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