You’ll Fall For Anything…
I am relieved and proud to admit that I believe that I was entirely wrong about the display situation and my standing down at the Glynn County Arts Coastal National Exhibit, and in the interest of fairness I confess my error and beg my audience’s pardon.
In reality I should have been flattered to have my work displayed in the room, and once I had a chance to study the work of my fellow artists last evening at the opening reception, I realized that my little tiny pen and ink presentation paled in comparison to the paintings that won recognition in the event.
The only mistake made, besides my own determination of mal intent, was in allowing my drawings into the event in the first place.
They call it a mixed media event, but it is really a show for paintings.
Acrylics, oil, and a few water colors, but no sculpture and only one charcoal drawing were present, along with my pen and inks. My drawings stood out like a sore thumb, and by the way…no one mentioned spending $200 on frames for $500 artwork.
What’s up with that?
Of the three offending parties I previously identified as suspects, only one was present and she was preoccupied with the mass of patrons that were ambling around the room in an unsupervised manner.
I’m noticing a trend in the “arts events” where a bumbling herd of people show up and the “powers what be” stand around on the sidelines watching the said herd ravage the snack table and spill wine on the carpets.
I would prefer a slightly more organized event, but since I’m not in charge, we stayed long enough to hear the awards announced and snag a couple of glasses of wine and a few finger sandwiches, then we were out the door.
Now I’ve got to figure out how to get myself to southern Ohio for Grandma’s funeral on Monday morning.
Delta wants nearly $2000 to fly there from Atlanta on Sunday. They can’t be serious, can they?
Friday, April 07, 2006
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Grandma's Gone
It was about 1:30 this AM
And It Was Peacefull...she just went to sleep and didn't wake up.
Thanks for your thoughts,prayers and support...
And It Was Peacefull...she just went to sleep and didn't wake up.
Thanks for your thoughts,prayers and support...
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
5 Years Ago Today
My Life Changed Forever...For The Good, I think...
Five years ago today I found myself walking up my driveway past a Police Line.
I almost forgot to say anything about this experience this morning, because I wasn’t looking at a calendar when I was writing.
Any way…five years ago this noon my house on Kennedy Lane in Marietta, Georgia, burned to the ground as a result of an electrical fire.
OK, it didn’t actually burn to the ground, because it was brick on four sides, but the important parts were basically charred beyond recognition except for a few items of memorabilia and things that were hosed down with water by the fire department.
I was paralyzed at first, but within a few days I accepted my fate—the end of an eight year run of bad luck involving deadbeat business partners, bitchy ex-wives, bankrupt business creditors, and just plain bad luck and stupidity on my part.
It has actually been a bit refreshing—the loss of responsibility that is…
My Teddy Bear, my stuffed monkey Mr. Zip with the chewed off plastic 1960's fingers, my Tonka Dump Truck, my trains and model airplanes and virtually everything I had amassed during the first 41 years of my life were gone in about four hours, according to the official report.
I even had to endure an “official” police investigation looking for any indication of arson and otherwise mal-intent. They asked me to take a lie detector test if any suspicion was to arise as a result of their forensic investigation.
They shook my hand and walked away without further incident.
To add insult to injury, someone broke into the damaged structure, not once, but twice, and tossed the contents of my charred bookshelves and drawers into the floor flooded with ash and muck.
The same pair of juveniles then returned, choosing to beat in the sunroof of my disabled Nissan Maxima. Even though they were tried and convicted in court, since they lived in "Section 8 housing" I had to settle for selling my beloved low mileage auto for scrap because the repair cost exceeded the wholesale value.
In the end, I’ve figured out that it doesn’t really matter.
After All, You Can't Take It With You...
Right?
Five years ago today I found myself walking up my driveway past a Police Line.
I almost forgot to say anything about this experience this morning, because I wasn’t looking at a calendar when I was writing.
Any way…five years ago this noon my house on Kennedy Lane in Marietta, Georgia, burned to the ground as a result of an electrical fire.
OK, it didn’t actually burn to the ground, because it was brick on four sides, but the important parts were basically charred beyond recognition except for a few items of memorabilia and things that were hosed down with water by the fire department.
I was paralyzed at first, but within a few days I accepted my fate—the end of an eight year run of bad luck involving deadbeat business partners, bitchy ex-wives, bankrupt business creditors, and just plain bad luck and stupidity on my part.
It has actually been a bit refreshing—the loss of responsibility that is…
My Teddy Bear, my stuffed monkey Mr. Zip with the chewed off plastic 1960's fingers, my Tonka Dump Truck, my trains and model airplanes and virtually everything I had amassed during the first 41 years of my life were gone in about four hours, according to the official report.
I even had to endure an “official” police investigation looking for any indication of arson and otherwise mal-intent. They asked me to take a lie detector test if any suspicion was to arise as a result of their forensic investigation.
They shook my hand and walked away without further incident.
To add insult to injury, someone broke into the damaged structure, not once, but twice, and tossed the contents of my charred bookshelves and drawers into the floor flooded with ash and muck.
The same pair of juveniles then returned, choosing to beat in the sunroof of my disabled Nissan Maxima. Even though they were tried and convicted in court, since they lived in "Section 8 housing" I had to settle for selling my beloved low mileage auto for scrap because the repair cost exceeded the wholesale value.
In the end, I’ve figured out that it doesn’t really matter.
After All, You Can't Take It With You...
Right?
Hey All You Delta Airlines' Pilots
I've Got Just Two Words For You...
EASTERN AIRLINES
Anyone but me remember why Eastern went out of business?
So Go Ahead you overpaid, pompus idiots, go on strike if your stupid assed Pilot's Union tells you to--kill your own company in the name of UNITY.
I like Air Tran and South Western Airlines better any way, and you make it impossible to use my Frequent Flyer miles, so what the hey...
Good Riddance
EASTERN AIRLINES
Anyone but me remember why Eastern went out of business?
So Go Ahead you overpaid, pompus idiots, go on strike if your stupid assed Pilot's Union tells you to--kill your own company in the name of UNITY.
I like Air Tran and South Western Airlines better any way, and you make it impossible to use my Frequent Flyer miles, so what the hey...
Good Riddance
Strategical Bumbling Man
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
If I were a superhero—you know, the kind found in cartoons and comic books—my name would be “Strategical Bumbling Man,” “Self Defeatist Man,” “Punching Bag Man,” or something of that sort.
I’d probably wear a pink or purple costume with a big bull’s eye target on my chest and on my back, and I’d stumble and run around in big oversized clown shoes and yell things like “SHAZAM” in a voice like Jim Neighbors’ character Gomer Pyle.
Each TV episode of my exploits would feature me saving myself from my own self-created problems or retrieving myself from needless peril.
It would basically be a one man show, because I wouldn’t have time to help anyone else as a result.
My art career is a perfect example of this type behavior.
I had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by entering the Glynn Arts Association National Juried Exhibit that opens Thursday evening.
From the outset I knew that the Association President was a good friend of two women (also Association members) that disliked me from a prior relationship with one of the local theater companies.
I had previouslyupset their apple cart disturbed the hierarchy of the set design and construction clic and when they resorted to juvenile retaliation tactics, I resigned, but not before delivering a stinging dissertation outlining my problems with their organization.
In anticipation of similar exclusionary tactics, I actually went to the trouble to enter this competition using my “Nome de plume” (pen name) Maxwell Raymond, for fear that the acceptance committee wouldn’t fairly consider my work if they knew whom it was that it was actually produced by (me.)
I did, however, feel that, if my work was accepted, I would have a fair evaluation in the Jury process because the Artist that is doing the judging is from somewhere outside of Georgia and has no known relationship to any of the offending parties.
Needless to say, I was quite pleased when my pen and ink drawing composition entitled “Sanctuaries of the Golden Isles” was accepted in the competition.
So good so far. (que the ominous superhero theme music...)
Next I ran into a telephone booth, changed into my costume, and emerged as my super hero “altered ego”--Strategical Bumbling Man.
“Here I come…tosave screw up my dayyyyyyyyy…”
You see, I was suffering from a bad case of “the big head” after my meeting with Mrs. Wilcox at the Left Bank Art Gallery, so in a fit of egotism I elected to put both my “Nome de plume” and my REAL NAME on the identifying label on the back of my art work.
Can you say the words “strategical error” or possibly BIG MISTAKE in laymans terms?
Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, apparently that is exactly what I committed, because when I stopped by the Glynn Arts gallery about 4:15 PM yesterday afternoon to sneak a peek at their progress in hanging the competitors’ artwork, I was crushed.
At first I couldn’t even find my drawings.
The gallery is really just a 30 foot square room with two doors opening onto the sidewalk, but even with the small size of the real estate, I had to wander around for a couple of minutes before I realized my art was on their wall, but that they had hung my drawings in the very back corner of the gallery, over the attendant’s desk, in behind the brochures and other obligatory crap that they have on display 24/7.
You can’t get within six feet of my work without moving the desk chair out of the way and leaning over a cradenza.
I was incensed…
I managed to control myself, and instead of throwing a public conniption fit (thereby awaking the old man dozing at the attendants desk), I just left the building.
Based on my history with the three aforementioned individuals I should have expected this exact situation to occur.
I thought about things for a while and decided to just go back by the gallery, show my ID, and ask that my work be removed from the exhibit.
When I arrived at the front door at 4:55 PM, the doors were locked and the lights were off, so I went home.
I’m fairly CERTAIN that there is no coincidence regarding where my work ishidden hanging, just like I’m fairly CERTAIN that it was a mistake to reveal my identity prior to the end of the art exhibit.
I don’t know what else to do, except grin and bear the experience.
Should I stay or should I go?
What do YOU think?
(If I hand you a big stick, will someone please attempt to beat some sense into me?????)
If I were a superhero—you know, the kind found in cartoons and comic books—my name would be “Strategical Bumbling Man,” “Self Defeatist Man,” “Punching Bag Man,” or something of that sort.
I’d probably wear a pink or purple costume with a big bull’s eye target on my chest and on my back, and I’d stumble and run around in big oversized clown shoes and yell things like “SHAZAM” in a voice like Jim Neighbors’ character Gomer Pyle.
Each TV episode of my exploits would feature me saving myself from my own self-created problems or retrieving myself from needless peril.
It would basically be a one man show, because I wouldn’t have time to help anyone else as a result.
My art career is a perfect example of this type behavior.
I had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by entering the Glynn Arts Association National Juried Exhibit that opens Thursday evening.
From the outset I knew that the Association President was a good friend of two women (also Association members) that disliked me from a prior relationship with one of the local theater companies.
I had previously
In anticipation of similar exclusionary tactics, I actually went to the trouble to enter this competition using my “Nome de plume” (pen name) Maxwell Raymond, for fear that the acceptance committee wouldn’t fairly consider my work if they knew whom it was that it was actually produced by (me.)
I did, however, feel that, if my work was accepted, I would have a fair evaluation in the Jury process because the Artist that is doing the judging is from somewhere outside of Georgia and has no known relationship to any of the offending parties.
Needless to say, I was quite pleased when my pen and ink drawing composition entitled “Sanctuaries of the Golden Isles” was accepted in the competition.
So good so far. (que the ominous superhero theme music...)
Next I ran into a telephone booth, changed into my costume, and emerged as my super hero “altered ego”--Strategical Bumbling Man.
“Here I come…to
You see, I was suffering from a bad case of “the big head” after my meeting with Mrs. Wilcox at the Left Bank Art Gallery, so in a fit of egotism I elected to put both my “Nome de plume” and my REAL NAME on the identifying label on the back of my art work.
Can you say the words “strategical error” or possibly BIG MISTAKE in laymans terms?
Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, apparently that is exactly what I committed, because when I stopped by the Glynn Arts gallery about 4:15 PM yesterday afternoon to sneak a peek at their progress in hanging the competitors’ artwork, I was crushed.
At first I couldn’t even find my drawings.
The gallery is really just a 30 foot square room with two doors opening onto the sidewalk, but even with the small size of the real estate, I had to wander around for a couple of minutes before I realized my art was on their wall, but that they had hung my drawings in the very back corner of the gallery, over the attendant’s desk, in behind the brochures and other obligatory crap that they have on display 24/7.
You can’t get within six feet of my work without moving the desk chair out of the way and leaning over a cradenza.
I was incensed…
I managed to control myself, and instead of throwing a public conniption fit (thereby awaking the old man dozing at the attendants desk), I just left the building.
Based on my history with the three aforementioned individuals I should have expected this exact situation to occur.
I thought about things for a while and decided to just go back by the gallery, show my ID, and ask that my work be removed from the exhibit.
When I arrived at the front door at 4:55 PM, the doors were locked and the lights were off, so I went home.
I’m fairly CERTAIN that there is no coincidence regarding where my work is
I don’t know what else to do, except grin and bear the experience.
Should I stay or should I go?
What do YOU think?
(If I hand you a big stick, will someone please attempt to beat some sense into me?????)
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Don’t Blame Me…
I Didn’t Vote For The Silly Bitch
Two words describe this morning’s topic, and together they form the name of someone that I believe is an embarrassment to the Atlanta metropolitan area, the State of Georgia, and the entire United States of America on the world stage.
Cynthia McKinney.
Don’t get me wrong here, because I’m not just writing about this topic off of the cuff—I know what I’m talking about because I’ve endured the insanity of the McKinney family during the entire 27 years that I lived in the Atlanta area before escaping to St. Simons two years ago.
I first became aware of Cynthia’s father, Georgia State Representative Billy McKinney, back in the 1970’s when he was spewing racial demagoguery all over the Atlanta Journal/Constitution newspaper where his irrational contrarian viewpoints were commonly aired for public viewing.
Daddy McKinney was a politician first and foremost, but he was also a BLACK politician that won’t hesitate to play the race card at the first sign of conflict—heck, I think that McKinney Sr. had entire decks of “race cards” custom printed with his picture on them and he would toss them out in any situation, at the drop of a hat.
Like father…like daughter today.
After serving with Papa McKinney in the Georgia State House from 1988 to 1990, Cynthia managed to get herself into national office in 1990.
Insanity and retardation ensued, from the mouth of what I could consider to be a very well educated woman—a woman that apparently can’t separate herself from political ambition and her father’s racial divisiveness.
Georgia managed to toss McKinney out of office back in 2000 when an articulate female black judge named Denise Majette ran for the US House seat in the revised 11th district of Georgia. I almost laughed my ass off when the Democrats screamed bloody murder as a result of the giant Republican turnout of hated “crossover votes” in the primary election that tossed McKinney out of the race on her ear.
Miss Majette went on to win the general election against a strong Republican opponent in November 2000, and Daddy McKinney was also tossed out of the State House on his ear because the voters had had enough of his inept, blatant, racist demagoguery.
After a single four year term in the state house, the retirement of Democratic Senator Zell Miller (whom I happen to like and admire immensely) caused Miss Majette to seek election to the open Georgia Senate seat, and the idiotic voters in Georgia’s Dekalb County, having short memory’s, re-elected Miss McKinney to her old seat in the US House.
So here we are today with all of the usual suspects (Papa McKinney, Harry Bellefonte, the National Organization of Women, et. al.), none of which witnessed the incident, claiming that Miss McKinney hit a Capitol Policeman because he was improperly racially profiling her and that he touched her “inappropriately” during the incident.
What total CRAPPOLA.
Couldn’t this incident have been handled with a quite conversation among the involved parties, rather than making it into front page headlines.
Unless the guard knocked her down and beat her, wouldn’t a polite apology from the policeman for not recognizing her in her new Afro hairdo been acceptable?
If she really did try to walk through security with no ID and then hit the guard when he tried to stop her in order to determine her identity, couldn’t she have just apologized for her behavior and hoped that the matter could be dismissed because of her position in the Congress—instead of running to the TV cameras and microphones?
Not if your last name is McKinney…apparently.
I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m saying, based on my past knowledge of the mode of operation of the McKinney family, that you can place your money on the Capitol Policeman’s version of this story.
I also say that you can take two to one odds that the McKinney family’s famous decks of race cards and prolific demagoguery will probably make the whole thing blow over in yet another biased fit of political correctness.
Let’s face it—the woman’s a dangerous, partisan, racist, idiot that has no business in the House of Representatives, and that her stupidity is only exceeded by that of many voters whom would choose to elect someone as inept as this to national political office in the first place.
God help us all...
Two words describe this morning’s topic, and together they form the name of someone that I believe is an embarrassment to the Atlanta metropolitan area, the State of Georgia, and the entire United States of America on the world stage.
Cynthia McKinney.
Don’t get me wrong here, because I’m not just writing about this topic off of the cuff—I know what I’m talking about because I’ve endured the insanity of the McKinney family during the entire 27 years that I lived in the Atlanta area before escaping to St. Simons two years ago.
I first became aware of Cynthia’s father, Georgia State Representative Billy McKinney, back in the 1970’s when he was spewing racial demagoguery all over the Atlanta Journal/Constitution newspaper where his irrational contrarian viewpoints were commonly aired for public viewing.
Daddy McKinney was a politician first and foremost, but he was also a BLACK politician that won’t hesitate to play the race card at the first sign of conflict—heck, I think that McKinney Sr. had entire decks of “race cards” custom printed with his picture on them and he would toss them out in any situation, at the drop of a hat.
Like father…like daughter today.
After serving with Papa McKinney in the Georgia State House from 1988 to 1990, Cynthia managed to get herself into national office in 1990.
Insanity and retardation ensued, from the mouth of what I could consider to be a very well educated woman—a woman that apparently can’t separate herself from political ambition and her father’s racial divisiveness.
Georgia managed to toss McKinney out of office back in 2000 when an articulate female black judge named Denise Majette ran for the US House seat in the revised 11th district of Georgia. I almost laughed my ass off when the Democrats screamed bloody murder as a result of the giant Republican turnout of hated “crossover votes” in the primary election that tossed McKinney out of the race on her ear.
Miss Majette went on to win the general election against a strong Republican opponent in November 2000, and Daddy McKinney was also tossed out of the State House on his ear because the voters had had enough of his inept, blatant, racist demagoguery.
After a single four year term in the state house, the retirement of Democratic Senator Zell Miller (whom I happen to like and admire immensely) caused Miss Majette to seek election to the open Georgia Senate seat, and the idiotic voters in Georgia’s Dekalb County, having short memory’s, re-elected Miss McKinney to her old seat in the US House.
So here we are today with all of the usual suspects (Papa McKinney, Harry Bellefonte, the National Organization of Women, et. al.), none of which witnessed the incident, claiming that Miss McKinney hit a Capitol Policeman because he was improperly racially profiling her and that he touched her “inappropriately” during the incident.
What total CRAPPOLA.
Couldn’t this incident have been handled with a quite conversation among the involved parties, rather than making it into front page headlines.
Unless the guard knocked her down and beat her, wouldn’t a polite apology from the policeman for not recognizing her in her new Afro hairdo been acceptable?
If she really did try to walk through security with no ID and then hit the guard when he tried to stop her in order to determine her identity, couldn’t she have just apologized for her behavior and hoped that the matter could be dismissed because of her position in the Congress—instead of running to the TV cameras and microphones?
Not if your last name is McKinney…apparently.
I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m saying, based on my past knowledge of the mode of operation of the McKinney family, that you can place your money on the Capitol Policeman’s version of this story.
I also say that you can take two to one odds that the McKinney family’s famous decks of race cards and prolific demagoguery will probably make the whole thing blow over in yet another biased fit of political correctness.
Let’s face it—the woman’s a dangerous, partisan, racist, idiot that has no business in the House of Representatives, and that her stupidity is only exceeded by that of many voters whom would choose to elect someone as inept as this to national political office in the first place.
God help us all...
Monday, April 03, 2006
Reaping What You Sew
She Said…He Said…And Other Miscellaneous PC Crap
Ok, my head is spinning around at orbital rotational velocity again this morning.
This time I have another problem with politically correct media induced bullshit, but this time I’m siding WITH the media and AGAINST the currently fashionable knee jerk political correctness crowd.
In the past month a couple of private E-mails from ABC Good Morning America producer John Green were leaked to the Drudge report and the New York Post.
In one of these E-mails, written during the first presidential debate in 2004, Mr. Green made clear his personal dislike of Republican President George Bush.
"Are you watching this? Bush makes me sick. If he uses the 'mixed messages' line one more time, I'm going to puke."
In the second, in slightly more inflammatory language, he made disparaging comments about former Democratic Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
In that note, Green wrote that Albright should not be booked on the show because "Albright has Jew shame."
Albright, who was raised as a Roman Catholic, acknowledged her Jewish heritage in 1997 after it was discovered by Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs in the course of researching a book.
Green wrote in that note that "she hates us anyway because she says we promised her five minutes and only gave her two . . . I do not like her." An ABC insider said Green was reacting to a heated dispute between Albright and a network producer.
It would seem that John Green is an equal opportunity offender of both sides of the political isle, but come on folks—when and where is this crap ever going to end?
I ask you, are we all doomed to live in 6th grade, with 6th grade mentalities, for the rest of our existences?
Let’s face the facts ladies and gentlemen, neither of these E-mails was intended to be released for public consumption, although I recognize the need to carefully pick your words in correspondence on corporate computers and internal snail mail systems.
For instance, writing on the company E-mail system that your boss is a moronic cross dressing, transvestite, pedophile could be considered potential grounds for discipline or dismissal from your employment, even if it were true, BUT…
If everything that you had ever written in the past ten years in your own E-mail correspondence were printed out in the newspapers or otherwise revealed to your friends, family, and the general public, isn’t it possible that you could manage to cause some hurt feelings and outrage.
Could there be some real and/or imagined slights in there somewhere, issued in haste or in the heat of the moment?
I suspect that no one would be immune, so why is ABC forced to place John Green on a months suspension for speaking his mind in a private context?
I've said it before here in this blog, and I'll say it again:
It is impossible for the government or the political correctness crowd to control the actual thoughts and feelings of human beings, but that is where they are trying to go with this PC crap.
Hate crime laws punish you based on what you were THINKING at the time you did something that was usually already against the law at the time the act was committed. It's not enough that you are convicted of killing someone, now they give you extra penalties based on what was going on in your brain's neurons at the time of the murder.
Historically there have been different standards or thresholds of tolerance expected by the politicians and the media from Democrats or Republicans, and particularly for blacks and whites when it comes to racially charged issues.
Trent Lott lost his Senate leadership position for comments made at a private birthday celebration for Strom Thurman—a South Carolina DEMOCRAT. All Trent said, and I’m paraphrasing, is that the US might have been a better place had Senator Thurman won the 1948 presidential election over Truman and Dewey.
Since Thurman was running at the time under the banner of the “States Rights Democratic” party with heavy segregationist rhetoric (he carried Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina), the media soiled their underwear and somber faced Democrats, lilly-livered Republicans, and “black leaders” demanded his outright resignation from the Senate.
They settled for his departure as ranking Senate Majority leader.
Meanwhile, Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Lewis Farrakhan can run around in front of TV cameras and microphones saying that the government intentionally broke the levees in New Orleans and no one bats an eye. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagen and the Democratic hag of a Louisiana Governor can leave a thousand empty buses sitting in parking lots while at the same time claim that the racism of the Bush Administration and FEMA caused their problems.
Likewise, Hollywood can produce movies with titles like “White men can’t jump” while me and all my evil white male buddies are expected to remain silent.
But do you know what?
It’s true.
By NBA standards, white men really can’t jump.
You know what else is true?
By the standards of the TV show “Soul Train”, white men can’t do much in the way of dancing, either.
I’m not losing much sleep if P-Diddy, Eminem, or Michael Jackson wrote a book or made a movie letting that secret out of the bag for public consumption.
I just had another thought, and this one might just piss a few people off, but it’s true.
White men are better than blacks and Hispanics at driving cars around in circles at 190 mph on Sunday afternoon.
We call it NASCAR.
But if you watch CNN or FOX news, based on the number of high speed chases on California freeways, you’d think that NASCAR would be overflowing with “Brothers” and “Hombres” chomping at the bit to get into the sport.
(OOPS, I just said "chomping at the bit..." I didn't mean anything by it, I promise...)
Instead of saying “Gentlemen—Start Your Engines” while the drivers sat in the cars on pit row, someone would yell “Cops” or “da fuzz” and the drivers would run to the closest car (a grand prix style start), hotwire the ignition, and dash off in a cloud of smoke and squealing tires.
Or maybe NASCAR could start a new “Escalade” truck series featuring highly tinted windows and 22" spinner rims as a concession to the minority drivers and white Hip Hop fans.
Instead of in-car TV cameras showing the driver's view of the racetrack, the cars would be "pimped out" with giant in-car subwoofers, flat screen plasma TV's, and DJ mixing board setups.
Instead of a Corvette or Mustang for a pace care, they could have a Ford Crown Vic police car, complete with blue lights and siren, and instead of following the pace car, in the Escalade event the pace car would CHASE the race participants.
One rule change would be there would be no slowing down or stopping for yellow flags and no pit stops.
If you had a wreck or a flat tire, the driver would be required to keep running with parts and sparks flying off. The race would end only when all of the vehicles had run out of gas or been otherwise disabled.
To add a measure of realism to each event for the drivers, the last ten laps would feature the top three drivers running the opposite direction, AGAINST the other traffic.
Talk about a thrilling change to a otherwise sometimes boring event. It would also give a whole new meaning to the Dale and Michael Waltrip's UPS commercials about "racing the truck."
Seriously, I think that I'm on to something here, but I probably got a few narrow minded liberals boxers in a bunch in the process...
Does anyone remember what my original point was?
Ok, my head is spinning around at orbital rotational velocity again this morning.
This time I have another problem with politically correct media induced bullshit, but this time I’m siding WITH the media and AGAINST the currently fashionable knee jerk political correctness crowd.
In the past month a couple of private E-mails from ABC Good Morning America producer John Green were leaked to the Drudge report and the New York Post.
In one of these E-mails, written during the first presidential debate in 2004, Mr. Green made clear his personal dislike of Republican President George Bush.
"Are you watching this? Bush makes me sick. If he uses the 'mixed messages' line one more time, I'm going to puke."
In the second, in slightly more inflammatory language, he made disparaging comments about former Democratic Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
In that note, Green wrote that Albright should not be booked on the show because "Albright has Jew shame."
Albright, who was raised as a Roman Catholic, acknowledged her Jewish heritage in 1997 after it was discovered by Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs in the course of researching a book.
Green wrote in that note that "she hates us anyway because she says we promised her five minutes and only gave her two . . . I do not like her." An ABC insider said Green was reacting to a heated dispute between Albright and a network producer.
It would seem that John Green is an equal opportunity offender of both sides of the political isle, but come on folks—when and where is this crap ever going to end?
I ask you, are we all doomed to live in 6th grade, with 6th grade mentalities, for the rest of our existences?
Let’s face the facts ladies and gentlemen, neither of these E-mails was intended to be released for public consumption, although I recognize the need to carefully pick your words in correspondence on corporate computers and internal snail mail systems.
For instance, writing on the company E-mail system that your boss is a moronic cross dressing, transvestite, pedophile could be considered potential grounds for discipline or dismissal from your employment, even if it were true, BUT…
If everything that you had ever written in the past ten years in your own E-mail correspondence were printed out in the newspapers or otherwise revealed to your friends, family, and the general public, isn’t it possible that you could manage to cause some hurt feelings and outrage.
Could there be some real and/or imagined slights in there somewhere, issued in haste or in the heat of the moment?
I suspect that no one would be immune, so why is ABC forced to place John Green on a months suspension for speaking his mind in a private context?
I've said it before here in this blog, and I'll say it again:
It is impossible for the government or the political correctness crowd to control the actual thoughts and feelings of human beings, but that is where they are trying to go with this PC crap.
Hate crime laws punish you based on what you were THINKING at the time you did something that was usually already against the law at the time the act was committed. It's not enough that you are convicted of killing someone, now they give you extra penalties based on what was going on in your brain's neurons at the time of the murder.
Historically there have been different standards or thresholds of tolerance expected by the politicians and the media from Democrats or Republicans, and particularly for blacks and whites when it comes to racially charged issues.
Trent Lott lost his Senate leadership position for comments made at a private birthday celebration for Strom Thurman—a South Carolina DEMOCRAT. All Trent said, and I’m paraphrasing, is that the US might have been a better place had Senator Thurman won the 1948 presidential election over Truman and Dewey.
Since Thurman was running at the time under the banner of the “States Rights Democratic” party with heavy segregationist rhetoric (he carried Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina), the media soiled their underwear and somber faced Democrats, lilly-livered Republicans, and “black leaders” demanded his outright resignation from the Senate.
They settled for his departure as ranking Senate Majority leader.
Meanwhile, Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Lewis Farrakhan can run around in front of TV cameras and microphones saying that the government intentionally broke the levees in New Orleans and no one bats an eye. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagen and the Democratic hag of a Louisiana Governor can leave a thousand empty buses sitting in parking lots while at the same time claim that the racism of the Bush Administration and FEMA caused their problems.
Likewise, Hollywood can produce movies with titles like “White men can’t jump” while me and all my evil white male buddies are expected to remain silent.
But do you know what?
It’s true.
By NBA standards, white men really can’t jump.
You know what else is true?
By the standards of the TV show “Soul Train”, white men can’t do much in the way of dancing, either.
I’m not losing much sleep if P-Diddy, Eminem, or Michael Jackson wrote a book or made a movie letting that secret out of the bag for public consumption.
I just had another thought, and this one might just piss a few people off, but it’s true.
White men are better than blacks and Hispanics at driving cars around in circles at 190 mph on Sunday afternoon.
We call it NASCAR.
But if you watch CNN or FOX news, based on the number of high speed chases on California freeways, you’d think that NASCAR would be overflowing with “Brothers” and “Hombres” chomping at the bit to get into the sport.
(OOPS, I just said "chomping at the bit..." I didn't mean anything by it, I promise...)
Instead of saying “Gentlemen—Start Your Engines” while the drivers sat in the cars on pit row, someone would yell “Cops” or “da fuzz” and the drivers would run to the closest car (a grand prix style start), hotwire the ignition, and dash off in a cloud of smoke and squealing tires.
Or maybe NASCAR could start a new “Escalade” truck series featuring highly tinted windows and 22" spinner rims as a concession to the minority drivers and white Hip Hop fans.
Instead of in-car TV cameras showing the driver's view of the racetrack, the cars would be "pimped out" with giant in-car subwoofers, flat screen plasma TV's, and DJ mixing board setups.
Instead of a Corvette or Mustang for a pace care, they could have a Ford Crown Vic police car, complete with blue lights and siren, and instead of following the pace car, in the Escalade event the pace car would CHASE the race participants.
One rule change would be there would be no slowing down or stopping for yellow flags and no pit stops.
If you had a wreck or a flat tire, the driver would be required to keep running with parts and sparks flying off. The race would end only when all of the vehicles had run out of gas or been otherwise disabled.
To add a measure of realism to each event for the drivers, the last ten laps would feature the top three drivers running the opposite direction, AGAINST the other traffic.
Talk about a thrilling change to a otherwise sometimes boring event. It would also give a whole new meaning to the Dale and Michael Waltrip's UPS commercials about "racing the truck."
Seriously, I think that I'm on to something here, but I probably got a few narrow minded liberals boxers in a bunch in the process...
Does anyone remember what my original point was?
Sunday, April 02, 2006
The Weather Is Here
Wish You Were Beautiful…
We’re back from Florida this evening, having made another trip to the hospital to visit my Grandmother.
The good news is that she is still with us half the time, but the other half of the time she’s sorta out of it. She’s decided to start eating a little again and she’s still drinking water and milk, but God knows where this is all going because the balance of her medical treatments have ceased.
She actually wanted to go home to her suite at my Uncle’s house today, and she even sat up in a chair for a little while—the first time she’s been out of bed in three weeks—but the official line is that she’s in the care of the Hospice personnel until the very end of her life.
It seems to me that she’s actually improving a little, but then I’m just a stupid engineer, not a doctor.
It’s very frustrating, and I don’t know what else I can do except visit and lend support to the medical decision makers. I think that if it were up to me I would have moved her to Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville by now in order to see if some higher powered brains could make any difference in her prognosis, but it’s not my call to make.
It’s tough to sit by and just watch her flounder around.
As a result of our trip, we missed two days of killer swimming pool weather and the Blessing of the Shrimp Boat Fleet up in Darien this weekend. Lots of good photo ops could have been had.
Oh well…
I’ve got renewed energy when it comes to my drawing efforts, and a new pad containing 24 sheets of Strathmore Acid Free 14”x17” drawing paper to cover with ink. I think that I’m going to take a shot at doing some water color washes on parts of a few drawings in order to add come color to my work.
The Coastal National Exhibit opens this Thursday evening at the Glynn County Arts Association Gallery down in the Village, and Pat and I are taking our neighbor Bucky (Dartmouth class of 1942) along with us to the artist’s opening reception.
I’m afraid that there are at least two or three little ladies down there that are not going to be too happy to see me represented in theirlittle cotillion mutual admiration association art exhibit because I’ve already crossed swords with them while working with the Island Players Theater company.
I’m going to love every minute of it, because one of these lovely ladies has already told be to not expect to be displaying any art on this island (because of the quality of the competition) until I had spent several years honing my skills like she had. After all, she had majored in art in college (at the Eastern Lower Southern Georgia Community College or the Coastal Shrimping and Cosmetology Institute or some similar damn place) sometime in the last100 30 years.
Gosh do I ever love having the opportunity to make people that have an ax to grind with me uncomfortable by going over their heads in a public venue.
This is going to be so much fun…
We’re back from Florida this evening, having made another trip to the hospital to visit my Grandmother.
The good news is that she is still with us half the time, but the other half of the time she’s sorta out of it. She’s decided to start eating a little again and she’s still drinking water and milk, but God knows where this is all going because the balance of her medical treatments have ceased.
She actually wanted to go home to her suite at my Uncle’s house today, and she even sat up in a chair for a little while—the first time she’s been out of bed in three weeks—but the official line is that she’s in the care of the Hospice personnel until the very end of her life.
It seems to me that she’s actually improving a little, but then I’m just a stupid engineer, not a doctor.
It’s very frustrating, and I don’t know what else I can do except visit and lend support to the medical decision makers. I think that if it were up to me I would have moved her to Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville by now in order to see if some higher powered brains could make any difference in her prognosis, but it’s not my call to make.
It’s tough to sit by and just watch her flounder around.
As a result of our trip, we missed two days of killer swimming pool weather and the Blessing of the Shrimp Boat Fleet up in Darien this weekend. Lots of good photo ops could have been had.
Oh well…
I’ve got renewed energy when it comes to my drawing efforts, and a new pad containing 24 sheets of Strathmore Acid Free 14”x17” drawing paper to cover with ink. I think that I’m going to take a shot at doing some water color washes on parts of a few drawings in order to add come color to my work.
The Coastal National Exhibit opens this Thursday evening at the Glynn County Arts Association Gallery down in the Village, and Pat and I are taking our neighbor Bucky (Dartmouth class of 1942) along with us to the artist’s opening reception.
I’m afraid that there are at least two or three little ladies down there that are not going to be too happy to see me represented in their
I’m going to love every minute of it, because one of these lovely ladies has already told be to not expect to be displaying any art on this island (because of the quality of the competition) until I had spent several years honing my skills like she had. After all, she had majored in art in college (at the Eastern Lower Southern Georgia Community College or the Coastal Shrimping and Cosmetology Institute or some similar damn place) sometime in the last
Gosh do I ever love having the opportunity to make people that have an ax to grind with me uncomfortable by going over their heads in a public venue.
This is going to be so much fun…
Saturday, April 01, 2006
Is There An Artist In The House?
I’m Not One…But I Play One On TV…
Well, yesterday was the day that I’ve been looking forward to for the past couple of weeks now—because I was supposed to have “THE” interview Friday morning.
I was sort of surprised that I managed to maintain a “devil may care” attitude through the entire ordeal, but it was not without some conscious effort that I was able to avoid getting myself all lathered up and nervous in the process.
“THE” interview I’m writing about here was the one I had scheduled with Mrs. Mildred Wilcox, proprietor of the Left Bank Art Gallery.
One of her assistants had earlier indicated that my pen and ink drawings of local churches and landmarks could be of interest to Mrs. Wilcox, and to my surprise I had the opportunity to present my work—hoping to display some or all of it for sale under her tutelage.
Mrs. Wilcox and her family are the acknowledged experts on all things Island and all things Art and all things Island Art for the past forty years here on St. Simons Island. The gallery is full of paintings by famous French Artists, along with a bunch of popular local artists that sell their work for tens of thousands of dollars each.
Am I audacious or what?
Things didn’t start out on an encouraging note, however, because when I arrived at the Left Bank Gallery yesterday morning about 10 minutes early, there was no one in sight.
The doors were locked and the lights were off.
No big deal…art gallery personnel keep bankers’ hours, so I wandered over to a nearby shop where I knew some of the employees and showed them my pen and ink drawings.
Yada yada…yacka yack…
By a few minutes after 10 AM the gallery employees had arrived and opened the doors, but by 10:25 I was distraught and discouraged because I was standing around by myself—no Mrs. Wilcox.
I handed the young woman at the front desk my business card, and I politely excused myself.
Just Damn…
In a fit of sanity, I decided to run down to another gallery in Redfern Village to check out their interest in the original drawings and possibly some stationary and note cards featuring my images.
Things were going well and while in mid “sales-pitch” mode, my cell phone rang, and Pat told me that someone from Left Bank Gallery had phoned and sent Mrs. Wilcox’s apologies and had asked that I stop back by the gallery on my way home.
Just Damn again…
My nerves were starting to wear thin, and my gumption was ebbing.
Remember that I’m and engineer, not an artist, in real life—at least not in the recent past. I have to psych myself up to do this stuff and play the part, and I was really ready to just go home, have a stiff drink, and take a nap or something while I licked my wounds. (Mental pictures of people tilting their heads back to laugh hysterically at my efforts come to mind…)
So any way, I went back to Left Bank Gallery, Mrs. Wilcox arrived, and forty five minutes later I was walking out the door with a grin that extended from ear to ear.
Double Damn…
She loved my work, expressed an interest in showing at least a dozen pieces, and took pictures of some of my drawings to include in her monthly newsletter along with a biography highlighting THE UPCOMING EXIBIT FEATURING THE WORKS OF VIRGIL RAYMOND ROGERS, III.
The only problem I have now is that I just put four of my best drawings in the Glynn Art Association’s Georgia Coastal National Juried Exhibition that runs through the month of April.
If I manage to sell them, then I have to reproduce them again for this new endeavor. That’s OK, because each time I draw a building I get better results because I’m more familiar with the details of each structure.
I’ve got to go now… where are my pens…
Well, yesterday was the day that I’ve been looking forward to for the past couple of weeks now—because I was supposed to have “THE” interview Friday morning.
I was sort of surprised that I managed to maintain a “devil may care” attitude through the entire ordeal, but it was not without some conscious effort that I was able to avoid getting myself all lathered up and nervous in the process.
“THE” interview I’m writing about here was the one I had scheduled with Mrs. Mildred Wilcox, proprietor of the Left Bank Art Gallery.
One of her assistants had earlier indicated that my pen and ink drawings of local churches and landmarks could be of interest to Mrs. Wilcox, and to my surprise I had the opportunity to present my work—hoping to display some or all of it for sale under her tutelage.
Mrs. Wilcox and her family are the acknowledged experts on all things Island and all things Art and all things Island Art for the past forty years here on St. Simons Island. The gallery is full of paintings by famous French Artists, along with a bunch of popular local artists that sell their work for tens of thousands of dollars each.
Am I audacious or what?
Things didn’t start out on an encouraging note, however, because when I arrived at the Left Bank Gallery yesterday morning about 10 minutes early, there was no one in sight.
The doors were locked and the lights were off.
No big deal…art gallery personnel keep bankers’ hours, so I wandered over to a nearby shop where I knew some of the employees and showed them my pen and ink drawings.
Yada yada…yacka yack…
By a few minutes after 10 AM the gallery employees had arrived and opened the doors, but by 10:25 I was distraught and discouraged because I was standing around by myself—no Mrs. Wilcox.
I handed the young woman at the front desk my business card, and I politely excused myself.
Just Damn…
In a fit of sanity, I decided to run down to another gallery in Redfern Village to check out their interest in the original drawings and possibly some stationary and note cards featuring my images.
Things were going well and while in mid “sales-pitch” mode, my cell phone rang, and Pat told me that someone from Left Bank Gallery had phoned and sent Mrs. Wilcox’s apologies and had asked that I stop back by the gallery on my way home.
Just Damn again…
My nerves were starting to wear thin, and my gumption was ebbing.
Remember that I’m and engineer, not an artist, in real life—at least not in the recent past. I have to psych myself up to do this stuff and play the part, and I was really ready to just go home, have a stiff drink, and take a nap or something while I licked my wounds. (Mental pictures of people tilting their heads back to laugh hysterically at my efforts come to mind…)
So any way, I went back to Left Bank Gallery, Mrs. Wilcox arrived, and forty five minutes later I was walking out the door with a grin that extended from ear to ear.
Double Damn…
She loved my work, expressed an interest in showing at least a dozen pieces, and took pictures of some of my drawings to include in her monthly newsletter along with a biography highlighting THE UPCOMING EXIBIT FEATURING THE WORKS OF VIRGIL RAYMOND ROGERS, III.
The only problem I have now is that I just put four of my best drawings in the Glynn Art Association’s Georgia Coastal National Juried Exhibition that runs through the month of April.
If I manage to sell them, then I have to reproduce them again for this new endeavor. That’s OK, because each time I draw a building I get better results because I’m more familiar with the details of each structure.
I’ve got to go now… where are my pens…
Friday, March 31, 2006
Absolutely Amazing
Victory (And A Recipe)
Elvis Has Left The Building...
I'm pleased to report that, after a month in refrigerator induced "Appliance Hell," our lives are back to normal again.
Actually, things are better than normal, because we now have a shiny new 28 cubic foot side-by-side fridge sitting where theold piece of crap old one formerly resided.
I stood by here as long as I could today waiting on the old fridge to be removed, but I had to leave to run errands late this afternoon, and when I returned it was gone.
Hallelujah
Praise Allah
Amen Brothers & Sisters
Even though there are only two people in our household, our fridge is a VERY important part of our kitchen. I cook dinner five or six nights each week, prepare breakfast one or two days, and do a hot lunch two or three days each week.
I mean real cooking--not Hamburger Helper.
I was extremely concerned that we were going to lose $800 worth of frozen food and ingredients/condiments if we didn't get things straightened out, not to mention the added cost of eating out in the mean time.
Don’t get me wrong here—I love eating out, but the quality of MY food cooked at home generally exceeds that of all but the best restaurants here on the island.
In a restaurant, an equivalent dinner to that served at my house would cost you $15 to $20 each, without drinks, almost every single night.
Any way, it all worked out when it was all said and done.
I celebrated the arrival of our new appliance by stopping by the grocery store to buy some giant Sea Scallops and a big bag of baby Spinach, and when I got home I improvised a dish that I call Scallops Piccata. (It was based on my Chicken and Veal Piccata recipe.)
Try it out when you have the time (the quantities are for dinner for two):
Six Sea Scallops
2 tbsp lemon juice
Six strips of thick cut bacon
1 large bag of baby Spinach
8 oz (1/2 pack) Angle Hair pasta
1 cup white wine
¼ cup of Capers
1 clove of garlic, diced fine
2 tbsp lemon juice
¼ cup of Chicken stock
¼ stick of unsalted butter
First things first…
Since Scallops spend their time lying around on the bottom of the ocean in the sand, they are understandably…SANDY.
I don’t know about you, but since I don’t like gritty food, I recommend that you rinse those suckers, then rinse them again, and Again, and AGAIN, and when you’re done rinsing—toss them into a bowl with a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice.
Now let your Scallops swim around in the lemon juice in the fridge for a couple of hours if you have the time, thirty minutes as a minimum.
When you’re ready to start cooking, fire up your charcoal grill. (If you are a gas grill weenie, you can wait a few minutes and save your precious propane if you want to)
Next, heat up a large, heavy skillet on the stove top and cook your bacon strips until they are at least half way done. I like my bacon crispy, so I cooked it pretty well. (Save a little juicy fat on each strip for cooking on the grill.)
After you pull your bacon strips out, let them drain and cool on some paper towels on the side. Spoon any extra grease that you don’t want to eat out of the skillet. Being a good southerner, I left my bacon grease in the skillet.
Deglaze the skillet by pouring in the white wine and chicken stock, scraping the bottom with a spatula to remove any juicy bits.
Now add your capers and lemon juice and turn things down to a slow simmer.
Take your bacon strips and wrap one around each scallop, securing it with a couple of toothpicks.
Is your grill hot now?
No?
Well, then heat that sucker up…
then toss your bacon wrapped scallops on the grill and cook them on each side for eight or so minutes, being careful not to burn them.
Put your Angel Hair pasta in a boiler of lightly salted water with a little butter or olive oil. Be careful not to overcook it, it only needs about three or four minutes because it’s so fine.
Put your plates in the oven to warm.
Meanwhile, back at the skillet, when your scallops are almost done, open your bag of baby Spinach and dump it in on top of your sauce.
Stir, stir, stir…you want the spinach to wilt.
Now comes the fun part…plating it all up.
Put your warm plates on chargers, pile half your drained pasta on each plate, spoon out the wilted spinach on the pasta, and top with three grilled bacon wrapped scallops.
Drizzle your wine/caper sauce over the top of everything.
Doesn't that look nice?
Well then, sit down at the table, grab yourself a fork, and EAT.
And by the way..try not to pass out before you push back from the table…
I'm pleased to report that, after a month in refrigerator induced "Appliance Hell," our lives are back to normal again.
Actually, things are better than normal, because we now have a shiny new 28 cubic foot side-by-side fridge sitting where the
I stood by here as long as I could today waiting on the old fridge to be removed, but I had to leave to run errands late this afternoon, and when I returned it was gone.
Hallelujah
Praise Allah
Amen Brothers & Sisters
Even though there are only two people in our household, our fridge is a VERY important part of our kitchen. I cook dinner five or six nights each week, prepare breakfast one or two days, and do a hot lunch two or three days each week.
I mean real cooking--not Hamburger Helper.
I was extremely concerned that we were going to lose $800 worth of frozen food and ingredients/condiments if we didn't get things straightened out, not to mention the added cost of eating out in the mean time.
Don’t get me wrong here—I love eating out, but the quality of MY food cooked at home generally exceeds that of all but the best restaurants here on the island.
In a restaurant, an equivalent dinner to that served at my house would cost you $15 to $20 each, without drinks, almost every single night.
Any way, it all worked out when it was all said and done.
I celebrated the arrival of our new appliance by stopping by the grocery store to buy some giant Sea Scallops and a big bag of baby Spinach, and when I got home I improvised a dish that I call Scallops Piccata. (It was based on my Chicken and Veal Piccata recipe.)
Try it out when you have the time (the quantities are for dinner for two):
Six Sea Scallops
2 tbsp lemon juice
Six strips of thick cut bacon
1 large bag of baby Spinach
8 oz (1/2 pack) Angle Hair pasta
1 cup white wine
¼ cup of Capers
1 clove of garlic, diced fine
2 tbsp lemon juice
¼ cup of Chicken stock
¼ stick of unsalted butter
First things first…
Since Scallops spend their time lying around on the bottom of the ocean in the sand, they are understandably…SANDY.
I don’t know about you, but since I don’t like gritty food, I recommend that you rinse those suckers, then rinse them again, and Again, and AGAIN, and when you’re done rinsing—toss them into a bowl with a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice.
Now let your Scallops swim around in the lemon juice in the fridge for a couple of hours if you have the time, thirty minutes as a minimum.
When you’re ready to start cooking, fire up your charcoal grill. (If you are a gas grill weenie, you can wait a few minutes and save your precious propane if you want to)
Next, heat up a large, heavy skillet on the stove top and cook your bacon strips until they are at least half way done. I like my bacon crispy, so I cooked it pretty well. (Save a little juicy fat on each strip for cooking on the grill.)
After you pull your bacon strips out, let them drain and cool on some paper towels on the side. Spoon any extra grease that you don’t want to eat out of the skillet. Being a good southerner, I left my bacon grease in the skillet.
Deglaze the skillet by pouring in the white wine and chicken stock, scraping the bottom with a spatula to remove any juicy bits.
Now add your capers and lemon juice and turn things down to a slow simmer.
Take your bacon strips and wrap one around each scallop, securing it with a couple of toothpicks.
Is your grill hot now?
No?
Well, then heat that sucker up…
then toss your bacon wrapped scallops on the grill and cook them on each side for eight or so minutes, being careful not to burn them.
Put your Angel Hair pasta in a boiler of lightly salted water with a little butter or olive oil. Be careful not to overcook it, it only needs about three or four minutes because it’s so fine.
Put your plates in the oven to warm.
Meanwhile, back at the skillet, when your scallops are almost done, open your bag of baby Spinach and dump it in on top of your sauce.
Stir, stir, stir…you want the spinach to wilt.
Now comes the fun part…plating it all up.
Put your warm plates on chargers, pile half your drained pasta on each plate, spoon out the wilted spinach on the pasta, and top with three grilled bacon wrapped scallops.
Drizzle your wine/caper sauce over the top of everything.
Doesn't that look nice?
Well then, sit down at the table, grab yourself a fork, and EAT.
And by the way..try not to pass out before you push back from the table…
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Fridge Still Struggling
Elvis Is Still In The Building...
We received the new refrigerator about 11:15 this morning, but the old one refused to turn loose of the ice maker water line that it wasn't using except intermittantly. The stupid old copper line has a stupid old copper valve with no handle that won't close so we have to turn off the water to most of St. Simons or something in order to connect the new unit.
We now have the old fridge sitting unhappily beside the new fridge while we wait on the water company and a plumber to come remedy the situation.
If I owned this condo we'd be done by now, but since it's not mine I'm at the mercy of the so called "professionals."
Pray for us...
We received the new refrigerator about 11:15 this morning, but the old one refused to turn loose of the ice maker water line that it wasn't using except intermittantly. The stupid old copper line has a stupid old copper valve with no handle that won't close so we have to turn off the water to most of St. Simons or something in order to connect the new unit.
We now have the old fridge sitting unhappily beside the new fridge while we wait on the water company and a plumber to come remedy the situation.
If I owned this condo we'd be done by now, but since it's not mine I'm at the mercy of the so called "professionals."
Pray for us...
Kitchen Difficulties
Our Fridge Is Possessed…
Anyone know a good Exorcist?
I’ve been wrestling with our kitchen fridge for the past month or so, and it’s been winning each round of the fight.
The fridge and I have sort of a “love hate” relationship…I love to hate our refrigerator.
I guess it’s not surprising that we’d have trouble with it because it would appear that it is pretty old and that the gentleman that rented us the condo probably took his good fridge with him when he moved out.
I don’t know if he bought this one at a used appliance shop or found it sitting beside the road or in the dump, but I’m 99% sure that old man Schwaller (our original landlord) didn’t keep his food in this beautiful piece of plastic and steel and chrome.
It has a crappy amateur spray paint job on part of it, rust on other parts of the cabinet, and it has generally looked like heck from the very beginning of our tenancy, but we’ve gotten by with it because we didn’t own the place and didn’t want to put the money into buying our own unit.
At first it was the ice maker that made us crazy.
Ever since we moved in it has made hollow ice cubes. There’s no adjustment or other control on the unit, and I guess that hollow cubes wasn’t really a big deal except that a cooler full of hollow cubes doesn’t have the same cooling value as a cooler full of solid ice cubes.
We’ve elected to just live with it anyway.
Next the icemaker started taking what we called random “vacations.”
When we had visitors or otherwise needed it the most, it would just stop making ice. I would then go out and buy bags of ice, and almost every time the machine would start producing its own ice again in a fit of jealousy or something.
Most recently the icemaker stopped putting the water into its ice tray and started dumping it down the back of the inside of the fridge into the bottom of the freezer section and ultimately out into a puddle on the kitchen floor.
At that point I took the irritating thing (the icemaker) apart, fiddled and fumbled around with the pieces, then put it all back together again. I even managed to not have any screws or other parts left over when I was done.
I couldn’t find anything obviously wrong with it, but guess what?
It worked…
For exactly one day.
Once I had prematurely declared victory, then it went back to dumping water on the floor.
I simply turned the blasted thing off and I have been buying ice ever since.
This week the feces hit the proverbial fan when Pat took a swig of 1% milk that was less than a week old and nearly spewed it on the ceiling.
The milk was sour, as was the other half gallon of whole milk (my beverage of choice.) I’ve been afraid to check the half and half and whipping cream, but I think that they’ve succumbed to the same fate.
It was at that time that we realized that our old friend and my nemesis, “Mr. Fridge,” was dying.
I, personally, didn’t know whether to celebrate or cry, but I finally called the landlord yesterday morning to report our difficulties.
The dentist that is our current landlord bought the condo the month we moved into it. In retrospect we missed an awesome real estate deal here, but we didn’t realize what we were looking at, being unfamiliar with St. Simons island property values when we arrived.
Any way…
The Doc came over twice within a couple hours of our phone call yesterday and by noon he had a nice new side by side fridge on the way...
AND HE RAISED OUR RENT $50 A MONTH to pay for it.
Gosh darn it, WE could have bought a new fridge for $50 a month ($1200 in two years) and owned the darn thing when it was all said and done.
Well, at least we don’t own the condo or the new fridge when it blows away in a hurricane this summer.
It would appear that by raising our rent $600 per year, my old nemesis “Mr. Fridge” got in one final parting shot as he goes out the front door this morning.
I think that I’ll give “Mr. Fridge” a nice kick in the door once it is safely outside the building…
Anyone know a good Exorcist?
I’ve been wrestling with our kitchen fridge for the past month or so, and it’s been winning each round of the fight.
The fridge and I have sort of a “love hate” relationship…I love to hate our refrigerator.
I guess it’s not surprising that we’d have trouble with it because it would appear that it is pretty old and that the gentleman that rented us the condo probably took his good fridge with him when he moved out.
I don’t know if he bought this one at a used appliance shop or found it sitting beside the road or in the dump, but I’m 99% sure that old man Schwaller (our original landlord) didn’t keep his food in this beautiful piece of plastic and steel and chrome.
It has a crappy amateur spray paint job on part of it, rust on other parts of the cabinet, and it has generally looked like heck from the very beginning of our tenancy, but we’ve gotten by with it because we didn’t own the place and didn’t want to put the money into buying our own unit.
At first it was the ice maker that made us crazy.
Ever since we moved in it has made hollow ice cubes. There’s no adjustment or other control on the unit, and I guess that hollow cubes wasn’t really a big deal except that a cooler full of hollow cubes doesn’t have the same cooling value as a cooler full of solid ice cubes.
We’ve elected to just live with it anyway.
Next the icemaker started taking what we called random “vacations.”
When we had visitors or otherwise needed it the most, it would just stop making ice. I would then go out and buy bags of ice, and almost every time the machine would start producing its own ice again in a fit of jealousy or something.
Most recently the icemaker stopped putting the water into its ice tray and started dumping it down the back of the inside of the fridge into the bottom of the freezer section and ultimately out into a puddle on the kitchen floor.
At that point I took the irritating thing (the icemaker) apart, fiddled and fumbled around with the pieces, then put it all back together again. I even managed to not have any screws or other parts left over when I was done.
I couldn’t find anything obviously wrong with it, but guess what?
It worked…
For exactly one day.
Once I had prematurely declared victory, then it went back to dumping water on the floor.
I simply turned the blasted thing off and I have been buying ice ever since.
This week the feces hit the proverbial fan when Pat took a swig of 1% milk that was less than a week old and nearly spewed it on the ceiling.
The milk was sour, as was the other half gallon of whole milk (my beverage of choice.) I’ve been afraid to check the half and half and whipping cream, but I think that they’ve succumbed to the same fate.
It was at that time that we realized that our old friend and my nemesis, “Mr. Fridge,” was dying.
I, personally, didn’t know whether to celebrate or cry, but I finally called the landlord yesterday morning to report our difficulties.
The dentist that is our current landlord bought the condo the month we moved into it. In retrospect we missed an awesome real estate deal here, but we didn’t realize what we were looking at, being unfamiliar with St. Simons island property values when we arrived.
Any way…
The Doc came over twice within a couple hours of our phone call yesterday and by noon he had a nice new side by side fridge on the way...
AND HE RAISED OUR RENT $50 A MONTH to pay for it.
Gosh darn it, WE could have bought a new fridge for $50 a month ($1200 in two years) and owned the darn thing when it was all said and done.
Well, at least we don’t own the condo or the new fridge when it blows away in a hurricane this summer.
It would appear that by raising our rent $600 per year, my old nemesis “Mr. Fridge” got in one final parting shot as he goes out the front door this morning.
I think that I’ll give “Mr. Fridge” a nice kick in the door once it is safely outside the building…
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Hospice
The End Is Near
A little over a week ago I mentioned here on this blog that my Paternal Grandmother was hospitalized in serious condition. The response I received in comments and E-mails was overwhelming, and my family even had a glimmer of hope when she improved slightly and was moved out of intensive care that she would be able to beat the odds yet again.
I received word last night that that was not to be the case.
My grandmother in fact has a living will, along with the other necessary documents allowing her to choose further medical intervention, and as of yesterday she has elected to refuse additional efforts to provide nutrition.
It’s just a matter of time now—one to two weeks under the care of hospice personnel.
It’s hard for me to accept, but it’s her decision.
My Grandmother Rogers was and is an amazing woman. Born in 1913 in eastern Kentucky outside the coal mining community of Grayson, she left high school to marry and raise my father and two uncles after relocating to Boone County West Virginia.
Grandma worked hard to elevate herself and my family above the squalor and ignorance common in the 1930’s and 1940’s in the coal mining “camps” of Appalachia. They started out in a two room house with no indoor plumbing, but before retiring to central Florida in the mid 1970’s she and my Grandfather managed to earn enough money to own the only brick house in the town of Prenter, WV.
After raising her family, she returned to high school at the age of 42 to receive her own diploma. When I last saw her healthy this winter she was talking about attending her 50th high school reunion this summer. I’m sorry that she won’t make that milestone.
Her oldest son, my father, was the first person in our branch of the Rogers family to graduate from college when he received a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Kentucky. Both of his brothers followed suit with degrees of their choice.
My sister and I were the first of our generation to graduate from college, and I believe that my sister is the first with a post graduate degree—an MBA from Emory University in Atlanta.
We’ve all worked hard in our own right to attain our individual successes, but none of us would be where we are today without our little 5 foot tall firebrand--Grandmama Rogers.
I hope the end comes quickly and peacefully.
I’m going miss her.
A little over a week ago I mentioned here on this blog that my Paternal Grandmother was hospitalized in serious condition. The response I received in comments and E-mails was overwhelming, and my family even had a glimmer of hope when she improved slightly and was moved out of intensive care that she would be able to beat the odds yet again.
I received word last night that that was not to be the case.
My grandmother in fact has a living will, along with the other necessary documents allowing her to choose further medical intervention, and as of yesterday she has elected to refuse additional efforts to provide nutrition.
It’s just a matter of time now—one to two weeks under the care of hospice personnel.
It’s hard for me to accept, but it’s her decision.
My Grandmother Rogers was and is an amazing woman. Born in 1913 in eastern Kentucky outside the coal mining community of Grayson, she left high school to marry and raise my father and two uncles after relocating to Boone County West Virginia.
Grandma worked hard to elevate herself and my family above the squalor and ignorance common in the 1930’s and 1940’s in the coal mining “camps” of Appalachia. They started out in a two room house with no indoor plumbing, but before retiring to central Florida in the mid 1970’s she and my Grandfather managed to earn enough money to own the only brick house in the town of Prenter, WV.
After raising her family, she returned to high school at the age of 42 to receive her own diploma. When I last saw her healthy this winter she was talking about attending her 50th high school reunion this summer. I’m sorry that she won’t make that milestone.
Her oldest son, my father, was the first person in our branch of the Rogers family to graduate from college when he received a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Kentucky. Both of his brothers followed suit with degrees of their choice.
My sister and I were the first of our generation to graduate from college, and I believe that my sister is the first with a post graduate degree—an MBA from Emory University in Atlanta.
We’ve all worked hard in our own right to attain our individual successes, but none of us would be where we are today without our little 5 foot tall firebrand--Grandmama Rogers.
I hope the end comes quickly and peacefully.
I’m going miss her.
Monday, March 27, 2006
If I Were Standing In the Legal Line
I'd Want My Money Back...
Does anyone but me find it sort of weird that we're having to have a DEBATE about the topic of ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION?
I mean, what is there to not understand about this issue?
Either you're born in Alabama with your banjo on your knee...and you're an American citizen...
Else…You're born in Ethiopia or Mexico City or Rio and you’re not an American citizen—at least you’re not without jumping through some legal hurdles.
(Notice that I didn’t say jumping across a fence or the Rio Grande)
If you meet the second criteria, you shouldn't be too surprised to find out that you’re a resident of an impoverished African country or that of Mexico or Brazil--at least until you get a passport and Visa and/or apply for immigration privileges and future US citizenship.
It all seems simple enough to me.
Both sides of my family did it (immigrated) a couple hundred years ago when things were a bit simpler, but they paid the price and I'm proud to be here today in spite of the sorry state of the mentality and morals of much of our population.
Most of us (my family) have also followed the laws and paid our own freight to maintain our existence since then. Some of us have even become wealthy along the path of following the American dream.
So what the hell is going on when a half MILLION Mexicans take to the streets downtown in an AMERICAN city to protest the proposed change in US law making entering our country illegally a felony
Again I ask, what is there to not understand?
Break the law, pay the price...
What I want to know is—why didn't the police and armed forces just walk in, fly a few helicopters overhead, and arrest everyone in sight that couldn't produce proof of citizenship?
OH…Nooooooooo…..can’t have that…German Gestapo tactics….ooohhhhh aaaaahhhh
Of course, as is usual with the liberal media when covering these type events, the estimates of attendance varied widely. I've heard 500,000 in the LA streets from the AP reports, and at the same time I heard that the number was closer to 100,000. I’ve found that the AP tends to overstate attendance when it fits their agenda, while at the same time understating the numbers when it advances a cause they don't agree with (the number of red state voters comes to mind in this instance.)
Any way…
Rumor has it that there are somewhere near 11,000,000 illegal immigrants here in the United-by-God-States of America today.
I suspect that that number to be a bit low.
How the hell can anyone in the government keep a straight face while talking about that number of infiltrators?
11 illegals is a non-issue.
110 is worth having a meeting every now and then.
1,100 is a real issue.
11,000 is a serious situation.
110,000 is more than a bit of a problem.
1,100,000 means someone in the government needs firing.
11,000,000 is in fact a...well...it's a NATIONAL DISGRACE.
I don't give a tinkers damn what Julio and Migael and Virgillio and Pablo say about their rights and intentions, ELEVEN MILLION people that don't belong here is ELEVEN MILLION too many.
Let me tell you, I've spent my fair share of time working with and around Mexican “immigrants” and I say that they all basically fall into three categories.
The first category is rather obvious...what I call the “poster boy/girl” immigrant. They’re industrious, honest, sincere people that are looking for a better life and fully intend to integrate themselves into most of the American lifestyle. Of course I can't blame them if they avoid a big piece of our culture like Hollywood and some of the other pop culture crap that has developed here in the last fifty years.
The second group is the real problem...criminal immigrants that would be considered a pestilence in any country and any culture. These people are mean, dishonest, greedy, robbing, thieving, drug dealing, scumbags that Mexican Presidente Vincennes Fox is happy to be rid of.
Finally, there is a third category that burns my ass, but there isn’t much that we can do about them until the government gets their collective heads out of their asses and stops theflood influx.
These people are here illegally and they know that there is nothing that the average citizen like me and you can do about it.
THEY’RE LAUGHING AT US, AS THEY TAKE OUR MONEY AND SEND IT BACK HOME TO MEXICO.
These people have no intention of assimilating into our country and our culture, they just want to stay here and start Mexico North.
Or is it North Mexico?
They are just as surely a problem as the outright criminal immigrants are, because they intend to take over the country by gaining citizenship and a vote, even as they subvert our immigration laws.
All I know is that I’m glad that I’m 46 and not 26 or 16 because the America I was born in is rapidly disappearing and the one I die in is likely to be a place I don’t recognize.
Belize...here I come...
Does anyone but me find it sort of weird that we're having to have a DEBATE about the topic of ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION?I mean, what is there to not understand about this issue?
Either you're born in Alabama with your banjo on your knee...and you're an American citizen...
Else…You're born in Ethiopia or Mexico City or Rio and you’re not an American citizen—at least you’re not without jumping through some legal hurdles.
(Notice that I didn’t say jumping across a fence or the Rio Grande)
If you meet the second criteria, you shouldn't be too surprised to find out that you’re a resident of an impoverished African country or that of Mexico or Brazil--at least until you get a passport and Visa and/or apply for immigration privileges and future US citizenship.
It all seems simple enough to me.
Both sides of my family did it (immigrated) a couple hundred years ago when things were a bit simpler, but they paid the price and I'm proud to be here today in spite of the sorry state of the mentality and morals of much of our population.
Most of us (my family) have also followed the laws and paid our own freight to maintain our existence since then. Some of us have even become wealthy along the path of following the American dream.
So what the hell is going on when a half MILLION Mexicans take to the streets downtown in an AMERICAN city to protest the proposed change in US law making entering our country illegally a felony
Again I ask, what is there to not understand?
Break the law, pay the price...
What I want to know is—why didn't the police and armed forces just walk in, fly a few helicopters overhead, and arrest everyone in sight that couldn't produce proof of citizenship?
OH…Nooooooooo…..can’t have that…German Gestapo tactics….ooohhhhh aaaaahhhh
Of course, as is usual with the liberal media when covering these type events, the estimates of attendance varied widely. I've heard 500,000 in the LA streets from the AP reports, and at the same time I heard that the number was closer to 100,000. I’ve found that the AP tends to overstate attendance when it fits their agenda, while at the same time understating the numbers when it advances a cause they don't agree with (the number of red state voters comes to mind in this instance.)
Any way…
Rumor has it that there are somewhere near 11,000,000 illegal immigrants here in the United-by-God-States of America today.
I suspect that that number to be a bit low.
How the hell can anyone in the government keep a straight face while talking about that number of infiltrators?
11 illegals is a non-issue.
110 is worth having a meeting every now and then.
1,100 is a real issue.
11,000 is a serious situation.
110,000 is more than a bit of a problem.
1,100,000 means someone in the government needs firing.
11,000,000 is in fact a...well...it's a NATIONAL DISGRACE.
I don't give a tinkers damn what Julio and Migael and Virgillio and Pablo say about their rights and intentions, ELEVEN MILLION people that don't belong here is ELEVEN MILLION too many.
Let me tell you, I've spent my fair share of time working with and around Mexican “immigrants” and I say that they all basically fall into three categories.
The first category is rather obvious...what I call the “poster boy/girl” immigrant. They’re industrious, honest, sincere people that are looking for a better life and fully intend to integrate themselves into most of the American lifestyle. Of course I can't blame them if they avoid a big piece of our culture like Hollywood and some of the other pop culture crap that has developed here in the last fifty years.
The second group is the real problem...criminal immigrants that would be considered a pestilence in any country and any culture. These people are mean, dishonest, greedy, robbing, thieving, drug dealing, scumbags that Mexican Presidente Vincennes Fox is happy to be rid of.
Finally, there is a third category that burns my ass, but there isn’t much that we can do about them until the government gets their collective heads out of their asses and stops the
These people are here illegally and they know that there is nothing that the average citizen like me and you can do about it.
THEY’RE LAUGHING AT US, AS THEY TAKE OUR MONEY AND SEND IT BACK HOME TO MEXICO.
These people have no intention of assimilating into our country and our culture, they just want to stay here and start Mexico North.
Or is it North Mexico?
They are just as surely a problem as the outright criminal immigrants are, because they intend to take over the country by gaining citizenship and a vote, even as they subvert our immigration laws.
All I know is that I’m glad that I’m 46 and not 26 or 16 because the America I was born in is rapidly disappearing and the one I die in is likely to be a place I don’t recognize.
Belize...here I come...
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Have I Got Memory?
200 Gigabytes Worth…
There was a time when I was always on the cutting edge of PC computer technology at work and at home.
I lived and breathed computers--it was both a hobby and a business tool. I even had a subscription to “Byte” magazine, the ultimate computer nerd magazine of the 1980’s.
I was always head computer nerd everywhere I worked, so as a result I got to make the purchase decisions and I generally had one of the fastest PC sitting on MY desk.
My tastes in computers trickled over to my home PC equipment also.
I had an 80 Mb SCSI hard drive when everyone else suffered along with 40 Meg IDE drives. I had a HP laser printer while my friends waited on noisy old Epson dot matrix printers to print their letters home to mom or “honey.”
I had a Dell notebook PC back in 1993 in the days before every other seat on an airplane featured some bored executive pounding away on the keyboard of one. I could barely get any work done because people kept stopping to ask “hey, isn’t that one of those new Dell’s?”
Darn it was fun, but it was EXPENSIVE buying a new computer every two years or so, particularly when I was spending an average of $3000 on each new platform.
Things have changed a good deal for me today, as my computer needs have been drastically reduced and my computer budget has fallen along with them. While I used to run AutoCAD every day and spend hours in Excel Spreadsheets and running custom programs that I had written, today my computer use consists primarily of writing Word Documents, editing photos in Photoshop, and surfing the internet.
I haven't read a computer magazine in years, and today I resort to invesitgating our technology needs as they arise, sort of on a "need to know" basis rather than sitting around lusting all the time over things that I don't need and/or can't justify the cost of owning.
Today I don’t really need screaming processor speed, the standard resolution of most monitors and LCD displays is more than adequate, but what I do need is LOTS of hard disk space on which to store my photographs.
The problem became critical last week when I realized that one of our machines’ hard drive was 98% full. This explained while the performance was crawling. The older laptop which I use primarily was in the same situation.
I hate to admit that I didn't have a clue what our options were, so I called my former college roommate Andy to ask for an opinion. Andy still lives on the cutting edge when it comes to information and computer technology as an executive at a division of Intergraph Corporation.
When Andy turns on his computer system, the lights in all of western North Carolina dim slightly. Andy's computer storage capacities are in the three TERRABYTE range...at HOME.
Andy suggested that as a solution to our storage woes that I forget looking at USB flash drives or replacement internal hard drives and instead consider the inexpensive USB external drives.
Saturday afternoon we wandered across the Torras Causeway--back to the real world to do some shoping. Pat went to Bed Bath and Beyond while I visited Staples and Circuit City.
When we left the parking lot on our way back home to our little island, I was so excited that I almost wet my pants.
No…I’m really not that simple minded…it’s just that I realize how amazing it is today when it comes to where we are with computer hardware.
We paid the clerk at Staples for a Maxtor 200 Gigabyte USB Drive ($119.00 plus tax), brought our purchase home, opened the package, plugged it into the computer’s USB port, plugged the AC adapter into the wall, rebooted the computer and….
instead of 40 Gig, Pat’s little Dell computer now had 240 Gig!
No driver installation from floppy disks or CD’s.
No special extra cost cabling or adapters.
No extra trips to the computer store
No e-mails to support websites.
No phone calls to tech support.
No bitching and complaining and shouting and scratching my head and/or ass, wondering what I’d done wrong.
There weren’t even any instructions in the packaging—just a reference to a website to answer questions to anyone unlucky enough to not know which end of an AC adaptor to plug into the wall outlet.
DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I’M SAYING HERE?
I guess maybe not--particularly if you are under the age of 35. Let me tell you kids something…things haven’t always been this way.
I remember back about 1985 when I managed to talk my boss into letting me buy a new hard drive for my IBM PC-XT.
You see, the old PC-XT’s originally came with a giant…get ready…10 megabyte hard drive.
My co-workers used to hang around my desk and gawk in envy because I didn’t need a stack of floppy disks to run spell check on Wordstar.
We paid nearly $300, as I recall, to double my capacity to 20 meg, and I had to replace the existing 10 meg drive to do it because “half height” drives hadn’t been invented yet and the old PC-XT chassis only had two drive bays—we needed to save one bay for a 5-1/4” floppy drive in order to install new programs and exchange data with other users on floppies.
Back then, adding or replacing a hard disk involved…gasp…OPENING UP THE CABINET of the PC, exposing sensitive things like the power supply and “mother board.” Then there was the inevitable extra trip back to the computer store to buy the cable that you really needed rather than the cable that they already sold you or that came with the new hard drive.
As I said earlier, today you plug the darn things in, turn them on, and start computing.
How easy is that?
Also, consider this statistic. Two Hundred Gigabytes in my new drive is 10,000 times larger than the 20 Megabyte capacity of that first drive that I installed 21 years ago.
Ten thousand times the storage capacity for less than half the 1985 price…
Sorry, but I'm still excited and I’ve got to go pee now…
(then I'm going to save some new pictures on our new hard drive)
There was a time when I was always on the cutting edge of PC computer technology at work and at home.
I lived and breathed computers--it was both a hobby and a business tool. I even had a subscription to “Byte” magazine, the ultimate computer nerd magazine of the 1980’s.
I was always head computer nerd everywhere I worked, so as a result I got to make the purchase decisions and I generally had one of the fastest PC sitting on MY desk.
My tastes in computers trickled over to my home PC equipment also.
I had an 80 Mb SCSI hard drive when everyone else suffered along with 40 Meg IDE drives. I had a HP laser printer while my friends waited on noisy old Epson dot matrix printers to print their letters home to mom or “honey.”
I had a Dell notebook PC back in 1993 in the days before every other seat on an airplane featured some bored executive pounding away on the keyboard of one. I could barely get any work done because people kept stopping to ask “hey, isn’t that one of those new Dell’s?”
Darn it was fun, but it was EXPENSIVE buying a new computer every two years or so, particularly when I was spending an average of $3000 on each new platform.
Things have changed a good deal for me today, as my computer needs have been drastically reduced and my computer budget has fallen along with them. While I used to run AutoCAD every day and spend hours in Excel Spreadsheets and running custom programs that I had written, today my computer use consists primarily of writing Word Documents, editing photos in Photoshop, and surfing the internet.
I haven't read a computer magazine in years, and today I resort to invesitgating our technology needs as they arise, sort of on a "need to know" basis rather than sitting around lusting all the time over things that I don't need and/or can't justify the cost of owning.
Today I don’t really need screaming processor speed, the standard resolution of most monitors and LCD displays is more than adequate, but what I do need is LOTS of hard disk space on which to store my photographs.
The problem became critical last week when I realized that one of our machines’ hard drive was 98% full. This explained while the performance was crawling. The older laptop which I use primarily was in the same situation.
I hate to admit that I didn't have a clue what our options were, so I called my former college roommate Andy to ask for an opinion. Andy still lives on the cutting edge when it comes to information and computer technology as an executive at a division of Intergraph Corporation.
When Andy turns on his computer system, the lights in all of western North Carolina dim slightly. Andy's computer storage capacities are in the three TERRABYTE range...at HOME.
Andy suggested that as a solution to our storage woes that I forget looking at USB flash drives or replacement internal hard drives and instead consider the inexpensive USB external drives.
Saturday afternoon we wandered across the Torras Causeway--back to the real world to do some shoping. Pat went to Bed Bath and Beyond while I visited Staples and Circuit City.
When we left the parking lot on our way back home to our little island, I was so excited that I almost wet my pants.
No…I’m really not that simple minded…it’s just that I realize how amazing it is today when it comes to where we are with computer hardware.
We paid the clerk at Staples for a Maxtor 200 Gigabyte USB Drive ($119.00 plus tax), brought our purchase home, opened the package, plugged it into the computer’s USB port, plugged the AC adapter into the wall, rebooted the computer and….
instead of 40 Gig, Pat’s little Dell computer now had 240 Gig!
No driver installation from floppy disks or CD’s.
No special extra cost cabling or adapters.
No extra trips to the computer store
No e-mails to support websites.
No phone calls to tech support.
No bitching and complaining and shouting and scratching my head and/or ass, wondering what I’d done wrong.
There weren’t even any instructions in the packaging—just a reference to a website to answer questions to anyone unlucky enough to not know which end of an AC adaptor to plug into the wall outlet.
DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I’M SAYING HERE?
I guess maybe not--particularly if you are under the age of 35. Let me tell you kids something…things haven’t always been this way.
I remember back about 1985 when I managed to talk my boss into letting me buy a new hard drive for my IBM PC-XT.
You see, the old PC-XT’s originally came with a giant…get ready…10 megabyte hard drive.
My co-workers used to hang around my desk and gawk in envy because I didn’t need a stack of floppy disks to run spell check on Wordstar.
We paid nearly $300, as I recall, to double my capacity to 20 meg, and I had to replace the existing 10 meg drive to do it because “half height” drives hadn’t been invented yet and the old PC-XT chassis only had two drive bays—we needed to save one bay for a 5-1/4” floppy drive in order to install new programs and exchange data with other users on floppies.
Back then, adding or replacing a hard disk involved…gasp…OPENING UP THE CABINET of the PC, exposing sensitive things like the power supply and “mother board.” Then there was the inevitable extra trip back to the computer store to buy the cable that you really needed rather than the cable that they already sold you or that came with the new hard drive.
As I said earlier, today you plug the darn things in, turn them on, and start computing.
How easy is that?
Also, consider this statistic. Two Hundred Gigabytes in my new drive is 10,000 times larger than the 20 Megabyte capacity of that first drive that I installed 21 years ago.
Ten thousand times the storage capacity for less than half the 1985 price…
Sorry, but I'm still excited and I’ve got to go pee now…
(then I'm going to save some new pictures on our new hard drive)
Friday, March 24, 2006
Dead Computer
Film At Eleven...
I hope that it isn't really dead because I have a bunch of photos that aren't on the other machine...but...she wouldn't boot up this morning.
Thus the lack of words, pictures, and commentary.
Stay tuned to this station, if you will.
I hope that it isn't really dead because I have a bunch of photos that aren't on the other machine...but...she wouldn't boot up this morning.
Thus the lack of words, pictures, and commentary.
Stay tuned to this station, if you will.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
An Exclusive Revelation
I've Identified The Seventy-Two Virgins...
Did anyone but me see the antics of the whitehouse press corps this week when President Bush held his "open" news conference? What a truely stupid bunch of partisan idiots most of these elitist morons showed themselves to be.
Particulary rancid was the behavior of Helen Thomas as she delivered a rhetoric laced "non-question" that the President took a swing at and hit out of the ballpark.
Poor old Helen kept on spitting and sputtering and interrupting, forcing President Bush to interrupt her several times.
I think that she might have soiled here Depends in the process of the exchange.
I have every respect in general for people that manage to live to the ripe old age that Helen has, but she has fallen a long, long way since her days in the Kennedy White House in the early 1960's.
She's been a reporter since 1943 for God's sake. Why dosn't she just throw in the towel and find something else to do with her time rather than doddering into the White House press room only to spike her blood pressure a couple of times week.
I started thinking about ways that she could serve her country, and this idea came to mind...
Hey all you suicide bomber followers of Allah and Bin Laden...
COME AND GET 'EM!!!
(that image makes me shudder at my own creativity...)
Did anyone but me see the antics of the whitehouse press corps this week when President Bush held his "open" news conference? What a truely stupid bunch of partisan idiots most of these elitist morons showed themselves to be.
Particulary rancid was the behavior of Helen Thomas as she delivered a rhetoric laced "non-question" that the President took a swing at and hit out of the ballpark.
Poor old Helen kept on spitting and sputtering and interrupting, forcing President Bush to interrupt her several times.
I think that she might have soiled here Depends in the process of the exchange.
I have every respect in general for people that manage to live to the ripe old age that Helen has, but she has fallen a long, long way since her days in the Kennedy White House in the early 1960's.
She's been a reporter since 1943 for God's sake. Why dosn't she just throw in the towel and find something else to do with her time rather than doddering into the White House press room only to spike her blood pressure a couple of times week.
I started thinking about ways that she could serve her country, and this idea came to mind...
Hey all you suicide bomber followers of Allah and Bin Laden...
COME AND GET 'EM!!!
(that image makes me shudder at my own creativity...)
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Hospital Update
Slightly better...
On Monday I mentioned here on the blog that my beloved Grandmother was in very serious condition in the intensive care ward of a Florida Hospital.
I can report with guarded optimism that she has now been moved out of intensive care today--into a regular hospital room, but she still has a LONG way to go because she's developed a new condition as of the result of her bed confinement and we're still awaiting an actual diagnosis of what is wrong with her, if anything, besides her advanced age.
I am humbled by the the widespread response of support from my fellow bloggers and many total strangers here on the internet.
Of particular note is that my blog idol Steve H. over at Hog On Ice noticed my Prayer Request and referenced my family's situation with this link in his blog.
Thanks a zillion Mr. H. (BTW, you blasted my hit count up six fold today.)
Several other of my fellow bloggers including Val Prieto over at Babalu blog took the time to comment and offer support. I also noticed that my blogfriend Richthofin at Blind Chick Racing tossed me a link also.
This is the first time I've ever asked for anything on my blog other than the patience of anyone that happens by in enduring my ranting and sometimes irrational ravings.
I am overwhelmed with this outpouring of concern and kind words, and on behalf of my family and myself I offer a hearty
THANK YOU!
On Monday I mentioned here on the blog that my beloved Grandmother was in very serious condition in the intensive care ward of a Florida Hospital.
I can report with guarded optimism that she has now been moved out of intensive care today--into a regular hospital room, but she still has a LONG way to go because she's developed a new condition as of the result of her bed confinement and we're still awaiting an actual diagnosis of what is wrong with her, if anything, besides her advanced age.
I am humbled by the the widespread response of support from my fellow bloggers and many total strangers here on the internet.
Of particular note is that my blog idol Steve H. over at Hog On Ice noticed my Prayer Request and referenced my family's situation with this link in his blog.
Thanks a zillion Mr. H. (BTW, you blasted my hit count up six fold today.)
Several other of my fellow bloggers including Val Prieto over at Babalu blog took the time to comment and offer support. I also noticed that my blogfriend Richthofin at Blind Chick Racing tossed me a link also.
This is the first time I've ever asked for anything on my blog other than the patience of anyone that happens by in enduring my ranting and sometimes irrational ravings.
I am overwhelmed with this outpouring of concern and kind words, and on behalf of my family and myself I offer a hearty
THANK YOU!
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Leg Of Lamb...Anyone?
Where's My Mint Jelly...
It would seem that strange things are happening in Meeuwen-Gruitrode, Belgium these days, as evidenced by this photograph (no, I didn't Photoshop it...)
This little critter was born there recently and has caused quite a stir in the local farming community.
I wonder if I could buy a franchise on ranching and distrubuting my own herd (or is it flock.)
Based on a 50% increase in the number of legs of lamb for sale, I'd say it could be a profitable (ad)venture.
It would seem that strange things are happening in Meeuwen-Gruitrode, Belgium these days, as evidenced by this photograph (no, I didn't Photoshop it...)This little critter was born there recently and has caused quite a stir in the local farming community.
I wonder if I could buy a franchise on ranching and distrubuting my own herd (or is it flock.)
Based on a 50% increase in the number of legs of lamb for sale, I'd say it could be a profitable (ad)venture.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Say A Little Prayer, Please
A Personal Request...
If you're inclined to pray, please pray for this little lady that is very dear to my family and I.
If you're inclined to pray, please pray for this little lady that is very dear to my family and I.
My Father's mother was born in 1913 and has resided the past week in intensive care down in Florida. She'd be 93 years old if she makes it to December.
Thing's don't look that good for that to happen.
The driving and time spent at the hospital yesterday has caused the posting to be rather light as a result.
I'll try to do better later today...
Sunday, March 19, 2006
Freedom OF Religion
Not Freedom FROM Religion
I actually have what I think is a valid point to make here, so bear with me while I ramble along mentally to get us to it...
If you are a non-blogger and/or causal internet user, you might not realize how far reaching Google’s influence has become. Besides making its co-founders famous and wealthy, it has also become a powerful guardian to the internet and internet access that can make or break blogs and commercial websites alike.
As I understand things today, Blogger.com, the company that hosts my blogs (for free by the way) is owned by Google. Recently I've learned that several prominent blogs have had trouble with their content being removed or otherwise censored for unexplained reasons, and the only recourse was for the blogger to go somewhere else for hosting.
I've thus far managed to stay out of that situation, but...hey...I'm always just one good rant away from insanity...
They (Google) spend a good deal of their time working on your and my behalf and they are the number one search engine on the internet.
I find their services to be indispensable in regard to my own web usage. They constantly refine search algorithms in order to ensure that the results you get when you peck in a topic in the search box are the best possible, but sometimes problems ensue
For instance, last year I found that doing a Google search for my name resulted in seeing me come up number one on their listing.
Woooo, hoooo, yeeeee, haaaa, with that and a buck I can get a cup of thermonuclear coffee at Waffle House.
But then, mysteriously, shortly after I discovered that ego enhancing fact, I also found that my ranking had virtually disappeared, falling down in the second or third page of search results.
It was no big deal for me commercially, but I have to admit that it hurt my feelings a little.
Not to worry, because today the sun is shining and the birds are singing, and my name again sits atop Google’s search results.
But do you know what else I just found out this morning?
Something sort of cool, but yet sort of strange at the same time.
One of my postings was prominently quoted in an article on the website about.com. What really caught my eye was that the category in which this article was published was Agnosticism/Atheism.
You can go here to read the text of the November 15, 2005 article entitled “Conservatives mobilizing against Atheists.
“What the heck” I first thought to myself. “Am I supposed to be flattered or outraged…”
It turns out that I just have to sit back and chuckle, because the posting that Mr. Austin Cline made was referencing my own blog rant entitled “Newdow, Old Tricks.”
I really thought that title was quite cleaver.
I was writing at the time about the meddling California Atheist father Michael Newdow that sued in court to stop his daughter for having to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in the classrooms in public schools.
Mr. Austin takes umbrage with my simplistic reasoning, but he missed my point entirely in the process. I actually wasn’t trying to be that serious, I was just venting my feelings—one of the primary reasons that I write a blog.
Here is what he said (the text in green is quoted from me):
At least Doug Hagin mentions a couple of genuine issues. Virgil Rogers dispenses with such niceties and goes straight for the personal attack:
"In my opinion, Mr. Newdow is a truly bored, egotistical, useless moron. I wish I had the spare time and energy that Mike has, because I’d probably have solved some critical problem like finding a cure for the common cold or producing a vaccine for Avian flue or something USEFUL by now. I bet Newdow spent his twelve years in public schools with the other boys and most of the girls kicking his butt and wiping the floor with him."
Notice any attempt to argue that Newdow is wrong? Neither do I. Virgil Rogers insists that Newdow is “screwing” with his rights and civil liberties, but he doesn’t explain what “rights” or “liberties” would be overturned if the government ceased to officially endorse, support, or encourage particular religious beliefs. Do Hindus have fewer rights and liberties because their religious beliefs aren’t endorsed by the state? Do Shintos have fewer rights and liberties because their religious beliefs aren’t promoted by the state? Hardly. Yet so many Christians are certain that it would be a form of discrimination if the government ceased to support and endorse their beliefs.
It’s not rights or liberties that they would be losing, it’s privilege. Christians and Christianity have, through much of America’s history, been treated with special deference as compared to other religions. When most Americans were Christian, this was accepted and enjoyed — objections by religious minorities were simply dismissed. Now that America is more religiously diverse, however, religious minorities are becoming more vocal and more successful in their challenges to traditional practices.
Well Mr. Cline, let me say THIS about THAT.
I am constantly torn between writing serious commentary versus just “letting it all hang out” here on the blog, trying to be entertaining.
Maybe you're just pointing out that I have failed at doing either or both at the same time, BUT...with regard to the issue of Michael Newdow’s lawsuit about the words “one nation under God” in the Pledge of allegiance, there is an important detail that I failed to mention, and that you apparently fail to grasp.
Let me state it as simply as I can for you and my readers.
I believe that the government can ABSOLUTLELY stop promoting the pledge of allegiance when the government also stops confiscating my property tax dollars to pay for the mind mush mills laughingly called “public schools” and REQUIRING that our citizens send their children there for twelve impressionable years of their lives.
Last time I checked, it was AGAINST THE LAW to not send your kid to school. The police will come to your house, arrest you, and put you in jail if you let your kids sit at home playing Playstation and eating Poptarts all day long.
I say that when the government starts allowing parents to have freedom of educational choice and are allowed to home school or otherwise educate their little darlin’s in the private school of their liking, then you can send your own child to a school where they say a pledge of allegiance to the Devil or Elvis or even Howdy Doody if you want.
It's all about educational choice.
The only catch is that the goverment should pony up some cash, in the form of school vouchers, to help the parents pay for the alternative (read that REAL) education. After all, it's their (our) money that the government is currently using to pay for the drivel that they are teaching between 8 AM and 3 PM.
The wording of the Pledge of Allegiance should be the LEAST of our problems.
It seems to me to be an easy choice, yet we all still sit here today with crappy, underachieving schools and endless debates on test scores.
Until such time when parents have educational choices, and only then, I say that the VOTERS, not the courts, are entitled to decide what our kids are or are not taught. This means that Michael Newdow can't use the COURTS to override the VOTERS.
It's just that simple...
I actually have what I think is a valid point to make here, so bear with me while I ramble along mentally to get us to it...
If you are a non-blogger and/or causal internet user, you might not realize how far reaching Google’s influence has become. Besides making its co-founders famous and wealthy, it has also become a powerful guardian to the internet and internet access that can make or break blogs and commercial websites alike.
As I understand things today, Blogger.com, the company that hosts my blogs (for free by the way) is owned by Google. Recently I've learned that several prominent blogs have had trouble with their content being removed or otherwise censored for unexplained reasons, and the only recourse was for the blogger to go somewhere else for hosting.
I've thus far managed to stay out of that situation, but...hey...I'm always just one good rant away from insanity...
They (Google) spend a good deal of their time working on your and my behalf and they are the number one search engine on the internet.
I find their services to be indispensable in regard to my own web usage. They constantly refine search algorithms in order to ensure that the results you get when you peck in a topic in the search box are the best possible, but sometimes problems ensue
For instance, last year I found that doing a Google search for my name resulted in seeing me come up number one on their listing.
Woooo, hoooo, yeeeee, haaaa, with that and a buck I can get a cup of thermonuclear coffee at Waffle House.
But then, mysteriously, shortly after I discovered that ego enhancing fact, I also found that my ranking had virtually disappeared, falling down in the second or third page of search results.
It was no big deal for me commercially, but I have to admit that it hurt my feelings a little.
Not to worry, because today the sun is shining and the birds are singing, and my name again sits atop Google’s search results.
But do you know what else I just found out this morning?
Something sort of cool, but yet sort of strange at the same time.
One of my postings was prominently quoted in an article on the website about.com. What really caught my eye was that the category in which this article was published was Agnosticism/Atheism.
You can go here to read the text of the November 15, 2005 article entitled “Conservatives mobilizing against Atheists.
“What the heck” I first thought to myself. “Am I supposed to be flattered or outraged…”
It turns out that I just have to sit back and chuckle, because the posting that Mr. Austin Cline made was referencing my own blog rant entitled “Newdow, Old Tricks.”
I really thought that title was quite cleaver.
I was writing at the time about the meddling California Atheist father Michael Newdow that sued in court to stop his daughter for having to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in the classrooms in public schools.
Mr. Austin takes umbrage with my simplistic reasoning, but he missed my point entirely in the process. I actually wasn’t trying to be that serious, I was just venting my feelings—one of the primary reasons that I write a blog.
Here is what he said (the text in green is quoted from me):
At least Doug Hagin mentions a couple of genuine issues. Virgil Rogers dispenses with such niceties and goes straight for the personal attack:
"In my opinion, Mr. Newdow is a truly bored, egotistical, useless moron. I wish I had the spare time and energy that Mike has, because I’d probably have solved some critical problem like finding a cure for the common cold or producing a vaccine for Avian flue or something USEFUL by now. I bet Newdow spent his twelve years in public schools with the other boys and most of the girls kicking his butt and wiping the floor with him."
Notice any attempt to argue that Newdow is wrong? Neither do I. Virgil Rogers insists that Newdow is “screwing” with his rights and civil liberties, but he doesn’t explain what “rights” or “liberties” would be overturned if the government ceased to officially endorse, support, or encourage particular religious beliefs. Do Hindus have fewer rights and liberties because their religious beliefs aren’t endorsed by the state? Do Shintos have fewer rights and liberties because their religious beliefs aren’t promoted by the state? Hardly. Yet so many Christians are certain that it would be a form of discrimination if the government ceased to support and endorse their beliefs.
It’s not rights or liberties that they would be losing, it’s privilege. Christians and Christianity have, through much of America’s history, been treated with special deference as compared to other religions. When most Americans were Christian, this was accepted and enjoyed — objections by religious minorities were simply dismissed. Now that America is more religiously diverse, however, religious minorities are becoming more vocal and more successful in their challenges to traditional practices.
Well Mr. Cline, let me say THIS about THAT.
I am constantly torn between writing serious commentary versus just “letting it all hang out” here on the blog, trying to be entertaining.
Maybe you're just pointing out that I have failed at doing either or both at the same time, BUT...with regard to the issue of Michael Newdow’s lawsuit about the words “one nation under God” in the Pledge of allegiance, there is an important detail that I failed to mention, and that you apparently fail to grasp.
Let me state it as simply as I can for you and my readers.
I believe that the government can ABSOLUTLELY stop promoting the pledge of allegiance when the government also stops confiscating my property tax dollars to pay for the mind mush mills laughingly called “public schools” and REQUIRING that our citizens send their children there for twelve impressionable years of their lives.
Last time I checked, it was AGAINST THE LAW to not send your kid to school. The police will come to your house, arrest you, and put you in jail if you let your kids sit at home playing Playstation and eating Poptarts all day long.
I say that when the government starts allowing parents to have freedom of educational choice and are allowed to home school or otherwise educate their little darlin’s in the private school of their liking, then you can send your own child to a school where they say a pledge of allegiance to the Devil or Elvis or even Howdy Doody if you want.
It's all about educational choice.
The only catch is that the goverment should pony up some cash, in the form of school vouchers, to help the parents pay for the alternative (read that REAL) education. After all, it's their (our) money that the government is currently using to pay for the drivel that they are teaching between 8 AM and 3 PM.
The wording of the Pledge of Allegiance should be the LEAST of our problems.
It seems to me to be an easy choice, yet we all still sit here today with crappy, underachieving schools and endless debates on test scores.
Until such time when parents have educational choices, and only then, I say that the VOTERS, not the courts, are entitled to decide what our kids are or are not taught. This means that Michael Newdow can't use the COURTS to override the VOTERS.
It's just that simple...
Strawberry Key Lime Pie
Don’t Anyone Get Between Me And My Key Lime Juice
(An Apology: I occasionally cross post things here on this blog that I also publish over on my cooking blog, The Redneck Gourmet, and this morning I find myself in the position of not having anything original worth saying so I took the opportunity to write up this pie recipe and dump it out on both blogs. You really aught to try making one for yourself and a few friends--its really quite yummy.)
Did you know that you can make a WHOLE Key Lime Pie in less than 30 minutes?
Did you know that you can make a WHOLE Key Lime Pie for about $6.00?
Further, if you are a cheep-skate like me and you don't mind making your own pie crust, did you know that you can cut the cost down to about $4.50.
That said, does anyone but me wonder why the heck a slice of Key Lime Pie costs you $5.00 in most restaurants?
Maybe they have to send someone to fly each day down to Key West and pick their own little Key limes and escort them back to their kitchen or something. That could explain the cost.
And why are these expensive pie slices colored GREEN?
The natural color of a Key Lime Pie comes out pale yellow when I make one.
Is the green color the result of radioactivity, or possibly food coloring?
Then again, maybe the high cost is due to labor.
I know from personal experience that juicing those little suckers (key limes) requires the patience of Job. The seeds are tiny and almost impossible to pick out of the juice without a fine mesh strainer, and it takes over a dozen of the little suckers to get an entire pie’s worth of juice.
I gave up juicing little limes last year once I found out that I could drive over to the grocery store and buy a bottle of Nellie and Joe’s Famous Key West Lime Juice.
This stuff is WONDERFUL.
One 16 fluid ounce bottle is said to contain the juice of at least 26 key limes. Based on my experience, it seems more like about 4 dozen of the tiny, tart citrus fruits.
Any way, I got bored last week and started thinking about doing something a little different with Key Lime Juice, and as usual—a trip to the grocery store was the answer.
What I found was that they are practically giving away Florida strawberries right now, so I bought two big packages of berries along with some other stuff, and a new form of Key Lime Pie resulted.
This recipe is EXTREMELY simple, so don’t blink your eyes or you’ll miss it.
All you need are these Ingrediants:
½ cup of Key Lime Juice
(1) 14 oz can Eaglebrand Sweetened Condensed Milk
(3) egg yolks
(1) cup pureed strawberries (drained well)
Sliced strawberrys and/or sliced kiwi fruit for garnish
A few leafs of fresh mint for garnish
(1) 8” or 9” pie crust (I used a Nabisco “Nilla” Pie crust)
You ready to make a pie now?
Step #1...Fire up your oven and set the temperature at 350 degrees F.
Step #2...Stir everything together, dump it into the pie crust, and bake for 20 minutes.
How simple is that?
When the dust settles, all that is left is to chill your pie in the fridge for a few hours, then slice it up, put it on chilled plates, and garnish it with the sliced strawberries, kiwi, and mint sprigs.
Now grab yourself a fork and EAT!
Enjoy Y’all,
The Redneck Gourmet
(An Apology: I occasionally cross post things here on this blog that I also publish over on my cooking blog, The Redneck Gourmet, and this morning I find myself in the position of not having anything original worth saying so I took the opportunity to write up this pie recipe and dump it out on both blogs. You really aught to try making one for yourself and a few friends--its really quite yummy.)
Did you know that you can make a WHOLE Key Lime Pie in less than 30 minutes?
Did you know that you can make a WHOLE Key Lime Pie for about $6.00?
Further, if you are a cheep-skate like me and you don't mind making your own pie crust, did you know that you can cut the cost down to about $4.50.
That said, does anyone but me wonder why the heck a slice of Key Lime Pie costs you $5.00 in most restaurants?
Maybe they have to send someone to fly each day down to Key West and pick their own little Key limes and escort them back to their kitchen or something. That could explain the cost.
And why are these expensive pie slices colored GREEN?
The natural color of a Key Lime Pie comes out pale yellow when I make one.
Is the green color the result of radioactivity, or possibly food coloring?
Then again, maybe the high cost is due to labor.
I know from personal experience that juicing those little suckers (key limes) requires the patience of Job. The seeds are tiny and almost impossible to pick out of the juice without a fine mesh strainer, and it takes over a dozen of the little suckers to get an entire pie’s worth of juice.
I gave up juicing little limes last year once I found out that I could drive over to the grocery store and buy a bottle of Nellie and Joe’s Famous Key West Lime Juice.
This stuff is WONDERFUL.
One 16 fluid ounce bottle is said to contain the juice of at least 26 key limes. Based on my experience, it seems more like about 4 dozen of the tiny, tart citrus fruits.
Any way, I got bored last week and started thinking about doing something a little different with Key Lime Juice, and as usual—a trip to the grocery store was the answer.
What I found was that they are practically giving away Florida strawberries right now, so I bought two big packages of berries along with some other stuff, and a new form of Key Lime Pie resulted.
This recipe is EXTREMELY simple, so don’t blink your eyes or you’ll miss it.
All you need are these Ingrediants:
½ cup of Key Lime Juice
(1) 14 oz can Eaglebrand Sweetened Condensed Milk
(3) egg yolks
(1) cup pureed strawberries (drained well)
Sliced strawberrys and/or sliced kiwi fruit for garnish
A few leafs of fresh mint for garnish
(1) 8” or 9” pie crust (I used a Nabisco “Nilla” Pie crust)
You ready to make a pie now?
Step #1...Fire up your oven and set the temperature at 350 degrees F.
Step #2...Stir everything together, dump it into the pie crust, and bake for 20 minutes.
How simple is that?
When the dust settles, all that is left is to chill your pie in the fridge for a few hours, then slice it up, put it on chilled plates, and garnish it with the sliced strawberries, kiwi, and mint sprigs.
Now grab yourself a fork and EAT!
Enjoy Y’all,
The Redneck Gourmet
Friday, March 17, 2006
Happy St. Pat's Day
I've got my green underwear on...how about you?
You just got to love a country that has a patron saint like Saint Patrick that can induce the public to drink zillions of gallons of green libations once a year.
Let's all turn in unison, face northeast across the Atlantic, and give our Irish friends a nice salute.
Meanwhile, I’d like to point out that the second largest celebration in the US outside of NY City will be happening in Savannah, Georgia, just up I-95 from us today.
They’re expecting about 300,000 revelers to attend. This, in a city of about 130,000 according the 2000 census.
Can you say Gridlock?
I last visited Savannah (only about 70 miles north of me now as I write) on St. Paddy's Day in 1983 with my college friend Randy.
I had no idea what I was getting into.
We drove down in his roommate's VW Jetta and when we got to town there wasn't a motel room to be found. Of course anyone with any sense knew that in that day the rooms were all booked up at least a year in advance.
Today I think you would be making reservations for 2010 at best.
Any way...we ended up sleeping in the car that night, parked on the curb of one of Savannah's famous "squares." Besides having street sweeper trucks driving past endlessly, we were also awakened about 2 AM by a female cop that ended up feeling sorry for us and let us sleep un-rousted until daylight. She even stopped back by a couple of times to check on us (I think she liked Randy.)
The second night was spent in an old fleabag hotel out on Tybee Island that had a shower that came preloaded with beach sand and where you picked up your black and white TV with a set of "rabbit ear" antenna in the office when you checked in.
It only cost a couple of bucks extra, so we splurged on the TV in order to be able to watch the news.
The parade, even back then, was a monstrous affair that lasted three or four hours in total, and the downtown streets were packed with participants wearing funny green hats and ties and with nubile young girls sporting body parts that they were willing to show in public in return for beads and other trinkets.
I saw the best "cat fight" I've ever seen that day. These two little 100 pound girls beat the shit out of each other, presumably over nothing, and when they got through they were both bloody and half naked...with hand full size hanks of hair laying on the ground at their feet.
The crowd was quite happy to cheer their progress on, and a couple of sideline fights erupted among some of the spectators and the "gentlemen" that were enduring the lonely task of escorting these two lovely young ladies.
In the end, we staggered up and down River Street in the crush of the crowd, bumped into a few other college friends, tried to drink all of the green beer, found ourselves to be unsuccessful, and slithered back home with a hangover the next day, never to return except for any day except St. Patrick’s day.
I’ve visited Savannah and Port Wentworth many times since, and I can actually drive around the city without needing a roadmap, but I’ve never been back for St. Paddy’s day. I feel the same way about New Orleans now, except that Katrina may have made the Big Easy endurable again as a side effect.
Any hooooo…I hope that you have a lovely day there in your green garments.
You just got to love a country that has a patron saint like Saint Patrick that can induce the public to drink zillions of gallons of green libations once a year.
Let's all turn in unison, face northeast across the Atlantic, and give our Irish friends a nice salute.
Meanwhile, I’d like to point out that the second largest celebration in the US outside of NY City will be happening in Savannah, Georgia, just up I-95 from us today.
They’re expecting about 300,000 revelers to attend. This, in a city of about 130,000 according the 2000 census.
Can you say Gridlock?
I last visited Savannah (only about 70 miles north of me now as I write) on St. Paddy's Day in 1983 with my college friend Randy.
I had no idea what I was getting into.
We drove down in his roommate's VW Jetta and when we got to town there wasn't a motel room to be found. Of course anyone with any sense knew that in that day the rooms were all booked up at least a year in advance.
Today I think you would be making reservations for 2010 at best.
Any way...we ended up sleeping in the car that night, parked on the curb of one of Savannah's famous "squares." Besides having street sweeper trucks driving past endlessly, we were also awakened about 2 AM by a female cop that ended up feeling sorry for us and let us sleep un-rousted until daylight. She even stopped back by a couple of times to check on us (I think she liked Randy.)
The second night was spent in an old fleabag hotel out on Tybee Island that had a shower that came preloaded with beach sand and where you picked up your black and white TV with a set of "rabbit ear" antenna in the office when you checked in.
It only cost a couple of bucks extra, so we splurged on the TV in order to be able to watch the news.
The parade, even back then, was a monstrous affair that lasted three or four hours in total, and the downtown streets were packed with participants wearing funny green hats and ties and with nubile young girls sporting body parts that they were willing to show in public in return for beads and other trinkets.
I saw the best "cat fight" I've ever seen that day. These two little 100 pound girls beat the shit out of each other, presumably over nothing, and when they got through they were both bloody and half naked...with hand full size hanks of hair laying on the ground at their feet.
The crowd was quite happy to cheer their progress on, and a couple of sideline fights erupted among some of the spectators and the "gentlemen" that were enduring the lonely task of escorting these two lovely young ladies.
In the end, we staggered up and down River Street in the crush of the crowd, bumped into a few other college friends, tried to drink all of the green beer, found ourselves to be unsuccessful, and slithered back home with a hangover the next day, never to return except for any day except St. Patrick’s day.
I’ve visited Savannah and Port Wentworth many times since, and I can actually drive around the city without needing a roadmap, but I’ve never been back for St. Paddy’s day. I feel the same way about New Orleans now, except that Katrina may have made the Big Easy endurable again as a side effect.
Any hooooo…I hope that you have a lovely day there in your green garments.
If I Were Commander In Chef Chief
My New World Map
'Nuff said, I think...
(Hat tip to Roger over at Curmudgeonly & Skeptical for the image.)
'Nuff said, I think...
(Hat tip to Roger over at Curmudgeonly & Skeptical for the image.)
When All You Have Is A Hammer
I Guess Everything Looks Like a Nail
I’m going to start this rant at the end, and then work backwards to the beginning--where I think that the problem lies.
Please take a gander at these paragraphs from Thursday’s edition of The Brunswick News online edition:
“The eagles under her control will be turned over to the DNR, Page said, but the responsibility for placing the rest of them will lie with her.
If she is unable to find a new home for the sanctuary, Page said that federal mandates require her to place the birds with educational programs or euthanize them.”
You see that?
That is your Federal and our State Government at work, ladies and gentlemen.
Instead of allowing people like me and you to own and maintain certain animals and specifically listed birds as pets in our homes, the stupid assed idiots that we have elected (and/or the highly paid morons that have been hired by those same elected idiots) would rather that the animals be KILLED if government approved “shelter space” isn’t available.
Is this a prelude to what is going to happen when we finally give government full control of our sick citizens and our old people?
Just kill grandpa when the nursing home is full and you don't want him doddering around your back yard or climbing up in your Philodendron in the foyer looking for his wallet.
Yeah...that's a good solution...an atypical form of a government solution.
I don't know where to place the blame here--with the tree hugger socialists in general, or maybe it should go squarely on the backs of the gullible Democrats that have been responsible for passing most of the endangeredfeces species legislation in the first place.
I just know that this "spotted owl and snail darter fish" crap makes my head spin. How the hell can people that grew up inside concrete buildings, surrounded by miles of asphalt and concrete know one damn thing about any living being except possibly cockroaches and ants?
They can have my fair share of ants and roaches--just leave my red tailed hawks and chipmunks alone, dammit.
Now to the beginning of the story.
There is an elderly couple, Al and Emmy Minor, which are fortunate enough to own land out on Sapelo Island about ten miles from here. Sapelo is one of Georgia’s many pristine barrier islands that doesn’t have a road connecting it with the mainland.
If you go to Sapelo, you either go by boat, else you put on your bathing suit and swim a few thousand strokes.
I’d love to live there, but I hear grocery shopping is a bitch--plan on taking the day to do it.
Any way…Mr. and Mrs. Minor have, since the early 1980’s, leased 10 acres of land to a non-profit animal sanctuary operated by Nan Page.
It has cared for more than 10,000 birds, including owls, pelicans, red-tailed hawks and gulls. Small mammals such as opossums, otters, raccoons and foxes have also been cared for.
Ms. Page is lamenting her problem in losing her lease on the Minor’s land at the end of this month. She may have to close the shelter as a result.
But what is the real reason that this much needed shelter is on the verge of being shut down?
Enter the aforementioned stupid assed government idiots, stage right.
May I have a drum roll…please…
GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS are making it impossible for the shelter to continue to operate because the couple that owns the land can’t or won’t be able to meet their (the government’s) requirements.
Al and Emmy Minor, founders and former operators of the sanctuary, are not renewing the center's lease on the 10 acres that has been used for wildlife shelter and rehabilitation when it expires March 31.
"It's just become too much for us to handle, age-wise," Mrs. Minor said.
While officially removed from the sanctuary's day-to-day operations, the Minors still live close by and have remained involved in a lessened capacity.
Birds – including hawks and eagles – come to the sanctuary by way of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and veterinarians' offices.
Mrs. Minor said the center currently houses about 11 birds, including a newborn bald eaglet.
In addition to the challenges involved in keeping the nonprofit center afloat financially and maintaining its facilities, Mrs. Minor said an increase in regulations has taken a toll on current director Nan Page's efforts in running the facility – challenges which, in turn, take a toll on her.
"Sometimes they just make it so difficult," she said of the rules. "To go to a school carrying a hawk, Nan needed permission from Fish and Wildlife. They said each hawk used needed to live in its own separate cage. And then she needed another cage to transport them to the school. Then she needed a big van just to hold the required cage."
What kind of crap is that?
I want to go out and kick anyone's ass that is stupid enough to force well intended people to KILL ANIMALS in the name of government regulations.
Isn't the prevention of the abuse and death the orginal reason for having laws about protected species in the first place?
What have these people been smoking?
I wish I had the money and land to take on this enterprise. Since I don’t, all I can do is point it out to YOU, my readers, and hope that someone steps forward to come to the shelter’s rescue.
I’ve heard that success is obtained when opportunity meets planning and preparation.
Government seems to simply involve idiocy and stupidity meeting tax dollars.
I’m going to start this rant at the end, and then work backwards to the beginning--where I think that the problem lies.
Please take a gander at these paragraphs from Thursday’s edition of The Brunswick News online edition:
“The eagles under her control will be turned over to the DNR, Page said, but the responsibility for placing the rest of them will lie with her.
If she is unable to find a new home for the sanctuary, Page said that federal mandates require her to place the birds with educational programs or euthanize them.”
You see that?
That is your Federal and our State Government at work, ladies and gentlemen.
Instead of allowing people like me and you to own and maintain certain animals and specifically listed birds as pets in our homes, the stupid assed idiots that we have elected (and/or the highly paid morons that have been hired by those same elected idiots) would rather that the animals be KILLED if government approved “shelter space” isn’t available.
Is this a prelude to what is going to happen when we finally give government full control of our sick citizens and our old people?
Just kill grandpa when the nursing home is full and you don't want him doddering around your back yard or climbing up in your Philodendron in the foyer looking for his wallet.
Yeah...that's a good solution...an atypical form of a government solution.
I don't know where to place the blame here--with the tree hugger socialists in general, or maybe it should go squarely on the backs of the gullible Democrats that have been responsible for passing most of the endangered
I just know that this "spotted owl and snail darter fish" crap makes my head spin. How the hell can people that grew up inside concrete buildings, surrounded by miles of asphalt and concrete know one damn thing about any living being except possibly cockroaches and ants?
They can have my fair share of ants and roaches--just leave my red tailed hawks and chipmunks alone, dammit.
Now to the beginning of the story.
There is an elderly couple, Al and Emmy Minor, which are fortunate enough to own land out on Sapelo Island about ten miles from here. Sapelo is one of Georgia’s many pristine barrier islands that doesn’t have a road connecting it with the mainland.
If you go to Sapelo, you either go by boat, else you put on your bathing suit and swim a few thousand strokes.
I’d love to live there, but I hear grocery shopping is a bitch--plan on taking the day to do it.
Any way…Mr. and Mrs. Minor have, since the early 1980’s, leased 10 acres of land to a non-profit animal sanctuary operated by Nan Page.
It has cared for more than 10,000 birds, including owls, pelicans, red-tailed hawks and gulls. Small mammals such as opossums, otters, raccoons and foxes have also been cared for.
Ms. Page is lamenting her problem in losing her lease on the Minor’s land at the end of this month. She may have to close the shelter as a result.
But what is the real reason that this much needed shelter is on the verge of being shut down?
Enter the aforementioned stupid assed government idiots, stage right.
May I have a drum roll…please…
GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS are making it impossible for the shelter to continue to operate because the couple that owns the land can’t or won’t be able to meet their (the government’s) requirements.
Al and Emmy Minor, founders and former operators of the sanctuary, are not renewing the center's lease on the 10 acres that has been used for wildlife shelter and rehabilitation when it expires March 31.
"It's just become too much for us to handle, age-wise," Mrs. Minor said.
While officially removed from the sanctuary's day-to-day operations, the Minors still live close by and have remained involved in a lessened capacity.
Birds – including hawks and eagles – come to the sanctuary by way of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and veterinarians' offices.
Mrs. Minor said the center currently houses about 11 birds, including a newborn bald eaglet.
In addition to the challenges involved in keeping the nonprofit center afloat financially and maintaining its facilities, Mrs. Minor said an increase in regulations has taken a toll on current director Nan Page's efforts in running the facility – challenges which, in turn, take a toll on her.
"Sometimes they just make it so difficult," she said of the rules. "To go to a school carrying a hawk, Nan needed permission from Fish and Wildlife. They said each hawk used needed to live in its own separate cage. And then she needed another cage to transport them to the school. Then she needed a big van just to hold the required cage."
What kind of crap is that?
I want to go out and kick anyone's ass that is stupid enough to force well intended people to KILL ANIMALS in the name of government regulations.
Isn't the prevention of the abuse and death the orginal reason for having laws about protected species in the first place?
What have these people been smoking?
I wish I had the money and land to take on this enterprise. Since I don’t, all I can do is point it out to YOU, my readers, and hope that someone steps forward to come to the shelter’s rescue.
I’ve heard that success is obtained when opportunity meets planning and preparation.
Government seems to simply involve idiocy and stupidity meeting tax dollars.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Almost Famous
My Head Is Spinning
OK, in fit of audacity, I packed up my church drawings and dragged them clumsily around the island today to get some quotes on making some copies for sale and to get some opinions about the quality of my work.
pinch me...please...
ALMOST EVERYBODY WANTS THEM...or at least copies thereof.
But...
In a last minute fit of self aggrandizing conniption and hyperbole, I went by the Left Bank Gallery --Thee number one, Thee most extravigant, Thee singular local that requires the lifting of one's eyebrows and the rising of one's pinkie fingers into the air while drinking tea, Thee most "Arty Farty" Art gallery on the island, and guess what?
The staff there loved my work.
Further, I have a presentation/interview on March 31st with Mrs. Wilcox--Proprieter.
Stuff sold in her establishment starts in the thousand dollar range...
Who want's to meet me in Miami--I sense a nice vacation coming on while spending the proceeds earned from my efforts?
Now where are my pens, I have to get back to my drawings???
OK, in fit of audacity, I packed up my church drawings and dragged them clumsily around the island today to get some quotes on making some copies for sale and to get some opinions about the quality of my work.
pinch me...please...
ALMOST EVERYBODY WANTS THEM...or at least copies thereof.
But...
In a last minute fit of self aggrandizing conniption and hyperbole, I went by the Left Bank Gallery --Thee number one, Thee most extravigant, Thee singular local that requires the lifting of one's eyebrows and the rising of one's pinkie fingers into the air while drinking tea, Thee most "Arty Farty" Art gallery on the island, and guess what?
The staff there loved my work.
Further, I have a presentation/interview on March 31st with Mrs. Wilcox--Proprieter.
Stuff sold in her establishment starts in the thousand dollar range...
Who want's to meet me in Miami--I sense a nice vacation coming on while spending the proceeds earned from my efforts?
Now where are my pens, I have to get back to my drawings???
if uyo acn raed htis
uyo'er oto admn loces
int's ti ufynn hwo het uhmna brani owrks?
thsi hpenoemna xelpiasn hwy i hvae tourlbe rwitngi wtihuto spellcheck.
int's ti ufynn hwo het uhmna brani owrks?
thsi hpenoemna xelpiasn hwy i hvae tourlbe rwitngi wtihuto spellcheck.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Real Life Is Stranger Than Fiction
Satirical Satire
Have I ever mentioned that I’m basically a religious person?
No?
Well, I am, to varying degrees throughout my life.
That said, let me tell you that I don’t actively participate in an organized religion any more because I think that most organized religion sucks.
I find that churches are generally filled with haughty, self important morons.
If it weren’t for PEOPLE, I’d be in church every Sunday because I love the buildings.
Unfortunately, it’s many of the church members that I have a hard time stomaching—particularly the ones that caused the phrase “holier than thou” to be coined in reference thereof or thereto.
Further, I think that if you want to get yourself screwed financially or otherwise, just drop your pants and bend over anywhere near a church or the people that routinely inhabit churches and they’ll be happy to anoint your ass with a healthy dose of Vaseline and proceed to have their way with you physically and/or mentally.
Case in point…
My parents helped start a church back in the late 1960’s when the United Methodist Church lost their mind and all of the Preachers in training at Emory University in Atlanta started living with their girlfriends (and boyfriends.) I guess that the last straw was when the church doctrine started assaulting the idea of the virgin birth of Christ
…yada…yada…yada.
One thing that you don’t do is insult someone’s religion, but the worst thing you can do is insult said religion from inside the walls of the Church sanctuary. That’s what the “powers what be” up on the hill in the Methodist Church started doing in the late 60’s, and it caused an exodus of members that ran out and formed what we called “The Independent Methodist Church.”
I think that it’s still around today.
Any way, my family started one (a new church) with a few other families. We hired this wonderful, sweet old man—a retired Army Chaplin—as a minister, and it wasn’t long before there were 80 people showing up at our services held in the County library each Sunday.
Our only rules were that you were sincere about your faith in God and…BYORS
BYORS means “Bring your own Rattlesnake.”
Actually I’m just kidding about the rattlesnake part—a rattlesnake would have cleared out the building with our crowd, and I would have gotten my ass beaten for bringing a reptile into the proceedings. I did think about it, however.
Any way, it wasn’t long before they had established a building fund, bought a few acres of land out on the “Bypass”, and bricks and mortar ensued. My dad helped draw up the plans and I built a scale model of the building out of cardboard.
The members did as much work as they could to save money on the construction. We spent practically every Saturday out clearing the land before construction began or staining doors and Alter Railings in the finish process.
It’s one thing to show up in an old church building on Sunday and go through the motions of a worship service, but I’ve witnessed a special pride that is the reward that can only be gained by participating in actually building the building
The problems started when we adopted a group of professional “Holy Rollers.”
Did you know about “Professional Holy Rollers”?
These people are to churches like fleas and ticks are to a dog.
Sort of an infestation, if you will.
They wander around the community touting their wild eyed zealous beliefs and they actually embarrass and intimidate the weaker members of congregations into coming along with them. One day you’re reciting the Apostles’ Creed and singing the Doxology, and the next Sunday you’ve got people speaking in tongues and TESTIFYING FOR THE LORD…HAWH J-E-S-U-SSSSSS.
If you don’t utter words in some sort of alien gibberish or proclaim your salvation at the top of your lungs at the drop of your hat, then you are considered clearly inferior in your faith and subject to a hearty dose of fire and brimstone along with the rest of the heathens.
The only problem is, the “Professional Holy Rollers” don’t always put their money where their Holy Rolling Mouths are. They rely on other people’s money to finance the carpeted halls of religious sanctuary where they do their Holy Rolling.
The only other problem was, all of us “Non-Holy Rolling” heathens’ parents names were on the mortgage of the church building title. Further, all of us “Non-Holy Rolling” heathens’ parents were making the tithes and tossing the checks in the offering plate that had built the building and paid the monthly payments on said mortgage.
In the end it was Holy Rollers 7, Heathens Parents 0.
We walked away from our church home and never looked back, AFTER having our names removed from the mortgage.
Bastards.
After seeing the agony that my parents and our friends were put through in the name of religion, I’ve never quite been able to commit myself to another congregation since.
Don’t get me wrong here—I believe in a God and all that, but I’m not quite certain if he is some old grey haired bearded guy that spends his time creaking around somewhere out past the planet Pluto, or if the real God is embodied in the collective consciousness of all of us humans that keep the world going forward on a daily basis and take good care of the kids and dogs and cats and everything else that needs doing in spite of Congress and the Democrats.
I can understand people getting upset when the “secular world” pokes fun at religion, but if religion and religious people wouldn’t give the heathens so much material to work with, then they could rest easy at home each evening and in church on Sunday.
Religions and religious people are their own worst enemies.
Why should they be immune from the occasional lampoon when they so obviously deserve it?
Most recently, Tom Cruise’s association with L Ron Hubbard’s Scientology religion has made a few headlines. I don’t care what the women think of his butt, I think Cruise is an overpaid idiot.
If he would just stick to acting—something I think he is pretty good at—and stop proving that he’s an idiot when he opens his mouth, everything would be fine…but he can’t.
More time with his mouth closed would give him extra time to spend running around chasing young tail, something else he has a talent for.
I’m also not a regular viewer of the Comedy Central show South Park, but I’ve seen enough of it to know that Trey Parker and the gang that write it aregeniuses equal opportunity insulters of religions everywhere.
The intro to every episode features a irreverent flying image of Jesus, but they balance things out with an ongoing Satin and Sadam Hussein in a Gay S&M Bondage relationship theme that cracks me up every time I see it.
One of my favorite South Park characters is the black school cafeteria cook “Chef”, based around the voice of the soul singer Isaac Hayes. I guess that I’ll have to resort to watching re-runs if I want to see Chef in the future, because Mr. Hayes has quit South Park because they did an episode poking fun at his religion….
What is his faith?
Scientology
This from a man that published a song called “Chocolate Salty Balls” that reached #1 on the chart in the UK a few years back. Here are a few of the words:
Two tablespoon's of cinnamon,
and two or three egg whites.
A half a stick of butter?.
Melted?
stick it all in a bowl baby.
Stir it with a wooden spoon.
Mix in a cup of flour,
you'll be in heaven soon.
Say everybody have you seen my balls
they're big and salty and brown.
If you ever need a quick pick me up
just stick my balls in your mouth.
Oooo suck on my chocolate salted balls
stick em in your mouth, and suck em!
Suck on my chocolate salted balls,
they're packed full of vitamins, and good for you.
So suck on my balls.
Sorry, Isaac…but I have to suggest that you remember the old problem with people living in glass houses and owning more than a few stones?
Have I ever mentioned that I’m basically a religious person?
No?
Well, I am, to varying degrees throughout my life.
That said, let me tell you that I don’t actively participate in an organized religion any more because I think that most organized religion sucks.
I find that churches are generally filled with haughty, self important morons.
If it weren’t for PEOPLE, I’d be in church every Sunday because I love the buildings.
Unfortunately, it’s many of the church members that I have a hard time stomaching—particularly the ones that caused the phrase “holier than thou” to be coined in reference thereof or thereto.
Further, I think that if you want to get yourself screwed financially or otherwise, just drop your pants and bend over anywhere near a church or the people that routinely inhabit churches and they’ll be happy to anoint your ass with a healthy dose of Vaseline and proceed to have their way with you physically and/or mentally.
Case in point…
My parents helped start a church back in the late 1960’s when the United Methodist Church lost their mind and all of the Preachers in training at Emory University in Atlanta started living with their girlfriends (and boyfriends.) I guess that the last straw was when the church doctrine started assaulting the idea of the virgin birth of Christ
…yada…yada…yada.
One thing that you don’t do is insult someone’s religion, but the worst thing you can do is insult said religion from inside the walls of the Church sanctuary. That’s what the “powers what be” up on the hill in the Methodist Church started doing in the late 60’s, and it caused an exodus of members that ran out and formed what we called “The Independent Methodist Church.”
I think that it’s still around today.
Any way, my family started one (a new church) with a few other families. We hired this wonderful, sweet old man—a retired Army Chaplin—as a minister, and it wasn’t long before there were 80 people showing up at our services held in the County library each Sunday.
Our only rules were that you were sincere about your faith in God and…BYORS
BYORS means “Bring your own Rattlesnake.”
Actually I’m just kidding about the rattlesnake part—a rattlesnake would have cleared out the building with our crowd, and I would have gotten my ass beaten for bringing a reptile into the proceedings. I did think about it, however.
Any way, it wasn’t long before they had established a building fund, bought a few acres of land out on the “Bypass”, and bricks and mortar ensued. My dad helped draw up the plans and I built a scale model of the building out of cardboard.
The members did as much work as they could to save money on the construction. We spent practically every Saturday out clearing the land before construction began or staining doors and Alter Railings in the finish process.
It’s one thing to show up in an old church building on Sunday and go through the motions of a worship service, but I’ve witnessed a special pride that is the reward that can only be gained by participating in actually building the building
The problems started when we adopted a group of professional “Holy Rollers.”
Did you know about “Professional Holy Rollers”?
These people are to churches like fleas and ticks are to a dog.
Sort of an infestation, if you will.
They wander around the community touting their wild eyed zealous beliefs and they actually embarrass and intimidate the weaker members of congregations into coming along with them. One day you’re reciting the Apostles’ Creed and singing the Doxology, and the next Sunday you’ve got people speaking in tongues and TESTIFYING FOR THE LORD…HAWH J-E-S-U-SSSSSS.
If you don’t utter words in some sort of alien gibberish or proclaim your salvation at the top of your lungs at the drop of your hat, then you are considered clearly inferior in your faith and subject to a hearty dose of fire and brimstone along with the rest of the heathens.
The only problem is, the “Professional Holy Rollers” don’t always put their money where their Holy Rolling Mouths are. They rely on other people’s money to finance the carpeted halls of religious sanctuary where they do their Holy Rolling.
The only other problem was, all of us “Non-Holy Rolling” heathens’ parents names were on the mortgage of the church building title. Further, all of us “Non-Holy Rolling” heathens’ parents were making the tithes and tossing the checks in the offering plate that had built the building and paid the monthly payments on said mortgage.
In the end it was Holy Rollers 7, Heathens Parents 0.
We walked away from our church home and never looked back, AFTER having our names removed from the mortgage.
Bastards.
After seeing the agony that my parents and our friends were put through in the name of religion, I’ve never quite been able to commit myself to another congregation since.
Don’t get me wrong here—I believe in a God and all that, but I’m not quite certain if he is some old grey haired bearded guy that spends his time creaking around somewhere out past the planet Pluto, or if the real God is embodied in the collective consciousness of all of us humans that keep the world going forward on a daily basis and take good care of the kids and dogs and cats and everything else that needs doing in spite of Congress and the Democrats.
I can understand people getting upset when the “secular world” pokes fun at religion, but if religion and religious people wouldn’t give the heathens so much material to work with, then they could rest easy at home each evening and in church on Sunday.
Religions and religious people are their own worst enemies.
Why should they be immune from the occasional lampoon when they so obviously deserve it?
Most recently, Tom Cruise’s association with L Ron Hubbard’s Scientology religion has made a few headlines. I don’t care what the women think of his butt, I think Cruise is an overpaid idiot.
If he would just stick to acting—something I think he is pretty good at—and stop proving that he’s an idiot when he opens his mouth, everything would be fine…but he can’t.
More time with his mouth closed would give him extra time to spend running around chasing young tail, something else he has a talent for.
I’m also not a regular viewer of the Comedy Central show South Park, but I’ve seen enough of it to know that Trey Parker and the gang that write it are
The intro to every episode features a irreverent flying image of Jesus, but they balance things out with an ongoing Satin and Sadam Hussein in a Gay S&M Bondage relationship theme that cracks me up every time I see it.
One of my favorite South Park characters is the black school cafeteria cook “Chef”, based around the voice of the soul singer Isaac Hayes. I guess that I’ll have to resort to watching re-runs if I want to see Chef in the future, because Mr. Hayes has quit South Park because they did an episode poking fun at his religion….
What is his faith?
Scientology
This from a man that published a song called “Chocolate Salty Balls” that reached #1 on the chart in the UK a few years back. Here are a few of the words:
and two or three egg whites.
A half a stick of butter?.
Melted?
stick it all in a bowl baby.
Stir it with a wooden spoon.
Mix in a cup of flour,
you'll be in heaven soon.
Say everybody have you seen my balls
they're big and salty and brown.
If you ever need a quick pick me up
just stick my balls in your mouth.
Oooo suck on my chocolate salted balls
stick em in your mouth, and suck em!
Suck on my chocolate salted balls,
they're packed full of vitamins, and good for you.
So suck on my balls.
Sorry, Isaac…but I have to suggest that you remember the old problem with people living in glass houses and owning more than a few stones?
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Deal...
Or No Deal
A little before 8 PM last night Pat and I wandered over to the Ritz Theater to watch the latest episode of the NBC TV show "Deal or No Deal."
A little before 8 PM last night Pat and I wandered over to the Ritz Theater to watch the latest episode of the NBC TV show "Deal or No Deal."
They had set up a giant projection TV on stage and a crowd of fifty or so people gathered to watch my buddy, Brunswick Mayor Bryan Thompson, win $202,000 in cold hard cash.
The show is a bit lame in my opinion because it's just a matter of pure luck how much money each contestant wins, but our good Mayor managed to kill an entire hour with his smooth people skills that got him elected in the first place.
Being the civic minded guy that he is, Bryan and his lovely wife Heather will be donating most of the after tax proceeds to various charitable causes here in Glynn County.
I, personally, will be stopping by with my hand out, looking for a little cash for my tree sculpture project.
And once I make it onto the show Jeopardy I'll demand that they set up a big TV at the Ritz so everyone can watch me crash and burn in front of a national TV audience.
My Mom and Pat will be so proud...
Monday, March 13, 2006
Those That Fail To Learn From History...
Are doomed to Relive It...
"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who
comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself
to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else,
for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of
creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the
person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an
American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says
he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at
all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have
room for but one language here, and that is the English language...
and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to
the American people."
T. Roosevelt (1907)
comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself
to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else,
for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of
creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the
person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an
American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says
he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at
all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have
room for but one language here, and that is the English language...
and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to
the American people."
T. Roosevelt (1907)
The Roar Of The Greasepaint
The Smell Of The Crowd
Sorry, but I just don't have a damn thing worth saying right now.
Some might say that is the case most of the time here on the blog.
My brain has a bad case of vapor lock this weekend and I haven't been able to shake it off in spite of my best efforts. I've got a long rant on transportation security started but I don't have the energy to do the research to finish it right now.
This morning I did manage to finally finish a nice pen and ink rendering of the old US Coast Guard station located at East Beach here on the island. I've already cranked through this drawing once and it came out pretty good, but I've refined my techniques a little, bought some new pen sizes, and pending a few final touches on the front door of the building I think that my second effort resembles a marketable product.
I'm making a photo trip later this morning to get some close up shots of that same door, along with some of another old church that had escaped my attentions last month. Since I have only entered one piece of art in the next Art Show/Competition, I hope to get them to let me toss a couple of extras in at the last minute (the exhibit allows three per artist.)
I've been looking into having my originals scanned and a limited number of copies printed for sale locally.
Good gosh it's expensive...
As far as I can tell, if you buy something that costs under $50 you're generally buying junk made in China or somewhere. I'm facing the grim realizations of the costs of framing, matting, and reproduction (not sex), and when I toss in a little profit for the starving artist (that would be me) it's easy to cross the $100 mark for what amounts to chicken scratchings on small sheets of fancy paper.
I have a hard time figuring out how to price art. Of course I can always sell the copies mounted on foam core board and matted for a lower price. I'm only worried because I want to at least recoup the up front costs--I have enough hobbies that cost money to participate in.
I want positive cash flow from this one.
Sorry, but I just don't have a damn thing worth saying right now.
Some might say that is the case most of the time here on the blog.
My brain has a bad case of vapor lock this weekend and I haven't been able to shake it off in spite of my best efforts. I've got a long rant on transportation security started but I don't have the energy to do the research to finish it right now.
This morning I did manage to finally finish a nice pen and ink rendering of the old US Coast Guard station located at East Beach here on the island. I've already cranked through this drawing once and it came out pretty good, but I've refined my techniques a little, bought some new pen sizes, and pending a few final touches on the front door of the building I think that my second effort resembles a marketable product.
I'm making a photo trip later this morning to get some close up shots of that same door, along with some of another old church that had escaped my attentions last month. Since I have only entered one piece of art in the next Art Show/Competition, I hope to get them to let me toss a couple of extras in at the last minute (the exhibit allows three per artist.)
I've been looking into having my originals scanned and a limited number of copies printed for sale locally.
Good gosh it's expensive...
As far as I can tell, if you buy something that costs under $50 you're generally buying junk made in China or somewhere. I'm facing the grim realizations of the costs of framing, matting, and reproduction (not sex), and when I toss in a little profit for the starving artist (that would be me) it's easy to cross the $100 mark for what amounts to chicken scratchings on small sheets of fancy paper.
I have a hard time figuring out how to price art. Of course I can always sell the copies mounted on foam core board and matted for a lower price. I'm only worried because I want to at least recoup the up front costs--I have enough hobbies that cost money to participate in.
I want positive cash flow from this one.
