Saturday, March 20, 2010

Fire On Beside The Mountain

Massive Lawn Clean Up Efforts...


Everybody look out, because "Burn Permit" in hand, this morning shortly after sunrise (and after downing a pot of coffee or possibly a couple of Bloody Marys) I'm hitting the back yard...chainsaw and electric hedge clippers and pruning loppers in tow on a mission to remove every stick and branch and bramble that is deemed to be out of place within reach of my hands...while standing on top of a 6 foot tall step ladder or my 20' tall extension ladder.

Look West or East or North or South on the horizon (depending on which way you happen to reside relative to the location of the Turbo Pup Compound here on the Banks of the Mighty Tennessee River), and that plume of smoke you see will possibly be from my expert combustionary efforts (is "combustionary efforts" a real word?) today.

Now where's my cigars and lighter...wait...I have time for a nap first...

Friday, March 19, 2010

Fair Warning...Don't Listen To Anything I Say Or Write Here

Insanity Cubed...


One of the reasons that I write so much here on this blog is because I'd like to think that in a million years a thousand years between now and whenever it is that the Democrats and the United Nations finally take over the Internet and scrub it clean of independent political thought and other content like I deliver that people might trip over my ramblings and remember that there once was a crazy guy named Virgil Raymond Rogers, III, and he not only lived in the late 20th and early 21st century in America, but he also had some interesting things to say every now and then.

Sort of like a self glorifying time capsule left in the electronic ether of what we call "the Internet."

Then there's the satisfaction I get in writing down things which are bothering me and having the ability to come back next week or next month or next year and see if there are any trends to my behavior and personality which have been improved in the process...else lost in time and aging dementia.

I realize each day that I could die in a car wreck or suffer a stroke and spend the rest of my earthly existence laying astride a hospital bed peeing and drooling on myself, but at least as it is right now everyone has five or six years worth of written records of the contents and goings on in my neural synapses on semi-permanent record, and thus be able to determine whether they should celebrate my demise or start a campaign to name a national holiday in my memory.

I guess right now unless I invent a cure for the common cold or cancer, the former is more likely than the later...but I digress...

I'm absolutely losing my mind right now wrestling with ongoing technical issues with my business efforts. Just when I solve one problem...technical or commercial...another one pops up and makes me want to pull what's left of the hair from my ever greying, ever balding head.

Hang on...I'm sitting in front of not one but TWO Laptops and the one I'm not writing on is demanding my attention in the process of installing a "USB to Serial" software driver...


AhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHH...I'll be back later...

MORE at 6:30 AM


I swear that this stupid PLC software is haunted...because once again after doing something as simple as shipping away my only programming cable to another customer and buying a couple of new replacement ones from the manufacturer, now my computers refuse to talk to my control panel.

So now I'm stuck literally within minutes of having everything finished and I can't make the machines speak to each other.

That's it, where's my really BIG Hammer...

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Anybody Want A "Limp Pickle"?

I'm Headin' Toward Happy Hour...


I think that I just came up with a new Shooter Drink which could actually go somewhere given proper promotion and marketing.

As those that know me in real life know, I enjoy the occasional (or not so occasional) "Dirty Martini" made with super chilled premium Vodka with Olive "juice" spashed in for color and flavor.

So fast forward to this afternoon when I'm cleaning up from cooking my German Night extravaganza last night (I call it an "extravaganza" because there were three meats and two vegetables and the Swedish already have the word "Smorgasbord" copyrighted...) and in the process I ended up emptying a jar by eating the last dill pickle...but there was still juice in there...

Then one thing lead to another and I couldn't resist taking a sip of the Dill Pickle Juice, and then I said to myself...I said...

"Self...I bet that there juice would be good tossed on top of some vodka."

And then, being a professional Injuneer and part time scientist and amateur research Chemist, I remembered that it just so happened that I had some 100 proof Vodka in my Freezer for use as a solvent and for other scientific purposes, so in the interest of world piece peace and promoting human welfare the happiness of yuppies and drunks everywhere I did this...

I poured exactly 20 ml of Vodka into a graduated beaker, then added 5 milliliters of Kroger brand Dill Pickle juice to the container, shook it with ice, and proceeded to come back here and risk giving away all my secrets a bunch of stuff which shouldn't make it on to the Internet....

so I'll be going now because I still have Vodka and pickle juice and it's calling me back to the kitchen laboratory.

(I almost forgot...the reason I call the drink "Limp Pickle" is because I believe that's all you'll be left with if you're over 30 and drink more than a couple...go figure...)

New Karaoke Tune

Live From The Banks Of The Mighty Tennessee River Saturday Night...




(That would be the group The Holleys doing their #2 ranked hit in 1972, "Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress"...I'm bumping it down a couple of steps in Key and adding a Harmonica solo...should be interesting...)

I'd Rather Be Dead Than Red On The Head A Banker

...You Better Be A Good One Else Look Out For Me...


Have I mentioned that I generally hate Bankers?

Well...I do...

It's just that simple.

I come by it honestly, but let's just agree that most of my dislike is beyond the scope of this current missive, but still...

I've nothing against the Bank Tellers and the other lowly employees forced to sit around in the bank accepting deposits and issuing Cashiers checks because they have no choice but to follow inane rules and procedures while handing out receipts and lolly pops to children.

I'm talking B A N K E R S...

The idiots who are the so called "decision makers" in our country's financial institutions.

I'm in good company I guess in my disdain, because my fellow writer and idol Mark Twain is quoting as saying this truth ism:

"A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain."

My reason for disliking the profession in general and many if not most of the people in it is their poor regard not for my desire to BORROW THEIR MONEY from them, but rather their insidious desire to KEEP MY MONEY FROM ME at every opportunity.

Take the occurrences of this past week, for example.

After being in business for almost five months and having delivered products to customers since January, after waiting what seemed like an interminable amount of time ..."net 60 days"...we finally opened an account in the Corporation's name with a local credit union which I've been doing business with the past two years.

Now mind you I've let them process the funds to buy one house here in town and store the proceeds of the sale of another investment property, and in the span of those 23 months I've never once bounced a check and never had a check I deposited into my account returned at any time.

EVER.

And when I walked in the door last week to open the commercial account I told the branch manager that the reason I was giving them the opportunity to serve my business banking needs was because I assumed that being a long standing customer...someone who had pushed SIX FIGURES through an account with them previously...that they would give me some consideration in processing what would sometimes be large checks without forcing me to go through the government allowed (but not mandated) and much hated "check hold."

You know, the old "check hold" game where a bank takes your money, written on Fancy paper with water marks and security seals and God knows what else, and signed with something besides a color crayon or magic marker, and then proceeds to act like they have to send it by a courier riding a donkey to Philadelphia to the Federal Reserve before releasing the aforementioned funds into your account for your use.

Now everyone with half a brain knows that in today's modern banking system, if you write a check for five cents or five dollars or five hundred thousand dollars that your bank knows about it within 24 to 48 hours and will gladly assess you a $39 fee for "overdraft" if you're 1 cent short on your "available" balance.

So why the heck do these morons and ingrates feel obligated to sit there with a straight face, a WEEK after you made the deposit...

a WEEK after they promised you they'd clear the funds ASAP...

and that same WEEK later tell you about the federal banking rules which allow them to hold the funds for ten days and there is nothing that they can do about it.

What a total, unmitigated, stinking, steaming pile of BS.

I'm probably going down to that credit union (which will remained un-named here in an uncharacteristic fit of personal restraint) next week when all the funds have cleared and withdraw, in CASH, every single penny they have in my name and the company's name and go buy a case of Ball Mason Jars and bury the stash out back in my garden.

(And they're dang lucky all of my guns are in Alabama or else I might just go down there and make a withdrawal this afternoon.)

That will be all...for now...

DAMMIT

Beware The Ides Of March...

"Et Tu...Pelosi?"


I swear to God, ladies and Gentlemen, I'm afraid that Speaker Nasty Pelosi would actually kill and eat her children and grandchildren if she believed it would help her in her effort to get the abortion (excuse the pun) they call "healthcare reform" passed in the US House and Senate.

Notice that I absolutely refuse to capitalize the words "healthcare reform," because it's anything but true medical care reform in any shape or form in my opinion.

It's going to screw things up like you won't believe, and I personally am seriously afraid of its affect on my own condition because, in spite of them telling me I'm going to enjoy "improved, lower cost access" and "removal of lifetime caps" and "elimination of pre-existing condition exclusions"...

I actually think that they're going to look at my crappy history over the past 25 years as someone with Genetic Hyper-coagulativity and just decide that the next time my blood trys to turn to the consistency of Jello they'll just buy me a lovely government issue Pine box and wait for Nature to take it's course.

I'd rather take my chances and pay the costs...as giant as they have historically been...under the current system, than have the government come to YOUR house and screw around with YOUR checkbook and change where you and your mother and your kids go to the doctor in the name of giving me ANYTHING for free or at a reduced cost.

It's just that simple...

Unfortunately there is still a large segment of of our population--legal and illegal--which has no problem having the government come to your house and make you pay for my Coumadine and Heparin IV's when I need them.

If and when that happens, I offer my heartfelt apology because I've done everything I can...phone calls and letters and e-mails...to stop this insanity.

Now getting back to my earlier reference to the Poster Child for Progressive Partisan Insanity--Nasty Pelosi.

I further suggest that if, by some miracle, President Obama finally started listening to the American People and took appropriate charge as the top Executive in the Executive Branch of our Constitutional Government, and in the process decided to end his abdication of power in letting Senate and House Democrats write this constantly changing, constantly evolving "invisible bill", that she would lead an uprising similar to the one staged against Caesar in Rome in 41 BC and assassinate his useless "community organizer" butt.

(The FINE PRINT: For those reading this and working with the CIA, the FBI, and/or the Secret Service, take note that I'm not advocating the assassination of an American President nor am I supporting a legislative/judicial/military uprising, I'm just saying that I believe that the egos out there in various elevated office are dangerous and I'd be worried if I were in the mix and stepped out of line...It's probably amazing how far sHrillary Clinton's $1000 high heel can penetrate your skull if she walked by and found you already knocked to the ground...)

Is it just me???

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Lost Star Wars Clips

People With Waaaaaaayyyy Too Much Time On Their Hands...

Not Still Winter

Not Yet Spring...


My bones are aching for some sunshine these days...at least that's what I've diagnosed the problem to be.

It's been crappy and cool for over a week now and with the time change I'm not only mentally cranky, I'm physically about to jump out of my skin in anticipation of being able to go outside and get some things done here on the property.

The house is set pretty far back on the lot off the street so we have over twice as much front yard--maybe three times as much--as we have back yard so the private areas not visible from the street and the neighbors properties are at a premium, and thus far with all of the construction and renovation and general fooling around I've done the first two summers we're probably in violation of numerous municipal codes and home-owners' association rules if we still had an active homeowners association.

Which we don't because everyone got old and all the kids graduated and moved away and they let an idiot with a backhoe tip his rig over and cave in the side of the neighborhood pool long before we moved in here, but I digress...

So I've spent the past two years whacking away at overgrown shrubbery like is common on houses near 50 years old and burning piles of branches and leaves and putting bags and bundles of stuff out on the curb for Waste Managment to pick up once in a while, and now I can see the end in sight, a rennovated landscape where I can actually start hauling new plants INTO the property and growing them rather than having to kill them and cut them down and then pay to have someone haul them away to the landfill.

A number one priority is to design and build some sort of "composting facility"--a group of two or three bins constructed of wire mesh and pressure treated lumber which will allow me to process the inevitable leaves and other folage which will be produced as a byproduct of growing a garden this year.

Then there's the expansion of the fenced area in the back yard, something which started out 24' x 24' for the Turbo Pup's use and then grew to 24' x 36' last year with the addition of two more 12 foot panels and the relocation of the end wall.

I guess I'm going to torture myself again and go rent a gas powered auger and drill three more holes in the ground another 12 feet further down the property line and end up with a fenced area that is roughly 24' by 48' in size....actually 32 feet wide on one end because I'm extending the fence all the way up to the back of the house in the process.

Then because we have rabbits the size of footballs hopping around everywhere here munching on everything in sight that's green or light brown, I'll have to put some kind of Chicken Wire or other material around the base of the perimeter to keep the little buggers away from my garden crop.

It pisses me off that you have to get a "burn permit" even here outside the city limits in Knox County, TN (my grandfathers are turning over in their graves because of that), but our neighbor got one last week which is good for a month so in return for using their "burn barrel" I'm handling processing all of their stuff laying around in piles on the line between our properties while I mix my own stuff in with theirs in the process.

Isn't it a stupid world when people have to ask their government for permission to build a fire outside?

I hear that in California the sniveling, booger eating, tree hugging, patchouli stinking, tie dyed hippy politicians won't let you cook on a charcoal grill or have a wood fire in our own fireplace INSIDE your own house in some areas of the state.

I guess if I lived in California when my house burned down they'd have wanted to come over and write me a ticket for having a fire without a permit, and if they found me roasting marshmallows on a stick over smoldering ashes when the fire department left I'd have gotten another one for grilling out in a restricted area.

$#@%ing liberal/progressives...

can't live with them, and it's apparently against the law to try to live without them because just like integrated schools in the 1960's, they bus them around to places like Eastern Tennessee and southern Alabama in electric powered mini-vans so everyone can enjoy them.

And speaking of electric vehicles, does anyone but me find it somewhat funny that more than a few of the stupid computerized "drive by wire" Toyota Prius...battle emblem of the sniveling, tree hugging, booger eating et.al. greenie weenies world wide--is accused of losing it's mind on a regular basis and crashing into stuff?

You don't hear about any mean old ever greying, ever balding bastards driving gas hog Chevy Suburbans with 454 cubic inch V-8 engines crashing into stuff out of control while getting NINE MILES PER GALLON ON REGULAR UNLEADED do you?

No...

Because we won't...

We'll just keep on putting up with the liberalization/feminization/deterioration of America, while being forced to eat our portion of government dirt and cheese and paying taxes and sitting around crapping our pants and muttering "I told you so" while beating the TV set with our walking sticks.

Geeze...I started out trying to write a little this morning from a positive perspective, but things didn't work out and I have to go now and stop thinking about this before my head explodes.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Government Clocks

Keeping Time According To Idiots In Washington DC...


On a positive note, I love this time of year when the "official" time lets me have daylight past 7PM on my clock.

On a negative note, it totally pisses me off that we've mindlessly let the government take control of stuff like our own methods of tracking the passage of the minutes of our lives and even the beating of our hearts...a rapid pulse being something the government will soon come knocking at our doors complaining about if the Obama/Pelosi/Reid "Health care plan" passes...

The older I get, I just seem to get crazier and more insane by "polite cultural standards" when it comes to my reactions to people in a state capitol or Washington DC telling me what the numbers should be on my clock or what the balance should be in my checkbook.

I guess that I'm just a mean old bastard...and I pride myself in perfecting the standard against which everyone else will be compared.

Monday, March 15, 2010

Mission Impractical Impossible

Obscure Old MAD Magazine Cartoon References...






RIP Mr Graves...

I'm "Extra" Inarticulate

A Pain In The Butt Writes About...What?


Sorry Ladies and Gentlemen, but I've probaby written about 10,000 words here in the past week which on second thought I haven't allowed myself to publish for public consumption on this blog.

It doesn't in the end diminish the value of writing them, it just keeps me from offending the delicate sensibilities of some of my regular readers and family and the occasional random visitor who ends up stopping by.

In my defense, as one of my favorite Authors...Samuel Clemmons once was quoted as saying:

"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer..."

Or this one...

"When angry count four; when very angry, swear."

In the end, I know that everything will be OK, and even if it isn't what I want, it will still have to do because after 50 years I've learned that things "are what they are" and life "is what it is..."

Don't worry...I'll probably be back full form within the week after regrouping and re-organizing and re-establishing a new head of steam, and until then...

Regards Y'all

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Cheer For The Yellow Jackets

GT Plays Duke


The final game in the Atlantic Coast Conference starts in about 15 minutes, and much to my surprise my beloved GT Yellow Jackets' team is still standing after starting play Thursday.

After 33 seasons I've learned not to get too excited and cocky, but a victory over Duke today could be the first time in 17 years they win the conference title (the others coming in 1985, 1990, and 1993.)

Too much to hope for probably, but you can't blame an old Ramblin' Wreck for dreaming I guess...

MORE at 4 PM.

Oh well, Duke took GT 65-61 but Tech can hold their head up high because it wasn't a blowout...and there's always "next year" I guess