Airport Blogging

Backward Thinking


Elapsed Travel time: Stardate 8 hours, 54 minutes EST

OK, so try to picture Pat and I sitting in the little airport restaurant/bar in White Plains, NY, drinking tiny $8 Jack & Cokes and $3 club sodas.

Add to that image me being just a little perturbed because after arriving at the airport 2-½ hours before our flight and stumbling through the obligatory disrobing and pawing in the TSA security area, we realized that there were only two gates and NO RESTAURANT OR BAR in the departure lounge area.

It took about two seconds for us to decide to risk running the security gauntlet again with my new explosive laden support hose New Balance tennis shoes in order to go upstairs and sit in comfort in the restaurant while we killed another hour and one half or so.

No big deal, but then when I tried to log onto the airport’s wireless network I learned that like Atlanta they wanted $6.95 worth of my credit card for 24 hours of access.

Like someone is going to hang out here all day for the great food and mixed drinks with flat Coke products. Of course there is the discount $3.95 rate for all the tight wads in their captive audience.

$3.95 gets you…

get ready…

FIFTEEN WHOLE MINUTES OF INTERNET EXTACY.

Yeah, riiiight…

I went ahead and sprang for the $6.95 deal, which was a good thing because it took me 15 minutes to get Yahoo and a couple of other windows to load because instead of 802.1g they must be using 401.05a or something invented back in the stone ages.

The network is veeeerrrrrrryyyyy S L O W.

Regardless, it looks like we’ll make it home on schedule, and my business partner gave my spirits a boost by letting me know that both seminars in Canada are a go on the 24th in Calgary and the 30th in Ft. McMurray. Even better, I don’t have to make the trip. If I go to Canada and I’m not skiing I want to go in July, not November.

I’m ready to sit on my sofa and vegetate, see y’all then…

Vacation Post Mortem

Happy To Be Heading Back Home


Well, it’s about 3 AM and I’m wide awake, even though the alarm on my cell phone was set for six. We have about an 18 hour travel day ahead of us as we backtrack on three ferry rides across eastern Long Island and Long Island Sound to Connecticut, turn south west to the White Plains airport, then on to Atlanta and Brunswick by air.

We expect to be back at home on our little island by about 10:45 tonight. I get a little tired just thinking about the process. At least the driving portion is on the front end rather than the back end of the sojourn.

I hate to admit it, but I have to be one of the poorest people within 100 miles of where I sit right now, particularly if you exclude the children under the age of 18 and most of the cats and dogs in the area.

Good God but this part of the world is well off. As far as I can determine there isn’t a house priced at less than $1,000,000 anywhere on Long Island unless it’s burned down or had the foundation washed away by a flood tide.

Yesterday we drove down to East Hampton and wandered around their shopping district during a late afternoon break in the rain. Tiffany and Gucci had little stores right on Main Street, and there were some amazing antique shops containing end tables and little bookshelves priced in the thousands of dollars price range.

I wondered if they would take an out of town check…boing boing boing…

I have to say that our review of the Bed & Breakfast Inn’s we chose is somewhat mixed.

The Roger Sherman Inn was basically a really good Restaurant with 30 rooms located upstairs and in the Carriage House. We ended up in a rather small room where I banged my knees and elbows into the furnishings and narrow door frames practically every time I turned around. The staff was competent and friendly, but seemed to be more focused on the restaurant business rather than filling my ice bucket and interacting with the room guests.

The Sunrise Guest House here in Montauk has only four rooms for rent, and we got the only two room suit with a fireplace. The room was excellent, but the proprietor was a bit aloof and unprofessional and I suspect could be considered bit off-putting to deal with for older patrons or those wanting a “hoity-toity” atmosphere. Being the laid back beach bum that I am, he and I got along just fine, BUT…

He had this weird rule about no food or drink in the guestrooms at Sunrise, although he didn‘t enforce it on our stay. I guess that I should have known that something was up when there was no cups or an ice bucket in our suit.

We broke that rule and stomped all over the pieces for a half day before we noticed the sign on the wall in the kitchen area as I ran up and down the stairs asking for ice to go with our vodka, club soda, and cranberry libations.

I have to ask this question:

Who the hell runs an Inn that doesn’t sell alcohol or provide beverages other than at breakfast and attempts to not allow the guests to drink their own beverages in a room that costs $195 per night in high season?

Answer: William does.

Any way, now I’m going to roust Pat up out of bed early and try to eliminate some of the drama from the return trip by getting an early start, and we might be able to visit our friend Bucky (Dartmouth Class of 1942) on the way back through the area.

See Y’all in Georgia soon...

.

Planes, Trains Ferries, And (Rented) Automobiles

Three Boats Later…


I find the geography to be weird as hell up here on the north tip of Long Island--but in a GOOD way.

For those of you that haven’t been to Montauk, it’s like you took a beach from the outer banks of North Carolina and plopped it down in the middle of Asheville, NC.

Seriously, you can drive away to the north from forty foot sand dunes and in five minutes you’re in rolling hills covered with slightly stunted versions of typical new England hardwoods that have already lost their leaves.

After watching Pat freak out while we loaded our rented SUV onto a giant auto ferry at New London about noon yesterday, we arrived at Orient Point Long Island about an hour and a half later having saved at LEAST a half day drive down through NY City and back up north.

I was planning on driving down the north fork and back up the south fork of the island, but when we stopped for lunch at Claudio's in Greenport I found the North and South Shelter Island Ferry’s that cut yet another 1-½ hours off the trip out to Montauk.

By the way, I have this innate ability to stumble over places like Claudio's by accident, and while is isn’t always a cheep experience the opportunity to visit such landmarks is well worth the extra cost (a hamburger and fries was $11.) The restaurant had been there on the dock, owned by the same family, since 1870--thereby making it the oldest single family run restaurant in the entire United States.

After lunch, Pat wasn’t exactly thrilled that I had added two additional short boat trips to our itinerary, but the Shelter Island runs were across very flat water and we got to stay in the SUV while under way instead of wandering around a passenger lounge, so she was no worse for the wear when the saga was over with.

I’m still kicking my own butt for having left my digital camera in the trunk in Brunswick because I’m running around with a stupid throw-away camera that makes the flash go off every time the lighting isn’t 1,000,000 lumens.

I just got in from wandering out to make sunrise photos from the beach in front of our B&B and all I probably got was overexposed images of sand with blurry clouds and a yellow blob for the sun.

I guess that I’m going to have to super glue my Cannon G3 to the Tripod so that I can’t forget one or the other next time--it’s all of nothing from here on out.

It looks like the weather might be giving us a break for a while today so we’re going to run around doing some shopping and the tourist thing, then we have to rise early tomorrow morning and reverse our saga’s direction in order to make a 4:30 flight out of White Planes.

Wish us luck…

A CORRECTION

I just checked the NOAA website, and the break in the clouds at sunrise was actually the "calm before the storm." There's a mini-nor'easter blowing this way from the south west, I just hope it blasts on through so we can get out of here early tomorrow morning...of course, if Delta doesn't fly, it wouldn't be a total loss to be stuck in White Plains NY for an extra night.

Changing My State (Of Mind)

Another Travel Day


Dang it, but I managed to screw around and I didn’t get a reservation on the auto Ferry until yesterday afternoon, and by the time I figured out that the hourly trips were filling up my choices were limited to some time before 1 PM else after 7 PM.

I got us on the 1 PM trip. Who knew that it would be so busy on Sunday?

As a result, it looks like we won’t be going to Rhode Island tomorrow because I don’t want to leave at 6 AM and with the front and associated rain moving in I think that an expedient trip up I-95 is the best option, after visiting some friends on the Long Island Sound over in Norwalk, CT.

All in all it’s been a great vacation so far, with lots of great food and plenty of time to visit with our former neighbor Bucky (Dartmouth Class of ’42) and his family.

I’m still basically ignorant about anything going on in the news except Ed Bradley and Jack Palance died in the past few days and the Wicked Witch of the West Nancy Pelosi is still assumed to be the leading candidate for Speaker of The House next January.

I’ve got to go throw up now…

Everything’s Perfect Here

Everything...Except For ME


Good God this place is beautiful.

The houses, the trees, even most of the people. No one is even FAT up here…it must be a law or something.

While we were walking around in the quaint little downtown shopping district yesterday, school let out and we were suddenly inundated with teens and pre-teens and if I were a 16 year old boy I would feel like I looked like this:





…while most of the girls looked like this:

Seriously, we live in a marvelous place on St. Simons Island, but IF I didn’t love the south and the coast so much, and IF I didn’t hate the cold so much, I would seriously consider relocating to the Fairfield County, Connecticut area.

The only problem would be that we would probably have to live in a homeless shelter or something, because things in this area are a bit ’spensive. I was doing some checking on the internet and the median per capita income is over $80,000 per year!

Just Damn.

Even the maids must be pulling down mid-five-figure incomes to afford an efficiency apartment on the edge of town…and speaking of apartments and condos--I haven’t seen any.

Even the most modest housing in the area consists of three or four thousand square feet of 150 year old boards and shingles, surrounded by a Revolutionary War era stone wall. Many of these “cottages” are actually “second homes” for people who live down in NY City.

There’s no Wal Mart, no Home Depot, no hotel/motels, and just a couple of Bed and Breakfast Inns in the area. It makes for an interesting population dynamic when compared to places like our little island which prostitute themselves for hoards of the almighty tourist dollars.

I’m not saying that they’re rude or anything because everyone has actually been very gracious, but this part of Connecticut isn’t going anywhere but up, even if another tourist never sets foot in the county in their second 270 years of existence as a settlement.

As some of my readers know, I have a few culinary hobbies including fine wine and cheeses. I walked into a wine shop yesterday and almost had a heart attack looking at their Port Wine selections. In Georgia you might find two or three vintages of Fonseca and Taylor Fladgate Porto in any given shop.

Not so in New Canaan.

Instead I found one bottle of 1963 (at nearly $500), in addition to bottles and bottles of 1970, 1985, and a number of vintages in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. Probably $7,500 worth of Port in one store on two shelves. The only things missing were bottles of the famous 1966 and 1977 vintages, else one could have stocked a complete cellar of excellent Port Wines in a single stop.

Next there was cheese. This one little private grocer that we visited had an infinite selection of fine hand crafted domestic organic sheep’s and goat’s milk cheeses, in addition to many fine imported European products that we never see in Georgia, even in our snobby Harris Teeter that serves the wealthy denizens of nearby Sea Island. One ten pound wheel of wax coated ambrosia was priced at nearly $150.

Now that’s some big cheese…

Thus far I’ve managed to enjoy our visit without uttering words like “shazam” and “Ggawwww Leeeee”, but I did get a bit excited in the wine shop--enough so that the manager came over and calmed me down by offering to box up and ship his entire inventory down to Georgia via FedEX.

I had to explain that I was afraid I was a few thousand short of funding THAT endeavor right now, but I'd keep his offer in mind in the future.

More Redneck adventures & commentary to follow...

News Withdrawal

And A Little Travel Fatigue...


If a substantial portion of the world blew up yesterday, I wouldn’t have known until the past hour or so because I haven’t been near a TV that carried FOX News since about 5 AM yesterday morning. Right now I’m having to settle for CNN--I’ll tell you why in a minute.

After three hours on regional jets and a couple hours in the Atlanta airport, we drove into New Canaan, CT about 2 PM and checked into our historic Bed & Breakfast, The Roger Sherman Inn in time to collapse for a few minutes and take our shoes off.

The Inn is nice and quaint and bigger than I expected, and it’s right down the street from our old friend Bucky’s abode and just a minute from downtown so we’ll get to spend our time socializing rather commuting.

Now back to my lack of news…The only gripe I have with our room is that someone has deprogrammed FOX News out of the cable programming on our TV, even though it listed on our in room TV directory. I guess that it was the handiwork of some sniveling liberal one of the lovely previous guests that was afraid of FOX’s programming or something.

Any way…having lived on our little island for three Fall seasons now, it’s really nice to see some trees with colored leaves, even though things are way past peak now and many trees are bare. At home things are basically green year round since the Live Oaks don’t ever lose their leaves at one time and almost everything else is things like pines and other evergreens.

I wanted to take out my tripod and make some pictures several times today, but the tripod doesn’t take very good pictures without important things my DIGITAL CAMERA, which is currently spending it’s vacation in our trunk at the Brunswick airport parking lot.

Sometimes I’m such a BONEHEAD…

MORE...

I fumbled around with the TV remote, did a little reprogramming, and I have the following announcement:

I CAN NOW VIEW FOX NEWS!!!

(I also resisted blocking the Clinton News Network CNN in a moment of weakness)

An Alabama Redneck In King Arthur’s A Connecticut Court

Look Out New England…Here I Come…Yeeeeeeeee Haaaaaaaaaaa


Well, we’re getting on an airplane a little after 6 AM tomorrow, heading for part of the country that I have thus far avoided gracing with my presence.

It’s not all a bad thing, however, because the trip helps me knock another couple of states off of the map in my plan to visit all 50 before I physically leave the planet.

After this trip, I’ll be able to mark Connecticut and Rhode Island off of my “not visited list”, leaving the total at an even dozen of sovereign states that I haven’t wandered into yet and tortured the residents with my southern accent, attitude, and stories of gun ownership.

Although it would have been an advantage to have visited a little earlier in the season while the leaves were still on the trees, at least the weather is predicted to be relatively mild--with highs near 60 and lows in the mid 40’s.

After spending a few days visiting our friend and former neighbor Bucky (Dartmouth Class of 1942), we‘ll be moving out of our Bed & Breakfast and taking an auto ferry across Long Island Sound to Montauk, New York for a couple of days of sightseeing and eating New England seafood. I hope to come home with some interesting photographs of lighthouses and the coastal scenes found there on the northern most tip of Long Island.

Thinking things through, I guess that I’ll have to restrain myself over the weekend while watching TV, with Georgia Tech playing North Carolina in Chapel Hill and the NASCAR race on Sunday out in Phoenix.

If you have relatives in that part of the country, you might want to phone ahead and warn them that I’m coming through…

Republicans Make Trip To The Woodshed

I Hope You Get Your Money's Worth...


I voted for the Libertarian candidate in a few state offices today. I would have probably touched the screen for more candidates with the "L" behind their name if there had been any.

It seems that people that would normally push the "R" button went for the "D" button with a similar sentiment.

Now, with the US House of representatives clearly in the Democrat's hands and the Senate teetering by one or two seats from being a tie, I look forward to the next two years being an even greater stalemate than we've witnessed over the past six years of the Bush Presidency.

All of you folks up there in Ohio and Pennsylvania should pat yourselves on the back because it would appear that the election was swinging largely on your opinions of how things should be done.

Look for the "tit for tat" mentality to continue, only with the Republicans playing partisan politics, and important issues like border security/immigration reform and Social Security taking a back seat to endless debate over redeployment of our troops and investigations and rumors of impeachment of the president taking the front page.

I hope the lamestream mainstream media is happy...they certainaly got their money's worth for their efforts...

IT’S TIME TO GO VOTE

Then Go Home And Stop Complaining...


And if you stay home today, you get EXACTLY what you deserve--no say in our political process.

I predict, in spite of the media hysteria to the contrary, that the Republicans will hold both the House and the Senate. In fact, I think that they might even INCREASE their margins.

Fortunately, just like football, polls mean absolutely nothing--we have to play the game to see the outcome...

MORE

This just came in to my E-mail from the John sKerry website:

This is our chance to take the power to lead America out of the Bush Republicans' hands. Winning means raising the minimum wage. Winning means moving towards health care for all, starting with every child in America. Winning means forcing an end to the disastrous war in Iraq, and getting our heroes home.

Winning means firing the incompetents, stopping the corruption, and making America stop being the world's leading denier of global climate change.

OK John,, let's take this thing point by point.

Point A--Raising the minimum wage will do nothing but hurt young people's chances of getting their FIRST job since employers will hire fewer people and demand more for their government mandated money.

As I've said many times before, if you're trying to raise a family of four working a minimum wage job you've also probably been smoking crack else you dropped out of/slept through high school and there's nothing that the government can do other than extort money out of employers to ease your pain--but the pain won't go away entirely because you are obviously STUPID.

Point B--Health care for children...hummm, let's see here.

I don't know a single instance where the parent of a sick child in Glynn County Georgia can't take their child to a free clinic or a doctor's office/emergency room in the area and receive treatment for their chirrun', on demand...UNLESS said parent is some crack head idiot that is so stupid as to be still working a minimum wage job in their thirties (see point A above.)

Point C-- Mr. sKerry, Hero's wouldn't be Hero's if they spent their time sitting on the sofa in Brunswick, Georgia. If we listen to you and John Murtha, Iraq will implode and terrorists will be over here mowing my grass within six months while they plot how to blow up me and my condo building.

Of course John skerry doesn't have to worry about terrorism because he parks in a secure garage in DC and has Secret Service personnel looking up his ass 24/7 while sleeping in his Chateau in France, his Lodge in Colorado, and his Georgetown mansion.

Point D--John, John, John...Regarding Global Warming, there is no such thing, DAMMIT...at least as far as there being any PROOF that the current slight upward trend is man made. What happened to the "Killer Hurricane" season all of the pundits and media was predicting for this summer?

And by the way Mr. sKerry, why is China and most of the third world exempted from the Kyoto Treaty and it's business killing limits on emissions? Why should President Bush be forced to sign a treaty that President Clinton also refused to sign when he was running the show here?

Yeah...I though so...

I bought A New Gun

The Squirrels Are Nervous


A couple of summers ago, when we first put our bird feeders out, we elected to use Safflower seed rather that a wild bird mix--thereby limiting the species of birds we attracted but also trying to not attract squirrels to our second story balcony.

It sounded good IN THEORY, and I'm happy to report that the scheme worked, until about six weeks ago.

Since that time, we've had an literal aerial circus of squirrels, leaping off of the roof and from adjacent trees; climbing the tabby walls, and apparently flying in from orbiting squirrel satellites to land on the patio and on the two feeders, thereby wrecking havoc on an almost hourly basis during daylight.

After chasing the little bastards around a dozen times a day and throwing ice cubes at them for a few weeks, on Saturday I went to Wall Mart and purchased some firepower.

A crappy little $28 crossman pellet/BB rifle (dang it, but the really good guns with a scope and 1000 fps muzzle velocity are over $100 now.)

I don't intend to kill anything, but using BB's and about two or three pumps, over the past day I've reduced the squirrel incursions by at LEAST 75%. I've managed to sting two or three in the butt as they retreated to the adjacent trees, so now their tactics involve running out of sight as soon as I open the sliding glass door.

There was a time in my life when I wouldn't settle for a BB and a few pumps of the handle, but would use a pellet and about ten lethal pumps.

I guess I'm getting mellow in my middle age...

Beating A Dead Horse

Can They Find Someone That Actually Gives A Damn?


I’ve been aware of this story for a while, but didn’t comment because I figured that it would end up being a tempest in a teapot.

I guess I was wrong, because the partisan ass that calls himself the Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor refuses to communicate with Ann Coulter and her attorney except in writing, and is now going to try to prosecute her for election fraud:

WEST PALM BEACH -- Conservative columnist Ann Coulter has refused to cooperate in an investigation about whether she voted in the wrong precinct, so the case will likely be turned over to state prosecutors, Palm Beach County's elections chief said Wednesday.

Elections Supervisor Arthur Anderson said his office has been looking into the matter for nearly nine months, and he would turn over the case to the state attorney's office by Friday…

Anderson's office received a complaint in February that Coulter allegedly voted in the wrong precinct during a Feb. 7 Palm Beach town council election. Since then, Anderson said he has made repeated attempts to resolve the matter with Coulter and her attorney but has been rebuffed.

Anderson said an initial letter was sent to Coulter on March 27 requesting that she clarify her address for the voting records ``or face the possibility of her voter registration being rescinded.''…

In July, Anderson said, he received a letter from Coulter's attorney, Marcos Daniel Jimenez D'Clouet. The letter said the attorney would only discuss the matter in person or by telephone because he complained Anderson had given details to the media. Anderson said the matter had to be discussed in writing.

Let’s think about this for a minute, shall we?

If this were anyone but Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity, it would already be a total non-issue.

After all, judges in almost every state and most of the Democratic party absolutely refuse to pass laws requiring your residency and identity to be positively verified when you present yourself at a polling place.

The fact that someone actually recognized Ann Coulter because of her celebrity and accused her of trying to commit voter fraud in of all things--A TOWN COUNCIL ELECTION--makes the story patently absurd.

I’m impressed that someone as busy as Ann took the time to be one of the 19.5% of the electorate that actually turns out for those type of local elections, so let the lady vote for Christ‘s sake--it‘s not like they‘re saying she drove from precinct to precinct and voted twenty seven times or something.

These idiots are actually implying that Ann Coulter knowingly and fraudulently went to an election place and presented herself to vote without actually having resided in that part of West Palm Beach.

I say that it has to be a paperwork error or something, because the people that staff the polling places down here in Georgia verify my name and address every time I walk in the door, and since I live on the border between two precincts there is always a discussion about my residency because apparently there was some problem in years past that they are still correcting.

By the way, you could swing a dead cat and fire a cannon down through the building and not hit anybody on off season local elections like we had here last summer for local sales tax referendums and such, so I hardly see what the bru-ha-ha is about other than it being some partisan, politically motivated vendetta against Ann’s outspoken position and an attempt to embarrass her publicly.

At one time I thought that I would like to live in West Palm Beach eventually, but the more I hear about it the more I think that it would be better that I stay away lest I end up strangling some liberal and spending my golden years in the lock-up.

Saddam's Getting A Little Taller

And A Little Deader...


I turned on FOX News about 4:30 this morning and they were reporting that a guilty verdict had be returned against Saddam and two of his cohorts, and the sentence was DEATH BY HANGING.

I wish that I could be there myself to witness the event. I would also like to round up a couple thousand little baggy pants wearing hip-hop punks here in in the US and make them come along to witness what should happen to you when you are found guilty of killing people.

The US mode of operation where we convict murderers in a jury trial, then allow them to fester in prison at taxpayer expense for twenty or thirty years while their lawyers further waste the taxpayers time and money filing endless appeals and the do-gooders argue about what form of execution is "humane" is a total exercise in stupidity, in my opinion.

I'd like the little thugs and animals wandering our streets terrorizing law abiding, God fearing citizens to be forced to witness Saddam drop off the gallows and shudder, jerk, shake, and soil his pants as his eyes bug out of his stupid head. I think an image like that might just change the future of our society.

I hope they really hang the bastard, and soon...

My Gun...My God...By God (and Constitution)

We're Now The Official Redneck's Dream State


As of the next election, everybody in the state of Georgia will have a Constitutional right to Hunt and Fish, at least if the voting goes the way that it's expected.

You see, while Georgia still remains a largely rural state, over half of the state's 9 plus million population lives in the metropolitian Atlanta area.

The new Constitutional Amendment is designed to head off a potential challenge to gun ownership rights and the anti-hunting bias that is becoming more and more evident over the past few years.

The source of these political undercurrents is the tens of thousands of carpetbaggers dang Yankee transplants our lovely northern neighbors that relocate here to Georgia each year, along with several generations of indigenous urban residents born and raised in Atlanta--far far away from the rural south in which I grew to know and love in my own youth.

Then there's the PETA folks (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) that are trying to tell us that hooking a 5 pound bass is cruel and unusual treatment, even if you release it unharmed back into your Grandpa's Pond rather than stuffing and mounting it on a plaque on the wall over your fireplace.

To me it's really sad how far our society has fallen in the process of so-called "progress", and how divergent our culture is growing as the "nanny state" mentality overtakes more and more people.

Having grown up hunting on a 360 acre family farm in Alabama and continuing to be allowed to fish on the five acre pond without a license, I just don't understand the idea of the government and a bunch of people that know nothing about it trying to tell me what I can and can not do on my own property, as long as I follow the long standing laws regarding game seasons and species limits.

After I go vote on Tuesday, I think I'll come home and clean my guns to celebrate...

If You've Waited Until Now...

Please Just Stay Home


Recently I’ve spent my time sitting here making faces at the TV most of the day because the news has pretty much been reduced to sounding like the newsletter from a pre-school or kindergarten.

"He hit me...she called me a name...they won't let me play with them..."

The Dems have elected to sequester all of their loudmouths the usual suspects the politicians that represent the true face of their party that aren’t up for (de)election--you know…Pelosi, Kennedy, and now Kerry after he stepped in a big pile of stinky stuff earlier in the week. They’re probably duct taped together in a warehouse on the lower east side watching the screech master Howard Dean practice his post election commentary.

On second thought, all they had to do was sail Kennedy out on his yacht with a few hundred cases of Scotch and some Hooters girls and if we’re lucky the SOB will decide to resign his Senate seat and spend his winter years filming Girls Gone Dead Wild videos. Kerry is at his podiatrist trying to get his foot removed from his mouth, and they handed San Francisco hippy chick Pelosi a half dozen new razors and told her to shave her legs and armpits--that should be good for at least a couple weeks of effort. (I’m a cruel, insensitive SOB…aren’t I?)

Meanwhile, in an effort to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, the Republicans have sat on their hands while the perverts in their midst were outed by the major media outlets and they whimpered and murmured about things not being fair.

Dang I wish the Libertarians would get off of their collective butts and field a few viable candidates in anything other than low level local elections.

Here in Georgia we basically have to sit by and watch if the House changes party hands because our incumbent Republicans have a lock for staying in office. Likewise, the state elections for Governor and state representatives are all yawners.

The most exciting thing here in Glynn county is deciding which incompetent imbecile will replace the incompetent imbecile in the offices of county commissioner and on the School Board.

Regardless, I can name the names of the candidates and I’ve followed the events leading up to the election, and in spite of having unlimited absentee ballots available and “early voting” this week, I’m waiting until next week to go cast my ballot because it just feels weird to me to vote in any other manner.

It's sort of like watching church services on TV rather than getting out of your Pjs, putting on a suit, and walking in the front door of the sanctuary on Sunday Morning.

Any way…as my title says, if you’ve waited until this week to figure out who is who and what is going on, I suspect that you have no clue about who to intellegently vote for--particularly in the national elections. I think that it’s better that you just stay home and watch “Oprah” and “Dancing with the Stars” rather than stumbling into a polling place and punching your “chads” based on the D or R symbol behind the candidate’s name.

But then again, just like having the right to vote, everyone has the God given, constitutionally guaranteed right to be STUPID, so who am I to say anything to anybody about their political decisions and the insanity of our current voting process?

Let’s Teach The Iraqis To Build Automobiles

Instead Of Blowing Them Up...


I'm sorry ladies and gentlemen, but I have to admit that I am SO TIRED of the politicalized rhetoric and discussion about a “timetable and plan” for pulling out of Iraq…and for that matter, ultimately leaving the ENTIRE Middle East to glare and stare at Israel and plot their next jihad attack here in the US.

Forget more military troops, I say that we send a bunch of Georgia Tech engineers over there with our slide rules and T-squares, ship over a few hundred thousand Japanese and Korean assembly robots, and toss in a few German ex-Mercedes and ex-BMW guys for good measure; and let them teach all of the dang towel heads lovely, yet angry, Muslims in Iraq to build mechanical camels automobiles.

Think about this idea with me for a minute…

I’ll wait…

Got it yet?

Think a little harder…

IF Islam is REALLY a peaceful religion, and IF the Muslims REALLY aren’t dead set (excuse the pun) on killing the rest of the world’s population that they can’t convert, then IF we set them up with auto design and manufacturing capability like Dr. Edward Deming did for the Japanese after WWII, then maybe Hammas , the PLO, and the rest of the Muslim world will follow suit like the Germans and South Koreans.

Praise Allah.

With the natives busy building thousands of their "Shia Kia", I believe that we could safely allow our troops to stand down and retreat to a few well positioned bases in Iran, Iraq, and all the "stan" countries just like we still maintain bases within the sovereign countries of Germany and Japan almost 62 years after the cessation of hostilities.

Do you suppose that then most of the Democrats and many of the liberal anti-war peacenicks could figure out how to remain silent 52 years after the creation of the “demilitarized zone” surrounding the 38th parallel, while still allowing tens if not hundreds of thousands of uneducated idiots (per John sKerry) young Military men and women to reside in country on South Korean bases without making it an election issue every two years?

You do understand what we ended up getting out of those deals by leaving troops in countries we had just defeated? (OK, in the case of communist North Korea, at least nearby?)

How about things like PEACE and and an overall lack of domestic hostilities like the current political bickering about the troop deployments in Iraq which we endure today.

Using the WWII/Korean War standards, Kerry and Murtha aren't constantly talking about closing Ramstein Air Base in Germany, Yakota Air Base in Japan, and “redeploying” the men and aircraft to England or Guam, so shouldn't Iraq‘s current short duration of deployment become a mute point?

Finally (“Buy American” slogans aside), almost everyone I know has had a BMW, Mercedes, Honda, Nissan, Toyota, Lexus, Infinity, or even a lowly Kia (which happens to build some great cars that are great values) sitting in their driveway at one time or another.

Face it...Americans love foreign cars.

Just imagine, if they implemented my plans, the Arabs would be too busy producing and shipping autos with full gas tanks to the rest of the civilized world to have time to spend issuing threats and edicts, chopping off heads, and blowing up IED's and car bombs.

Am I onto something here, or not???

WHAT, you don't agree?

Well, at least it couldn’t hurt to try…

.

You Got To Love It

I Do Stuff Like This Too...

No Good Deeds Go Unpunished

Miss Crappy Pants Strikes Again


I received some terrible news yesterday.

Our current condo board and management company elected to terminate the employment of our 60 year old landscaper and friend--Ozzy.

They elected to tell him on Monday that Tuesday (yesterday) would be his last day.

After serving the owners on a five day per week basis for over SEVENTEED YEARS, they gave him only one day notice and no severance pay.

I think that the situation TOALLY SUCKS.

How can you let someone work for you for that long and not at least give him two weeks notice?

After all, they weren’t firing him for his behavior or performance, but rather apparently as a cost cutting measure.

I know that the elected board is within their rights to make unpopular decisions, but let me tell you a little secret…

The truth is that many if not most of our elderly residents have enjoyed using Ozzy like their personal slave valet for the duration of his service out here, and people on previous boards knew it and looked the other way in public because they were the parties guilty of taking greatest advantage of Ozzy’s good nature and willingness to help.

You see, Ozzy took care of this property like it was his own, and he treated our elderly residents like they were his own parents.

Ozzy would drive our neighbors to the store and pharmacy, on company time, because they asked them to do it. The former board members did it. If the person was too sick to come outside, Ozzy would run errands to get medicine or whatever and most of them never did anything but say thanks--and that was all Ozzy expected.

I just did a calculation in my head and, over the past 31 months we’ve had no less that FIVE full time residents pass away, and SEVEN have either moved into assisted living or built bigger houses and moved outside of our 48 unit property.

That’s a 25% reduction in full time resident Seniors, and almost all of these departures served on the Board of directors at one time or the other.

But now, with the remaining beneficiaries seniors reduced down to two or three, they’ve decided that Ozzy is too expensive--he’s expendable.

Now I guess that we can look forward to having a hoard of Illegal Aliens descend on the property once every week or two, while Ozzy’s prospects to finding another similar position are rather grim at his age.

Ozzy taught me a great deal about the location of hidden things like water service valves, sprinkler controls, and other service related items that no one else knows. The standard situation was for a contractor to show up on the property and the first thing they had to do was ask Ozzy where things were.

In Ozzy’s defense, I’ll be damned if I tell anybody anything unless it affects OUR condo.

Good luck Ozzy, we’re gonna miss you…

.

Words to Live By

More Free Advice...


"You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well.

If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."


Best Regards,

John Kerry


MORE COMMENTARY BY YOURS TRUELY:

I just noticed this, but of course the Arab Newspaper/Website al Jazeera.net loves to spread storys like this to our enemies in the Arab world.

Way to go Mr. sKerry, way to take one for the team...er..um...exactly which team are you for anyway?


REVISION II--EVEN MORE INSANITY

This New York Daily News reports sKerry says he won't apologize!!!

Bush called the comment a major dis to U.S. troops.

"The senator's suggestion that the men and women of our military are somehow uneducated is insulting and it is shameful," the President said. "The senator from Massachusetts owes them an apology."

An angry Kerry insisted the line "was a botched joke about the President and the President's people, not about the troops."

His office said he meant to say it was the administration and its allies who were not smart and got "us stuck in a war in Iraq." "I apologize to no one for my criticism of the President and of his broken policy," [emphasis mine] Kerry fumed. "If anyone owes our troops in the fields an apology, it is the President."

Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, also lashed out at "despicable Republican attacks" from "those who never can be found to serve in war."

"If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the President who got us stuck there, they're crazy," he said in a statement.


Excuse me Mr. sKerry, I've got to go have my hearing checked, want to come along with me?

.

My Digeridoo's Here...My Digeridoo's Here

Hurray!!!


I bet I'm the only person you know that owns one of these:

(No, that's a wicker basket in the corner behind it, not part of the instrument...)

It came to the house via UPS on Monday, and all I've had time to do thus far is pull it out of the well padded box and rumble a few notes on it a couple of times.

Pat had forbidden me from playing it after 9 PM

The cool thing about this "Doo" is, quoting the website:

Crafted from start to finish by Aboriginal family Naiuwa. A great well balanced player with strong backpressure and an easy flowing tone. Seven tommy head lizards decorate this great flared didge. It was inspired by the lizards that scamper up and down the trees just outside Naiuwa's workshop.

I've already figured out how to get about three different variations on the droning sounds it makes and can change sounds at will, but in my middle aged decline I don't have enough wind to blow for more than about 20 seconds at a gasp.

The aboriginal players can do what's called "circular breathing" (I also could 30 years ago when I played the trumpet for three hours a day) which involves puffing your cheeks and pushing the air out of your mouth as you inhale through your nose.

Hey, even if I never appear at Carnege Hall with it, at least I'll be getting some good respiratory therapy.

Bought, Cut, Gutted, And Delivered

I'm Glad To Be Rid Of That One...




This is what the kids saw just before I hauled the hulking thing over to the local seniors home.



I'm TIRED...time to go practice scaring the squirrels and calling whales playing 10 Hz noises on my Digeridoo

It's The Great Pumpkin--Day One

Have I Bit Off More Than I Can Chew? Bought More Than I Can LIFT?


Well, the official weight is in, courtesy of our friend Ski's bathroom scales...

131 POUNDS, and ten pounds of it was SEEDS.

The "plug" I cut out of the top to get to the seeds and insides must weigh over ten pounds all by itself.

I loaded it onto a borrowed garden wagon and wheeled it in the front door of the school about 9:00 AM, and by noon I was freaking out because it took an hour to shave the thickness of the carving wall down to something thin enough for my drills and saws to cut through.

My "PumpKing" is now another 20 pounds lighter, and this is the condition I left it in at 3:30 today:



I have permission to return at 7:30 tomorrow to put in another two or three hours, and I'm certain now that I can pull my performance out at the last minute.

After all of the classes get their picture taken with it and my ever greying, ever balding head, I'm delivering it over to the local retirement home for their enjoyment Halloween night.

I think that I'm tired of Pumpkin...

I'm Busy Carving Pumpkins

Anyone Need A Pie?

Between my engineering marketing efforts and designing pumpkin carving templates (and watching a little football and NASCAR), I'm afraid that I've been neglecting my internet responsibilities (that includes your site...Jim)

I promise to be back up to full rant and programming mode after I get through with my Halloween obligations to all the kids and kids at heart. Here's a picture of the pumpkin which I carved for our friends Ski & Bruce tonight:





See you again shortly...

The Silence Of The Lambs Dogs

I Think We’re Good For Another Year……


No, I’m not gonna gloat.

I have to admit that I did laugh a little privately once the last seconds had ticked off of the game clocks this afternoon in Atlanta and Jacksonville, however.

You see, being a Georgia Tech sports fan requires a great deal of patience. I’ve spent the past 29 football seasons learning my own lessons in humility.

Of course, I didn’t attend Tech to play football and, when I first set foot on the North Avenue campus I barely realized the glorious history earned under the auspices of legendary coaches Heisman, Alexander, and Dodd in the early and mid 1900’s, but since my first days sitting in Grant Field I find that any season that results in winning eight or more games to me represents INFINITE success.

That said, Tech is well on their way to at least meeting MY standards now, having survived Miami’s best efforts to erase a 14 point fourth quarter deficit.

Meanwhile, a few minutes later, about 75 miles down the road from here, the University of Georgia’s team failed to overcome the final 7 point Florida advantage on their scoreboard and since then a literal sea of black and red clad fans have quietly snuck back to their accommodations here on our little island.

No barking and woofing.

No blaring auto horns and hooting & hollering.

I just checked our parking lot and it is almost full again, just like last night, but the silence is DEAFENING.

Good.

The best thing that a good Georgia Tech fan can get out of a Georgia Florida game is the silence I’m hearing right now, along with the sulking early departure of our formerly boisterous visitors this morning.

Now all Tech has to do is win the Georgia game in Athens on December 2nd to earn a quite winter and spring for our longsuffering fans.

Georgia Tech Fans Are Nervous

Georgia Fans Down Right Worried...


Just in case you aren't paying attention, GT survived fumbling the football on the first play of today's game with Miami to come back to a 13-13 tie at halftime.

Georgia, on the other hand, is down 14-0 after 30 minutes of play.

I know better than to start gloating or celebrating now...check back with me in a couple of hours and I'll let you know.

MORE...

Tech 30, Miami 23 and now it's time to cook dinner

I See DRUNK People

The Insanity Continues…


Well, it’s only a little over six hours until kickoff down in Jacksonville, and I just returned home with a copy of our local newspaper and a couple of scratch off lottery tickets after having to endure standing in line behind five lovely coeds (or possibly former coeds) at the local convenience store.

Three of the group were yapping on cell phones the entire time they were buying their gum and cigarettes.

I noticed that there was also a line of cars outside of the liquor store at 8:30 AM, and as a result you couldn’t PAY me to drive around the island this evening based on the state most of our visitors are going to be in, Win or Lose.

Speaking of girls, with all due respect to my sister and ex-wife (both Tech grads), but I have to admit that Georgia sure has a BUNCH of good looking women that like to wear the school colors. When I went to Georgia Tech back in the late 1970’s the ratio was about seven men for every one women. Needless to say that my sister had it made when it came to social opportunities, while I sat around by myself most Friday nights carving pumpkins and doing drafting homework this time of year.

Fortunately for me, the Georgia Florida game isn’t the only attraction here in the southeast this afternoon. Georgia Tech is hosting a rather weak Miami team up in Atlanta in our Homecoming game which will be televised regionally on ABC this afternoon, so I‘ll be bouncing back and forth between the two games with the TV remote control.

NASCAR is racing in Atlanta Sunday afternoon, but the other major item on the weekend agenda is my final preparations for my pumpkin carving extravaganza at the Montessori School on Monday. I’m doing the test carving of a friend’s small pumpkin using a reduced size copy of my new pattern. I had to quit fooling with it earlier in the week because I was obsessing over details that will probably be lost on most 10 year old kids.

Any way…I hope your weekend is at least half as much fun as mine will be…and I’ll talk to you all later…

Rainy Night In Georgia

Sorry I'm Neglecting My Readers


There was a time, years ago (it seems like it was almost in another lifetime), back in the days when I had a REAL job selling millions of dollars of fancy doodads and doohickeys to high powered companies like Michelin, Georgia Pacific, Phillip Morris, and Anheuser-Busch, that I was forced into facing the arduous task of actually rising from my bed early each morning, shaving and showering, and driving my auto somewhere to do something somewhere for somebody.

Not so these days...at least for most of the past six or eight years.

But…

For the past year or so, starting out as a hobby, I gotten involved with a friend's business doing some Forensic consulting Engineering, and in the process I'm afraid that I've possibly inadvertently stumbled back into the professional workforce.

Dang it.

After recently flirting with the idea of working as a fry cook, newspaper writer, and a brain surgeon (in the style of Jethro Bodine), I’ve been secretly attempting to re-enter the consulting engineering business, and now it would appear that I’m on the verge of actually having to put my empty wallet were my mouth is (I’m sure that you’ll excuse the mental picture.)

Word has it that everyone’s astir up in Western Canada about a series of seminars which Wayne and I have developed called “Understanding Life Threatening Steam Water Hammer.”

Specifically, our latest victims reside in a place called Ft. McMurray, Alberta, Canada, an area that sits on top of one of the largest tar-sand deposits on the entire planet.

Unlike the eco-Nazis and other tree huggers here in the US, the Canadian government has had the foresight to actually allow oil companies to tap this resource and today we all most likely drive around with some of the products produced by “Syncrude” in our vehicle’s gas tanks.

Any way, as of today, I’m expecting to spend my Thanksgiving bitching and complaining while driving around in the snow while assisting delivering the lectures I‘m selling.

I hate to admit it, but to my estimation, as my health continues to improve, my choice is either work or boredom, and there seems to be a fine line somewhere there in between.

We're Under Assault

AAAHHHHHAaaaaaaaahhhhh--Its' Georgia-Florida Weekend


The hoards are already arriving here on the island. Quick…Everybody…run somewhere and hide.

IT’S GEORGIA FLORIDA WEEKEND…OR FLORIDA GEORGIA WEEKEND if you live down there in Gainesville.

They call it "The Worlds Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party", wrapped around a college football game.

God help us all.

The more affluent one's (the fans) have been trickling in since last weekend.

Nothing personal, but the locals here on our little island that don’t sell food or drinks or hats with a big G or Alligator face on them hate this weekend every year.

Picture Mardi Gras or St. Patrick’s Day, crammed onto an island with a population of less than 17 thousand. This weekend we’ll probably hover somewhere near 30K--most of the visitors staggering, stumbling, studdering stinking drunk for the duration of their entire visit.

Even our little condo development will be assaulted with morons that think that we are used to picking up beer cans and fast food bags from our parking lot year 'round.

I made the mistake of taking Pat out to my friend John Howton’s Blackwater Grill for dinner the first year we resided here and when the evening was over with, she had almost gotten ME into finishing at least a half dozen arguments that could have escalated into fist fights--and those were mostly with WOMEN.

The men were generally well behaved, at least by drunken football fan standards.

I’m pulling the bicycles inside, stopping by the grocery store and liquor store this afternoon, and boarding up the windows and doors to wait for their departure.

If you Pray, Pray for us, and otherwise...wish us good luck...

Everybody

Would You Get A Grip On Yourself…PLEASE?


OK, I’ll start out this morning by saying that I’m sorry if I need to be, but I have to emphatically state that I just don’t give a damn what Michael J. Fox has to say about anything--embryonic stem cell research included.

If Mr. Parkinson Fox wants to slink off to some foreign country and impregnate a gross of women (or even 144 gross women), then harvest the embryos and feed them to chickens, I say that the issue should be between God, the local officials, and the fathers of the women (and possibly the owner of the chickens.)

The part of this issue that keeps being missed by most of the general public and omitted by ALL of the stupid moronic so called professional journalists in the lamestream media is that embryonic stem cell research is legal in most places in the world--President Bush and the US Congress just hasn‘t thus far decided to confiscate any of my money to pay for the efforts.

If, however, YOU have an extra twenty dollars and want to sponsor killing a few excess humans, I suggest that you go on the internet, find yourself an organization that supports the process, and I’ll send you a stamp to put on your envelope because chances are at least 50/50 that anyone that would allow their eggs to be used in such a manner would also produce and rear offspring that would grow up to be a freaking Nancy Pelosi California liberal anyway.

Now, having pissed off most of the liberals and all of the feminists with my introductory rant this morning, let me continue by alienating most of the aliens--both legal and illegal.

Have you heard about the flap that’s been going on up in Minnesota with the airport taxi drivers and passengers carrying alcohol?

Check this crap out…

The taxi controversy at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport has caught the nation's attention. But the dispute may go deeper than the quandary over whether to accommodate Somali Muslim cabdrivers who refuse to carry passengers carrying alcohol.

Behind the scenes, a struggle for power and religious authority is apparently playing out.

At the Starbucks coffee shop in Minneapolis' Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, a favorite Somali gathering spot, holidaymakers celebrating Eid, the end of Ramadan, filled the tables on Monday. Several taxis were parked outside.

An animated circle of Somalis gathered when the question of the airport controversy was raised.
"I was surprised and shocked when I heard it was an issue at the airport," said Faysal Omar.

"Back in Somalia, there was never any problem with taking alcohol in a taxi."

Jama Dirie said, "If a driver doesn't pick up everyone, he should get his license canceled and get kicked out of the airport."

I have a couple of things to say about this issue, and I have to admit that rational consideration has overridden my initial knee-jerk reaction which was basically this:

“Get the $%&# out of MY country if you don‘t like it…”

First of all, if I own the vehicle, I believe that I should be allowed to determine the behavior of anyone which I choose to provide my services to. In that respect, I'll give our Somalia friends the same courtesy.

That said, I also believe that when you enlist yourself in providing licensed services to the public in return for financial compensation, you also accept certain overall intrusions into your personal space in return for said compensation.

In Somalia, while I would never presume to just wander over and jump into your car wearing blue leotards and a red cape, I would also expect that in NYC or Minneapolis on October 31st you might reasonably expect to haul a man in a gorilla suit and a woman dressed as a French maid from one local to another because it’s Halloween here in America.

"Hey Abdul, over here we have something called disposeable income, and unlike you we’re not busy sending it all back to Africa via Western Union…you know?

By the way, I'll admit that we Americans have vices...we like to do unhealthy things like buying edible underwear that tastes like biscuits and gravy for our women, and it's none of your nappy headed business what color that underwear is, at least as long as we all keep our pants on in your taxicab."

Now this doesn’t mean that I expect our lovely Somali friends to be forced to allow liquor soaked imbibers to splash vodka all over the back seats of their 1976 Impalas on the trip to the Holiday Inn Express, thereby overcoming the pungent aromas of the incense and goat hooves burning on the crinkled, cracked vinyl dash board.

No, it just means that if I happen to have a flask of bourbon or a bottle of wine that I’m intent on taking to my room on my way from the airport at 11 PM (after the hotel bar has already closed) that they should shut their Muslim yaps, pay attention to traffic rather than what I’m hauling around in my carry-on bag, and remember that they are in the By-God-United-States of America, not Africa

And on second thought, if any of these Muslim Taxi drivers continue to have a problem with ME and my bad habits, they should just get the %$#@& OUT of MY country.

There..I said it..because most people are too chicken to speak up, dang it....

OK...Just When You Think I've Said It All...Read THIS

A blog acquaintance of mine, a fellow southerner and widely read blogger that had the misfortune of dieing last summer of a pulmonary embolism, wrote this little ditty back in March of 2005, and his daughter just re-posted it as a greatest hit on his blog site recently.

In the process, it reminded me that I couldn't have said it better myself, so I'm taking the liberty of publishing the Acidman's words from over at Gut Rumbles here in their entirety:

10 reasons Why I [really don't] Hate Black People

In response to the email posted below:

1) I DON'T hate black people. But a lot of people believe that I do, so f**k it.

2) Racism exists in this country and I'm sorry to say that it always will. So will sexism, classism, eliteism and every other kind of "ism" you can name. People have ALWAYS picked on anyone they could, and they always will. That's simple human nature and you'll see it over and over again if you study history.

3) Being black is no excuse for failure. You may have a steeper climb, but you can make it. Look around. A lot of black people have. You can do it, too.

4) Stop making your own bed and bitching about sleeping in it. Black people who listen to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and expect the government to give them something for nothing are blind sheep. Those "leaders" have a vested interest in keeping the slaves on the plantation. If you listen to them, that's where you'll stay.

5) Learn to read and write. That's not "acting white." That's the key to success anywhere you want to go. And ANYBODY can master those tools.

6) Nobody ever said life was fair. It ain't and it never will be. Get over that fact. You're not the only people ever pissed on by life. Look at the Jews and the Vietnamese. THEY were pissed on, but they didn't lay there in the puddle to be pissed on again.

7) I've never liked labor unions because they preach the lowest common denominator as a standard for performance. I do not believe that we should dumb down the rest of society, create "4.6" GPAs and engage in the tacit racism of low expectations for black people. That kind of crap only exacerbates the problem.

8) Black men: raise your goddam children. I've heard this shit too often to recall--- some 20-something black guy bragging to his buddies at work that he KNOWS he's a man because he's sired three children by different wimmen. He doesn't know his kid's names, but that doesn't matter to him. He thinks he's a man. Dogs do what he did. Fathers don't.

9) Accept responsibility for your own actions. I know that it's a lot to ask in today's victim-oriented society, but do you really believe that hip-hop and rap, ebonics and baggy pants are the way to get out of the ghetto? I don't think so. I believe it's the way to keep yourself mired there and it's YOUR CHOICE TO MAKE.

10) Blame all of your problems on ME. That's right. If you are unemployed, living on a welfare check, semi-raising illegitimate children and unable to read the want ads in the newspaper, I DID THAT TO YOU. Me. Whitey. It ain't YOUR fault. Racist bastards such as myself took away every opportunity in your life, made you drop out of school and become pregnant or a jailbird and bitter because manna from heaven didn't fall right into your lap. Just do me one simple favor. Take a good, long look in the mirror before you point a finger at me.

Okay, there's a racist rant. Now, all you bleeding hearts and Acidman-haters can have a field day with it.

Shuuussshhhhh

I'm Working...


OK folks, I know that there's a whole bunch of stuff going on out there in the world that's just BEGGING me to make some of my patented irreverent commentary on and/or about, but I haven't found the time because I'm actually busy doing something that I rarely do...WORKING.

Meanwhile, it's turned off a bit chilly down here on our little island--actually recording a record low temp yesterday morning. Needless to say the bike stayed parked on the rack on my bumper last night.

One thing which I want to mention is that, as you probably already know, we've got an election coming up in less than two weeks. Why not do the rest of the population a favor and find out the names of the candidates on your local ballot and consider putting an X beside said name based on a reason other than the "D" or "R" listed on your computer screen or hanging by your "hanging chads?"

I just hate people that do their voting by default, and I'd like to think that the people that stop by here to read my rantings are smarter than that.

Now you have my permission to go back to whatever you were doing...

Things I Saw This Week

And I bet YOU Didn't...


It’s 37 degrees Fahrenheit down here on our little island this morning, but even as winter comes upon us here in the Golden Isles, our fine feathered friends continue to amaze me with their presence and antics.

The bad news is that we lost one of our young Cardinal’s to a window strike on the front patio this week. I’m afraid that our giant panes of glass surrounding our living room on the front and rear of the condo have killed more birds than we realize over the years, particularly when our drapes are open--as we lost another little guy or gal a few weeks ago from another collision with our front window.

The good news is that we’ve had the opportunity to visit with a number of BIG birds at close range recently. Pat and I spent about five minutes last weekend sitting in the car about 50’ away watching a young Red Tailed Hawk stand in a rain puddle in our parking lot drinking his or her fill of water.

Early Sunday morning about 4 AM, while doing my nocturnal bike ride, I had an encounter with our local Great Horned Owl that I’ve been “talking to” on and off for the past couple of years.

By “talking to,” I mean having a hooting competition.

I can’t and won’t try to write the syllables of the conversation down here on the blog for you to read, but I honestly believe that the big bird responds to the noises which I make. Feel free to call the authorities and have a straight-jacket delivered if you will.

Finally, yesterday, a giant blue Heron came squawking 50 feet up in the air across our heads and landed on the roof of our building while we were standing out in our front yard, flapped and flopped around doing some personal preening, then squawked a few more times and fluttered off back to the lake adjacent to the nearby 18th hole of our golf course.

I truly LOVE living here…

I Got A Didgeridoo

Are They Legal Where You Live, And Am I Weird Or What?


I've been wanting one of these for a couple of years now, so I just picked one up tonight on the Internet from some hippies out in California:

(No Rusty, I'm gonna play music on it...not smoke it...and I have to come up with my own feathers and vegetation to wear while playing it...)

What it is is a "Didgeridoo", an instrument designed by the native Australian Aboriginal Peoples.

I've had some success in the past playing wind instruments like the trumpet and the harmonica, I know that I've had limited success with and could probably play the piano successfully in public if I bought one and put my mind to it, and I've fiddled (excuse the pun) with the violin a little but found it and the guitar to be of lessor interest and greater effort than I could muster with my scatter-brained lifestyle.

Enter the Didgeridoo, stage right...

These things are really cool sounding. They make that eerie woooommmmm waaaaawwwwww wooommmmmm waaaaaaawwww "droning" sound that you've heard in the movies and on TV.

No, I don't expect to make any money playing my Didgeridoo for throngs of cheering fans anytime in the near future, I just want to display mine in my living room and piss Pat off while she's trying to sleep entertain myself late at night when I'm tired of blogging.

Next on the acquisition list is a pair of Caribbean Style Steel Drums...something like this would do nicely:



I've got to go now...I need time to practice my circular breathing...

Almost Done

How's This?

My Haunted House

Pumpkin Carving Ideas

What about this for a carving design?



Comments...Questions...Suggestions???

I'm the Pumpkin Pie King Pied Piper

More Public Art...At Private Expense


Well, the phone call came in here about 11 AM.

I have a 150 pound pumpkin, and now on October 30th I have an audience of 95 kids to watch me carve it into something as yet to be determined.

Anyone got any good Ideas?

Where Do We Go?

And How Many People Do We Have To Slap?


Forget my head exploding...

Forget my head rotating (even at supersonic velocity)...

I'm just turning red in the face and standing up while writing this posting.

Just look at this crap:

ATTLEBORO, Mass. - Tag, you're out! Officials at an elementary school south of Boston have banned kids from playing tag, touch football and any other unsupervised chase game during recess for fear they'll get hurt and hold the school liable.

Recess is "a time when accidents can happen," said Willett Elementary School Principal Gaylene Heppe, who approved the ban.

While there is no districtwide ban on contact sports during recess, local rules have been cropping up. Several school administrators around Attleboro, a city of about 45,000 residents, took aim at dodgeball a few years ago, saying it was exclusionary and dangerous.

Elementary schools in Cheyenne, Wyo., and Spokane, Wash., also recently banned tag during recess. A suburban Charleston, S.C., school outlawed all unsupervised contact sports.

"I think that it's unfortunate that kids' lives are micromanaged and there are social skills they'll never develop on their own," said Debbie Laferriere, who has two children at Willett, about 40 miles south of Boston. "Playing tag is just part of being a kid."

Another Willett parent, Celeste D'Elia, said her son feels safer because of the rule. "I've witnessed enough near collisions," she said.

Dang it ladies and gentlemen, but I think that, instead of carving my big Pumpkin, I'll just drive up to Massachusetts and drop it on one of the school board member’s feet.

My pumpkin obviously has more brains than all of these Politically Correct Boston liberals.

IDIOTS...

So Many Lawyers...

So Few Legitimate Torts Little Time…


Would somebody please take a look at this stupid crap this so called “news” story for a moment and explain these peoples' logic to me?

Go ahead and take your time…

I’ve got the rest of my life…

Here’s an excerpt for those of you too lazy to click on the link:

MARION, Ind. - Relatives of a university student misidentified as a classmate who was killed in highway accident have told officials they plan to sue over handling of the crash.

The so-called tort claim on behalf of survivor Whitney Cerak, her parents and sister targets the actions of Grant County Coroner Ron Mowery in identifying four Taylor University students and one employee who were killed in the April 26 crash.

Grant County officials on Monday received the tort claim, a legal step required under state law before a government agency can be sued. The claim argues Mowery was "not properly trained and educated" as a coroner and that he "failed to exercise reasonable care" to avoid the misidentification.

The claim seeks unspecified damages for emotional trauma.

So think about this with me for a minute...someone you love with all of your heart is reported to be killed in a car accident, then two weeks later you find out that they are actually still alive.

What do you do, sue the messenger?

If that were the case, the US Army would have gone out of business in WWI as a result of lawsuits over inaccurate killed/missing in action reports delivered to mothers and wives here stateside.

Two wrongs never make things right, and in this case this lawsuit appears to be totally unwarranted and totally absurd.

That's not to say that there's not a good chance that, given our current legal climate, they might not win a judgment in their favor, but will their windfall be based on additional medical costs caused by the coroner's proported negligence (and there were no costs--the young lady went straight to the hospital from the accident scene...) or our "jackpot mentality" touted by the legions of Tort Lawyers wandering late night TV commercials and printing ads on the back of your local Yellowpage Phone Books.

Some of you may remember the original story about the April 26th crash involving a tractor trailer and a College van, killing five and severely injuring four of the vehicle’s occupants.

The Cerak family’s argument and resulting lawsuit results from the fact that at first they were told that their 19 year old daughter, Whitney Cerak, was killed in the accident, and continued to believe that she was dead for a couple of weeks.

It was actually 22-year-old Laura VanRyn who was the fatally injured victim.

The VanRyn family kept vigil beside Whitney’s bedside for a couple of weeks, only realizing her true identity when she awoke from her coma and was able to speak coherently.

So why aren't the Cerak's suing the VanRyn's also, since they couldn't tell their own mutilated daughter from the Cerak's mutilated daughter?

I also like to point out that a key point of the lawsuit questions the coroner's "handling" of the accident victims.

Let's see here...the dead people were buried, and the live people were sent to the hospital, weren't they?

It's not like that the coroner sent the live girl to the morgue (thereby denying her of emergency medical treatment) or hit her in the head with a hammer to stop her from thrashing around at the accident scene--at least as far as I've heard.

So are the VanRyn's out there somewhere waiting to see the outcome of the Cerak's legal follies, in anticipation of hitting the financial jackpot themselves?

Probably, but maybe not...

My position here is that this family should be content to rejoice that Whitney actually survived her ordeal, then shut up and go sit home and in church with their recently recovered daughter, all the time counting their blessings, rather than hiring a lawyer and suing the county for a coroner’s innocent mistake.

After all, it’s common published knowledge that the girls bore a striking resemblance to each other, and in this day and time of many kids having virtually cavity free teeth, even dental records might not have provided any assistance in the identification process.

I also suspect that some member of the Cerak family was asked to do an initial identification of the body of VanRyn, and there might not have been an autopsy, but the family could possibly share some responsibility for the mistake.

Further, maybe these two young women were in the 2% small minority of young women in the US that don’t have rings and studs protruding from their faces and tattoos covering their breasts and the small of their backs--making the identification process even harder.

Regardless, I think that if anyone should be the target of the lawsuit, it should be the truck driver that caused the accident and possibly the trucking company that operated the equipment.

And in a final moment of political incorrectness, I have to admit that if I were the coroner, I’d be tempted to ask if the Cerak family would drop the lawsuit if I rented a truck and finished what the other driver started.

(OK, I just felt like saying the last paragraph, but I really don't think like that, so don't be e-mailing me with your whiny complaints...)

It's The Great Pumpkin

Where's Charlie Brown & Linus When You Need Them?


Late this afternoon I wandered over to Harris Teeter looking for only TWO things--a newspaper and a bag of Sauerkraut to go with my Knockwurst and Bratwurst for dinner tonight.

Fifteen minutes later, I ended up coming home with THIS MONSTROSITY…




That creature would be a 30” diameter PUMPKIN that weighs about 150 pounds.

It took the efforts of myself and two bag boys to load it into the back of my Suburban, and the cargo net, bungee cords, and various blocks and shims were installed to keep it from rolling around in traffic, thereby killing me on my way home from the store.

In the back of my suburban is exactly where it’s going to stay too, at least while I cut a hole in the top of it, scoop out the seeds and extra flesh, then I hope to haul it over to one of the local elementary schools to do a pumpkin carving demonstration.

You see, I like to make my own 3-D patterns and do things that look like this two years ago…



And it looked like this in the dark…


No...that's Herman Munster, not John Kerry... And last year I found a Georgia Tech logo in a little pumpkin:



Unfortunately, today on my way home from the store with my newly purchased vegetable prize I suddenly had the grim realization that most politically correct schools don’t officially do Halloween anymore, so I may just have to lug the darn thing up the stairs and let it sit and rot outside my own front door until the end of the month.

Not to worry, because now I have my friend Keenan, the owner of Ziggy Mahoney's (the most popular dance club here on the island) checking out his kids' private school's interest in having their own Pumpkin carving.

One way or the other...it'll get carved and displayed, and finally I guess I have to ask the obvious question…

“Anyone need a couple dozen Pumpkin Pies?”

Feeling Small? (Part II)

This One's For The Ladies...

Feeling a bit small?

I Do Now...

Ghee Whizz

Should I Buy a Motel 6, Or A Seven-Eleven?


Anybody out there know what “Ghee” is? I’m proud to say that I do now…

“Ghee” is the Indian word for a batch of carefully clarified unsalted butter, and I had no idea until last night what the heck it was myself.

You use it in cooking Indian cuisine, and I used some of my Ghee to make a variation on this version of Chicken & Vegetable Curries.

I lightly steamed some broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, and celery, then cubed up some boneless chicken breasts, and cooked up a nice batch of Basmati rice to serve everything with for dinner.

The other fun thing was that I did everything from scratch, including making my own batch of Garam Masala--the spice blend that puts the “Curry flavor” in your Indian Curry.

Garam Masala includes things like coriander seeds, cumin seeds, black peppercorns, black cumin seeds (shahjeera), dry ginger, black cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, and crushed bay leaves.

Turmeric powder and coconut milk finishes off the sauce and gives it it’s characteristic yellow/green color.

The house still smells fabulous right now.

The only things I didn’t have on hand was the black cardamon and black cumin seeds, but the resulting flavors of my mixture--even without these two items--roasted and pounded by hand to a fine powder in my mortar/pestle, were quite acceptable.

I'm gonna try to find those two additional spices and then I’m going to repeat my efforts again next week while trying my hand at making some Indian parantha flat bread to go with it all.

In the mean time, I have some other meals planned featuring Turkish delicacies and possibly some Egyptian dishes, thereby completing my tour of cooking my way around the Mediterranean --having already completed my French, Italian, Greek, and Moroccan studies earlier this year.

Don't you wish that you were eating dinner at my house these days?

Poetic Justice

Idiots In Traffic--A continuing Theme…


I was a complete bum most of the day today, after spending much of last night working on a couple of proposals for consulting and construction work and my continued efforts to get this new computer formatted and operational.

Then Pat and I did a late afternoon bike ride, covering the six mile round trip from our home on the marsh up to Fort Frederica in less than 40 minutes, but upon our return I was too tired to face an hour or so cooking my planned entree, authentic Chicken Curries.

As a result of my “Chickening out,” I was forced to drive a few miles south to the local deli to pick up a Greek salad and a Sub sandwich. In the process, I once again encountered another ignorant arrogant asshole one of our indigenous resident’s with a severe case of self-importance.

About half way to the Deli, buzzing along at about 36 MPH in a 35 MPH zone, I looked in my rear view mirror and all I saw was a windshield and the top of a hood ornament on a late model white Mercedes coupe.

I didn’t budge a half MPH.

As I neared my destination in the shopping center, I broke one of my cardinal rules and entered the turn lane a bit early--hoping that my co-pilot would simply continue onward at his desired higher rate of speed.

I was WRONG.

Like a member of the Blue Angels stunt team, he hung right there with me a few feet off of my rear bumper, and then made the left turn into the parking lot still “flying in formation.”

What really pissed me off was that his tight formation position caused me to drift past a couple of parking spaces, and only after he dove into one of the spaces which he caused me to miss did I manage to park twenty yards down the lot on the opposite side.

The son of a bitch had the audacity to glare at me as he virtually sprinted in the door of the deli ahead of me, placing his order…fumbling for exact change, then spending the next few minutes hiding behind the potato chip rack, impatiently drumming his fingers on the top of the stainless steel counter.

I, on the other hand, being the laid back, useless beach bum that I am, calmly placed my order and wandered around out front of the shop enjoying the nice cool evening.

When I walked back inside, I arrived just in time to witness my adversary complaining because “I know I forgot to say it…but you guys know I always have whole wheat bread with my chicken salad sandwich…”

Well now...just let me issure a giagantic "Boo hoo HooooooooooOOOO" on his behalf.

Since he was in too much of a hurry to wait another three minutes for the 16 year old kid working the counter to make a replacement sandwich, he simply left the shop in a huff.

So sad....and although he deserved it, I never said a single word to him, but he did see me smirking at his delimma.

I really hope that he perceived the rest of his evening to be as shitty as the fifteen minute portion which I witnessed.

Maybe he even managed to survive the balance of his drive home without having a heart attack...but you never know.

I, personally, refuse to live here on our little Island and be in that much of a hurry and, in spite of idiots like this fellow encountered this afternoon, thus far I think that I’m definitely getting my money’s worth.

Survival Of The Fittest

More Public Stupidity


My regular readers know that two of my favorite reoccurring themes here on this blog are those of driving autos and riding bicycles or walking as a pedestrian on the public streets and in the parking lots here on our little island.

While I’ve previously issued what I think to be the definitive mandate when it comes to traffic safety, after my trip to the grocery store today I believe that a refresher course is in order…

Today I almost killed three people accidentally, and when the two events were over with, after averting disaster caused by their own STUPIDITY, I almost went ahead and killed them anyway just to get them off the streets and out of the food chain.

Be advised that IF I ever manage to strike you with a motor vehicle, that under most circumstances, I will shift into reverse to back over your quivering carcass, thereby finishing the job of ending your miserable life.

Sue me…if you will…

Today’s first circumstance revolved around a family of four riding their shiny bicycles parallel to Frederica Road, the main north/south artery here on our little island. The problem I have with groups of bicyclists is that they seem to act like they are a freight train, connected together at the front and rear bumper of their bikes--if one does something, everybody does it regardless of safety and traffic conditions.

You see, Saint Simons has an extensive network of wide sidewalks which also serve as bike trails, and perhaps as many as one out of ten people here on the island either own or rent a bike to use on a daily basis.

The problem comes when the men and enthusiastic older children ride well ahead of the women and younger child(ren), thereby causing a 100 foot long chain of potential dead humans--all because they don‘t pay attention while crossing intersections on side streets.

Today’s adventure included what appeared to be a mid-teenaged daughter and portly dad, dragging a young boy and middle aged woman along the bike path.

When the SUV two vehicles ahead of me stopped dead on Frederica before turning right onto a side street in order to avoid the daughter/father grouping, instead of stopping, the mother son group just sped up and made six or eight vehicles wait as they caught up to the balance of the biking party.

I was almost rear ended by the car behind me in the process.

Having survived that near disaster unscathed, next came the usual adventure visiting the local grocery store parking lot, a place that twenty years ago I would have already been arrested in for assault because of the stupidity that I have witnessed or otherwise been subjected to over the past 2-½ years.

This portion of my shopping trip was relatively uneventful, the checkout lines were uncluttered, but upon returning to my vehicle everything changed. As I was backing out of my parking space, with at least 50% of the Mustang sticking out into the lane and still rolling backward, some silly bitch drove down the traffic isle--blabbing on a cellphone--and cut off not only my efforts but at least two other autos over the next fifty yards of asphalt.

I call this maneuver “the parking lot slalom course”--and all of you self-important assholes out there that do it know who you are and exactly what I’m talking about.

Stop it, dang it…it pisses me off…and it’s WRONG.

If a car is already rolling backwards and is at least half way out of a parking space, STOP.

At least YIELD.

I swear, if I manage to live into my eighties, I’m going to buy an old Studebaker or possibly a Sherman Tank and I’m going to lurk around parking lots and when I see you exhibit behavior like I saw today, when you come back out of the store with your Brie and Champaign you’re going to find your Escalade or BMW sitting there in the form of about six inches of flattened metal and plastic.

Think about it…and to all of the safe, courteous drivers out there…YOU have a nice day...

Rechargable Batteries

I Take Mine For Granted These Days...


Way back about 1980 I was employed by a company that designed and built custom low humidity air handlers and "clean rooms."

Most of our customers at the time were companies involved in the manufacture of Lithium batteries for industry and medical products like pacemakers. Lithium batteries made their public debut by powering the “Lunar Rover” vehicle that the Apollo astronauts drove around in the early 1970’s on the moon.

Some of you might remember that in those days most rechargeable batteries were bulky, cumbersome contraptions that, after sitting attached to the wall outlet charging overnight, would last about fifteen minutes in your “portable power screwdriver“, after which time your “portable power screwdriver” worked better as a hammer--as that was the only way to install screws after the batteries had discharged.

Lithium batteries represented a MAJOR improvement.

Now fast forward to 2006, and most of us take rechargeable batteries for granted. Heck, today I think that most children think that long lasting rechargable batteries grow on trees.

Cell phones, portable phones, laptop computers, digital cameras…you name it, most people have a half dozen sets of rechargeable batteries in their home and/or car at any given moment.

About 2 AM this morning, standing on the cart path adjacent to 18th hole of the Sea Palms Golf Course, I found myself to be in possession of only one set of rechargeable batteries after dismounting from my bicycle.

One tripod, one bicycle, one digital camera, and…

DEAD BATTERIES.

We all missed some awesome images of a spectacular October moonrise over the marsh.

Sorry