I Feel Like A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court

Actually More Like An Alabama Redneck In A Sea Of Orange...


Have I mentioned that living in a "college town" pretty much sucks if you happen to not have attended the "town's college"?

Well...it does...at least until the team that's in season (as opposed to the game that's in hunting season like "wabbits" or ducks) loses three or four games.

Then things settle down and quieten up a good bit and you can stand to wander around in public without being assaulted.

Thus my situation here this morning on the banks of the mighty Tennessee River...in the middle of the 2009 College football season.

When you do go out for drinks or dinner or shopping here even with U of T's three losses to date we still see probably 50% of the people wearing orange or at least sporting a big orange T on their heads and breasts and backs and butt and feet and car bumpers.

The local newspaper--the Knoxville Sentinel--is equally difficult to stomach.

If the team is winning, the front page has a story and three quarters of the sports section is UT blaa blaaa blaaaaaa.

Likewise, if the team is losing, the front page has a story and three quarters of the sports section is UT boo hooo hooooo.

You can hardly EVER find any mention of anything except SEC sports...they'll instead print stories about the recruiting prospects of the UT Pick-up-sticks and bowling teams rather than write about anything going on in Atlanta or the ACC or in anywhere else in the country for that matter.

I guess I can understand, but still...the Oak Ridge National Lab and ranks of Tennessee Valley Authority offices are full of Auburn and Clemson and more importantly...

GEORGIA TECH ENGINEERS.

Yet God forbid they should ever mention GT's success thus far this season as UT faces being stomped by Alabama on Saturday.

And ME?

I'm faced knowing the Tech faces the University of Virginia at noon today in Charlottesville and I'm afraid that the Raycom broadcast won't be on our local moronic Comcast schedule.

So any way, I've been wandering around town in my GT shirts just for fun and last night at dinner I happened to end up sitting adjacent to an older Tech alum who was equally happy to find a fellow Rambling Wreck to talk to.

We spent a half hour swapping stories about the good old days down at the North Avenue Trade School, then I came home and went back to my new grind managing a new Website I'm developing and working on some proposals.

BTW...the company I incorporated just got it's first small order yesterday, so we're off and running and hopefully I'm no longer semi-retired/unemployed.

Of course it will take about twenty more orders like this to make some semblance of a living, but it's a start after a great deal of soul searching and planning and false starts over the past 10 months in limbo.

Time for a nap now...and wish me luck...if you will...

Slackard Video Blogging

I'm Still VERY Busy...


Take a look/listen at George Carlin's take on "Saving The Planet"...

(WARNING: George's usual coarse language...probably not safe for work if you work somewhere which monitors your internet usage...)







All I have to say is heh...

Today's Humor

Lazy Bloggin Yields New Commedian?


Anyone but me never heard of "Mrs. Hughes"?

Here...take a listen and try not to blow your coffee out your nose...





Thanks again as always to Rodger over at Curmudgeonly & Skeptical

Haunted By "Cash For Clunkers"

I Told Everyone So...


I think some people thought I was crazy when I got heated up when I wrote More thoughts on cash for clunkers earlier.

Well...it looks like my predictions and economic analysis was was pretty darn spot-on, as reported in this News Paper story:

Berks dealers say federal clunkers program has made cheap, used vehicles harder to find

Dealers say program has made cheap, used vehicles harder to find
By Mike Urban
Reading Eagle

In her search for a cheap, used minivan for her and her husband, Krissy Dieroff has visited seven dealerships across Berks and Schuylkill counties in the last week, but to no avail.

"There's not much to pick from, and the ones we do find are overpriced," said Dieroff of Auburn, Schuylkill County, while browsing the lot of a city dealership on Monday.

Dieroff blames the shortage of inexpensive used cars on the federal cash-for-clunkers program, in which almost 700,000 used vehicles were traded in for newer, more fuel-efficient vehicles, and then scrapped.

continue reading here...

See ladies & gentlemen, the sniveling, booger eating, tree hugging, Kumbaya singing patchouli stinking, grown-up 1960's hippies currently residing in Washington DC working under job titles with the words "Economic" or "Economics" in them don't really know shit from shineola...

of if they do they just ignore the realities in pursuit of their own hidden agenda.

Either way the Voters should be PISSED OFF when things like this...so called "Government" taking 700,000 vehicles off the road in the name of helping prevent climate change...ends up hurting the very people they claim to be helping in the process.

Now just you wait for phase two of this government program to kick in...GIVING vouchers to "working families" to help offset the higher vehicle costs coming as result of phase one. Or maybe like some kind of mutant game show or Publishers Clearinghouse they'll just show up in peoples driveways with a new Prius or Corvette.

As usual, I have to go now and soak my head...

Wookin' Pa Nub In Ah Da Wong Paces

Having One Of My Buh-Weet Moments...


Sorry, but I don't have crap to say worth listening to this morning.

Imagine that?

I guess some say that's true most of the time, BUT...

In lieu of my normal original piercing political commentary and insightful wit, I suggest that you just go here and watch this silly video from the Eddie Murphy's SNL days:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHiZ15x6Vt4


Then laugh with me at this clip:




Finally, I couldn't stop Googling and as a result I found another one of my SNL favorites of Dan Aykroyd doing a drunken Julia Child:




And thus this morning's blogging is saved with cheap Internet Videos.

heh ...

I have "Zero Tolerance" For "Zero Tolerance"

Dumbasses Take Control Of Our Planet and Edumacational System?


I happily, heartily, and with great hubris admit today that in my day I brought all kinds of stupid, non-essential crap to various public schools in the late 1960's and early to mid 1970's.

That said, I'm also sorry to report that if it were up to the current bunch of spineless, mindless so-called teachers and "administrators", emasculated eviscerated by and because of the pandering politicians making things represented to be "LAWS" over the past 35 years, I'd never have made it past the 11th grade because I'd have spent all of my time wearing prison pinstripes.

Then in college I proceeded to build things out of Plexiglas's tubing designed to break national and international drug laws, and spent a good deal of time carrying around a trumpet and a bottle of Jack Daniels in my boot when it was outlawed in a college football stadium.

Yet today I survived without killing anyone I'm aware of (unless they died laughing at my antics) and I sit here realizing that my punishment is watching how SUTPID many Americans have become.

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

Donna Shalala Speaks...

Think About This Government Issued Bullshit...


(paraphrasing)

"those of us that have coverage [health insurance]...can't afford to continue to pay for those of us that don't under our current system..."


I ended up spitting on my computer monitor as I watched this former Clinton era Head of the Department of Health and Human Resources bumble around talking to FOX News Mike Huckaby...

because I have to remind everyone of this.

(taking a big breath here...)

THE GOVERNMENT HAS NO MONEY TO PAY FOR ANYTHING.


They print money, but unless SOMEONE works to pay for it in exchange, it's worth nothing.

Thus the government has to come to a house, knock on a door, point a gun, and proceed to STEAL the MONEY from SOMEONE in order to GIVE it to SOMEONE ELSE.

Food, clothing, a roof, or "HEALTHCARE", it's still paid for with someone else's money if you don't pay for it.

Are you actually willing to demand a portion of someone else's life, energy, and efforts in order to pay for something you mistakenly believe you have a RIGHT to?

Mathmatically Challenged Dumbasses Allowed To Ruin Run The Country

"Sports Writers" Only Marginally More Impaired Than "Political Pundits"...


I'm sorry Folks...but this rant has been coming on for a number of years now.

OK...having been a Georgia Tech sports fan...you can make that a little over thirty years now.

It's not anything contagious or genetic that makes my head spin when it comes to the topic of the politics of "sports rankings."

I guess it's basically just the rank odor which ALWAYS to my way of thinking seems to emanate from that little column in the newspaper and now on the Internet when you see how the minds of so-called "Sports writers" work...and then by default how the balance of college sports ranking systems work when everything is all said and done.

Unfortunately I think that the determination of political candidates on a national level (and possibly a state and local level) also suffers from a related fatal viral illness--but I'll get to that topic later if I have the time and energy.

Any hoooo, most of those of you that don't live under a rock or in a discarded packing crate under a bridge somewhere outside of Macon, Georgia probably know that the College Football rankings come out every Sunday afternoon/evening in the months of August through early January.

This year again is no exception.

I just tuned in my computer and found this evening's latest posting--looking for my GT Yellow Jackets to have launched into the top ten in the national rankings.

WRONG...

Solidly beating the number 4 team...Virginia Tech... a team which has occupied the spots of #6, #5, and then #4 in the AP "sports writers" poll for the past three weeks...only gets them the number 11 spot in the minds of these rocket scientists.

This after crashing out of their national rankings after falling from the number 14 spot because of getting beat by the AP's #20 ranked Miami team a month ago...the VERY SAME MIAMI TEAM which rose up to NUMBER NINE in the rankings that week after beating Georgia Tech at number 14?

WTF?

Let's face it people, if you are a college sports fan you have to understand the bias which exists in the "sports media" just like it exists in the national media covering everything from "the balloon boy" to political races.

Sports writers are, in my personal considered Redneck opinion, biased, narcissistic, idiotic assholes which let their personal interests and opinions threaten and influence what has grown over the past fifty years to be a MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR enterprise...

the final outcome of each season of NCAA DIVISION I COLLEGE FOOTBALL.

And that's the reason I don't run around baseing my self worth and public stature on something which is so arbitrarily determined by a bunch of idiots that couldn't make 20 on the ACT or 1200 on the SAT before going to the local community college to get their journalistic education.

And I suspect that three quarters of these "sports writers" were also relegated to the position of "bench warmer" during their limited high school or college "sports careers."

"Sports Writers" or just "Monday Morning Quarterbacks," I totally hate people that spend their lives running around like walking billboards with University of Florida or Miami or Ohio State clothing, when the only time they ever likely set foot on a given College Campus was on Saturday afternoon trying to buy scalper tickets to "THE BIG GAME."

True sports fans are exactly that...FANS

"Sports Writers" should be neutral, but that's not going to ever happen...as evidenced by teams like Boise State and Iowa and Cincinnati hanging around endlessly in the top rankings of their Fraternity poll while at the same time none of these impotent teams ever manage to actually PLAY anyone with any credentials except their own conference "straw man" dummy teams.

In closing I have this to say about THAT to all of the people running around wearing a closet load of RED or Orange or GREEN or whatever color clothes with a big W or T or U on their chest or ass...

GET A REAL LIFE!!

Dammit

Georgia Tech "Up-ends" Virginia Tech 28-23

Wramblings From An Old Rambling Wreck...


As my regular readers know, unlike most if not many men, I rarely spend much time watching or talking about sports.

On this blog you hardly ever see any time or words devoted to the topic.

It's not because I'm entirely unfamiliar with the subject, it's just that I've chosen such a difficult faction of sports enterprises to follow through the years.

Starting with the Atlanta Braves on Ted Turner's Channel 17 TBS Cable network during the Dale Murphy/Phil Nekro era...

and then including the NFL's Atlanta Falcons living and dieing with Steve Bartkowski in the 1970's, my understandably jaded long suffering professional sports affection/affliction has be relegated these days to yelling occasionally about Pat's beloved Pittsburgh Steelers

...else nothing at all.

On the college front, long after the tenure of Heisman, Alexander, and Dodd (and Rodgers and Curry and Ross) and having attended virtually every home football game on North Avenue at historic Grant Field in Atlanta from 1977 until the late 1990's following Georgia Tech, and having season tickets to their basketball program's games throughout the 1990's, I feel I can speak authoritatively to topics relating to young men battling their way through their academic career on the gridiron or basketball court, yet today I spend a limited amount of time and money following those sports on any basis that could be considered anything beyond casual interest.

That said, this 2009 NCAA Division I College football season has again brought my attention back to the TV screen because of Georgia Tech's potential re-emergence on the national football scene.

After losing badly while ranked #13 to a lower ranked Miami team and being dropped from the national rankings, the Yellow Jackets have scratched and clawed and stung their way back past the likes of North Carolina and survived a game with nearly 100 points combined against Florida State...

to culminate last night in pushing past number 4 ranked VIRGINIA TECH with a solid second half performance.

Georgia Tech didn't "dominate", but they (notice I say "they", not "WE" because I didn't play there in my years on campus) won in the end, and for the first time since their 1990 National Championship Season I'm a little bit excited about the possibilities for the balance of this season.

The single loss to date at Miami will most likely keep the team from vying for the national title, but a nice New Years Bowl invitation and a better outcome than last year's debacle in the Georgia Dome against LSU (I spent a couple hundred dollars attending that event) could be in the making for the "Old White and Gold" team.

I'm not making any predictions, but then again things could be pretty interesting come December.

Go Jackets...

Today's 1980's Audio Flashback

The Church..."Under The Milky Way Tonight"



UPDATE: 10/19/09

I did this song at the local Karaoke Bar Saturday night...easy for my vocal range and it got a good crowd response because no one ever does it but everyone remembers it when you sing it.

This Weekend's Audio Flashback

Mushy Mid 1970's Music...




Can anyone believe I used to have hair sorta like that?

One Bad Apple Spoils Every Barrel

Being Your Own Worse Enemy...


I just had an interesting experience this noontime today.

I called the US office of a company based in France which builds a machine that I have the opportunity to support on an O&M basis, and much to my surprise...

THEY WON'T SELL ME PARTS FOR THEIR MACHINE.

Without "Permission."

Paraphrasing the conversation with the polite lady with the title of "Spare Parts Manager":

"We have to have a letter from the company that owns our machine telling us that you are authorized to work on on their machines else we can't even QUOTE YOU PRICES for spare parts."

[silence...heavy breathing]

(Taking a big breath here boss)

WTF?

I guess that now I have to remind everyone of the story of Apple Computer Corporation, the company that owned the "Personal Computer" market until 1982/1983 when IBM came on the scene.

You see, Apple's downfall and relegation to second tier status in the computer business...living a life as the machine favored by the "arty/farty, dope smoking, patchouli stinking hippy and sniveling, booger eating, tree hugger crowd"...was their insistence on clinging to a "closed" hardware/software system architecture where the only innovations and advancements came from within APPLE and their tightly controlled community of software developers.

IBM, on the other hand, virtually gave away their drawings of their computer and begged smart people to write programs and build expansion cards for their "open architecture."

Anyone but me ever buy a "QuadRAM board with extra serial I/O ports" to get a PC with a system clock with a battery back up?

And the end result?

There's a ZILLION IBM PC clones out there today built by companies with names from Acer to Zenith, and computer store isles are filled with software to support the machines based on the ancestry of the old Intel 8080 CPU chip.

Meanwhile Apple languishes in a small back corner area of those same stores, having recently resorted to building their own machines that can act like a "normal" APPLE Computer while at the same time imitating a "REAL" IBM PC clone machine in order to try to draw in a larger user base. (A business associate of mine bought one for about $4000 and absolutely hates it and nevers uses it in "APPLE" mode.)


Needless to say that these French Assholes haven't heard the last from me, because I already have pricing from regular industrial supply houses for a box full of o-rings and gaskets and for the time being I'll just make do without them...probably giving my customer a LOWER price in the process.

Free trade isn't FREE, but my money is as green as the next guy's/gal's and I have a LONG memory and little allegiance to anything without red/white/blue on the label.

Dammit...

Stupid Crap Keeps Happening And The News People Swallow It...

Hook Line And Stinker Sinker


OK Everybody...I'm taking up a collection and building a really big balloon, and then I'm going to spend the afternoon hiding in my attic after I launch it.

Here's my design, modeled after the locally famous "peach" water tower up off I-85 in Gaffney, SC. (Just in case you're wondering, my next balloon design will be modeled after a giant tube of "Preparation H.")



If you see me coming you better watch out and AVOID anything falling out that you see heading your way...

after all...

If the US Congress can Crap all over everyone...

I don't see why I can't take the opportunity to fly past and dump a little well intended feces in your life just to show you that I care.

Heh...

Replacement Terminology For My "Sniveling, Booger Eating, Bed Wetting, Eco-Friendly, Communist, Global Warming Believing Socialist Liberals..."

I Need A New "Anachronism..."


All Liberals are democrats, and all democrats are twig eatin', tofu fartin', lily livered, Prius driving, America-hating, bleeding heart liberal, blinkered, Starbucks drinking, elitist, can't-we-all-just-get-along, granola eating, namby-pamby, Birkenstock wearing, tree hugging, long haired, pansy-assed, kumbaya-singing, Earth First, bed-wetting, patchouli wearing, dirty, smelly, dope smoking, bongo playing, arm pit haired women and feminized, armpit shaved men crying "Mother Earth is Gaia," tortured "artiste" types, Kennedy DNA bearing slugs

Thanks Again Rodge

Slackard Blogging

I Wish I'd Thought Of This Stuff First...


If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one.

If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.


If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat.

If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.


If a conservative is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.

If a liberal is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.


If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.

If A liberal is facing living on the street, he demands to know who is going to take care of him.


If a conservative doesn’t like a talk show host, he switches channels.

Liberals demand that those they don’t like be shut down.


If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn’t go to church.

A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it’s a foreign religion, of course!)


If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.

A liberal with a festering foot or ear lobe...demands that the rest of us pay for his.


If a conservative slips and falls in a store, he gets up, laughs and is embarrassed.

If a liberal slips and falls in his own apartment, he grabs his neck, moans like he's in labor and then sues the apartment management.


If a conservative reads this, he'll forward it so his friends can have a good laugh.

A liberal, moving his lips as he scans these lines, will delete it because he's "offended"
(or comment anonymously calling me a racist and bigot.)

Slightly edited from my Blog Idol Rodger over at Curmudgeonly & Skeptical

Take A Look At This Crap

Then Join Me In Soaking Our Heads In Ice Water... (I'll Buy The Ice)

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Will Somebody Call Someone...Will Somebody Do SOMETHING???

Here...Read These Words...


From my Blog Idols over at Powerline blog:

...What is meant by a "weak mandate" is that, in the current version of the Baucus bill, there is no requirement to buy health insurance at all until after 2013, and by 2017 the penalty for failing to buy health insurance still amounts to only about 15% of the cost of the insurance. Now, think about it: if you know that you don't have to buy health insurance when you are young and healthy, but if you should get sick, or just get older, you can apply for health insurance at any time and it will be illegal for the insurance company to turn you down, what would you do? Obviously, you would defer buying insurance unless and until you get sick. This means that the pool of those who are insured will be lower quality, and the cost therefore higher for everyone who buys insurance. It is as though you could wait until you die, and then your heirs can buy life insurance on you.

This isn't reform, it is stupidity.

It actually would be very easy to make health insurance cheaper. All we have to do is allow insurance companies to compete nationally instead of state-by-state and eliminate all mandates that limit consumer choice. It has been estimated that these simple reforms--which are not part of any of the Democrats' "reform" bills, for obvious reasons--would reduce health care costs by one-quarter to one-third. Instead of such common-sense reforms, the Dems are proposing Rube Goldberg measures that will make health care more expensive. Instead of eliminating mandates, their measures, including the Baucus bill, increase them--in effect making cheaper health insurance illegal.

Once more: this isn't reform, it is stupidity.

I have to go now and fill the kitchen sink with ice and soak my head...If you're interested in this topic , Go here and read the whole blog article.

Nobel Committee Slights Obama

Prize In Economics Goes To Michael Vick


Coming up for air after working in my basement shop all morning, I was cruising Drudge Report trying to find out what was happening in the world when I saw this Wall Street Journal Story lamenting President Obama NOT receiving the Nobel Prize in Economics this year.

With a little more Googling I found this secret photo of the Nobel Committee deliberating their internationally significant earth-shattering decisions:

Obama has as much business winning the Nobel Prize in ANYTHING...Economics, Physics, Peace, or Bungee Jumping...as I have showing up at the Super Bowl in a Helmet, pads, and a Football Uniform.

Speaking of Football, here's a photo of this years Nobel Economics winner prior to declaring bankruptcy after going to jail and forfeiting his Zillion dollar a year contract with the Atlanta Falcons...

You got to love a Brother with spirit...

Heh.

New Dairy Queen Blizzard Flavor

"Chunky Nobel Peace Prize"


Here...take a look at the new DQ menu item celebrating our President receiving his latest round of international recognition...





I guess it's good that you get to keep the cup, but then again... I suspect that the aftertaste will never fade...


(yes...it's me and my Photoshop at it again...)

Foreign Socialists Continue To Meddle

Nobel Prizes Made Of Silly Putty and Dog Poop...


So there I was this morning, pounding away on a proposal with one hand and wiggling my mouse doing an AutoCAD drawing with the other, when I decided to break the silence in my office by tuning in to Neal Boortz's streaming broadcast on the Web this morning.

Then the first thing I heard was President Obama giving some kind of speech.

Then my face fell off as my head exploded as I realized that this wasn't a "hope and change" speech or a "government health care reform" speech....

this empty suit was delivering his "ACCEPTING THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE" speech.

As I picked my face up off the floor and stuffed my Cerebellum and Medulla Oblongata back into my fractured cranium I felt a little better because I remembered that this same bunch of foreign sniveling booger eating eco friendly climate change disciples had also previously handed the same prize to the likes of Yasser Arafat and Jimmuh Carter.

Still, it pisses me off that they hand the thing to Obamarama after being in office for less than ten months and having accomplished WHAT?

Nothing

Nada

Buttkiss

I seem to remember in spite of his January pledges that Gitmo's still full of abused naked peaceful Muslim "detainees" being forced to watch Koran's being flushed down the toilet.

And aren't Americans are still dropping on the under staffed battlefields of Afghanistan and Pakistan?

The only thing Obamamrama has done to date is run around the planet apologizing for imagined mistakes and wrongs committed over the past 233 years...

and telling the Israelis to stop building houses and play nice with the Palestinians and Hammas.

Some %$#@ Peacemaker.

I say if SURRENDER and APPEASEMENT is the only thing necessary to win a Nobe Peace Prize, they aught to just print them up and sell them in flea markets and at yard sales.

Dammit...