My Hysterical Historical Perspective

I'm Back out of the Fiery Steel Furnace...


Some years ago I read a editorial news story which suggested after WWII GM and the other auto manufacturers paid and lobbied local and national politicians to have the Cities and regions decommission their street cars so more people would have to buy their own cars, and the passenger railroads also saw their own demise begin (in spite of /addition to their own stupidity) at the hands of autos and airlines.

After the streetcars were gone and the auto traffic jams began, then of course the motor companies had the foresight to come back and offer to sell those same cities/politicians fleets of gas and diesel powered buses to drive each day over the same asphalt covered rails which once served to guide the daily journeys of vehicles powered by what???

...ELECTRICITY?

Today it kills me the hysteria over gas prices, and all of the 1970's Carter era rhetoric about Ethanol and "alternative energy" and hybrid electric cars.

Where do these tree hugging booger eating panty waisted Owl Gore/Ralph Nader following morons think that electricity comes from...Mars?

The Internet?

Plllluuuuuueeeeaaaasssseeeeeeee...

All I know today is that I'm back in the Coal fired energy business again after my self imposed hiatus and what amazes me is that we can't find qualified people to take a half dozen six figure jobs in our firm.

There's more grey and bald heads than kids in the building, although age really doesn't matter.

At least three of the recent hires including me came back out of various stages of "retirement" from other places to come to the heart of the Tennessee By God Valley Authority (another post depression era Government funded boondoggle come fairly successful private enterprise) and we feel fortunate to find Knoxville to be a great place to live so far.

So much for the "unemployment crisis" and "age discrimination" while we're at it.

Here's an Idea...

Think about this while you're glancing at the front pages of your local dead tree print edition of the Newspaper this morning and as an exercise try constructing your own Newspaper headline.

Ready???

Imagine how the Buggy Whip and Horse Saddle makers whined in the 1920's and 30's when Henry Ford was in the process of putting a Model T or Model A in every barn and stable in preparation for "transferring our wealth" to the Middle East?

Here's my News Headline Ideas...

Horses Lament Lack of Work!!!

Whip Manufacturers Cracking

Owners Saddled With Rising Debt

And what about the people that were in the "livery stable business"?

Can I run for Congress with that plank in my platform?

See...It's all just a matter of historical perspective, in my Considered Redneck Opinion

Today "forty acres and a mule" would go about as far as a "chicken residing in every pot..."

(come to think of it, over most of the last 60 years everyone has had their chickens--government supplied or otherwise--but today the government doesn't seem to be happy until chicken cost $10 per pound because all of the chicken feed has been converted into gasoline.)

Our Little Island A Long, Long Time Before We Got There...

New Cannon 850 Multi-Function Printer/Copier/Scanner In The House


This evening I scanned this reproduction of an old photo Pat bought when we lived on St. Simons:



And after scanning it and spending a half hour with Photo shop doing some clean up and cropping I had THIS image:



(They're really high resolution copies, so click in the first image and enjoy the scratches and speckles, then look at how much of the "noise" I removed...a new copy of Photo Shop is on the way to my house as I write.)

This just In...

New Cialis Salad Dressing A Success


As I was sitting here doing some work and enjoying FOX News in the background on the computer, a thought came to me regarding a new use for all of the chemicals they're trying to sell me to improve my middle aged performance in areas outside the office, in private, and generally after dark.

You think that anyone would be interested in my new Salad dressing/fertilizer based on the male impotency drug Cialis?

So far it works pretty darn well.

Here, take a look at a photo of the results of some of our early experiments that took less than one day to produce:




(Yes, I made this whole story up all by my wittle self, but I didn't grow the cucumber and I suspect that there's little use for anything that size in real life. The same is true most of the time for other chemically treated things that size found hanging around or pointing at the ceiling for longer than four hours...)

Steel For Sale...

Cheap

I don't actually have the steel, but I have the drawings for a bunch of it haunting me day and night and would be happy to sell them for a good price unfinished.

Then again, I guess that I signed up for this when we left our little island for money--and I've already been paid for most of it so I guess it's time to head back in and play with it some more.

Doesn't The Post Office Foward Mail To The Weather Nerds?

Hey "Fay"...WE'VE MOVED

I came home today having spent ZERO time on the Internet at work, so after checking my E-Mail I dove over to the NOAA Hurricane Web page to see what our girl Fay was doing down in the Florida Straits and found this image:



Then I thought..."Isn't that nice, Fay's coming to visit me..."

Then I remembered..."I don't live on our little island any more..."

I still miss the place, regardless of Owl Gore's warnings.

Deadlines

work, Work, WORK...


Heap Big Pow Wow (Que the tribal drums.)

Injuneers everywhere.

I'm not finished behind paralyzed with the client's ongoing yet normal indecision.

Management kissing posteriors.

Not a pretty sight.

Meeting at 9:30 AM

Painting on make up donning a drop cloth.

Hope I don't get anything on me...

Can Someone Explain THIS To Me

The Lamestream Mainstream Media Continues To Ignore The Issue

As my opening to this commentary, I offer this critical Internet Link to a formerly famous document which some years ago was written as an OUTLINE (not a micromanagement plan) for the conduct of a life here within what ended up to encompass the borders of all lands lying north of Mexico, south of Canada, and east and west of the shores of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

It's usually called the US Constitution (although I'm not quite sure what they're teaching future voters kids today in government public schools, so excuse me if I appear ignorant.)

Here's the words I'm concerned with this morning, Article II, Section 1 of the aforementioned document.

"No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States."

Pretty straight forward stuff.

Any Questions?

Then why does the rest of the planet discuss things like this document and numerous other things that have or haven't been released about Candidate Obamarama (can anyone say John sKerry's discharge papers?):

in news articles like this one:

Jakarta - The "little curly-haired one" is well remembered by his Indonesian teacher Israella Darmawan.

It was in 1968 when Barack Obama joined her class, and she likes the idea that he soon might become the world's most powerful person.

"We hope and pray that he will become the best US president of all time," says Darmawan.

Darmawan was Obama's teacher while he attended the Catholic St Francis of Assisi school in Jakarta's up-scale Menteng district.

Darmawan, 64, who retired last year, now only returns to her former school to tell current pupils about their famous alumnus.

She takes a faded book from a shelf, the school register dating back to 1968.

"Barry Soetoro"

Under registration number 203 it reads in large-lettered handwriting: "Barry Soetoro."

"Barry" used to be Obama's nickname, which he used together with his stepfather's last name.

While you probably haven't heard a single word about the issue of Obamarama's eligibility to even run for president?

Let me offer this candid, insightful question if this is true (that Obamarama wasn't born in the US to parents of US citizenship):

Can we really afford to have an "undocumented worker" hanging around at this "Pay Level"?

(if you didn't watch the "forum" last night you'll miss half of the question...)

Hurricane Predictions "Fay"ding Away

So Go Buy Some Milk, Bread, And Batteries...


As you may recall, I, as a long time self proclaimed "Hurricane Expert," spend a good deal of time watching weather reports and looking at on line computer models of the atmosphere.

Call it a hobby...call it an infection affection, but as I have said many before, knowing what I know today and seeing Jim Cantori's shiny head being paid zillions of dollars by the Weather Channel to stand around in a rain coat telling you to run away or take cover, I sometimes wish I could go back to 1977 and major in Meteorology rather than Injuneering.

Problem was, in those days (the '70's) all you thought of when you thought about weather was the local TV dude on WTVY in Dothan or the weather "bimbo" on the national morning TV shows that waived their hands over a map and reported that today it might rain somewhere and snow somewhere and the rest of us were going to dry up or burn up and blow away courtesy of the Santa Ana or Chinook winds.

Maybe I should call my self a "weather critic" rather than a weather expert. Sort of like a "Wine Critic" or even more accurately, a Movie Critic."

In support of that assertion, I can definitely tell you that a nice bottle of "Mad Dog 20/20" wine has a hard time comparing to a bottle of Fonseca 1977 Vintage Port Wine (which I am currently lovingly harboring in my personal cellar right now) or a 1994 bottle of Stags Leap Cabernet Sauvignon, and I'm also pretty sure that you're wasting your time and money going to see the latest productions by Weird Al Yankovitch or Michael Moore.

Back to my original topics of Hurricanes...I guess what I really do is not predict Tropical Weather.

What I do predict and tell you loudly is about our inability to EXACTLY predict within a WEEK what will happen in the coastal weather department.

Heck, the local weather men can't even tell me for sure if it's going to rain here on the banks of the Mighty Tennessee River at noon today.

So when the so-called real "Hurricane Experts" puff up their chests and proclaim an above average hurricane season I have to ask this question...

SO WHAT?

What do you want us to do?

Run Away screaming?

Pee in our Pants?

Move to California and subject ourselves to wild fires and earthquakes?

Move to Iowa and die of boredom?

WHAT?

And think about this for a minute.

Since 2005 when Katrina hit, the following Hurricane seasons (including 2008 to date) have been below average, although every single year the "experts" have predicted an above average season.

That's right, it's not in their best interest financially or ego wise to predict that the waters of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico will be calm.

It doesn't make news, and it doesn't increase government and private funding for "weather" or "hurricane" research. If something ceases to be a real problem (or an imagined problem like man made global warming) the money goes away along with the news reporters.

So any way...now we have our first real threat of the 2008 season in mid-August and I ask you to sit back and enjoy the upcoming hysteria. I don't want a single roof blow off or anyone to spend a single minute without power/TV/Internet service not to mention being injured or killed, but at the same time ...

GIVE IT A REST.

We know...we know...WE KNOW ALREADY...

Evacuate if we're in the path of the coming storm, else buy 15 loaves of bread, 9 bags of ice, and tons of batteries if we're nearby, and then get on with being bored out of our minds by the upcoming presidential election coverage.

(BTW they just revised the storm path and forecast for FAY and now they're saying that it won't make hurricane strength as it comes ashore somewhere around Port Charlotte or Tampa.)

I Wanna' Talk About Me

Wanna' Talk About I, Wanna' Talk About #1....Oh My Me My...(With Apologies to Mr. Toby Keith)


So here I am, in the middle of the SUMMER, looking around for winter shoes and stuff to service my "Global Warming Induced Climate Accommodation Needs" since moving up here from our little island to the heartland of the US tundra the banks of the Mighty Tennessee River and I found this image (click on the picture and look closely):

The ad stressed the protection it afforded from Lyme Disease and West Nile Virus.

( I put my Lymes in my Tequila on ice and limit my travels to places not further than the East bank of the Nile river so I can rest easy most of the time without netting blocking my vision...)

Any way, it stopped me in my tracks on my keyboard for a few minutes few seconds...then I shook my head and grabbed a bag of tools and went outside to install a new flood light fixture on the corner of the carport.

Meanwhile my brain kept seeing that image of that man standing there clad in a tee shirt and denim shorts, wrapped ENTIRELY in some kind of fancy expensive mesh...

AND HE'S NOT A BEEKEEPER!!!

That's right You're supposed to buy this mesh stuff just to walk outside in the morning or afternoon on vacation.

Or wear it when you're AT WORK.

I'm sorry Ladies & Gentlemen, but I believe that this CRAP is just like the omnipresent Bicycle helmets (when I lived my entire life riding with my ever greying, ever balding head helmet less, with whatever hair was left over flapping in the breeze while on a bike), handrails on everything taller than 12 inches off the ground, and the Chinese/Asian propensity to wear a disposable surgical mask on the subway or in the farmers market at the Gourmet Fried Poodle Counter.

How soon will it be before everyone from the North Slope of Alaska to the thong clad topless nudists on Miami's South Beach are forced by the Fashion Police or some other government entity to wear something like this when outside of their energy efficient, eco-friendly, Lead and Mercury-free government subsidized housing modules?

I don't know about you, but I simply refuse...

(Pass me the "Off" now if you please)

"Body Armor" For Western Europe

The Polish Take The Plunge...


Dang have things ever changed in my lifetime in Poland.

Never actually been there myself, but if I ever make it to Europe I intend to stop by Warsaw as I skip over London and Paris on my way through Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Turkey if I can get a good enough Kurdish disguise (did I mention Casablanca on a side trip to northern Africa?)

From the days when a blue collar guy named Lech Walesa led strikes in the shipyards under the iron fisted rule of the former Soviet Empire and rose up to later become president of the newly freed country, to yesterday's announcement of Poland agreeing to accept multiple layers of American missile defenses and the stationing of troops inside their borders to defend Eastern Europe from the Iranians or Moscow or whichever group of morons decides to start lobbing explosive filled steel tubes through the air in the future, all I can do is sit on the sidelines and cheer--but I'm happy with the progress none the less.

Of course the Russians and our domestic booger eating pantie waisted liberal pacifist citizens are already declaring doom and gloom and blaming us for an "escalation" of military hostilities in the region.

You want "escalation" of "hostilities", try bombing a few airports and malls in Georgia (in the United States) and see what the UN would have to say about matters. I seem to recall our own government doing exactly that in July of 1864 and look at where we all are today as a result of that effort.

Instead of living in the sovereign country of Tenalabamkentuckigeorge (or something like that), I live in a place that has ended up almost exactly where President Davis and General Lee were afraid we were going.

The states have virtually no rights, the citizens almost have even fewer, and yet the Federal By-God Government of the United States of 'Merica continues to exist in spite of, not because of, the actions of pompous asshole Senators and Representatives we elect and send to Washington DC every two or four years.

And now we're gonna have a base and a bunch of anti-missile missile's in Poland. Based on the German's attitude and negative public statements toward us over the last couple dozen years, I say we pull the entire crowd of military personnel and equipment out of Germany and move them all over the land of Kielbasa and Cabbage.

And yet the Russians complain. And people in Washington and San Francisco wag their fingers in dismay...

Let me remind everybody that the missile "defense shield," as the name implies, is a DEFENSIVE measure, not OFFENSIVE.

The targeting systems and payloads are designed to destroy little packages of fast moving metal with wings attached, not entire neighborhoods or cities.

Let the Russians whimper and cry if they feel like it, I say it's just like giving the People living daily in the sights of the slumbering cold war aficionados and wild eyed islamofascists a bullet proof vest, and until of the wimpy booger eating limp wristed politicians and voters can get a spine and talk the Iranians out the reactor business, we aught to install phase two of the system in Tel Aviv.

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

Making the Term B.C. Politically Correct

Another Rerun because I'm Lazy..

I wrote this back on April 26, 2005, and I found it because someone googled the topic this evening...so here it is in it's entirety:

My head is spinning around…again.

This time it’s over the the Political Correct Police’s efforts to eliminate the terms B.C. (Before Christ) and A.D. (Anno Domini) from textbooks and other reference books…

“ALBANY, N.Y. -- In certain precincts of a world encouraged to embrace differences, Christ is out.

The terms "B.C." and "A.D." increasingly are shunned by certain scholars. Educators and historians say schools from North America to Australia have been changing the terms "Before Christ," or B.C., to "Before Common Era," or B.C.E., and "anno Domini" (Latin for "in the year of the Lord") to "Common Era." In short, they're referred to as B.C.E. and C.E.”

There are clearly a number of people out there that have way to little to do with their time.

The modern calendar works quite well, in my opinion, and just like the government’s force feeding Americans the metric measurement system in the 1970’s, I think that this effort will be doomed to failure. (Being an engineer, I am quite comfortable with the metric system, by the way.)

But there is more…

“The terms B.C. and A.D. have clear Catholic roots. Dionysius Exiguus, an abbot in Rome, devised them as a way to determine the date for Easter for Pope St. John I. The terms were continued under the Gregorian Calendar, created in 1582 under Pope Gregory XIII.

Although most calendars are based on an epoch or person, B.C. and A.D. have always presented a particular problem for historians: There is no year zero; there's a 33-year gap, reflecting the life of Christ, dividing the epochs. Critics say that's additional reason to replace the Christian-based terms.

"When Jews or Muslims have to put Christ in the middle of our calendar ... that's difficult for us," said Steven M. Brown, dean of the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City.

The new terms were introduced by academics in the 1990s in public elementary and high school classrooms.”

So they want to replace “Christian based terms in our calendars” and “academics” have already introduced the terms into public elementary schools and high school classrooms?

What I want to know is…

WHO THE HELL APPROVED THIS BRAINSTORM?

DID YOU KNOW ABOUT IT?

What are they teaching your kids in our government schools? I don’t have any kids myself, but this really pisses me off.

Why don’t we just throw out the calendar all together. Let’s toss out the alarm clock while we’re at it.

Let’s just re-number everything as before Clinton (BC) and after Clinton (AC.)

Or how about using the terms before gay marriage (BGM) and after gay marriage (AGM)?

Let’s have a calendar that completely skips the birthdays of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln and eliminates Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter. There would just be a blank square on the page with no number and no title—just a big smiley face or a picture of a condom.

I know...lets design a clock that runs backwards and only chimes on Martin Luther Kings’ birthday, Earth Day, and Gay Pride Day?

Let’s eliminate the minimum wage and pay everyone $20 an hour to stay home and smoke dope and watch Public Television.

Ah...Ahhhh..AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH (New text added for emphasis)

I’ll see y’all, I’m moving to Costa Rica.

Home Again

Back To Work...


I have to jump on a few hundred tons of steel and wrestle the details onto paper this week, and I'm thinking about trying to get 40 hours in between now and Friday afternoon, so you'll have to excuse me if the blogging is light as a result.

Then again, something may get my attention or piss me off and in that case there will be words here letting you in on my opinion.

Until then...Y'all have a nice week (what's left of it.)

Back On The Road Again

Human's Worn Out...Turbo Pup Getting That Way

Well, It's time to get ourselves back on the road again later this morning, moving from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean back to the banks of the Mighty Tennessee River. The good news is that we've accomplished all that we hoped for on this journey

In my mind the only negative thing is that we have to leave the coast yet again.

As a rule I generally refrain from publishing photos of myself and Pat here on the blog, but suffice it to say that you can understand our condition and experiences by looking at these shots of our little Missy the Turbo Pup.

For instance, how can your face not look like this:

When you've spent a couple of days in the sand doing things like this:

And this:



Somebody's got a nice bath coming their way tomorrow evening in Knoxville.

Anyone care to guess who?

Blogging In Year Five

Hurricanes...We Don't Need No Stinkin' Hurricanes???



In ending this year's blogging birthday celebration, I though that it was more than just a little appropriate that my final re-run blog posting was on the topic of Hurricanes.

You see, I feel like I know a thing or two about Hurricanes.

More than the average weather man/woman or other otherwise media terrified citizen knows about the mature remnants of "tropical storms."

Having lived as a teen through Hurricane Elloise in the 1970's in LA (Lower Alabama) and witnessing my parent's dismay with Opal in the 1990's and having my mother go it solo through yet another storm since 2000 (sorry Mom, I forget the name), I feel that I AM AN AUTHORITY on the topic of Hurricanes and can provide you with insight that cannot be gained anywhere else than here on this blog.

Just in case you haven't noticed, this year' s "Hurricane Season" was predicted to be a "doosie", yet thus far we've only featured one storm that spent a month cruising around the middle of the Atlantic ocean and a couple of storms that blasted Mexico and south Texas (where they need the rain more than they fear the winds.)

Now the idiot rocket scientists over at the NOAA Hurricane Prediction Center --instead of admitting that they're wrong--have come back out and are insisting that in spite of the relative quite in the worlds waters that this year the the ocean is MOST DEFINITELY GOING TO JUMP UP AND WILL FLOOD each and every home in it's path and blow the roof off of what is left on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of the US.

The only thing that they haven't done is state that only poor people, minorities, and women need to worry about the storm's wrath.

I'm sorry, but I think that the Hurricane researchers are drinking their own toilet water and have become media addicts of the worst kind. They just can't stand being out of the news and in the absence of storms all they can do is resort to issuing threatening press releases.

All of that said, here's what I wrote on the subject of Hurricanes back in August 2004:

Two hurricanes in one week (well, actually one hurricane and one tropical storm) certainly is a good formula to take your mind off of a number of life's frivolous distractions--particularly if you live on or near the coast of the Southeastern US during the summer months.

Don't you just love the gleam a good 145 MPH wind puts in the eyes of the local TV weather nerds and the gloating staff of "The Weather Channel?" I personally prefer a good weather news story a great deal more than I like following the sexual antics and mis-behaviors of some overpaid athlete and their remorseful female conquest or the endless saga of some poor, photogenic wife whom has paid the ultimate price as the victim of her bad life partner choice.

The present movement of Hurricane Charley is of particular interest to me and my neighbors as it slides across the Florida pennesula this evening toward our homes on St. Simons Island, Georgia. Current local forecasts are for winds only in the fifty to seventy MPH range. The minor storm surge is probably our biggest concern here as most of the island is two feet below the government's so called flood plain and there is only one low lying road connecting the island to the mainland.

Having been a coastal resident since only this past March, I find myself in the early stages of learning the habits and behaviors that will allow me to successfully negotiate the intricacies of storm preparation and, God forbid, evacuation in advance of an approaching storm. I've found that many other longer time residents are in the same boat (excuse the pun.)

You see, the Georgia coast enjoys the distinction of rarely bearing the brunt of tropical weather of the type and severity that Florida and North Carolina does each year. We are, however, tittillatted every three or four years with the possibility of the strike of a bona-fide doosie of a storm. It seems that I have arrived back home from a vacation in Chicago today just in time for such an event.

The thing that is most striking to me thus far is the reality that many if not most people absolutely loose their blankin' minds upon even the hint of the approach of a major storm. For instance, I made a trip to the grocery store this afternoon to pick up a few last minute items--having spent several weeks out of town and arriving with the storm possibly only a half-day away.

The first sign of trouble was that the grocery lot was virtually full of autos and SUV's upon my arrival. The next obvious clue was the availablilty of only three shopping carts inside the front door of the store. The place was an absolute madhouse filled with wildeyed senior citizens and soccer moms who were careening wildly up and down the isles, their carts each filled with bales of toilet paper, paper towels, bottled water, and on most occasions--TWO OR THREE LOAVES of bread. The biggest personal blow was that the Peter Pan peanut butter was sold out entirely (I had to buy Jiff.)

Now I ask you, what makes normally rational people believe that they are actually going to go through two or three jars of peanut butter and three loaves of bread in the one or two days that a storm this size and path could cut us off from civilization? If they do eat all of that peanut butter, they will be so stopped up they could never possibly use an entire case of toilet paper, could they?

In an effort to document my current experiences and assist any future coastal residents in the art of Hurricane preparedness, I would like to offer my own list of Do's and Don'ts:

Do listen to local weather broadcasts every few hours in order to stay up to date on the storm's location, forecast storm track, and any evacuation orders that may be issued.

Don't go to the local bar hours before the storm roars into your neighborhood and get shitfaced drinking kamikaze shots or a half dozen long island ice teas before heading home to tackle hanging that truck load of plywood you just bought at Home Depot over your windows and doors.

Do put together a basic hurricane supply kit including drinking water, prescription medicines, first aid kit, canned foods, flashlight and spare batteries, battery powered radio, etc.

Don't think that you're prepared when your hurricane kit simply includes a twelve-pack of warm beer, a fifth of tequila, a couple of half burned candles from the last storm warning , an old Bic lighter, and an inflatable raft with one broken oar.

Do gas up the car or SUV and move it to high ground prior to the local roads being closed.

Don't venture out during the storm onto flooded roads in high winds at break neck speeds in an attempt to recreate Lt. Dan's hurricane scene in the movie "Forrest Gump."

Do move your boat onto it's trailer and secure it in a safe storage area. Relocate larger boats away from docks, pilings, and other boats and double/triple anchor them in place.

Don't think you are going to weather out the storm on board your boat with your warm twelve-pack and fifth of tequila. (You will end up dead or be seen on CNN by all of your friends and family--you'll be the one hanging by a cable underneath a Coast Guard helicopter.)


Got to go outside to check out the weather again Charley's back offshore in the Atlantic and the eye is tightening up again, more later...

Tough Weekend For Black Artists

And Fans Regardless Of Color Are Having a Hard Time


First Bernie Mac dies

And now I learn that the voice of South Park's character Chef (Isaac Hayes) has Crapped out...

Irritating Irreverent Irrational Politicians

Can't Live With 'Em, Can't Vote Without 'Em


Good gosh but is it ever good to be back home here on our little island, even if it is only for an extended weekend.

Good food...good friends...good weather so far, and I've even managed to make some progress in my never ending real estate investment escapades which might end up yielding me a profit before the end of this calendar year if not sooner.

That said, I promised my readers a peek at my local political commentary, something with which I've managed to make quite a stir a couple of dozen times here over the past few years.

Most recently I've been lamenting the goings on at the highest level of local government, something which we have down here on the Southeastern Georgia coast called a "County Commission."

You might have one where you live...I don't know..but if you don't consider yourself lucky, because our County Commission is IN CHARGE and don't care what we think or want between election years.

County Commissions and more specifically, the individual County Commissioners, are to normal humans like ticks and fleas are to a dog....in as much as their day to day activities make you want to jump around, shake your head, and scratch.

Don't get me wrong, they're not all bad guys, they're not ALL corrupt, and most seem to be relatively normal honest hard working people the day we vote them into office, but then things change when we hand them the keys to the near quarter billion dollar county coffers loaded with tourist dollars here in Georgia's Golden isles.

We have an unfortunate yet obvious class struggle within the borders of our county, with only one incorporated city (Brunswick) in the aforementioned boundaries, and probably 99% of the tax revenue (OK, 75%) is generated on the 11 mile by 4 mile wide island we call St. Simons.

My problem isn't so much with the so-called "commissioners" being outright idiots or thieves, it's with their insistence in weaving and wobbling into areas into which they have little business and even less expertise, and proceeding to write stupid, unenforceable, mineless laws and policies with which they later find being used to bash them in their heads and make Glynn county the laughing stock of the state...something which isn't easy to do if you've spent more than a month living east of the Chattahoochee river and south of the Carolina's and Tennessee.

The latest upheaval which caused me to pound on my computer keyboard and hit the "send" key involved our little island's tourist "Trolley Tour Services", and the plight of a nice lady acquaintance named Bunny Marshal who's earned most of her living owning and operating a reliable tour service here for the past 15 years or so.

The link to the Brunswick News article in PDF form is here...

cliff notes version of the story would tell you that other tour operators have come to town over the past couple of years and had a hard time making a living, so instead of improving their service or understanding that the market is small here they have instead elected to go to the commissioners and complain, causing the commission as a hole whole to react by doing what county commissions do best.

Avoid the subject at first, then after much consideration proceed to screw things up in entirety.

At first they're afraid of "legal action," so instead of letting the status be "quo" they take a defensive default position in which the original players lose yet the new players don't win what they want--economic success.

Then after two or three more rounds of complaints and concessions, what the public ends up receiving from our commission is not two or three options in the Trolley tour business on the Island....Noooooooo....

WE'LL PROBABLY END UP WITH NO TROLLEY TOURS FOR YOU TO TAKE WHEN YOU COME OVER HERE TO SEE WHAT I'VE BEEN RAVING ABOUT FOR THE PAST GOING ON FIVE YEARS.

That's right, according to Bunny, instead of the continuing quaint simple tour around world fameous poet Sidney Lanier's "Golden Isles" past "Bloody Marsh", Christ Church, and General Oglethorpe's Ft. Frederica, you may have to settle for...

a book from the bookstore and your own car for a self guided tour, else...

Nothing.

government...ya' got to love 'em.

Their latest assault on free enterprise has determined that "trolleys" cannot ring their "bells" while stopped in the village pier area--the place where the "tours" have originated since Methuselah wandering the desert the island has had tourists and ferry boats landed adjacent to the current pier in the days when there was no roadway across the marsh from the mainland.

"Trolleys" can only ring their "bells" now and legally annoy people as they drive down Frederica road and the outlying areas of the island.

The people standing around in the village tourist area (a place where people might actually WANT know that there is a trolley tour leaving) are officially protected from "bell ringing" according to the county attorney.

Now here's the text to what I wrote last Thursday which was published Friday in the print edition and here on The Brunswick News Website

I have a few questions for the so called "authorities" of Glynn County.

If I, as a private citizen, buy myself a nice shiny bronze bell and further, I happen to park myself and my bell adjacent to the trolley stop on St. Simons when I'm visiting the area, can I ring my bell whenever I want to?

Or does the local government require that I have to have license and/or a permit to ring my bell?

If noise is a problem in Village and the balance of the SSI waterfront, I'd like to know what measures are being taken to eliminate or minimize the sounds of construction as the new pool and other renovations are taking place.

Maybe I should offer my services ringing my new bell to cover the noise that the jackhammers and backhoes are making over the next year if you would like to pass another resolution to that effect.

Finally, using the same convoluted logic, one could not help but wonder how long it will be before some atheist tourist or local "activist" gets a commission resolution and a legal decision to make the local churches buy a permit else stop ringing the bells in their steeple towers for the same petty reasons Trolley company owners are dealing with today.

I think that that says what needs to be said on the matter...How about YOU?

Some Things That Don't Matter Never Change

But The Stuff That Does Matter Always Does


If you haven't heard me say it here on the blog, let me let you in on a little secret.

I could pretty much care less about the "Olympics."

I'm not quite sure when it happened, but I guess it was around Carter's 1980 "boycott" of that year's games because of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan that my personal relationship with the Olympics and Olympic TV coverage started its steady down hill movement.

Heck, the world came to my doorstep and brought the Olympics to Atlanta in 1996 and I only manage to watch a little piece of the proceedings on TV.

I was working in an engineering office in downtown Atlanta the day in 1989 when the city was officially awarded the games and I celebrated in Underground Atlanta with my boss at the time and with throngs of my fellow Georgians with delight over the prospect, but by the time I had lived with the politics, infighting, and official ticket scalping which ensued in actually bringing the Olympics to a successful completion I made what I still believe today to be a rational decision.

I actually left town for most of the duration of the 1996 Summer Olympics in order to avoid what was projected to be giant traffic jams and congestion. I was, however, scheduled to be in Centennial Olympic Park the evening when the infamous Richard Jewell explosive backpack went off.

Fortunately, a couple of three too many Margaritas at a local Mexican restaurant caused me to stay home in Smyrna that evening so my own personal brush with that disaster was averted.

Any way, writing about the Olympics has been an annual topic here on my blog, and the following posting was first delivered on August 14th, 2004 (back before I knew how to convert html links into plain text):


As Television became a part of most every family's life in the 1960's, so were the political realities of issues like race relations and international politics brought home to our living rooms each and every evening.

Where in the 1940's and 1950's you had to read the newspaper or go to the local movie house to see news reels before each film or during intermission, the Network evening news and cable/satellite television now brings the gory details of worldwide tragedy's into your personal space in suburbia for your individual enjoyment or horror.

With the opening of the $7.34 billion edition of the modern Olympic Games, the current terror threat level and the multi-billion dollar security (that's Billion with a B) reminds me of some historical lessons that we could all probably learn from:

For instance, Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) wins the gold medal in the 1964 Olympics, refuses to be drafted and go to Vietnam, and changes his name to that of a member of that peaceful religion called Islam:

http://espn.go.com/classic/biography/s/Ali_Muhammad.html

Then Palestinian Arab "Terrorists" (lead by a young, future Nobel Peace Prize winner--Yasser Arafat) slip into the 1972 Munich Olympic Village and hold hostage and massacre Israeli athletes:

http://www.wftv.com/news/3643877/detail.html

Another future Nobel Peace Prize winner--one term President Jimmy (smile when you say that) Carter boycotts the 1980 Olympic games because the Soviets invaded Afghanistan...say what???

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/20/spotlight/

Then Richard Jewell took the initial heat for the bombing at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta:

http://www.cnn.com/US/9701/03/olympic.bombing/

So what spine tingling excitement will the current events in Athens (Greece, thank God, not Athens, Georgia...home of UGA) hold for us over the next few weeks???

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=597&u=/nm/20040812/tv_nm/olympics_dc_37&printer=1

We're flying back from Chicago to the Georgia coast for the arrival of Hurricane Charley tomorrow--wish us luck.

Keep watching, listening, and learning, Ya'll...

Missy The Turbo Pup's Back On Our Little Island

And Coincidentally...My Name's Back In The Newspaper Here


I'm quite pleased to report that with the expenditure of eight hours of moderate effort tendered mostly on the national Interstate Highways, and in spite of government proclaimed excessive energy costs, we've managed to make it back to our real "home" here again from the temporary quarters situated on the banks of the Mighty Tennessee River to spend four glorious nights on St. Simons Island, Georgia.

The hotel is within a half mile of our last abode on Alabama street and three miles from the Sea Palms condo in which we resided for over four years, and mother nature managed to hold off the thunder storms for the duration of our southeastward bound sojourn--reserving the obligatory task of blasting us out of our socks with lightening bolts until we were through happy hour and on our way to dinner in an adjacent restaurant and back into our beds for the evening.

Today is my official "Redneck Real Estate" meeting Day with contractors of various specialties and descriptions showing up to finalize ways for me to inject some more of my overtaxed hard earned dollars into my own personal real estate "Tipping" (as opposed to "Flipping") schemes.

When we walked into the building over on the Marsh for a much anticipated reunion with a number of our local friends we learned that a letter that I had hastily blasted off to the Editor of the local newspaper on Thursday morning had been to published in Friday's edition.

I guess that I'm now obligated to buy a large brass or bronze "trolley bell" and hang myself from the lighthouse or a local church steeple--dedicating the balance of my time spent on this lovely but highly troubled planet ringing it on the command of the local county government (capitalization intentionally omitted on the words "county government")

Give me a chance to get some work done this morning and catch my breath and I'll copy the text of my latest "readers newspaper commentary" here for your enjoyment and get on with my fourth anniversary blog birthday blogging.

Regards...y'all...

Posting Number 1901

Help Me...I Can't Stop Writing...

This attempt at humor was originally delivered on August 12th, 2004, was titled "NASCAR Hype," and if you ever watch Racin' you might understand where I'm coming from here:


I enjoy watching an occasional NASCAR race. I’ve followed the sport of stock car racin' since I was a kid in the 1960’s, when it was still in its infancy (by today’s standards,) and guys like Bobby Allison and Richard Petty drove cars that were actually built on the same assembly line beside the ones that parked in your neighbors’ driveway.

The race cars also actually looked like the vehicles in the dealers’ showrooms—except for the 600 horsepower engine under the real steel hood, the roll bars, the lack of a back seat, the STP & Hooker header stickers on the fenders, and the big numbers plastered on the doors and the roof. Come to think of it some of our neighbors in south Alabama had all the stickers and the roll bars and no back seat. I guess you had to be there to understand.

There was little TV exposure in those days except regionally for the really big races like Daytona and Talladega—the Indy 500 was the only race of any kind regularly televised nationally back then. If you got north of or west of Tennessee and hooted and hollered and yelled the number “Three” in public, no one knew what on earth you were talking about let alone would be willing to fight you over whether Dale Earnhart or one of the Allisons was the better driver.

Today things are quite different. Total strangers will beat your Grandma if she happens to ‘dis their driver in public. From New Hampshire to California, from Michigan to Homestead Florida, people are fighting in traffic and willingly paying seventy five or more dollars to attend NASCAR races--events that represent probably the most commercialized 6 hours they will endure in a lifetime, with the singular possible exception of Christmas each year.

What really gets me is the TV interviews they do with the drivers and pit crewmembers. The interviewee is always forced to use the name of sponsors, car owners and other suppliers as every other word in each sentence. “Thanks Bill, I couldn’t have driven this Ronnie’s Pulpwood Bubba’s Garage Dodge Charger all 500 laps here at the Trojan Condoms Raceway without the help of them super Goodyear tires while quenching my thirst drinking some of that good ‘ole Gatorade sports refresher.”

After each race, the driver finally gets to Victory Lane after tearing up almost all of the grass in sight doing donuts and burn-outs and when he exits the car, having pulled off a logo adorned helmet the size of a beach ball, he then is forced to put on a baseball cap with some other logo on it. Then they line up soft drink and sports drink bottles and other consumer products on the roof of the car behind his head and body-less hands and arms appear in the TV picture to force feed him various drinks from prominently labeled bottles to the point he can barely answer the questions being offered by the TV reporter.

Imagine if the early explorers like Columbus, Cook, or Byrd were forced to submit to this kind of TV coverage and did interviews and had product sponsors like NASCAR has today. I know there was no TV back then, but just imagine if there was. Columbus’ return from the new world could have gone something like this:

Headphone-Clad Announcer: “So tell the viewers, Chris, are you glad to be back here in civilization?”

Columbus: “ Well I’ll tell you, Vito, we definitely wouldn’t be here in first today at the Pope Pius IX Marina if it weren’t for the performance of our fine vessils--the Guido's Shipyard Queen Isabella Ragu Spaghetti Beteroulli Olive Oil Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria. They just sailed so smoothly. Of course, we did loose the Pinta about half way home due to engine failure.

Announcer: Engine Failure?

Columbus: Yeah, the sails, they blew right off her in a storm, they did…it was really something to see!

Announcer: “What about that incident at the midpoint of the trip with the native’s canoe outside the Virgin Islands—are you going to hold a grudge with him on the next excursion to the New World?”

Columbus: “No, I don’t think so, we just love sailing, and things happen when you are going eight or ten knots. This Guido’s Custom Shipyard built fleet of ships just ran right over those itty-bitty dugout canoes—I think that Indian is still swimming home right now. He won’t be no trouble in a year or so when we’re over that way again.”

Announcer: “Did you ever think that you and your crew wouldn’t make it back here to Europe?”

Columbus: “No, not at all. We all had every confidence that these Queen Isabella Guido's Shipyard Italian Solid Oak ships and Mercury Vesevius outboard sails had the muscle to keep us in the lead most of the trip and bring us on home safely…but, by the way, there was that one incident when the Indian Chief caught me with his youngest daughter…boy was she ever a hotsie-totsie…

Announcer: A Hotsie-totsie?

Columbus: Yes, boy or boy, breasts out to here and legs down to there. Whew wee, I didn’t know if I was going to make it back with my skin intact let alone off that island that night…er, um, never mind…forget what I just said… sorry honey, I'll be right home.”

Announcer: Where do you see yourself and your crew going from here, Mr. Columbus?

Columbus: You see that there moon up there in the sky?

Announcer: The Moon?

Columbus: Yes, well, we’re working with this guy named daVinci, you may have heard of him, on this new kind of ship and boy I tell you, she beats the heck out of the speed and power of these babies we just got off of. We ask the fans to just watch the news in a few hundred years and see what we’re doing. It will definitely make your head spin, it will indeed.

Announcer: Well, ladies and gentlemen, you heard it here first…now back to you in the studio in Madrid, Mr. Jennings…

The Means To Be (Less) Than Average

More Government Statistical Mumbo Jumbo...


I don't know exactly what set this rant off this morning.

The thought process went something like this:

A. Start thinking how stupid it is for the Imperial Federal Government of the By-God United States to pass laws so some local guy building a country club can't harvest some coal on his giant property by strip mining the ore and selling it rather than just mindlessly bulldozing the mineral into the low spots on his land.

B. Next start ranting in your head about all of the other things that the government has screwed up over the years in the name of looking out "for our own good" while soaking the people that are successful to pay for the ineptitude of what turns out to be a relatively small part of the population.

The break down in the process comes when the government, in their effort to prove that there is a "problem" or a "need" in the first place, has to massage the numbers--often outright lying and cheating--in order to prove that they are mandated to sign a new "entitlement program" into law because "the Majority of Americans" support the process.

That said, I'd like to get into to my initial topic this morning, the difference between the mathematical term "AVERAGE" and "MEDIAN." After all, when you think about it clearly, there is a significant difference between the two words.

An AVERAGE, simply put, is the sum of a group of numbers (grades, temperatures, or in the government's war on poverty...income) divided by the number of numbers you added together to get the total.

Is your head hurting yet?

Stay with me here...I'll try to be clear and relatively brief.

The MEDIAN, on the other hand, is the number in that same group of numbers that falls in the position where HALF the amounts are higher and Half are lower.

Let's look at a few practical examples:

Let's say that you start your own country and you have a total of fifteen citizens with income that looks like the following table (subsitute the word Median for the word Mean as I've been corrected in the comments):

Holy Toledo...notice that the Average income is over ten times the Median Income?

That's because if you look at the list carefully you'll see that SEVEN taxpayers make more than $66,000 and another SEVEN make less than $66,000.

Now suppose that being a Government, just for fun you start meddling with the tax roles, giving deductions to some people based on income because you know that you can still run the government by paying for the "deductions" and "earned income" credits with money from your taxpayers making greater than the "median" income. Something like this:



Notice what happened to the Average and Median numbers? The Median is exactly the same, while the average income only fell by about $10,500.

See, everything is fine when it comes to funding the government through taxes, while at the same time you've removed one third of your population from the burden of paying taxes. In fact, those same five people are not only still making their original average of about $27,000 per year--

BUT they're also getting the "earned income" credits (unearned tax refunds) so their earnings actually went UP by allowing the government to transfer money from the top two thirds into their pockets at government gunpoint.

OK, maybe the government isn't really all that bad you say, so now lets suppose that you come to your senses and mostly leave the income numbers alone for the lower income earners, but you still play games with the upper income brackets by doing your math in a screwy manner--saying that if you don't have "wages, salary, or tips" then you have no income.

This is actually how the government calculates the number of people "living in POVERTY."

Under that scenario, this is what your income numbers would look like with the exact same original population if the upper earners didn't work every day but instead earned their income through INVESTMENTS and SAVINGS and owned their Home(s) free and clear:

How about them apples?

The Median income fell by 93%, and the Average income is down by 80%.

All I'm saying here is that the next time you hear some Morning News "Anchor" lamenting the 40 plus million Americans (including illegals) living without health insurance (but not health CARE) or the number of Children living in poverty, remember this little math lesson I delivered this morning when you feel the government reaching into your wallet.

It's not that I don't care, it's just that I would like to decide who gets how much of my money instead of letting a bunch of mathematically inept liars do it for me.

The rest is up to you...

(embarrassed blogger note...I mixed the terms "Mean" and "Median" indiscriminately in the original version of this writing as reader T.K. pointed out in the comments. All I can blame it on is poor editing and the early morning hour in which I was writing, but the balance of my points remain the same regardless of the name change...)