in Oxen Hill, Maryland paddled me very hard once when he caught me and another fool trying to cut class. But the worse beatings I received came when I went to military school in high school. Capt. Dimaggio had a rubber hose he called "Willy Whack". If you pissed him off in his class, he would say, "Macrum, two minutes after class with Willy Whack." If you really pissed him off, it could mean 4 minutes with Willy. His routine was what I would call true abuse. He would set up at one end of his class while I set up at the other end. He would say, "Now" and begin chasing me around the class while swinging that hose as hard as he could. And he was quick and wiry. Let me tell you, that damn hose hurt. It left welts that did not go away overnight.

Once I became an officer as a senior, he never threatened me with it again. But he would use it on other cadets, younger cadets. I had him for study hall as a senior. His arbitrary use of that hose for the slightest infraction always pissed me off. One day he went after a Prep (7th or 8th grader) after class. I hung around outside the classroom door. When I thought the poor kid had had enough, I went in and took the damn hose away from him. I received 50 demerits for insubordination.

And guess what? Those demerits and some 100 more I received that year meant I had to get more whacks the day before I graduated if I was going to graduate as a first lieutenant and not the buck private I had been busted down to. The whacks were dispensed by "the Colonel", the commandant of the school. The Colonel had the paddling thing down. He always gave you a choice, Whacks or hours marching with a rifle on "the track". Demerits were taken off at the rate of one demerit for one hour of marching. Or 3 demerits for each whack. As I still had some 30 demerits on the last day of class, he decided that I would get a special rate. He would wipe my record clean, give me back my first louie pips for 4 whacks. I jumped all over it. I really wanted to graduate as a first lieutenant. My parents were coming to see me walk the walk.

All of this went down in the Armory, a long room that had a desk for the Colonel and racks of rifles and shelves filled with ammo. The recipient would grab a rifle rack with both hands, thus placing the buttocks in the perfect position for a solid upswing stroke from the Colonel. His paddle was about the length of a baseball bat whittled out of a very thick board that ended in a paddle surface about 12x12 inches big. It had 5 big holes drilled in it. The holes allowed a free swing with no wind resistance and left round welts that did not go away for days. Every time I faced his paddle, the blows brought tears to my eyes. The Colonel did not fool around. You knew you were getting hit. One last time I left that last day with tears running down my face but with gratitude that he allowed me to graduate with honor in front of my parents. I had neglected to tell them I had been busted.

My wife and I made the conscious choice to not spank our daughter. Not so much that we considered spanking abusive, but more that it was ineffective. I know the fear of it never made me think twice about the trouble I was always brewing up.

An after thought or side note here:

While trying to come up with an appropriate image for this post, my initial searches only turned up links to naughty girl spanking sites or S&M sites. Apparently corporal punishment has now transcended punishment and become pleasure for many people out there. What a whacky world we live in.

Later.............................