I GUESS THE TRUTH HURTS !

The organization Thatsabortion.com which is fronted by mostly black pastors were forced to remove this billboard in NYC, because it was deemed too offensive. Guess you probably know who was already planning to get some protest face-time, yeah good old Al Sharpton. The pro abortion people can't argue the statistics, (almost 60% of african american babies are killed by abortion) they just don't want it talked about. It should come as no surprise that the abortion mill is most effective in minority areas.
The founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, through Planned Parenthood, advocated abortions and birth control on Afro-Americans in order to eliminate what she called "socially undesirable people. Sanger was a racist, socialist and atheist.
The legalization of abortion in this country was founded on a lie. Roe v Wade was argued for a woman (whose real name is Norma McCorvey and is now pro life) wanting to abort her baby because she had been raped. The only problem with that was, it was a lie, she was not impregnated by rape. By the time the left leaning Supreme Court had ruled in favor of the abortion industry, the woman in question had already delivered the baby she wanted to exterminate and gave to baby up to a family who was thrilled to have her. I wonder how this 38 year old woman feels about her mother trying to have her killed?

MEATBALL MADNESS

No time for blogging today, working on my sketti and meatballs. 6 lbs of meatball mania!

THAT'S ABOVE MY PAY GRADE

Illustration of partial birth abortion

Obama supports this procedure. To a some people it's just another medical procedure. He took the cowards way out when pressed on the issue during the election process. He was asked when he thought life begins for a baby; that's when he made the above statement. Don't you think that if your personal opinion is going to have such an impact on the most innocent amoung us, you should educate yourself on the matter.

 As leader of the free world nothing should be above you pay grade.

BLACK EYED PEAS FOR RITA'S VIEWING PLEASURE

HEY MUAMMAR, THE BLACK EYED PEAS CALLED, THEY WANT THEIR OUTFIT BACK !

IS BLOGGING REALLY DYING?

What surprised me when I got into the blogging thing, was all the talk on the web about the death of blogging. What? I just started; was I so bad at this that I killed it for everyone?

After looking further into this subject I absolved myself of any responsibility. Apparently the decline of this venue has been going on way before I entered the fray.

Most blame the explosion of social networks, (mainly Facebook) for the impending demise of blogging. I really don’t understand what one thing has to do with the other; the Facebook I know, is not the platform for deep thought about the world around us. I’m not saying my blog is mind expanding in any way, but F.B. is more about friends getting back in touch and sharing day-to-day ordinary life. I know there are other uses for F.B., some of these revolutions in the Middle East depend on the communication supplied by this and other social networks, but that just seems to me to be just a fringe element of this media.

Am I missing something? Are there political forums in F.B. that are more effective then regular blogs? I try not to go all Limbaugh on F.B., sometimes when someone makes a really stupid political comment, I can’t help but jump in and put my opposing two cents in. I know that might upset a few people I care about, so I feel more comfortable doing it here; so if you don’t like what I have to say you don’t have to call up my URL. Maybe that explains my small readership. Oh well, like I said this blog is mainly self-serving anyway and I am shouting at my TV a lot less these days, which makes my wife happy.

The reason for this particular blog is to get a sense if reports of the death of blogging are greatly exaggerated or did I buy a ticket on the Titanic?

Comments anyone? Is blogging really on it’s way out?

WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE?

Just heard on the radio that the four Americans recently taken hostage by Somali pirates have been murdered. For the last several years they have been sailing the world giving out free bibles, according to reports this may have been reason enough for Islamic dominated Somalia pirates to slaughter these innocent victims. I wrote about this subject a few days ago and wondered why in the hell do we let these ragtag losers get away with this behavior. Like I said then, M60’s mounted on the bow and stern would easily turn back these dumbass in their little dinghies. I bet you could even get volunteers to stand the post. We could have a lottery and the winners get the privilege to take their turn behind the machine guns and make a sport out of it. Hell we could even start a pool and you could earn points by taking one of these vermin out and extra points if you sunk their little boat. You would have people standing in line to buy that lottery ticket.

This problem is not going away on it’s own. If you allow the terrorists in boats to attack at will, without fear of return fire and you continue to throw money at these assholes in ransom; there is no reason for them to stop.

Albert Einstein said it best “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”

WELCOME TO INDIANAPOLIS

"Welcome to Indianapolis" 

That wasn’t a greeting to our fair city. That was the comeback the IPD detective gave me in response to me shaking my head after he told me the damsel in distress I just rescued from an armed felon was a hooker. It shouldn’t have come as a complete surprise; after all I was at 10^th and Rural! That area is hooker heaven, what was I doing there? I sure as hell wasn’t looking for professional company. I was running my route in a service van rescuing homeowners from broken down refrigerators and such.

 It was broad daylight and I turned the corner heading west on east 10^th, looked just ahead and saw there was some type of ruckus right in the middle of the street. Some guy was grabbing a woman and she was doing everything possible to get away, as I got closer trying to evaluate the situation the guy gave her one hell of a right hook to the jaw and she went flying. She is laid out on the street and he goes after her, I gunned it honking the horn and pointed the van between the two. I had the impression this guy wanted to kill this woman. When I blocked him he tried to walk in front of my van so I nudged the van forward like I was going to run him over if he tried. Then he walked toward the back of the van, I guess this dumbass didn’t know I had a reverse. As I’m shifting to R, I’m also dialing 911, although I have a concealed weapon permit, the company I work for will terminate you if you have a weapon on you during work or in the van, so I used the only weapon I had and that was the van. So this jackass is trying to get around the back of my van I’m in reverse getting ready to run scumbag over while I’m pushing 911 send on the cell, suddenly another van coming the opposite direction stops beside me; a male and a female undercover cop jump out of their plain blue van and pull their guns on the guy and order him to the ground. I’m sitting there staring at the cell wondering if this was some sort of magic phone. I had just hit send and instantly two cops with guns drawn appeared from nowhere. With my backup here, I jumped out of the van and started yelling at the guy spread eagled on the street. “YOU CHICKEN SHIT M****** F*****!, YOU MUST BE A BIG PUSSY HITTING A WOMAN LIKE THAT!” I yelled. The guy looked at me and said, “I know my rights”. I flipped him the bird and continued my tirade “F*** YOU M****** F*****!”. The female cop was standing right next to me, never taking her eyes or her aim off the guy on the ground and firmly told me “sir we got this, please get back I the van and pull in the lot so we can get your statement”. I decided not to press my luck and let the cops do their job. In short order there were cops everywhere and they had him cuffed and stuffed in no time. A little later the female cop came over and talked to me, she was smiling and friendly. She asked me” did you call that guy a m***** f*****?” I said yeah I did, she busted out laughing, I guess she felt the same way about him. I asked her “ where the hell did you guys come from? I was still dialing 911 and you guys were there”. She told me her and her partner were just down the street surveilling something else and saw the whole thing go down. I told her it sure was a lucky for me they were and I appreciated what her and her partner do for a living. She told me to sit tight and wait for the detective to take my statement. When he came, I gave him the rundown of what I saw. He asked me if I saw the guy pull a gun. I asked him “ you mean that guy was armed?” ” yes” the detective said “and he is a known felon”. I just kind of stared off and remembering that he walked within a foot of me when he was trying to get around the van. Man he could have just popped me so easy. I told the detective, that he may have had the gun pulled but I didn’t see it, if I had I probably would have tried to run him down. I asked about the woman and he told me she was a known prostitute; I just looked down and just shook my head; that’s when the detective gave me the “welcome to Indianapolis” line. I know the city all too well, running calls in Indy many years, I’ve had to park next to crack dealers, dodge bums asking for booze or drug money and have seen plenty of hookers plying their trade. I gave my statement and agreed to testify in court if needed. The detective thanked me and walked off.

Indianapolis is a great city, but like all big towns, it has a dark side too. Looking back later that day, when I had time to process everything that had happened and why I stuck my neck out for someone I didn’t know. I sure as hell am no hero; I just reacted to a situation that happened right in front of me. I didn’t know she was a hooker, but as I told the detective, I didn’t care what she was, no woman deserved to be beat like that. The prosecutor’ office kept in touch with me the next few months with the final call letting me know the crook had plead out; he was going back to prison for another 8 years. The dumbass had just gotten out; I guess some idiots never learn.

That goes for me to, because a few years after that incident I got involved in a similar event right down the street from my house, I’ll have to share that event sometime down the road. It’s blog worthy I think. At least to me it was another life lesson.

I know I look down my nose sometimes at those people in that state of human disrepair, but I can’t forget the look on that woman’s face as she was on one side of the van with her attacker on the other. She was slapping her hands against my windshield, pleading with me to protect her. I also can’t forget the look on his face as he walked by my window, never looking directly at me, he just had the 1000 mile stare going, but I could see the rage, almost feel the rage coming from him. He wanted her dead and had the means to do it and nothing in the world to lose.

Every now and then I wonder if creep is still in prison. His 8-year stretch should be almost up, I figure he probably screwed up again and is still doing time. I wonder about the hooker and hope maybe that was her wakeup call, just maybe she took stock of her wretched life and realized she’s not Julia Roberts in the Pretty Woman movie. Maybe she got clean and found herself a little corner of life that she could be comfortable in.

That’s what I’d like to think, but the truth is, people seldom turn their life around once they slide that far down into the cesspool. She didn’t look a thing like Julia Roberts and Richard Gear was nowhere in sight.

YES I AM A PIRATE, TWO HUNDRED YEARS TOO LATE

”The cannons don’t thunder, there’s nothing to plunder, I’m an over 40 victim of fate.” Arriving too late, arriving too late.

Jimmy Buffet wrote that it’s too late to be a pirate; too bad radio Somalia didn’t play this song.

Why would people in this day and age still be out there playing pirate? Oh yeah, cause it pays!  That’s one major cause of this crime on the high seas, the other is we don’t take preemptive action. I don’t know maritime laws, but I think M60’s mounted on the bow and the stern would pretty much eliminate the problem. With an 1100-meter killing range on a very high and stable platform I would take that advantage over a small boat with automatic weapons and even RPG’s. It would be a turkey shoot.

BILLION DOLLAR BABY

I hear your having trouble with your baby. It started when you gave your baby a piece of candy to stop it from crying, and it worked! At least for a while, but you figured out all you had to do was give the baby a second piece of candy and it worked again. What do you know; you were really on to something. The next time it took a third piece, then another and another until you had to give your baby candy all day long to keep it happy.

Then several years later, one day you looked at your baby and said “damn! I got one fat- assed baby here. My precious little baby has turned into Baby Huey and I can’t afford all this candy any more, now what do I do? So you decide to cut your baby back to one piece of candy a day. "I know I can afford that and my baby will be healthy again" you say. What happens when for the baby’s own good you withhold all that extra candy? Your baby goes all ape shit on you.

It swears it will never vote for you and will support your opponent who will give it extra candy for the vote.

It stops working, which is kinda funny cause babies don’t really work very hard anyway, but then your baby starts walking around your house with picket signs.

The baby writes some mean stuff on those signs calling you Hitler, Mussolini, and Mubarak and saying you hate babies and such. Then your baby really starts misbehaving and causes all kinds of ruckus in the State House by interfering with the grownups business.

 Then some outsider baby sticks their big nose where it doesn’t belong; the biggest, fattest, most spoiled baby on the block. The” Commander In Pampers’! This baby believes all the babies should get all the candy they want and never have to work very hard for it. The Commander in Pampers expects YOU to pay for it. Getting all the spoiled babies in the neighborhood free candy, is how the Commander got elected in the first place.

 Now you’re in a real pickle; it would have been such a simple thing in the beginning when your baby first started to cry; for the good of the baby and all the rest of us you should have just let your baby cry for a little bit. When it saw you weren’t going to give in, it would have stopped, but once you gave in and gave it all that extra candy it was impossible to reason with the greedy little baby.

How did you get yourself into this mess?

You just wanted the baby to stop crying.

You just wanted the baby to love you.

You just wanted the baby to keep on voting for you.

Your baby.

Your billion dollar baby.

THEY MADE US LAUGH, HOW DID THEY MAKE US LAUGH ?

Whenever I’m scanning the hundreds of useless channels on my Comcast digital DVR box, I can’t help but stop and watch if I see an old episode of The Andy Griffith Show, or Dick Van Dyke. I have seen every episode hundreds of time and they can still make me laugh out loud even if I’m watching it all alone.

It never fails, after watching it I always wonder, how do they make me laugh? Nobody dropped the F-bomb, no jokes about unnatural sex acts, no mention about sex at all. The married couples didn’t ever sleep in the same bed until Ozzie and Harriet. There were many good shows from the black and white days, I Love Lucy was a stop and watcher too.

I believe it was a combination of two key ingredients, really great comedy writers and incredible comedy actors. I Love Lucy was a great show not so much because of great writing, I think it was more the acting that carried that show. More specific, Lucy O’Ball; I think you could have put dozens of actresses in the scenes of trying to keep up with the candy line or the Vitameatavegamin commercial and it just wouldn’t have the same magic. The rest of the cast on that show were great also, but Lucy carried the day. The Desilu production company also revolutionized sitcom filming, becoming the standard.

Some of the sitcoms of the late 70’s that are on my stop watch list; Barney Miller and Taxi. Though not quite as innocent as the black and white days. These two shows had me staying home and out of the bars on Thursday night back then.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not exactly a prude; there are many really funny new shows that I watch every week, that is when they have new episodes. My new favorite is Men of A Certain Age; the Ray Ramono’s show. I love this show mainly because it doesn’t need a laugh track of dead people to remind me when something is funny. It’s a lot like the Wonder Years, not ha ha funny, but clever funny. There are also some new shows I watch that are downright crude but they still make me laugh.

I do miss the old shows from back in the day that you can watch hundreds of times and never get tired of. 

It’s almost a black and white thing and I do not mean that in a racial way, what I mean is whenever I remember the late 50’ or early 60’s my memory is in black in white, I guess that is because all the family photos from that time are in black in white and all the shows and all our TV’s were in black in white. When we were little kids life was black and white as far as dad was concerned, either you did what he told you to do the first time or your  “ ass would belong to Joe Hayes” as mom or dad put when you were pushing your luck. ‘I didn’t know who Joe Hayes was, all I knew was, when he had your ass, it was always dad who beat the hell out of.  I figured dad leased a time-share on my ass from Joe.

Today is a different story things aren't as clearly defined as they used to be, television technology has improved in inverse proportion with civilization in general; the Don Henley song "In The Garden Of Allah" expresses this well, in the song, the devil laments that he longs for the time “when good was good and evil was evil, before things got so fuzzy”.

I remember the day when dad brought home our first color TV. We were way behind on that technological upgrade; we had seen color TV at our aunt Rita’s house a few years before and were transfixed watching even the commercials. We never whined to dad about getting one. We knew better than to gripe about what we didn’t have around dad, or else you know what would belong to you know who and dad would collect the taxes on it. Well this one particular day we were all sitting around watching our cartoons on our lame-assed black and white TV and dad walks in with another TV. We were trying to figure out why dad was swapping our set when this one was working just fine, the blacks were black, the whites were white and the grays were gray, what the hell? He plugged in the new set which was a portable vacuum unit about a 13” that weighed a metric ton. After several minutes of tube warm up time, it came to life in living color! Wow, the last black and white family in the free world finally has a color TV!

The last 40 some odd years of TV upgrades has led me to a nice 52” DLP High Def 1080 I, which gave me an incredible picture. Who could want for more? Me, after my baby sister got a huge LED 1080 P, damn! Now I have to start praying that my DLP’s light engine goes to hell and I will be forced to upgrade again. Then I will be able to watch the world going to hell in a hand basket in perfect 1080 I, clarity.

You know, I really wouldn’t want to go back to the old days, but I do still kind of miss the times when TV’s and life were in perfect black and white.

FIVE STEPS YOUR OVER

I pulled the syringe from the bag that contained my works. The needed was used and slightly bent. I tied off and watched the vein in my arm swell. I poked the needle in pulled back the plunger a little and watched the syringe fill slightly with blood and I knew I had hit pay dirt. I asked myself what in the hell are you doing? Why at this stage in my life, after all I have been through, do I want take a chance and get hooked on heroin? I pushed the plunger in anyway and felt the warm rush hit my neck, then the side of my face until finally the heavenly solution slid into my brain like a narcotic waterfall and it was now a complete body rush of ecstasy. Too late, at the age of 55 I’m already hooked.

 Then I woke up. I lay there in bed and wondered where in the hell did that dream come from? I have never done heroin in my life, but in my dream it felt just like I had always imagined it would. Then it hit me, it was a combination of watching a couple episodes of A&E’s Intervention and shooting myself up in the belly with Lovenox the last couple of days after my latest bout with A-fib. I was taking the blood thinner Cumedadin, but the Lovenox injections gets the viscosity of the blood thinner quicker. The dream needle in my arm was the preloaded Lovenox syringe, I don’t know why I dreamed the needle was bent, I guess the dream's screenwriter thought it would be a nice touch.

 I lay there reviewing the dream and thinking about the show Intervention. I always go through the same emotions when I watch that show. I start out being disgusted at the addict and feeling angry about the way they treat their loved ones. One such example had a young teenage heroin addict extorting drug money from her father. She had cleaned the family out completely but she didn’t care, she just wanted more. She had a fall back for money if her dad refused. She would sell herself to some old pervert older than her father, he knew she had done this in the past. When dad refused to give her money, she would tell him," fine, I’ll just go to my boyfriends house" there she could always get drug money from the old bastard.

 I see addicts like that and I just want to wring their necks and throw them out in the street. Then towards the end of the show, they are faced with an intervention with a councilor and the family. More often than not, when faced with a complete cutoff of financial support and housing most will agree to enter treatment. Most times heroin and crack addicts relapse while in treatment or leave treatment early or relapse when they get back home. Some rebound and make it over the huge hurdle eventually, but a lot of heroin and crack heads just don’t make it and after spending most of the show being disgusted by these people, I end up feeling sorry for them.

I still don’t feel comfortable calling their condition a disease in order to excuse them of responsibility. Do they say someone who is hooked on cigarettes or Mountain Dews is suffering from a disease?

In my past I have abused all manner of legal and illegal substances and I never claimed I was diseased, just stupid.

They close the show with the results of the intervention and play the song “Five Steps Your Over” during the close out. It’s a really good song though I can’t figure out it's exact meaning. What follows is a clip from You Tube of the song and some stills from the show.

I do feel bad for the families that are in turmoil over this problem and I feel bad for the addict that is putting their family though this hell.

I know I need to be a little less judgmental, I know that's a problem I have.

Sometimes I just can’t help myself, maybe I have some sort of disease.

IT’S ABOUT THE MUSIC, IT’S ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT THE MUSIC

I zipped by the Grammy’s a few times last night, just long enough to see some freak hatch out of an egg and this morning I saw a picture of some idiot that won a Grammy who looked like “those we don’t speak of “ in M. Knight Shyamalan’s movie, THE VILLAGE

 The song that won him a Grammy?  “F*** Y***” what a genius, how did he come up with such an original name.

 Real nice choice Grammy guys. You must be related to the buffoons who decides who gets the Nobel Prizes.

As for Lady GaGa  and her egg deal, you know I’m all for a good stage show, but when all you got are gimmicks I can’t take “your art” serious.

I know a lot of people like her, including my nephew who I usually agree with as far as his taste in music. I guess we are going to have to disagree on this one. Him and I drove all the way to Columbus Ohio to see Roger Waters performing “The Wall” last year, now that was a stage show, but if Waters would have been carried to the stage in a gigantic Easter egg and danced around the stage in a see through rubber suit, I woulda walked out.

Many years ago another poser, Madonna was accepting an award for another crappy song and stated, “it’s about the music, it’s always been about the music”, yeah right!

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME, YOUR OWN HOME !!!

 

A federal appeals court has upheld a controversial verdict that an Arizona rancher must pay $87,000 to four illegal immigrants he detained at gunpoint while they crossed his property.

The ruling Thursday from a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco found that the 2009 civil judgment against rancher Roger Barnett was proper and that the jury should not have been instructed that they could find Barnett acted in self-defense.

Maybe our government should pay head to what is going on in the Middle East as it relates to the way they are running our country. Stories like the above are becoming all too common and getting worse. This rancher has been found guilty of violating the civil rights of illegals! Does that even make sense? And why the hell are they trying the case in the most morally bankrupt part of the country? With what is going on in the Mexican border towns and all the government can do is persecute a rancher trying to protect his property? So if I decide to take a short cut through one of these idiot federal judges homes and they catch me and turn me over to the police, can I file a suit and expect a payday? Instead of making San Francisco a sanctuary city, lets make these federal judges homes, sanctuary houses and let the illegals squat on their property. I wonder how that would fly.

Oh, and lets not leave Nancy Pelosi out of this plan. I’m sure she has a few extra rooms in her mansion.

By the way, who in the hell designed most of our border fences that come with built-in ladders?

I could design a better fence than this, hell Ray Charles could!

NORTH DALLAS THREE

              SCENE FROM MY FAVORITE FOOTBALL MOVIE: NORTH DALLAS FORTY

 

Coach B.A looking down at the monitor of an ancient Radio Shack TRS 80 computer and says to Phil: Now that’s it, that’s what it is Phil, that’s what it all boils down to, it’s your additude….

….and there’s a theme that runs through all this data Phil, it’s immaturity, your immaturity, you lack seriousness.

Phil to B.A: Well I scored 5 T.D.’s coming off the bench, that’s pretty serious.

B.A. says loudly to Phil: YOU SCORED 5 T.D.S? DON’T YOU KNOW WE WORKED FOR THOSE, WE PLANNED FOR EM? WE LET YOU SCORE THOSE TOUCHDOWNS!

This is a scene from one of the greatest football movies of all times, North Dallas Forty. Loosely base on the 70’s era Dallas Cowboys team. The movie has a great line-up, starring Nick Nolte, Mac Davis, Bo Svenson, J.D. Spradlin, Dabney Coleman and a real football player John Mutuszac who played for the Raiders back in the 70’s and he was great in the roll of O.W. Shaddock

Nick Nolte played the lead roll of Phil Elloit, wide receiver for the North Dallas Bulls; he was a talented receiver “best hands in the league”, but very cocky and a “regular wise ass” as Joe Bob (played brilliantly by Bo Svenson) called him.
 The movie came out in 1979 and was based more on the 70’s era football instead of the 60’s era that the book was based on.

I have this movie on my computer and when I watch the ass-chewing scene between the coach called B.A. and Phil, I think of today’s football game and some of the more well known wide receivers. I would like to take the above scene and replace fictional Phil Elliot with such notable star receivers such as: T.O., Chad Johnson (I still can’t bring myself to call this idiot Ocho Cinco with translates to eight five, not eighty-five) and Randy Moss.

While I admire their talent, I can’t get past their childish antics after they score a T.D.

The list is long and lame, but the standouts; Chad Johnson sporting his homemade future Hall Of Fame jacket; Terrell Owens stomping on the star of Texas when he was playing for the 49 ers; and Moss squatting and acting like he was mooning the fans. Compare these three receivers with the Largent, Wayne and Rice and who are true team players and stand in stark contrast to the three clowns who care more about making the highlight films than actually winning games.

                                                                            CLASS




Steve Largent



Jerry Rice

 

Reggie Wayne


                                                                                CLASSLESS












                                                                                    






8 & 5



Moss

Owens

I want to take Phil Elliot out of that chair and put, the three stooges Terrell, Chad and Randy in his place. I want B.A (who was based on Tom Landry) to explain how the game is supposed to be played. Let B.A. tell them that they are supposed to be part of a team; they can't score one T.D. on their own. When they pull one of their ignorant stunts, they DEMEAN the game and disrespect their teammates.

the three stooges say to B.A.: “B.A. we’ve always given 100%” B.A. to the stooges:”100% !,Your talking about individual effort, yes you do give that, I don’t deny it, I’m talking about a team, a winning team. A winning team is 45 finely meshed gears working together in perfectly synchronization. One of those gears fly’s off on it’s own, I’ll pull it. And if that’s not straight enough, I’ll say it a different way. If you three guys want to play football for me you have to change starting right now.

Would these 3 stooges respond to this ass chewing the same way that the fictional Phil did?

Phil to B.A.;”B.A. I’m sorry if my immaturity has offended you and I’ll honestly try to change, but I’ve been a starter for 6 years and it’s hard to sit on the bench, but I’ll wait my chance. And when you do start me, I’ll make you glad you did.

B.A. to Phil:” I appreciate that Phil and we’ll see.”

Or would they do what they always do when they don’t get their way and sulk, backstab their quarterback and shut down their efforts.

I have a feeling their response to a coach B.A. type of chastisement would be: Same shit, different day.













CROSSROADS AND WIND DIRECTION

Well Mubarak has finally cut his losses and bugged out. Whether this will play out for the better or the much, much worse remains to be seen. He was a tyrant to be sure, but he was a predicable one at least. I remember well how he came to power; it was during a military parade when one of the vehicles broke ranks and drove up to Anwar Sadat, unloaded with automatic weapons, threw in some hand grenades for good measure and that was that.

Two possible outcomes that worry me are: the more radical elements of islam e.g., the Muslim Brotherhood, or any number of radical Islamists hijack the revolution and Al Qaeda wins the day. The other outcome that we should be concerned with? The peace treaty with Israel is not popular with the masses of Egyptians and I can’t even imagine how ugly the Middle East will get if they null and void it.

You gotta remember why Mubarak came to power in he first place; we already know the how, but the why is main worry here. After Sadat signed the first treaty with Israel, the radical elements of Islam issued a Fatwa on him and had him whacked by hit squad formed from his own military.

The only comic relief from this whole affair is watching The Obama administration putting the wishy in wishy washy. He kept sticking his finger in the air to check which way the wind was blowing, but I think he forgot to wet his finger first. He finally bet on the right horse yesterday, when the news media told him that it was a done deal and Mubarak was stepping down yesterday. Errr, it didn’t happen yesterday. Opps, that’s what you get when you put any faith in our news media.

I’m sure Obama is going to try to spin this event to try and make it look like it was all his idea. I got an idea Barry, why don’t you back the right horse in Iran the next time their people are fighting and dying in the streets trying to overthrow the most vile dictators on the planet. Obama thought it was above his pay grade and didn’t even open his mouth to give even passing support to the desperate people who with just a little non-military help would have had a fighting chance to neutralize that hot bed of terrorism.

Oh well, as Peter Jennings once said about President Bush at the beginning of 9/11,

“I guess some presidents are just better at it than others”

muslim brotherhood presser last Sunday

REALLY, I MEAN REALLY, I MEAN REALLY REALLY??????

Congressman Chris "the dombass" Lee

Does this really ever work out ok for anybody? Hey dumbass, ask Bret Farve how's that workin for ya?

REALLY? I MEAN REALLY?

She looked like she was walking the red carpet into the courtroom

Some people are just so ignorant they just can't get out of their own way. All the second chances and do-overs this dingbat has gotton and she steals a damn necklace? Why do so many celebs like Lohan and Charlie Sheen get away with stuff that us regular schmucks would get canned for?

CARDIOVERSION, THE HOME VERSION

During my recent bout with Artial Fibulation and trip to the hospital to jump-start my heart, I had some weird ideas floating around in my head. I remembered SNL and the late hilarious Chris Farley, when he was doing the motivational speaker guy and he felt his weekly heart attack coming on; he would take both fists and pound his chest to restart his own heart.

"your gonna be livin in a trailer down by the river"

This is called the “pericardial thump”, we learned how to do this in Army BCT, but it’s usually preformed by another person on an unconscious victim. Farley was funny as hell and this was always my favorite skit; too bad he enjoyed doing hardcore drugs more than he enjoyed living.

I thought about the procedure I was about to go through for the second time in 10 months; they were going to take me down to that special room again. The room is full of things like crash carts, heart sonograms, needles full of adrenalin, breathing tubes and P.O.S.  razors that pull the hair out of your chest instead of cutting it.

They first spray numbing medicine in your throat then squirt goo in your mouth that you swallow that numbs your throat even more. Then they inject you with Versed more or less a date rape drug because you can’t remember a damn thing after it kicks in. They put the ultrasonic device down your throat to look at the special little place in your heart where a blood clot can form if you have been in A-fib too long. If it’s all clear, they knock you completely out and stick a paddle on your back and one on your chest and shock your heart back into rhythm, hopefully.

I was lying in the hospital bed the night before the procedure was to take place and I was laughing to myself about the Chris Farley’s self induced pericardial thump and I thought; hmmm, I wonder???? I do have a stun gun at home. Now before I go on with the rest of this story let me be crystal clear; I would never, I repeat, never really try this. Are you listening Rita? Don’t go calling Nurse Ratched on me! But the repair technician in me just wondered what if in a pinch, say there was a nuclear war and all the hospitals were wiped out and a guy went into A-fib and he had a stun gun at home. You know where I’m going with this.

I had my trusty notebook computer with me and just for shits and giggles, I was blue-skying this home cardioversion procedure, so I googled the cardioversion process again and read in more detail what happens when several thousand low amped volts zap your heart.

Apparently your heart stops beating! For a few seconds, then it reboots itself and starts beating again, this time hopefully in sinus rhythm.

 beat, beat, come on damn you beat!

Hmmmm time to table this idea of the home version of the cardio version, especially since they had to shock my heart 3 times the next morning to get the damned thing to work right.

I could just see everybody at the funeral home talking the way they do when they are trying to figure out what happened to the departed. “ I don’t know, I heard they found him by the work bench in his garage laying on the floor with a stun gun in his hand. The police thought he may have been fighting off an intruder and had a heart attack. Why else would he be holding a stun gun? God that’s weird, but doesn’t he look natural laying there?”

In closing let me repeat; RITA, I WOULD NEVER TRY THIS AT HOME, THIS STORY IS FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY, RITA! DON’T TELL JOJO ON ME!

Whooo, so having made this disclaimer; let me say, some things are best left to the professionals. I have learned over the years I can’t fix everything around me that breaks.

And this stun gun DIY project would never work. Probably, wouldn’t work, No, no, no it couldn’t work, but what if??????  I wonder if it’s ever been tried before? Hmmm, I think I will google that.

Cardio version for dummies

Hmmmmm BACON !

So I’m reading the news this morning on my Crackberry and a headline catches my eye. “Feral Pig Problem Spreading in U.S.”

And I wonder what’s the problem? You can never get enough bacon or pork chops. Pork chop gravy with mashed potatoes and biscuits has no equal. I’m sorry if you’re Jewish, Islamic, or a vegan, you don’t know what your missing. To each his own I guess, but man, I loves me some pork chops and gravy.

I understand why Jewish people can’t touch it, after all it was forbidden in the Old Testament along with shellfish and a few other things. I don’t know what Mohammad had against a BLT, but whatever.

Vegans however are a different matter, our family has Indian friends that are from an area in India where they don’t eat any animals of any kind and I respect that. They are not meat Nazi’s who try to force their beliefs on the rest of us so it’s not a problem when the Indians and the Indianans break bread together. We always make sure there are plenty of veggies around when our Indian family come to town.

I do however have a problem with the animal rights wacko’s. They have a major flaw in their belief system. To them, we are just another species on this planet and all animals are created equal; we are no better then the lowly feral pigs who are rooting there way across the U.S.A.

I say if we are all equal then they need to have a talk with lions and tigers and bears, Oh my. Come talk to ME when you get all the other carnivores and omnivores to murder plants instead of other animals. Until then stay the hell out of my refrigerator meat drawer!

Back to the story, the feral pig population is exploding and they are very destructive to vegetation and other animals! Yes they are murdering other defenseless rodents and pets.

The population of wild pigs is exploding due to the fact they have no natural predator (other that mankind) and can have a litter of 13 little piggies after they are only 6 months of old.

Further into the story, we find out that some states have given hunter’s the green light to wack these horny little critters and of course the animal rights wacko’s have got their panties in a bunch over this edict. They want the government to come up with a birth control method for our ham packing little buddies. Yeah, no shit that’s the solutions these dumbasses came up with. I say we give these animal lovers a bunch of pig condoms and let them chase down the wild tusk bearing boars and let them install the condoms on their corkscrewed little wieners!

As for me, I agree with what the pigs said in Animal Farm. After all they are the ones who made the rule;

“ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS!”

RUNAWAY TRAIN

“And the sons of Pullman porters and the son’s of engineers,

 ride their father’s magic carpet made of steel”

The City of New Orleans by Arlo Guthrie is one of my all time favorite songs. I never get tired of hearing it. It’s one of those songs that have all the best elements in it to make it a perfect song, a haunting song.

I love trains, one of the greatest Christmas gifts me and my brother ever got (and I’m sure he will agree) was a train set back in the early 60s. I believe it was a 1:48 scale model, but I’m not sure about that. I remember mom and dad got us all up that Christmas morning around 3 or 4 am. When we ran into the living room the train was all set up and running around in a figure 8 track setup. We went ape shit over it, I remember it came with a powered hand car and a bottle of oil that you use to make oil puff out of the stack. I’m sure Obama and all the environmental wacko’s would worry about the carbon footprint we were leaving and make that liquid smoke illegal now.

My brother Mike is still a train nut, he and his grandson Kyle play with a train set Mike has set up in his spare bedroom. They also use a train computer game to while away the hours when Kyle comes over and they go to all the local train shows possible.

The reason blogging about trains came to me; is a memory that keeps popping up in my rapidly aging brain. In my early 20’s I worked for a company that repaired, inspected and rebuilt railroad cars. This was not Amtrak, we didn’t work on passenger cars, we did mostly coal hoppers, we also repaired freight cars, tankers, gondola’s ect. I first started there around 1979 or 80, working with some old high school buddies building railroad tracks in the yard. I’ll use their nicknames; there was Wormy, Amos P. Moses and my buddies called me Maddog back then, couldn’t tell you why.

It was a very interesting job, but could be extremely dangerous too. We were young and full of piss and vinegar and felt like we were 10 feet tall and bullet proof. Aside from laying track, we also worked in the shop, flipping railroad cars upside down, climbing to dizzying heights above shop and anything else that was required to keep a paycheck coming.

From time to time, we had to travel to our two other shops to repair or lay new track at either Sidney Nebraska or Paris Kentucky. This particular memory that keeps popping up stems from our trip to Paris Ky, our company had secured a contract with a railroad co. down there to perform mandatory inspections on their coal cars. Me, Amos and Wormy were down there with other guys from the Indy shop to repair some track and help out with the guys doing the inspections and repairs. There was no shop; we were working on the cars outside which was not uncommon. After we got the access tracks shaped up, we helped the road crews anyway we could for the next few days.

The work area was in a flat clearing and the cars we were to work on were all coupled up together several hundred yards up a fairly gentle grade. We were taxed with the job of cutting the cars loose in strings of 5 and riding them down in a free gravity ride. One guy would stand between two cars and drive them down while the other guy pulled the lever that opened the coupler and broke the string of 5 loose from the rest.



coal hopper, top right is an exampe of a hand brake



Here’s tricky part, you need to climb the ladder on one of the cars and stand at the top of the rungs where the was a tiny platform because that’s where the hand brake was, so you stand between 2 cars because that gives you twice the braking power. Railroad cars are normally stopped by pneumatic brakes with air supplied by the engine coupled to all the cars by a series of air hoses and glad-hands, but they also have a mechanical backup system where you can actuate the brakes with hand cranks.

The dangers here are miss-judging your speed and coming into the work station too fast, where there are cars jacked up off the trucks (the wheel sets that the car rides on) and guys on and under the cars working on them. Even though these cars were not carrying their usual payload of tons of coal, you still had about 550 tons you had to get stopped before you ran through the workstation and killed some of your buddies. These things sure as hell don’t stop on a dime! The other danger is falling off the string of cars and getting ran over by a railroad car, even though empty they still weigh 110 tons each. That almost happened to a guy we called Rat. He was riding a string and fell, just before he hit the track, his leg got caught and he was dangling upside down hanging by one leg staring at the track going by and the wheel of the railroad car. Luckily for him, Amos saw him and ran to catch up with the train, grabbed Rat and pulled him off and away from certain death. They went tumbling safely in the ditch, but now we got a runaway train heading for the work station till someone else caught up to the coal cars,  jumped on and cranked the brakes down.

The prospect of getting cut in half by a railroad wheel is too gruesome to imagine. Sadly it did happen at the shop one day about a year after I left that company, a teenager who was helping switch cars in the yard was riding on the outside of the track mobile and slipped off was ran over and cut in two at the pelvis. Believe it or not he lived, with a dramatically limited quality of life.

But that horrible event was in the distant future and aside from Rats close call which was retold several times over several beers after all the strings were cut and the cars inspected and we could laugh about Rats’ adventure the way guys do when they are covering up their fear of what could have been.

But that was not the lasting memory I came away with from our mission in Ky,

It was standing on the footrest by the top of the ladder between the 1^st and 2^nd car; cranking the handbrakes to get the brake shoes close to the wheels but not touching. Feeling the jerk of someone uncoupling the string that cuts our train loose and the railroad cars slowly begins their journey through the woods towards the poor stiffs down the line that actually had to work while we got to play choo choo train.

The more strings we rode down, the farther we had to hoof it up the woods to get to the next string, but that meant the free ride down was getting longer too. When the cars got up to a safe speed I’d crank the brake wheels down just little to keep the cars under control. It’s a perfect summer day in the backwoods of Kentucky, the only sounds I can hear are the breeze of the 550 tons of American made steel whizzing through the trees and the sound of the steel wheels clicking a steady rhythm against the rail. Looking at the secluded woods from the 20-foot high vantage point I had, was like a rolling vista. Approaching my next stop, applying the breaks on car #1 then turning around reaching across the two cars grabbing onto the hand brake of car #2 jumping across to the small foothold on car #2 and cranking that hand brake down gently bringing my train to a safe stop at the work station; no runaway train on this run.  I was a kid again playing with the worlds biggest train set.

Nighttime on The City of New Orleans,

Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee.

Halfway home, we'll be there by morning

Through the Mississippi darkness

Rolling down to the sea.

And all the towns and people seem

To fade into a bad dream

And the steel rails still ain't heard the news.

The conductor sings his song again,

The passengers will please refrain

This train's got the disappearing railroad blues.

Good night, America, how are you?

Don't you know me I'm your native son,

I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans,

I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.