Arlen Spincter Spector Dismissed

One Hand Clapping...


Sorry for the light posting this week, but I'm distracted getting caught up from being out of town most of last week and getting ready to leave town again this weekend for most of next week to be spent in Kansas City, Missouri.

That's a tough trip by car--air being cost prohibitive for two adults and one Turbo Pup-- thus we're spending the night in St. Louis on the way out and in Paducah, KY on the way home in order to break things into shorter manageable segments.

It's tough being me...but any way...

For some reason I've got a good head of steam up to do some ranting this morning...so here goes...

For the past couple of months I've tried my best to keep my mouth shut and my hands off my keyboard when it comes to predicting the outcome of this fall's "mid-term" US House and Senate elections, thus you'll just have to excuse me now when I erupt in commentary on yesterday's primary results and do some well deserved gloating in the process.

It seems that I have a hard time not insulting the 25% or so of the population that votes and isn't gullible if not just plain STUPID, but then again with the quantity of candidates of poor quality out there running for office I understand when people make crappy choices in the voting booth when "none of the above" isn't an option.

We have to elect "somebody" every two or four years, even when unfortunately the only options are true "nobodies" most of the time.

Primarily my disdain and sophomoric giggling mirth is directed toward the Pennsylvania electorate's decision to send eighty year old pantie waist, sniveling, booger eating, political turncoat former Republican come Democrat Arlen Spector out to pasture.

Just in case you've been living in a cave or under a rock not paying attention, this asshole survived changing from Democrat to Republican in 1965 in order to win the Pennsylvania District Attorney seat, and after 45 years of sabotage and espionage hiding in various positions with a "R" behind his name while actually "reaching across the isle" hiding in plain sight as a Democrat in Republican suits, then decided to change back to publicly professing his closet Democratic leanings in April of this year when he realized he'd be destroyed in the primary running against the current Republican opponent.

Fortunately he got his butt beat any way, and Senator Spinchtor will hopefully take his saggy jowls home and fade quietly into history sitting in a rocking chair on his front porch looking at naked pictures of Owl Gore and Nasty Pelosi sitting in a hot tub full of their own urine stained water.

(Dang I'm mean this morning...)

And speaking of nice, friendly, God fearing Pennsylvanians making poor electoral decisions...I see where in the special election to fill the seat left by the death of PA Representative Mad Jack Murtha they chose as his replacement his own former aide Mark Critz (as opposed to former Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz.)

What's weird to me is that the Penn voters will be forced back to the polls again in November to decide between the same two candidates...Critz and Republican Tim Burns for the exact same seat.

Isn't this a perfect example of government waste?

Spend the money to conduct political campaigns and print ballots and program voting machines in mid May, knowing that only six months later you're going to have to spend money to conduct political campaigns and print ballots and program voting machines for the EXACT SAME SEAT IN THE US HOUSE in November of the same year...with the EXACT SAME IDIOT VOTERS AND THE EXACT SAME IDIOT CANDIDATES.

What can possibly happen between now and November that will change the election outcome and justify the expense of two elections...unless Critz gets killed in a Zeppelin Explosion or he gets caught by the National Enquirer wearing women's lingerie while having sex with a black transvestite hooker in a drug sting smoking crack laced camel dung or something.

You know?

And another thing...while I'm bitchin' about "poli-ticks" this morning...

I was Googling around on Mad Jack Murtha and found this map showing the shape of Pennsylvania's "12th Congressional District."

Just look at this crap...

What in the world were the "authorities" and "leaders" and other professional morons thinking when they drew those lines on a map...other than some sort of self-serving demagoguery by excluding giant chunks of voters in order to get their "demographics" right and pre-determine an outcome in future elections.

By the way...here's a look at the other "pieces of the puzzle" showing the 9th and 18th congressional Districts that surround and fill in the holes in Mad Jack Murtha's little piece of heaven in Penn:





What...did they hire a snail to crawl around the perimeter? Or possibly they used a drunken band of civil engineering surveyors to wander up and down hill and dale and vale and valley?

Didn't anyone own a ruler or a compass in the past 100 years in Washington DC or the state house in PA?

...where they could manage to draw a straight line or a uniformly curved piece of ink or pencil lead on the page of the map without looking at the voting habits of the people living in the area and try to Gerrymander the masses into voting in a predictable fashion?

(...taking my own pulse and blood pressure here boss...)

I swear to God people, if it weren't against the law, I say our situation would be greatly improved if we were allowed to grab at least half of the population of elected officials by the hair and neck and proceed to summarily stomp the air and feces right out of every convenient orifice.

But then again I'm just a mean old ever greying, ever balding, angry white middle aged Redneck.

What do I know about anything?

Funky Polynesian Chicken Pizza

Yet Another Original Flavor Masterpiece


Just in cace no one noticed, I pretty much took the day off yesterday after spending about six and one half hours Saturday herding Pat and the Turbo Pup back northeast across Alabama and home into Eastern Tennessee.

I did manage to make some interesting home-made rosemary hash browns with onions, Portabella mushrooms, and a splash of good Balsamic Vinegar to go with eggs and bacon at breakfast, but when it came time for dinner preparations to start mid-afternoon I knew pizza was on the menu but I wanted something different in the topping category.

Looking at my options, I ended up settling on a combination of sweet and savory based on the old standard "Hawaiian Pizza."

You know..."Hawaiian Pizza."

Pizza covered with Ham and green bell peppers and onions and pineapple and some sort of sauce.

Problem was, we didn't have any ham and green bell peppers in the house and I didn't want to get dressed and go to the grocery store, so after a little Goggling for other ideas I dug around in my pantry and Fridge and came up with the following ingredient list.

For my standard crust:

Starter Dough
1 pack dry yeast
1/4 cup 100-110 degree F water
3/4 cups King Author Bread Flour

Main Dough
3/4 cup room temperature water
1-1/2 cup King Author Bread Flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp white pepper

For the "Polynesian" Sauce:
2-8 Oz cans Hunts Tomato Sauce
1/4 tsp powdered ginger (or fresh grated ginger root if you have it)
2 tbsp Hosin Sauce
1 tsp Teriyaki Sauce
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1/8 tsp Oriental Five Spice Powder

Toppings:
1/2 pound of good whole milk Mozzarella Cheese, cubed/chunked
4 strips of bacon, fried crisp
1 boneless chicken breast, cooked medium and cut into 1/4 strips
1/2 red bell pepper, course diced
1/2 yellow bell pepper, course diced
1/4 pound good feta cheese, cubed or crumbled
1/2 of a 20 Oz can Pineapple slices, cut into 1" segments

When making a good pizza crust, I like to let my dough have plenty of time to rise and more importantly--to get a good rise regardless.

Years ago somewhere on the Internet I came across the idea of doing a pre-rise of a small batch of dough. By mixing the yeast with 1/4 cup of warm (but not hot) water and allowing it to react with a smaller quantity of flour for about 20 minutes, then adding another 3/4 cup of room temperature water to the pre-rise mixture you get a more uniform distribution of the yeast through the entire mass of dough. You add your diluted pre-rise mixture to the 1-1/2 cup of flour/salt/white pepper mixture and you have enough dough for one 15" pizza

I don't know if it's worth the effort to everyone, but I've been doing it this way for six or eight years now and I think I make a better crust than 90% of the Pizza restaurants out there...I'll leave it to you to decide I guess.

So any way, the point is, make yourself a mass of dough--however--and then kneed it out to a good consistency (I also don't over-work my pizza dough contrary to all of the crap published on the Internet demanding that you spend twenty minutes playing with a sticky ball of goo) and toss it out on to a floured cookie sheet, cover it with a clean towel, and toss it into a cold oven or your microwave to rise for about an hour and one half.

Now fix yourself a drink and contemplate your sauce and toppings.

The sauce is pretty straight forward, dump the cans of tomato sauce into a small boiler, add all of the spices and a splash of your pineapple juice from the can, and simmer everything for a half hour or so until it thickens.

Sauce done...wasn't that easy?

Now as to putting it all together.

Preheat your oven to 550 degrees F (500 deg F minimum if you can.)

Punch down and roll out your dough, toss it into the air and get it in your hair if you want to, and keep fooling with it until you have something resembling a round pizza crust.

If I haven't mentioned it before, I highly recommend the use of a pizza stone but whatever you use toss your finished crust onto it, then spoon your funky Polynesian sauce out onto the center of the crust leaving about an inch around the perimeter uncovered.

Heck, cover the whole dang thing up with sauce if you want to, but I leave a clean edge around my Pizzas.

Now evenly spread you chunked Mozzarella around on top of the sauce, add the rest of your toppings, and once your oven is up to temperature slide the whole shebang in and let it cook for 17 to 19 minutes.

Get yourself a pizza cutter and some plates, wait for things to cool down for about five minutes after you take it out of the oven, and EAT!!

Regards Y'all

The Redneck Gourmet

Headin' Back Toward Knoxtown

Tired Success...


While I was busy doing stuff like this (see earlier photos)...






I didn't even have time to use this...




or this...




All of the above, located here...




At least the place looked nice when I was finished. Time now to do a little reading, packing, and load up the Turbo Pup's lockers and Sea Cheasts and hit the road north I guess.

Wish us a safe trip Y'all...if you will...

Minnie The Moocher

Hard To Believe It's Been THIRTY FIFTY EIGHT YEARS...

I was googling around during a break this afternoon and found this video of a young Cab Calloway and his orchestra doing "Minnie the Moocher" like he did in 1980 with "The Blues Brothers."



Youtube has disabled the embed code for the version from the Blues Brother movie but you can go here to watch Belushi's and Aykroyd's antics...

Time to get back outside and put the tools away and cook dinner...free at last...

Progress

I'm Tired...


I think that my title and subtitle say it all, and I guess that I'll leave things at that for now.

Time to spend a little time reading the news and blogs before hitting the yard again this morning.

Regards Y'all...

Before Photos

Not Bad After 23 Years Of Sub-Tropical Weather...


Here's a look at this week's rebuild/renovation project down here in Lower Alabama, the 3' wide x 75' long dock leading out across "Lake Lee" (named for my Mother's Mother) to a 20' six sided Gazebo.

And here's a close up of the Gazebo my Father built back around 1986/1987 while he was "retired" from his day job as an Electronic Engineer:

Based on my experience today prying up warped and rotten/unsafe lumber suffering from exposure from the elements, I say that no one building a project of this scope and difficulty (that would be my dear deceased Father) could ever have been considered to be "retired."

Today I had to "retire" during Phase One of my efforts after only about 4 hours, and if I get another 4 hours of time in Wednesday I'll be impressed, but probably not finished with the current scope of work...and I'm just doing a partial replacement of about a third--the current unsafe portion--of the pressure treated decking and all of the top handrail lumber members.

The idea is to make things safe over the next year or so as I come back down and continue the rennovation process every four to six months as an onging project.

Any way, somebody send up a flare and call 911 if you don't hear from me in the next 24 hours...

Sawing & Nailing

Measure Twice...Cut Once...


I'm too busy to blog?

I guess that's true every now and then.

I'll try to do better tonight.

Regards Y'all...

Farm Hand

Project List Progress


Well, it looks like I'm gonna be a busy bee this week. At least the weather is going to be agreeable for a change.

It usually rains three or four days out of every week I spend down here trying to get some work done. Not so this week according to the current forecast.

I've already replaced the battery in the old Mazda pickup and put new wiper blades on the car, and after lunch we're heading over to the local lumber yard for a pile of wood.

In addition to a couple of hundred square feet of deck lumber and 132' feet of handrail to repair/rebuild, the tasks have grown to include the following:

A. Rebuild the cutter head on a 6 HP electric start string trimmer mower
B. Service all of the other lawn equipment including a 20 hp lawn tractor and a push mower and God knows what else.
C. Use aforementioned mowers and tools to cut the highway right of way around the driveway.
D. Prune the shrubbery encroaching on about 50 yards of driveway.
E. Rebuild a couple of broken sections of board fence destroyed by fallen pine trees.

...and on and on and so on...you get the drift of the situation.

I wish I was thirty years old again rather than nearly fifty one, but since I have a five or six day window I should be able to get through most of the list...as long is it doesn't grow any longer in the process.

Historically something else breaks while I'm doing whatever I'm doing so I have to stop and go buy parts and spend a half day fixing whatever's getting in the way of progress.

Time to hit the lumber yard I guess...y'all have a LOVELY afternoon...and feel free to stop if you have some spare time and feel like doing some mowing or something.

VP Biden Gives Away MY Money To Spain?

The Insanity Continues...

Is it only me that understands that the US of "By-God" 'Merica is basically going BROKE these days?

No...wait...I seem to recall reading something to that effect on some blogs here on the Internet and hearing similar assertions on some of the programs on FOX News.

And for some reason I think I've heard that President Obamarama and the Obamamaniacs have commissioned something called a "Debt Commission" to address our government's prolific spending.

Then I read this article in "The Hill" saying that this week we had packed VP Biden's stupid bumbling ass off to Europe to do guess what???

Vice President Joseph Biden on Saturday addressed the press with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and pledged the U.S. would support efforts to stem the financial crisis that has befallen Greece and potentially other countries within the European Union.

“We agreed on the importance of a resolute European action to strengthen the European economy and to build confidence in the markets,” Biden said. “And I conveyed the support of the United States of America toward those efforts and was pleased to hear the efforts that were under way on the part of the president.”

The European Union and the International Monetary Fund have pledged $145 billion to bail out the country of Greece, which has recently become overwhelmed with debt. The U.S. is the largest contributor to the IMF.

Just like our government spending with the United Nations (something I totally disagree with), this latest round of taxpayer funded bailout of people who generally thumb their noses at us and hate us is TOTAL UNMITIGATED BULLSHIT...

Go here and look at how much of our/your money goes to the IMF this year...or more accurately, the percentage of the IMF funding that the US of A is on the hook for giving the these socialist bastards so they can continue to lead us down the path to a similar destruction as Greece is enduring right now.

Try SEVENTEEN PERCENT (actually 17.09%)?

With Japan a distant second at 6.12 percent.

In a world full of hundreds of sovereign independent nations, who in the %$#@ came up with these funding rules???

...that you and I and your grandmother and great aunt Emma here in the US handle the bulk of the costs while everybody else has their heads stuck up into their neither regions flipping us the middle finger and telling us what we're doing wrong all day?

I'm not sorry, but I have to go get in the car now after drying my head off from sticking it into a bucket of ice water. If I think about this crap for two minutes longer my head will explode...

Live From The Edge Of The Oil Spill...

Everybody On The Gulf Coast Says "Hey"...


Well, we managed to make the epic trip from Eastern Tennessee all the way down to Ft. Walton Beach yesterday in less than ten hours, including a brief stop at the farm to pick up Mom in the process.

We're visiting our near 90 year old "Uncle John" and his family at lunch today for a while before turning around and heading back to lower Alabama for the balance of the week.

Then I have to put on my "yard shoes" and get busy.

If anyone thinks owning and/or being responsible for a HOUSE is a lot of work...try owning part of a seven acre lake and a giant piece of property surrounding said body of water...near 70 acres...

There is something dead or dieing or blooming or falling or giving birth or breaking or needing raking or mowing or chopping or clipping or WHATEVER...all the time every day 365 days each year.

Most of the time all I can do working from long distance is cheer my mother and cousins on in the process and help keep the big things from falling down or over in the three plus weeks of time I get to spend there on average each year.

I can basically work all day every day I visit and there's still a list of things which have to be put off until "next time."

This trip the task du jour is several hundred feet of wooden walkway/dock on the lake, some of which needs new pressure treated lumber after 23 years of service. I brought my big pneumatic framing nailer which will simplify installing the new boards, but I dread prying and beating the old lumber up off the framing and pulling all of the old rusty 16 D nails out of everything.

So now it's time to do a little Internet reading to catch up on what's going on in the world, grab some breakfast, and maybe wander over to the beach for a few minutes.

Y'all have a LOVELY Mother's Day Sunday...if you will...

You Got To Do What You Got To Do...

I'm Not In This For The Fame Or Fortune...


From this morning's edition of the Knoxville News Sentinel... http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2010/may/07/man-killed-in-hit-and-run-tried-to-stop-dirt/

Virgil Rogers, who lives on Grovedale Drive, said that he and Chris Billington had talked about a recent rash of dirt bikes speeding loudly in the neighborhood.

"Running up and down the hill at very high speeds," said Billington's sister, Sandy Ferguson.

"Usually starting late in the day, for about the past 30 to 45 days," Rogers said. "We have been complaining to (KCSO) for a while."

Rogers said he has seen at least three different bikes and that at least three different youths have been riding each one. He said the bikes are all clean, and have no tags on them. Ferguson and Bonnie Billington said that two and sometimes three bikes have been seen together, but the one that struck Chris Billington was the only one in the street at the time.

"I hope the investigation is pressed to find out who has been providing those bikes to the kids," Rogers said.


That's sort of mis-quoting me because I actually reported to have seen several bikes, but not all at the same time...leading me to believe that the kid was possibly associated with someone who owns a motorcycle dealership because there was also a four wheeler involved in one incident.

But any way, I'm not letting the little bastard get away with a few weeks in Juvenal Detention and some community service and a slap on the wrist while his mama says "He's such a good boy..."

This little SOB jeered at me and taunted me within 50' of my face when I had the audacity to call him out in the last two weeks and now my friend Chris is dead as a direct result of his little "boys will be boys" adventure.

This shit ain't going unpunished in my back yard, and the idiot so called adults living down on the corner better be ready for a industrial strength can of "whoop ass" to be opened up next time they so much as make a farting sound in my direction.

dammit...

Boop Boop Dit-tum Dat-tum Wat-tum... Choo...

And they Swam And The Swam All Over The Dam...


I'm too lazy to blog much of anything worthwhile, but here's what I've been wasting time looking at this morning...




And as a bonus prize I give you this little ditty.."Spring Chickens":





And finally Drum Virtuoso Buddy Rich versus the Muppets Animal...



Good Stuff...all and all I'd say...

Time To Get Down To Business

Reaping The Fruits Of Procrastination...


Oh...I don't know...where do I start writing this morning?

Let me open by saying that I think that life's pretty dang good these days here at the Turbo Pup Compound on the Banks of the Mighty Tennessee River.

Twenty years ago I'd be spazzing out finding things to worry about which today I understand don't really matter in the "big picture", so as it is I'm innately able to focus on the QUALITY rather than the QUANTITY of my daily and weekly life experiences.

Call me stupid or un-reliable or just someone that possess a "devil may care" attitude... whatever... but given my current mental attitude, physical condition, and financial where-with-all I think things are pretty well balanced all in all.

Between now and leaving town Saturday morning heading down to the Farm in Alabama for a weeks long Mother's Day visit I only have to finish packing and build four more pneumatic valves and get them shipped out on Friday after the parts arrive today.

A pretty darned easy schedule I say.

And then with the glorious weather in the mid 80's and clear blue sky each day this week there's probably another cigar and an afternoon spent wallowing in the sun working on darkening the white areas on my giant walrus sized body.

I'm actually practicing moving around laying on my stomach and flopping forward and sideways around the pool deck like scenes you see in the Arctic on National Pornographic Geographic.

I could probably substitute a couple of cigars for tusks in my mouth and the illusion would be complete...with the video soundtrack supplied by another giant Walrus...Rush Lindbaugh...doing his radio show in the background.

OK, I have to go lay down now and take a nap because, re-reading what I just wrote here, I realize I'm getting a little tired and loopie.

Talk to y'all later...

"Kierán Suckling" Says...

Only Liberals Hang Names Like That On Their Children...


According to this Washingtonpost.com story, some idiot named Kierán Suckling tells us:

the federal waiver [from and regarding detailed environmental impact studies] "put BP entirely in control" of the way it conducted its drilling.

No one knows to this day exactly what happened in the Gulf of Mexico, except that eleven souls were lost and a state of the art oil drilling platform worth a zillion dollars collapsed into the water.

Everyone expects all of us Injuneers to be perfect now?

A car accident is when your suspension breaks and your wheel flys off and you crash into the ditch.

An accident isn't when you're an idiot who runs red lights and stop signs and speeds everywhere and doesn't yield at "yield signs" and you end up hitting something.

But unfortunately the lamestream media's primary line...and the eco-nerds line...is that the "accident" was preventable, just like some teenager running a stop sign.

Following me here?

Just guessing...

and believe me I know that I'm going out a limb here being a slightly buzzed self proclaimed Redneck this afternoon...

but I bet you dollars to doughnuts a hunnert a hundred dollars a dinner at Sonic Drive-In that this guy/gal with the name "Kierán Suckling" has never had to hold down a real job and actually earn a living that didn't involve a university masters/doctoral research position or government grants from taxpayer dollars in his entire life.

I bet his/her/gay/lesbian/transgendered little piss shitting snit throwing environmental, tye died, booger eating patchouli stinking, kumbaya singing tree huggin self drives a Prius and proudly wears Birkenstocks and Che Guevera Tee shirts.

People like this are either STUPID, IGNORANT i.e. uneducated and just don't know any better, or more likely brilliant LIARS.

I say we repeal a few laws, stop protecting brain dead liberal weenie wimps full of opinions and good intentions, and go back for just three months to a period of time like the 1870's and let a few people with gun carry permits and some decent biceps go out and do what needs to be done.

Is it just me?

Back On My Deck

Momentary Relapse Ends Productive Streak...


Well...I promised myself that I was going to spend today getting some paying work done.

Hah!

Then I tore into the latest shipment of valves early this morning and found I only had the right materials to rebuild two of the eight...and the parts are back ordered until next week right now so dang it...

This afternoon I find myself smoking yet another Dominican Cigar and working on yet another Crossword and Sudoku puzzle while sitting in the sun surveying my expansive vegetable gardens.

Time to mix another drink and head back outside to "vegetate" I guess.

Somebody might want to stop by and pour some water and fertilizer on me.

...wait I'm so full of BS I'm self fertilizing...

OK, in the words of SNL's Emily Latella..."Never Mind."

I Can't Eat Laying Down

Also Hard To Cook While Horizontal


I'm pleased to report that I finally managed to get up out of bed and off the sofa yesterday long enough to do some work out in my garden.

I also mustered the energy to prune some branches off of our giant Crepe Myrtle Trees and some other stuff along the rear property line which was blocking the sun off a couple of areas I've planted stuff on in the past couple of weeks.

Then I suffered a relapse of lethargy and spent the rest of the afternoon reclining in a deck chair in a pair of denim shorts reading the newspaper, doing the crossword puzzle therein, smoking the first cigar out of a new bundle, and listening to Rush Lindbaugh spray spit on his microphone.

All and all a good afternoon.

As an excuse I offer that I have to enjoy this time being useless while it lasts because I received another shipement of pneumatic valves yesterday afternoon and I have to get at least four of them out the door Thursday or Friday.

So any way...then last night we went out and celebrated Quatro de Mayo at dinner at the local Mexican Restaurant, in order to avoid the crowds associated with the traditional Mexican Cinco de Mayo celebration to be held today.

I've not been in much of a mood to join in celebrating the 5th of May on the calendar ever since my father passed away suddenly on May 5th, 1996.

Today it's hard to believe that I've spent nearly a third of my life without the love and guidance of the greatest man I ever knew.

But I have...somehow.

It hasn't been pretty, but I'm still here regardless...screwing around often times needing a good slap up side the head once in a while or a stern look.

Miss you Dad...

The Waters Subside

Enthusiasm Levels Follow...


Dang I'm stuck feeling lazy these days.


I've only managed to get up and put on shoes and something besides PJ's (OK...lounge pants and a t-shirt) for maybe three hours each day since we got back home Saturday.

I have managed to muster the energy to wander over to Home Depot for a few minutes on both Sunday and Monday, but I guess that's something akin to a kid getting up long enough to go to the candy store, so I guess that the trips don't count as actually being productive.

I did crawl back up the ladder yesterday and pull the last five or six hands full of crap out of the gutters...stupid little "propeller" seeds from a neighbor's trees...so now my gutters are clean as a whistle and hopefully won't start clogging up and overflowing again until this fall when the leaves and pine straw start dropping again.

Did I mention that I HATE gutters and the maintenance thereof?

So any way, if you've been asleep since about Midnight you probably don't know that they arrested another stupid f**king towel head "naturalized citizen" of Pakistani descent at the airport at JFK under suspicion he built the "world's stupidest car bomb" and planted it in downtown NYC near Times Square.

I say the good news is that, since all of the sniveling, booger eating, tye died, patchouli stinking, human rights activists won't let us profile when arresting terrorists and illegal Hispanic "immigrants", that generally the worst things the folks from Mexico and Central America want to do to me is mow my grass or baby sit folks kids or paint my house or possibly hang Sheetrock for $5.00 per hour.

Of course there are the occasional drug dealers and career criminal thugs that come across the southern border, but I guarandamntee you that if the Mexican invaders had the same propensity to blow things up and cut people's heads off that the towel heads stupid Mohammad following shit heads peaceful islamacists from the middle east have the government would get off their butts and do something.

As it is, I expect that by this time next summer we'll have another 11 to 15 million swarthy Spanish speaking legal residents and, just like it did when Regan legalized the invaders in the mid 1980's, Congress will continue to refuse to take positive, meaningful steps to actually close the borders and stop the influx of illegals.

comprende?

Back To Reality

For Only A Week...


Well, the rain NOAA and the National Weather Service threatened us with--causing us to abandon South Carolina a day early on Saturday--finally got here to the Banks of the Mighty Tennessee River after dark this evening.

In spite of my best efforts spent cleaning most of the crap out of my gutters this afternoon, the stupid little "propeller seeds" from a nearby tree that remained in there when I was finished apparently have managed to pile up again at the downspouts so three out of four of them are CLOGGED...AGAIN...and water is spilling over and pounding a couple of Tomato plants and generally making a mess around the base of the house.

I didn't put the gutters on the house and it amazes me that the old guy that owned it for almost 45 years managed to keep them clean enough to do any good. I've already made several modifications to the downspouts and it looks like I'm going to have to replace two more soon in order to get good flow (they're old small pipes like they used in the 1960's.)

I'd really like to have totally new guttering installed but that's a thousand bucks we really don't have or otherwise want to spend now on "this old house." Thus I think with a little injuneering and some fine tuning of the existing "rainwater collection and discharge system", and then adding a coat of paint when we do the trim and soffits and fascia later this summer, that I can make things work as intended.

I actually hate gutters.

The new "International Building Code" and most local codes by default require them on new construction, but gutters are just a band aid on the water flow/control problem most homeowners face, and most of the time they end up a government mandated architectural eyesore in the process.

If you do a little checking around and look at average and maximum hourly rainfall totals for everyone here in the subtropical southeastern United By-God States of 'Merica you'll see that most houses with even smaller than average roof surface area/roof pitch standards can easily overflow even a commercial grade 6" x 6" gutter system...even with 3" x 4" downspouts...unless you have your builder/contractor install downspouts something like EVERY 10 FEET ALONG THE FRONT AND BACK AND SIDES OF YOUR HOUSE.

And who wants to look at downspouts between every window and door any way?

My solution is to do things the old fashioned way and build the house up on a berm or high spot, then slope the grade/soil/dirt sharply away from the house and let the water flow off the roof in sheets and spill onto the ground naturally and run down across the lawn to the carefully thought out swales (swale = "drainage ditch.")

The problem with that great, simple, workable theory comes today when the "greedy developer/builder" gets a site plan approved by the idiots downtown on the "zoning board" allowing him/her to cram 24 houses on a little 5 acre piece of dirt which slopes toward the middle on all four sides.

Then when it rains and everyone's government mandated gutters overflow everyone ends up living on water front property and someone possibly is flooded out by all of the highly directed water pouring out of downspouts.

Come to think of it, I believe that the code enforcement folks down in Florida have the right idea as I learned when I was permitting a house (which I never ended up building) in Gulf County Florida.

While they still require gutters and down spouts, down there they will only allow your house and other solid, non-permeable things like concrete/asphalt driveways and patios to cover something like 45% of the total real estate area of your lot.

That way when monsoon season hits or a Hurricane or Tropical Storm comes ashore the water which lands on your property has a place to go and soak into the ground in the process before washing your car and your neighbors Dachshund Puppy into the bay or Gulf of Mexico.

Fortunately up here in Eastern Tennessee we have a near half acre lot like everyone else on our street and we're on the uphill side of the subdivision so other than my gutters pissing me off two or three times a year we don't see many serious water problems.

Still, if it were up to me I'd take a crowbar and a hammer and BEAT THOSE OLD GUTTERS off my house and just let things drip all around when it rains.

Don't tell the government morons, but from what I can tell that's what happens (water pouring over the flooded gutters in sheets) at least half the time on most homes due to stopped up gutters/downspouts...so what good does making people buy them (gutters) if they don't keep them clean?

Maybe Obama and the Obamamanics can appoint a "Gutter Tsar" to run around inspecting gutters and fining people for having trees and weeds growing up out of their stopped up gutters like the stupid renters a couple of doors down from here do as I write this tirade.

Wait...

OK...I'm going to stop writing now because the longer I go the more pissed off I get it seems about...of all things...government mandated GUTTERS...

oh....OH....ah....Ah....AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH...

Clunk...

(the sound of me falling over backwards out of my chair...)

Home Sweet Home

Early Return Avoids Rainfall...


This morning I made an executive decision to blow out of the upstate of South Carolina a day early and head back home here to the Turbo Pup Compound on the Banks of the Mighty Tennessee River after I cooked breakfast for the crowd.

Based on the rainfall here this afternoon and what I'm seeing on the Weather Channel, it was a wise decision.

We only had a little fog over on Saluda grade coming up into North Carolina, and then it only finally started raining once we were back in Knoxtown a couple of exits from home.

After unloading/unpacking and a trip to one of our weekend watering holes for drinks and dinner, I've been wallowing around on the sofa watching the Kentucky Derby and trying to catch up on my sleep--missing my mid-day nap two of the past three days--only sleeping three or four hours each night on the sofa because the Turbo Pup and her Mom took over the Guest room Queen sized bed all three nights we were visiting.

So now I have to go round up the flashlights and check the batterys because we're under a Tornado and Flash Flood watch until tomorrow morning, and I hear the bed and a crossword puzzle calling my name and I think I'll call it an evening and try to get some more sleep.

Regards Y'all...

Dain Bramage

Watch This...You'll Laugh





Heh...

Expert Thumb Twiddler For Hire

Wasting Time With One Hand Tied Behind My Back...


Dang it...I'd almost forgotten how good I am at doing nothing all day.

Take yesterday, for instance.

I didn't do a darn thing...if you don't count eating and drinking and taking the Turbo Pup for a couple of potty walks.

Heck, I didn't even bother to blog any in the process, but I did check e-mail a couple of times and found out my latest shipment of pneumatic control valves arrived at my customer's plant and even better, they were shipping me another set of eight to rebuild next week.

And here's the crazy thing about my situation...

There's a darn good chance that I'll end up doing the exact same thing all day today.

Wish me luck...If you will...

Palmetto State Blogging

Lazy Days In South Carolina...


We hadn't been back across the Smokey Mountains through Ashville to Greenville in about a year until yesterday...that situation being helped by the closure of I-40 at the Tenn/NC line last October by a huge rock slide that took until last weekend to repair.

Fortunately we found both east bound lanes of the interstate open and traffic moving like nothing ever happened mid afternoon, and even though one west bound lane was still closed the traffic seemed to be moving smoothly in the opposite direction also.

The Turbo Pup and I are hanging around with my old college roommate for the day while Pat has meetings with a new health provider client, then hopefully the weather will hold up for a lake trip tomorrow--something I haven't done in a couple of years.

There was a time in my life when I almost lived on the water full time, but the absence of important things like OWNING A BOAT since my 32' Sea Ray was stolen in 2003 down in Florida has limited my ability to burn mass quantities of gasoline while floating around the liquid parts of the Earth's surface.

Of course with Gas running over $3 a gallon in marinas I don't miss filling up a 150 gallon fuel tank. Do the math...$450 for a couple of days worth of fuel is a luxury I haven't been able to afford for quite a while now.

The best way to do boating is to have FRIENDS that own the boats, then you go out and drink a few beers and get sunburned, and at the end of the day you toss them a $20 bill for gas and say "Bye...had a good time..." and drive home as they spend the next two hours cleaning things up and tieing things down.

I, actually, being a professional Pirate/Beach Bum and competent deck hand, generally stay around and help swab the decks and wipe the suntan lotion off the upholstery and fiberglass and so on.

It's actually fun to me to take care of a boat...just writing about it makes me want to go to Boat trader.com and torture myself looking at used boats right now.

Pirate Porn I call it...ohhh Baby...look at the Hull on that one...

Government Sponsored General Motors' Lies

The Devil's In The Details...


My blog Idols over at Powerline blog pointed out this article in Forbes online which further clarifies the mis-statements--verging on outright fraud--contained in the latest round of General Motors TV ads and GM CEO Ed Whitacre's companion op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal.

In the WSJ piece Mr. Whitacre writes: "Today, General Motors is announcing that it has made a payment of $5.8 billion to the U.S. Treasury and Export Development Canada. We're paying back—in full, with interest, years ahead of schedule—loans made to help fund the new GM.

Our ability to pay back these loans less than a year after emerging from bankruptcy is a sign that our plan for building a new GM is working."

What he fails to mention is that GM hasn't turned a dollar of profit yet...and they paid back only $6.7 billion out of $49.5 billion (including some earlier payments) the US Federal Government put into the company in 2008-2009.

He also fails to mention that in paying off the 7% loan using TARP funds (read that "other" taxpayer money previously given to them for "operating capitol"), it also allows the Obamamaniacs in the government to save face with the voters while they tell the US Department of Energy it's OK to loan GM yet another $10 billion at 5% for use in retooling their auto plants to meet the Government's own increased gas mileage (CAFE) standards in 2011.

Click on the link and read the entire article if you want to know more and can stand learning about the continuing stream of lies told by and on behalf of our first black president and his inept administration.

I have to go now and soak my head in ice water before it explodes, then finish packing in anticipation of heading over to South Carolina this afternoon for a long working weekend vacation.

Regards Y'all...

Hide The Decline

Global Warming Humor...If There Is Such A Thing...


For those of you who are too busy to follow the realities of the gigantic International Fraud being foisted on prosperous countries like the United States by the United Nations and our own internal bunch of sniveling, booger eating, tie-died, patchouli stinking, tree hugging, greenie weenie Owl Gore followers...

I offer as a public service the following brief insight garnered from my own efforts expending hundreds of hours reading crap that doesn't make it into the NY Times and the front pages of Yahoo News or your local newspaper.

First of all, you have to understand that about 75% of the popular "pseudo scientific" crap used to support the entire Global Warming Fraud and currently being used by Democratic/Liberal/socialist America Hating members of congress in their efforts to pass Cap and Tax "Cap and Trade" legislation was produced by a guy at Penn State University named Michael Mann...inventor of the infamous "hockey stick graph" purportedly showing a rapid increase in global temperatures cause by man and man made "greenhouse gasses"--namely Carbon Dioxide.

After Dr. Mann published his gerrymandered chart using data he liked and excluding a whole butt load of stuff he didn't like and that didn't support the ideas that were getting his inane research efforts funded with government grants, the whole world wide population of "global warming' fleas and ticks and whores and charlatans jumped on his bandwagon and, supported by the likes of former Vice President Owl "giant carbon footprint" Gore things were cruising along on autopilot for about ten or fifteen years or so...UNTIL...

A bunch of other scientists...REAL scientists--not guys like "The Professor" on "Gilligan's Island", started noticing that the hottest year in modern records wasn't in the 1990's as Mann and his ilk including a couple of idiots at NASA suggested.

The hottest year on record was actually in the late 1930's (I'm too lazy to Google the fact right now and it doesn't really matter in the course of this diatribe.)

Professor Mann conveniently left that little factoid out of his data chart when he was drawing his "hockey stick" Graph.

Fast forward to 2010 and even though with the leaking of the E-mails from the lab in Britain and everything else, Mann (and our Democratic Congress) still has gonads big enough to want to complain when someone challenges his findings and reputation or makes fun in a humorous sense thereof.

To that end, I give you "Hide the Decline"



and "Hide the Decline II" (produced after Mann threatened to sue the producers of the first video for using his "image" without his permission in the parody.)



I'm really tired of talking and writing about the subject of "Global Warming" and it's latest evolution..."Climate Change", but as a good citizen and blogger I have to mention it every now and then just so I can tell you "I told you so" when gas hits $5.00 a gallon and you electric bill runs $600 a month using "Green energy."

I tried...DAMMIT...

Hubbell Ultra Deep Field 3-D Images

Expensive Photos of Nothing A Whole Bunch Of Stuff?





In my opinion, that's a dang fine use of my Tax Dollars.

Too bad I can't just pay for stuff like that and the military and the interstate highways--stuff I actually use and benefit from--instead of buying housing and paying cash for clunkers for crack heads and earned income credits for idiots that slept through high school before having six kids they can't afford to feed working for minimum wage at McDonald's.

(And there you have it, Ladies and Gentlemen...my angry white Christian Conservative/libertarian male insensitive moment for the day...stay tuned to this channel for more insensitivity as it erupts...)

My Garden's In...But I'm Heading Out

Travel Plans Necessitate Automation...


I'm pleased to report that I managed to sneak out into the garden between rain showers and get the balance of my vegetable/herb seedlings into the dirt yesterday afternoon.

It wasn't pretty, but when it was all said and done I had Mint, Cilantro, Dill, Basil, Fennel, Parsley, and Sage in the Herb Garden area and Sweet Texas Onions, Radish, Okra, Pole Beans, two kinds of Cucumbers, Watermelon and Squash in the main garden along with Colored Bell, Banana and Cayenne Peppers.

All that in addition to three kinds of Tomatoes and Tomatillos in two other separate beds against the back of the house...surrounded with carrot seeds which are now sprouting around the base of the bigger plants to keep the weeds down in theory.

With any luck I'm planting a few other herbs from seeds and I have some GIANT Pumpkin seeds (bartered for in exchange for a cow while climbing a beanstalk I think)to toss out in a few perimeter areas and some other miscellaneous stuff I may sprinkle around and let it fend for itself over the season.

Besides getting most of the chicken anti-rabbit wire stapled up into place around the perimeter, the most important improvement was the installation of a digital timer supplying an area sprinkler and two sections of soaker hose which will allow us to hopefully complete the extensive travel schedule we have planned over the next six weeks...the upcoming long weekend in South Carolina, a week in Alabama around Mother's Day, Florida possibly thrown in for good measure, and a half a week in Kansas City celebrating Pat's Granddaughter's High School Graduation in late May...without everything drying up and turning to dust in the heat.

I don't mind asking the neighbors to pick up the mail and newspaper and occasionally sprinkle a little water on the house plants, but handling watering the garden is a chore best left to family and life long friends, thus the need for the automation.

As usual I'm sure the water system will continue to grow and evolve over the next few weeks and seasons, but the current experimental evolution will just have to do for now.

Time will tell I guess.

Still Raining On My Garden(ing)

Precipitation Delays Progress...


As of this morning I have about half a garden installed in the back yard.

Ten tomato plants of various descriptions, two Tomatillos, and a row each of onions and radishes.

Oh, and there's the expensive Yuppy container pot of pole beans--four plants--that I paid way too much for and transplanted to a spot in the dirt by the rear fence so they can run along the rails and posts.

There's also a whole bunch of carrot seeds I sprinkled around the base of the tomato plants which are starting to germinate, but the Herb Garden part of the planting is still sitting in little pots in my wheelbarrow while the rain continues to fall.

I was planning on finishing things up today and getting the chicken anti-rabbit wire stapled up around the perimeter but it looks like its going to be tomorrow or even Wednesday morning before things dry out enough to risk dragging my compressor and pneumatic staple gun around in the yard.

I wish everything was already in the ground so it could take advantage of the rainfall.

I may sneak outside between storms and try to get some more stuff in the ground at the risk of having more dirt on me than the plant's roots.

Until then...Regards Y'all...

I Guess That They Think We're All STUPID

I'm Not...Are YOU?


Say I'm sitting here living in a house I borrowed money to pay for.

OK?

And then say at dinner last night I told you and all of my friends that I was celebrating because I had paid off the mortgage I used to buy my house with.

Here...have a drink and acknowledge my accomplishment(s).

Hurray...I'm out of my government insured mortgage and can dance the dance of being "Debt Free."

But wait...

At the end of the evening I let it slip...and I let you in on a little secret...

I actually managed to pay off my first mortgage by...

get this...

BORROWING more money from the government to pay off the first mortgage...this time with no real commitment to legally have to pay back the money to Uncle Sam.

What would you think about that?

Pretty damn clever, eeh? Paying off a legal obligation with money that I have no real legal grounds to be forced to pay back...

Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, just in case you only watch ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/MSNBC and listen to what the government appointed lacky CEO Ed Whitacre Jr says in their current TV commercials, you'd think that GM had paid back all of their "bail-out" funds.

If you think that, you'd be WRONG, because the Imperial By God Federal Government of the United States of 'Merica is letting these assholes tell you that they have paid back their loan(s), when in reality what they did is take other Taxpayer money--TARP funds-- and basically robbed Peter to pay Paul.

Here's the story as it has been bubbling around the sidelines on FOX news.


A top Senate Republican on Thursday accused the Obama administration of misleading taxpayers about General Motors' loan repayment, saying the struggling auto giant was only able to repay its bailout money by dipping into a separate pot of bailout money.

Sen. Chuck Grassley's charge was backed up by the inspector general for the bailout -- also known as the Trouble Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Watchdog Neil Barofsky told Fox News, as well as the Senate Finance Committee, that General Motors used bailout money to pay back the federal government.

"It appears to be nothing more than an elaborate TARP money shuffle," Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a letter Thursday to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

GM announced Wednesday that it had paid back the $8.1 billion in loans it received from the U.S. and Canadian governments. Of that, $6.7 billion went to the U.S. treasury.

But Grassley said in his letter that a Securities and Exchange Commission form filed by GM showed that $6.7 billion of the tens of billions the company received was sitting in an escrow account and available to be used for repayment. He called on Geithner to provide more information about why the company was allowed to use bailout money to repay bailout money, and how much of the remaining escrow money GM would be allowed to keep.

"The bottom line seems to be that the TARP loans were 'repaid' with other TARP funds in a Treasury escrow account. The TARP loans were not repaid from money GM is earning selling cars, as GM and the administration have claimed in their speeches, press releases and television commercials ," he wrote.

Vice President Biden on Wednesday called the GM repayment a "huge accomplishment."

All I want to know is, how much longer before everyone joins me with a torch and pitchfork in going to Washington DC and tar and feathering Biden and his ilk and riding them all out across the Potomac River on a rail?

Is it just me?

Crappy Weekend Weather

Poor Forecast Yields Indoor Procrastination...


Dang it...It's supposed to rain all weekend according to the weather forecast. Seems to me to be a good excuse to waste a couple of days on the calendar if I'm not careful.

Check back with me here on Monday, but right now I see a high probability that this weekend I will get ABSOLUTELY NOTHING done here at the Turbo Pup Compound on the banks of the Mighty Tennessee River.

That is, if you don't count cooking.

And possibly doing a little laundry while goofing around in my shop in the basement.

I have a number of non-commercial projects in process I could go down and work on if I can manage to pry myself out from in front of the computer for a few minutes.

There's the balsa wood model airplane kit which is about 1/3 finished, and there's the hardwood vintage canoe model that I started about a year ago and never finished, and then of course there's the second hand push lawnmower which has been cleaned up and the engine torn down to the nuts and bolts...and I have a new gasket set...that could be put back together so I can do a little trimming in the back yard around the garden plots every now and then.

But any and all of that would require EFFORT and ORGANIZATION, and right now I'm feeling LAZY and USELESS.

Like I said...check back later and see what happens.

I have absolutely no idea myself...

I Broke My Big Skillet

Kitchen Consternation's...


For the past few months I've been limping along in my kitchen with the handle on my big deep wall 12" stainless steel skillet slowly cracking away from itself.

I made a couple of temporary repairs using a high temperature epoxy called "Liquid Metal" that seemed to hold for a while, but a couple of weeks ago the handle finally broke off...fortunately in a condition where it didn't splash hot grease or a giant portion of scalding food all over me and the kitchen.

I love that skillet.

I really learned to cook using that big skillet.

It's nothing fancy, just the sort of slightly better than average home kitchen skillet like you could buy at Macy's or Rich's back in the 1990's, but still...

I just refuse to let it go to the scrap heap, but at the same time it's a pain in the butt to pick it up by the little handle on the opposite side from where the main handle was using a pot holder in one hand so today I'm forced to make a decision on a critical piece of Kitchen equipment and the choices are daunting.

It's easy to spend over $100 on a stainless steel skillet of this size, but I'm not sure that tossing out much over half that amount yields anything other than "snob factor" satisfaction for people that watch cooking shows on Food Network but never ever manage to actually lay the TV remote control down and get into the kitchen to cook.

If my old skillet were a car or a car tire, it would have over 100,000 miles on it right now.

Actually, I'd like to replace my old skillet with not one but TWO new skillets, a 12" x 3-1/2" deep straight wall skillet and a 14" sauce/saute pan that can double as a Wok when I get the urge to stir fry something...anything...shrimp...scallops...or just vegetables to keep my ever expanding girth under control.

I don't even care if the new stuff comes close to "matching" the things already laying around in the cabinets here, the idea of a "matched set" of cookware being a concept rendered obsolete years ago when I realized that you naturally wear out certain size vessels in cooking routinely while others sit gathering dust on the sidelines.

Knives are another source of interest here on the kitchen front.

Years ago I gave away an entire set of German Hienkel's to an angry ex-wife in another life. I found the brand to be functional and lovely to look at, but way overpriced.

Again...the snob factor entered into that equation also. I think that good sharp knives don't have to cost a week's pay and they, like your pots and pans, don't have to match to do a good job in the kitchen.

I grew up watching my grandfather on his farm sharpen everything from plow shares to axes, with the kitchen cutlery and his pocket knife thrown in for good measure.

The man could put a sharpened edge on a dried piece of cow dung that would cut your head off if you weren't paying attention.

I figure the same goes for knives today.

I want to buy some new ones, but I don't want to drop the cost of a decent used car into the process.

I've got a couple of sizes of fairly inexpensive chef's knives and some annoying crappy paring knives laying around here that I use a steel on occasionally, and once in a while I drag them down to the basement and get after them with my Dremel grinding tool.

I think I'm going to look into a moderately priced Japanese Sushi blade and a good pairing knife and another 8" Chef's knife, and then spend the rest of my money on a good set of sharpening/whet stones and be done with the process.

I'll leave the "Ginsu" Knives and the other stuff from Ron Popiel to the amateurs and late night TV watchers.

Regards Y'all...

Professionally Unprofessional

Old Habits Hard To Unlearn...


I hate to admit that I'm having a hard time having to go back to working on a regular schedule and actually accomplishing something on a pre-arranged basis these days.

I hope that you'll understand how hard it is when I've spent years perfecting doing things in fits and starts using bursts of energy, and then falling back to laying around blogging and yelling at the TV and basically doing nothing all day and night for weeks on end in the periods of time in between the spasms of productivity.

This week is another one of those hated "productive periods."

I've been up since 2 AM tearing down another group of four pneumatic valves and getting them solvent cleaned and rinsed off, and if my energy holds out I'll do another batch of four later this morning and ship out another load of eight units today following yesterday's load of four.

My fingers and hands hurt from handling the sharp steel and aluminum parts and cranking on the wrenches and vise handle, and on that note I think that I feel a nap coming on... before getting back up and doing it all over again.

Regards Y'all...

Day The Earth Stood Still In My Dungeon

All Work And No Play Makes Jack Virgil A Dull Boy...


Just in case anyone needs me...

...you only have to come over to the Turbo Pup Compound on the Banks of the Mighty Tennessee River and look down into my shop...following the trail of dust and fumes and cursing while I watch CNN.

Be back when I have another four valves put back together Y'all.

And have a LOVELY Day...If you will...

Somebody "Chop Sueyed" My Personal "Feng Shui"

Where's All Of My Spare Time Gone?


I don't know Ladies and Gentlemen...

I may have to call the "authorities" or an "expert" or something.

This week has started out even busier than last week did, and in spite of loafing around the later part of last week and the weekend trying to shake some sort of "creeping crud" that had taken hold of my spine, now I find myself WaaaaaAAAAAAyyyyyyYYYY behind in my duties.

I hope that you'll understand if the posting here is light and/or sporadic this week as valves fly apart and back together and into boxes.

Of course I reserve the right to see something on TV or in the newspaper and, after my eyeballs refocus after returning from being rolled into the back of my skull, explode here onto the pages of your computer screen so you should keep the Windex and paper towels handy I guess.

Latest Owl Gore Anti-Global Warming Scheme

Probably Taxpayer Funded...


Before...




After...



Next time you even THINK about agreeing with 99% of the crap delivered by the sniveling, booger eating, treehugging, eco-friendly greenie-weenies...

You know...

Stuff like being made to drive a car the sized of a Breadbox that gets 100 MPG...

And letting them turn off all of your new Fluorescent, mercury filled, light bulbs about 22 hours each day because all of the Coal Fired Power Plants and Nuclear Plants have been outlawed by the government...and they've torn down all of the Hydroelectric Dams so the Salmon can swim back up rivers.

...and their beloved "Green" solar farms and the wind farms can't keep up except for about two hours a day...

When you and your family are living through all of that and more, just remember what one FREAKING VOLCANO did to Air Travel in Europe and in Asia this past week.

Capiche?


(and yes, that's yet another original concept from my gigantic yet warped brain, rendered for your enjoyment with my Photoshop skills.)

Looking Off My Deck This Weekend

Pretty Yet Steep...

Mancamp Blackmail Evidence

AKA The Old Farts Drinking Beer Association...

Traveling In Internet Hell

Thus The Reason For No Recent Posting...


More later...



...It's later now, and I'm a little under the weather suddenly and I've had a long couple of days traveling and visiting with people I've known for somewhere between 29 years (an old Architect employer/friend) and some others I went to grade school thru High School back in Alabama starting about 45 years ago.

The place we're staying here in the Bent Tree Resort in the North Georgia mountains had four deer standing virtually in our front yard as we entered the driveway and we had to wait for them to wander out of the roadway in broad daylight so we could enter the driveway.

We're here to attend my first "Mancamp" (actually the fourth annual for most of the rest of the group) and they made an exception to allow me to bring Pat and little Missy the Turbo Pup as long as they had separate accommodations for the three day/two night event.

I just rented our own house for the weekend, which was no problem because the house that one of my classmates owns nearby has seven guys sleeping in a three bedroom house (read that there's people sleeping on the floor and on the sofa...etc.)

Meanwhile I have two bedrooms and three beds and two sofas for two adults and one Turbo Pup. I offered to let someone come over and use the extra bedroom but they all wanted to hang around and drink and tell lies all night...so go figure.

The vistas and views are absolutely stunning from our back deck...there's mountains and a blue colored lake. I'll take some photos and post them tomorrow after the sun rises.

I have the official Mancamp title of "Chief Creek Watcher" because during this visit I'm designing a repair support system for an existing concrete patio extending out over a beautiful mountain Stream/Creek along the back property line. The support footings have been eroded and the concrete is sagging and I'm planning on putting in a giant wooden beam and "jacking that sucker back up.

So any way, it's time for me to get a little sleep because I'm cooking a Brunch consisting of pancakes and eggs and sasausage for seven hungry men and Pat and the Turbo Pup about 10:30 tomorrow, and I'm doing two of my soon to be fameous Rogers' signature Pizzas tomorrow night.

Yall have a LOVELY weekend...

More Crap What Pisses Me Off

Charging Extra For WiFi?


I'm sorry, but I don't think that there's hardly a day that goes by these days when I somehow have to subdue the inner urge to rip the arm off of someone I meet in public and proceed to beat them to death with it...

Why?

Because they're so obsequious purple and clairvoyant annoying or just basically STUPID...judging from the behavior I've been forced to endure in the fifteen minutes or half day proceeding the removal of their limb and fatal bludgeoning.

I guess that you can just attribute it to the process of me getting old.

Which is better than the alternative I guess...

Some out there would suggest it's a textbook case of being a Mean Old White Male Caucasian Asshole (or MOWMCA...for short.)

Whatever...I didn't aspire to the condition, but I suffer from a severe case of it none the less.

Believe me, I try to be patient...

But..,

These days it seems that the only certified solution that doesn't involve legal or medical professionals is for me to just stay home most of the time and then when I have to go out to carefully plan where I go and when I get there.

Thus travel on major holidays like Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Labor Day are permanently on my personal "no fly list" and if it weren't for family considerations Thanksgiving and Christmas would be spent in my basement pounding on the laptop and/or watching reruns of Mike Rowe's "Dirty Jobs."

Take this week's trip to Atlanta, for instance...

I don't want to directly offend anyone with this posting, but just let me say that I've seen more stupid behavior in the process of going down there and back in the past 72 hours--mainly from people of other races than my own--than I've seen in the past TWO YEARS.

And what scares me most it that some of these people VOTE.

Let's just leave that at that...

But then again what really got me pissed off was when I arrived at my Hotel...the brand of which is part of the HILTON--as in Paris Hilton--Chain...and found out the their Internet teaser rate did not include Internet.

Isn't selling room and boarding on the Internet without including Internet access a major Oxymoron?

Want Internet?

That costs an extra $9.95 per day?

WTF?

Answer me this...

What hotel, in the middle of a major metropolitan area, in the year 2010, doesn't include "free" WiFi Internet service in their pricing?

Just like when they leave out the price of taxes and surcharges and service fees on your cell phone pricing...why not just "cut to the chase" and tell me what I'm going to PAY IN TOTAL rather than teasing me with prices I will never spend a single night paying.

Don't force the desk clerk to look me in the eye and tell me while I'm standing there with a 25 pound bag full of cameras and 17" HP 250 GB hard drive computer that they're going to make me jack around once I get to my room "logging in" and authorizing extra charges to my credit card while their stupid system locks up and reboots and re-hashes and re-regurgitates and generally just makes me crazy.

Seriously...the building was full of BUSINESS TRAVELERS.

People with two and three cell phones and I gauran-damn-tee you every single one of them had a computer attached to their hip or their forehead or their thigh and the whole concept of charging EXTRA...instead of just putting Internet service in the basic room fee, was in my considered Redneck opinion...

S T U P I D

and unethical because they charged by the day and I would have stayed at another hotel if they told me that up front, even though the law firm/insurance company that hired me is paying the bill.

It's just the "principle" I'm objecting to, something that school "Principals" apparently stopped teaching about thirty years ago

And there you have it Ladies and Gentlemen, my agreement with the theory that more money is stolen by people wearing a suit and tie than are taken each day by the ones employing crow bar and wearing a ski mask.

On The Road Again

Get Me Out Of Here....


OK...I proved I could do it again.

What, you might ask?

Spending three days and two nights in Atlanta.

I'll be back home to the Turbo Pup Compound on the Banks of the Mighty Tennessee River by dinner time tonight.

I'm ready to see my girls...

Live From Atlanta

Dead Actually...


As announced, I'm in Atlanta doing Forensic Injuneering Today--thus the lack of posting due to travel Sunday, a dinner meeting Sunday night, and the morning spent standing around with a hard hat and safety glasses looking at wierd stuff with pipes and wires hooked to it.

I'm tired, having missed my nap, so I think I'll go now and take one.

More later

Sophomore Machine Design Class Lecture At Georgia Tech

After The Fraternity Party EVERYTHING Sounded Like This...





(I forgot to mention that I'm still working on the "Rogers Turbosonic Pulse Doppler Laser Nippleometer"...a device which can measure the ambient temperature by reflecting a highly columated beam of high intensity light off of random women's breasts...)


Heh...



Thanks Rodge

While I'm Thinking About It

Picture Me Giving The Middle Finger To the IRS...


I spent the ENTIRE DAY FRIDAY, after spending parts of several other days in the past couple of months, finishing our personal and business tax returns.

The gift that keeps on giving...starting a Tennessee Corporation...and electing "Sub chapter S" Tax status...continues to make me crazy with Federal and State forms and filings and other crap in spite of the fact that...

The company operated at a nearly $6,000 deficit in 2009, and we didn't hire and directly pay any employees in the calendar year.

Yet the State of Tennessee and the Imperial Federal Government of the By God United States of 'Merica demands that I pay things like a $100 "Franchise Tax" (although I don't have a Franchise) and file forms like 940 and 941 telling them that I don't owe unemployment tax and I didn't pay wages so I don't owe FICA and FUTA taxes and so on.

If the government assholes would get the hell out of everyone's way and stop acting like we work for them as slaves and that every dollar we earn is their money until we can prove otherwise I say things would improve a lot faster in the economy...without STIMULUS PORKULUS...

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

I'm A Traveling Fool

Busy Month...


OK, get this story.

I have to get to Atlanta on Sunday for an informal meeting with a client Sunday night before a Forensic Engineering investigation in a Chiller Plant Monday, then I come back home to the Turbo Pup Compound on the Banks of the Mighty Tennessee River on Tuesday.

No problem.

I've done things like that hundreds of times before.

But then hardly before I can catch my breath and lay around being a bum for a couple of days I have to turn around and head BACK to Atlanta on Thursday afternoon with Pat and the Turbo Pup so she (Pat...not the Turbo Pup) can meet with a hospital client on Friday.

And then late Friday afternoon I'll be bringing two females with me (Pat and Missy the Turbo Pup)to an event in the North Georgia Mountains with a bunch of guys I went to High School with--loosely called "MANCAMP." They're all bunking on the floor and sofas and bedrooms in one house owned by one of the attendees/sponsors, while we'll be residing in luxury in our own 2 bedroom log cabin nearby.

Then there's still the trip to Baltimore to be done in the next week or so and there's another trip to South Carolina for Pat's business...again extending over a weekend with my old College roommate, and when it's all said and done...

...I'd say that our own economy is recovering here at the Turbo Pup Compound on the Banks of the Mighty Tennessee River...

in SPITE of the government (which caused me to work all day yesterday finishing TAX FORMS instead of blogging.)

E*Trade Baby Out-takes

I Actually Use TD Ameritrade...But They're Still Cute




Heh...

I'm Ready To Do Stuff Like This

Except They'd End Up Locking ME Up...


For reference purposes, I keep a copy of the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights on my desk in my office. I also have a machine sewn 9' wide American Flag hanging on the wall across from my desk that I look at most of each and every day.

If I had the time and money I'd go back to college and get a degree in US History, except for the fear that I'd end up killing half of my classmates and 99% of my professors in a fit of liberal revisionist homo hetero negro African American commie pinko socialist historical progressive hating rage.

Thus I celebrate guys like this taking the lead in my absence at "town hall" meetings...





All I can say is "Amen"...Brother...people in government are at best uninformed, and in many cases shear IDIOTS...

My Turbo Pup Wants One Of These

Modern Canine Technology




Heh...

Back In The Saddle Atlanta Again

More Broken Stuff...


I've been running around the Turbo Pup Compound this week trying to clean up a bunch of details because I'm heading back down to Atlanta this weekend on another Forensic Injuneering adventure next week.

As my friends and long time readers know, I have somewhat of a love/hate relationship with the city of Atlanta and the "Atlanta Metropolitan Area", having lived there for 24 years beginning in 1977 while attending Georgia Tech and moving north to Smyrna and Marietta and Vinings.

I got to see the little big city go from 1.4 million people up to over 4 million in population, and in the process become something culturally and socially and politically beyond the scope of which I want to deal with on a daily basis.

I moved to Florida and then on to an Island on the Georgia Coast...and now I live here in Tennessee on the banks of the Mighty Tennessee River in order to get away from the traffic and noise and confusion associated with the town I at first loved and ended up hating.

But next Monday morning about 10 AM I'll be standing in a boiler room looking at something that broke--and fortunately didn't kill anyone--and possibly visit with a few old friends Sunday and Monday night in the process.

I can hardly wait to get there...and at the same time I can hardly wait to get back home...

The Things Going On In My Basement

When I Don't Have Time To Make My Own Drink


I'm building one of these...




Four valve rebuilds in process...with eight more arriving today, so I have little time to write....Y'all have a LOVELY day...if you will...

(thanks for the link Rodg)

The First Day Of The Rest Of My Life

Remembering Not To Forget...


On this morning on the calendar in 2001 I was waking up in a motel room homeless, with virtually everything I owned either chared black, else sitting within the four walls of that rented space or contained inside the confides of my old Chevy Suburban.

Turns out I still had a Weber Kettle Grill and my old Nissan Maxima were still intact, but everything else looked like this:













The old 1966 house wasn't fancy, but I owned it (stole it for next to nothing out of an estate foreclosure when I needed a place to stay while getting divorced...I know...too much information)

Hey...don't laugh at it...that house had a $4,000 surround sound stereo TV media room in the basement den...you got to have your priorities straight...

I was nearly finished renovating it--new roof, new soffits & fascia and exterior paint, and if it wasn't brick on four sides it would have collapsed because the kitchen and master bedroom crashed into the basement after they put the fire out.

My personal and professional life was about in similar conditions, and so today you can understand why I feel like a good deal of healing has taken place since then--especially when I don't even remember to write about the event until the day after it occurred nine years later.

There's some people out there that still won't speak to me because of things that happened when my spirit was also descending into the depths and catching on fire like my house, but all I can do is say "I'm sorry" and keep on moving forward...

things are just as positive now as they were negative then, and I'm dang sure happy to still be here "after the fire."

On The Seventh Day He Rested He Rented A Lawn Tiller

Beat To Death By A Gasoline Engine...


So I know it's sacrilegious (or possibly semi-sacrilegious)to do yard work on Sunday, but at the risk of earning myself a lightning bolt on Easter Sunday afternoon I got off my butt and went up to Home Depot and brought home a medium sized lawn tiller.

I couldn't stand waiting any longer and with the weather forecast changing from rain on Saturday and Tuesday to sunny and mid eighty's through the rest of the week I felt like I had to get the garden and tomato plots tilled up before the ground set up like concrete.

Since it was 2 PM on Sunday afternoon Home Depot has a policy of letting you keep their rental tools until 9 AM the next morning for the half day rate.

Yeah...RIGHT...after only TWO hours of hanging on to the infernal machine I had everything I deemed reasonable busted up and I loaded that sucker back up in the car and tossed it back in the front door of the store and ran as fast as I could in the other direction.

It basically whipped my butt in the process, but working in ten or fifteen minute torture sessions I was able to get a 36' x 10' area and two 8' x 12' areas dug up about 8" deep.

My hand's and forearms have had it, and if 8" isn't deep enough according to the experts, let the experts come over and bring their tiller and they can have at it.

So any way, it's still a little risky to plant certain crops here at the Turbo Pup Compound now because we still have a couple of weeks of frost possible, but I'm tossing a couple of store bought tomato plants into the ground any way and sewing some carrots around their bases for ground cover.

Meanwhile down in the basement I have a bunch of tomato and pepper seeds already germinating and I'm planting some more Herb seeds like Mint in egg cartons that don't have to be out until May today.

I guess it's time now to take a couple more Tylenol and go lay back down on the heating pad.

Y'all have a LOVELY week now...

A Muppet Easter Bunny?

"Don't Stand By Me"





Heh...

Easter

I'm Taking The Day Off...


I hope everyone has a chance to go to church today if they want, visit with family, watch the kids chase around looking for eggs and stuff, and generally take pause to remember all of the people in all of the places in the world who are afraid to practice their religion in public and end the day just happy to have not had a bomb blow up in their front yard or a bullet pass through their bedroom wall.

I know I'm glad to live here, in spite of the idiots in Washington DC, rather than in Europe or Ethiopia or Iran/Iraq.

Little Kids in Afghanistan wouldn't know what to do if their only worry in life was waking up this morning and finding a basket with fake green grass full of colored eggs and candy.

It's too bad so many Godless people here hate the country we've spent over 200 years building...somehow feeling guilty because we've worked hard and have it so good...and do everything they can to tear us down and make us equal to France and England and even Russia.

But since it's Easter I'm going to stop writing now (because I'm probably by and large preaching to the choir) and go back to my first paragraph...

Hope you have a Happy Easter...