Liberal Government Double-Speak

Tired Of Having To Learn New Meanings for Old Words???


Sorry folks, but I'm feeling a bit lazy this morning, and after watching the TV news endlessly chanting the words "Hillary" and "Obama" and bashing President Bush's upcoming State of the Union Speach, I decided to go back and republish some of my Golden Oldie rants that my newer readers may have not seen and my older readers may have forgotten that I wrote.

First up, here's one from September of 2004 entitled Tax Cuts For Working Families:


I’ll open this discussion on income taxes with the following statement:

“YOU CAN’T GET AN INCOME TAX CUT IF YOU DON’T PAY INCOME TAXES.”

Did you get that?

Adding a further collorary to this concept:

“DON’T EXPECT AN INCOME TAX RETURN IF YOU DON’T PAY INCOME TAXES.”

I’m afraid that today at least half of the US population has lost track of these concepts.

Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry loves to talk about tax fairness for Americans. If he and Mr. Edwards (two so called “limousine liberals”) were to win the election this November, he says that the first thing they would do next January is to roll back all of President Bush’s tax cuts..

Mr. Kerry’s campaign dialogue is peppered with references to President Bush and the Republican Congress enacting “tax cuts for the rich” instead of “tax cuts for working families.”

A report issued in late August by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) shows that nothing could be further from the truth.

But Kerry wants tax cuts for “working families.”

Let me ask the question, exactly what is a "working family?"

Does the term “working family” mean that both parents, all of the children, and the family pets each hold full time or part time jobs?

Does the term “working family” only apply if you make less than $50,000 per year in total income?

Does the term imply that people making over $100,000 don’t work for a living and/or don't have families ?

In fact, Senator Kerry, the Democrat’s, and other liberals of all stripes and colors use of the term “working family” plays to the most basic form of envy and class warfare that has been a staple of politics since the income tax was enacted in the early 1900's.

As this editorial in the Detroit News (a newspaper in a city full of Kerry’s so called “working families”) so eloquently opines, Bush hasn’t gotten the credit he deserves. Consider this...

After the hated tax cut, in 2001 the top 10% of taxpayers earned 38.3% of the total taxable federal household income, but they actually paid 66.7% of the federal income taxes. The top 20% of taxpayers earned 51.1% and paid 74.8%.

What else do they want?

I know, I know…”those evil rich people supposedly don’t really NEED all of their money.”

Seriously folks, how can you cut taxes on someone that already doesn’t pay taxes?

The bottom 20% of income earners already get an earned income credit and a resulting tax refund equaling 5.7% of their non-taxable income. The bottom 40% of households earned 9.7% of the total household income and had a negative tax rate of 2.8%.

This means, even after Bush’s tax reform, that the imperial federal government of the United States uses the IRS to take money from the top 60% of income earners and give it to the bottom 40%.

Now the Dem’s figure that if they can just increase this figure from 40% to 51% that they will be guaranteed re-election to local and national offices for eternity. (See Mob Rule Part I)

When faced with the above facts supporting that the tax cut is truly across the board, the liberal Democrats then take another track.

They start jumping up and down about how the tax cut fueled a record setting Federal Budget Deficit.

Again, it's simply not true.

While the 2003 deficit is a record number of total dollars, at 3.1% it was in fact smaller as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) than it was in 1976 under Carter (4.1%,) in 1985 under Reagan (5.1%,) and 1992 under Clinton (4.4%.)

The problem is government spending, not income (tax revenues.)

Why does that matter, you might ask?

Here’s an example: Say that one year a business has a $50,000 net income, but expenses also equaled $50,000 and the owner choose to borrow and additional $10,000 during the year to fund new product development costs.

The next year, however, the new products sell well and the gross income doubles to $100,000, but expenses go up proportionally and the owner keeps working on expanding the business and as a result the total debt increases to...say...$15,000.

Record deficit scream the stockholders! Fire the company president.

Wrong...you government school educated imbeciles.

While the amount spent in excess of income rose by $5,000, the debt as a percentage of income actually fell from 20% to 15%, a deficit spending reduction of 25%. Put away the calculator and college diploma, simple 6th grade math tells the story.

Why can’t the AP, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times get this right?

As a last resort, the Democrats and other liberals come out and claim that the middle class is unfairly burdened by FICA/FUTA/Social Security taxes.

In former President Reagan’s words: “there (they) go again…”

Just in case you didn't know, FICA/FUTA/Social Security taxes apply equally to everyone at all income levels and are in fact stolen by the federal government from today’s wage earners to pay the obligations they have accumulated and owe to unemployed, disabled, and retired members of past generations of taxpayers.

Further, the so-called rich taxpayers already pay these taxes on disproportionate amounts of their incomes and at most only see pennies on the dollar in benefits because they earn and save too much money in private retirement accounts.

President Bush didn’t invent these taxes, but I seem to remember several famous Democrats like Roosevelt and Johnson whose fingerprints are all over these bait and switch programs.

Yes they are unfair and need reform or outright elimination, but every time Bush and the Republican congress even try to talk about changes and improvements, they suffer under the age old liberal tactic of “scaring the old people” to get votes. “The Republicans are gonna take away your Social Security benefits…run to the polls and vote for us and we'll save you...”

Numerous web sites like http://www.bushtax.com/ go even further with their arguments, indicating that, beyond the excessive amounts of money “given” to the rich in this country by existing tax cuts, the Federal government’s tax policies have actually shifted additional costs to the middle class in the form of increased property taxes and greater tuition costs at state colleges and universities as the state governments see a reduction in the federal gravy-train of grants and other funding.

Give me another break, plu-eaze.

So more and more "working families" are able to actually own their own homes and as a result have to pay corresponding property taxes; and more and more children of "working families" are graduating from high school and entering college and incurring the associated tuition costs.

Here's an option for those of you that want to complain--rent a house and get a job at McDonalds after you finish 12 grades of FREE government school instead of borrowing money to go to college.

While I'm at it, let me mention another problem--up to the late 1970’s or early 1980’s most state governments operated with a budget surplus. Since that time however, most states and many cities have engaged in a spree of hiring employees, building new programs, and generally increasing their spending—following the federal business model—and now they are all facing deficits of THEIR OWN MAKING.

It is not the federal government’s job to step in and bail the Governors, state legislatures, and city councils out of their mess. Let the voters go to the polls and correct their spending problems at the state and local level this fall.

In my opinion, term limits, rational spending policies and letting people keep more of their hard earned money will allow the Federal and Local Budgets to take care of themselves.

Continued income redistribution through taxation and expanding dependence on government for employment, health care, and retirement will ultimately be the death of us all fiscally.

While I'm Busy Posting Photos...

I Might As Well Start Out Your Week Seeing Me Being Rude as usual



Doesn't this image for some reason remind you of Whoopie Goldburg???

(Or possibly something out of the Star Wars movies...)

Yeah, I thought so...

Photoshopping My Life Away

Hey, Check These Out...


First I tried a "filter function" called "Posterize" that gave me this Image...



Then there is just a little old fashoned brightness and contrast adjustment and a little slight of hand that gives you this (click on the images to enlarge)...



More...this is sorta cool also...

Finally!!!!

The Moon And Venus


I've been chasing this photo opportunity for almost two years now.

What I was looking for was a crescent moon hanging low in the western sky at sunset, with decent weather conditions. In this exasperating process and time frame I've learned that it is a very rare event indeed.

Until yesterday...

Last evening I had the added bonus of the planet Venus keeping the Moon and the Sidney Lanier Bridge company over downtown Brunswick, Georgia.

Here, take a look (click on each photo to enlarge)...




Here's a zoomed image (notice that Venus has phases just like the Moon does)...



I need to work on my technique to get the focus and depth of field fine tuned, but it was still a spectacular vista. I almost caused a couple of car wrecks by simply standing on the side of the road with my camera and tripod when people noticed what I was looking at.

Crazy Birds

The Sapsuckers Are Eating Our Seeds


Look at the posture that one of our local feathered friends has to take to hang onto one of our feeders:





And here's a photo of he/she flapping away after noticing my attentions...




Crazy birds...

You Better Get Interested In What's Going On

The Democrats Want To Silence ME US...


Here, take a look at Senate Bill S.1, Section 220, currently being considered in Washington:

(18) PAID EFFORTS TO STIMULATE GRASSROOTS LOBBYING-

(A) IN GENERAL- The term `paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying' means any paid attempt in support of lobbying contacts on behalf of a client to influence the general public or segments thereof to contact one or more covered legislative or executive branch officials (or Congress as a whole) to urge such officials (or Congress) to take specific action with respect to a matter described in section 3(8)(A), except that such term does not include any communications by an entity directed to its members, employees, officers, or shareholders.

(B) PAID ATTEMPT TO INFLUENCE THE GENERAL PUBLIC OR SEGMENTS THEREOF- The term `paid attempt to influence the general public or segments thereof' does not include an attempt to influence directed at less than 500 members of the general public.

The term "paid attempt" in the past has included "in kind donations" like the time that I spend carefully thinking about writing my rantings. Since I'm routinely reaching tens of thousands of people each year, I'm afraid that they're coming after me before it's over with.

I swear, people, but if we're not careful it's going to soon be against the law for me to write things like "Nancy Pelosi is a stupid partisan bitch" and "Dingy Harry Reid is a moron" or "Robert Byrd is a senile old bastard" if more than 500 people read my writing.

Are YOU going to sit there and let the government silence the bloggers?

Then call someone, dammit...

This Is Just WRONG

An African Grey Parrot, Showing Off...


Polly Want A Cracker?

Silence

Sorry...I'm Still Busy

I'm almost sleeping normally, so in my absence, you might want to go here to read THIS.

And then, of course, there's this guy's ideas.

In the mean time, all I have to say is

See Ya' Later, Y'all.

.

The Oinker Of The Day

Guess Who???

Isn't that the face of one happy woman, or what?

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OMG

Careful, Don't Hurt Yourself...


Take a big breath, then go HERE and take a peek.

I Know That's It's Easy To Bitch & Complain

Thus I Currently Write Short Rant's, Else I Write Nothing At All


My head is busy either thinking about technical issues or it is rotating at orbital velocity as a result of having read the newspaper or watched the Television, and as a result I'll just avoid risking offending anyone or inspiring anyone with my ongoing rantings while I thrash around here on our little island.

It started to cool off here last evening, and that's definitely not a positive influence on my attitude either...

Dammit...

Rosie O'Donnell Is A "Jackanapes"

I'm Trying Out FOX Network's Bill O'Reilly's Word Of The Day



Yeah, YOU there, reading this... BE CAREFUL.

Don't Be like Rosie...

Don't be a jackanapes

I, personally, LIKE words like that, because they're so descriptive.

.

Have A Nice Glass of Orange Juice, And Put It On My Tab

That Global Warming Trend...She Be A Real Bitch


Quick, everyone...run to the grocery store

NOW!!!

It seems that most of the California Citrus Crop has been destroyed by cold weather in the last few days.

The weekend's bone-chilling weather has caused widespread crop damage and other effects from the San Joaquin Valley to the Imperial Valley, and could top agricultural losses seen in the last major freeze in California nearly a decade ago. California Department of Food and Agriculture Secretary A.G. Kawamura toured a Ventura packinghouse today and viewed damage to local strawberries, citrus and avocados."They got hurt pretty bad Sunday morning.

The wind and irrigation water that farmers tried to use to protect crops didn't work too well," Kawamura said. "It certainly appears that this will be very similar if not exceed the damage from the 1998-99 freeze."In the 1998 freeze, $700 million in agricultural damage occurred across eight counties. Kawamura said this freeze was more widespread. Three consecutive nights of sub-freezing weather beginning Friday night froze navel oranges, lemons and tangerines in the San Joaquin Valley, and damaged avocados from San Luis Obispo to San Diego.

Artichokes in Castroville and strawberries in Santa Maria sustained damage. Kawamura said even winter vegetable crops in the Imperial Valley endured critically cold temperatures.

I guess that my Guacamole dip prices will be going up also.

Damn this Global Warming...How can I continue to eat and gain weight with stuff like this going on??

The World's Happiest Poor People

Venezuela's Population Still Stupid & Oppressed...Chavez Still Crazy


Here, take a look at this story: Venezuela Intensifies Takeover Fight With Big Firms.

Now let me ask you this:

"Why is the media so STUPID when it comes to writing headlines?"

After all, the last time I checked, a "takeover" involves BUYING a company.

You know, actually compensating the owners or investors for their financial costs.

Not so according to this story.

All you need is a few guns and bombs and you're in the oil business.

You see, the so-called Venezuela "takeover" is actually a "nationalization", or in reality the theft of private investors funds by a government entity, just because...

Just because they can, and Liberals like Jimmy Carter will avert their eyes in the process.

And the local peasants will hoot and holler and cheer about the results, then go home and have a nice bowl of dirt and glass of filthy water as they raise their angry fists in the air in celebration.

While we're at it, let me offer my own hearty "Yeeeeeee Haaaaaaaa" on their behalf...

If the US government continues along our track here in this hemisphere, that being one of ignoring people like Castro and the little twit dictator Chavez, and we keep not drilling our own oil reserves offshore and in Alaska, we're all going to be tap dancing in dark homes to the beat of music played by little tin hats like this &^%*$er.


Get a grip, people...

.

Cuba Versus Puerto Rica

I Say Let China & Japan Give Them The Same Treatment as Hawaii…


What kills me about the so called intelligent political dialogue (or lack thereof) concerning the current invasion of wetbacks illegal immigrants guest workers and, while we're at it, the US foreign policy in the Middle East, is the lack of consistency with regard to race and culture.

If you honestly believe that the US ended its policy of expansion and colonialism in 1959 when Hawaii became the 50th state, what do you have to say about Puerto Rico and other overseas “possessions” like America Samoa?

Just because most of their citizens can’t swim, sail a ship, or otherwise choose to stay on their home soil, are we and they any better off than say…the citizens of Mexico---particularly the ones still living in Juarez?

How can their residents continue to be forced (or allowed) to live in squalor, with US tax subsidies and other massive funding laid on the backs of US taxpayers, without any standards and oversight other than a slap on the ass and the emergence of an occasional professional baseball player and a cheep supply of rum and cigars?

Worst of all, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, and Cuba are right here within a few hundred miles in our own hemisphere and fall into this same category of third world “Plantation countries“ owned and operated by displaced citizens living here in the US.

If they had a few more guns, some explosives, and more than a minority of citizens content with singing in nightclubs, cooking in restaurants, and smoking marijuana, we’d all be in big trouble in my book.

The good news is that apparently Fidel Castro is on his last legs, and if we can’t manage to toss a few hundred million taxpayer dollars at ensuring that that situation gets straightened out upon his death, I’m thinking about just folding up my tent, packing up my pots and pans, and moving my ever balding, ever greying, lard assed redneck carcass off to somewhere like Belize or Costa Rica .

Please write if you can’t call…

Another Day...Another Dollar

Earned or Spent?


I'm sorry to admit that I'm stranded in a winter malaise of indecision.

It's so nice outside that I find my mind wandering to the pool and the beach and my bicycle, but then the couch takes over and I wake up having snoozed the better part of the afternoon away being useless and listening to talk radio.

I ran around again today looking for a giant blob three or four pounds of potter's clay to do a quick sculpture to enter in this year's Coastal Heritage Art Exhibit.

My efforts failed.

I won second place last year with my photo submission, but even though I knew that this year's deadline was approaching I found myself without anything in my inventory to submit and by the time I came up with a concept and theme it would appear to be too late.

I took the small blob of clay that I purchased last week for a prototype model and smashed it up and made a giant 3" olive for my friend Brenda to use in a humongous martini glass over at her nearby wine shop...The 19th Hole Package Store.

I'm using a bamboo barbeque skewer as a toothpick, and the results should make a nice finish on a front counter display in her store.

All I have to do is wait for it to finish drying, toss on another coat of green paint and color the pimento red, and I'm good to go.




Time to do some more reading now...or maybe I'll take another nap...

Pollen

I'm Not The Only One Confused...


It's January 15th.

It's 75 degrees F outside.

You can write your name on the hood of our car in the pollen dust that settled in the dew over night.

Pollen on January 15th?

I love living here...

Rational Thoughts From A Great Man

I Wish Jessie Jackson And Al Sharpton Would Get A Clue...


Here, take a look at an excerpt from Martin Luther King's famous April 1963 "Letter from A Birmingham Jail":

I guess it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick, brutalize and even kill your black brothers and sisters with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky, and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son asking in agonizing pathos: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tip-toe stance never quite knowing what to expect next, and plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"; then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience...

I hope this letter finds you strong in the faith. I also hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil rights leader, but as a fellow clergyman and a Christian brother. Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Maybe we all do have some distance to go to achieve true equality, but we've also come a long way since that text was written. Too bad the good Reverand Jackson & Mr. Sharpton own the franchise these days...because in my opinion, they're both faint shadows of the man that wrote those words.

RIP Dr. King.

.

75 Degrees And Sunny

We're Certainly Getting Our Money's Worth Down Here...


Gosh it was beautiful here on the Georgia coast yesterday. We're expecting more of the same for the next few days as the Midwest and northeast suffers under ongoing bouts of rain, sleet, and snow.

I almost feel guilty.

But not really guilty...

This Covers Everything In My Book

Enough Said...

I Had No Idea

Dang She Was Good Lookin'


I missed this story until today, and it seems that most of the media did also. It seems that actress Yvonne De Carlo AKA Lilly Munster died this week at the age of 84.

Here what she looked like in the mid 1960's at the age of 43...

And here she is in the 1940's:

The other thing I didn't know about her was that she played opposite Charlton Heston as "Moses wife" in the 1950's classic "The Ten Commandments."

Movies, TV, Broadway, acting, dancing, singing..a life well lived, I'd say.

RIP Miss Yvonne...

Racial Hysteria

Get Over Yourselves


Good God people it‘s 2007, not 1867 last time I checked.

I’m sitting here watching Hannity & Colmes on FOX news and they’ve just spent the past five minutes talking about another stupid assed so-called celebrity getting caught on camera outside a Los Angeles comedy club, using the dreaded “N” word.

That’s right, some white boy said the word “Nigger”, and everybody has thrown off their clothes and is in the process of writhing around on the ground, peeing and drooling on themselves.

I’m entirely sick of this shit.

People are even afraid of the word Niggardly (it's a real word...look it up for yourself, and it's not a racial term.)

There, I just wrote the word “nigger” and "Niggardly" in consecutive paragraphs…so SUE me.

Go ahead, stop reading my blog if you must.

See if I care, dammit.

The act of writing a word or thinking a word does not, in my opinion reduce the humanity or social value of any one individual or race of people.

We as a national culture have all been forced to become so hyper sensitive to a word that blacks negros African Americans people of color routinely are allowed to throw at each other on the street, on music videos, and in jail, that we apparently can’t or won't continue to function normally if confronted with a single utterance in public.

I’ve written at length in the past here on this blog about the use of the word “Redneck” and my desire to prevent it getting posted on the “black list” of words that cause the demise of individuals’ professional careers and public popularity based on polite usage.

What ever happened to “Sticks and Stones may break my bones but words will never harm me…”?

This Redneck happens to enjoy the term, and most intelligent, successful people of color should be no more offended by the “N” word than I am of the “R” word.

We are, after all, adults here?

Aren’t we?

.

The North Pole

Get The Facts For Yourself


I haven't mentioned it, but I'm currently fooling around with a project in Faribanks, Alaska. The temperature there was -40 degrees F in the middle of the day earlier this week.

If you have free long distance on your phone, just for fun take a minute and call 907-488-1111 to get the time and temperature in a place just down the street in North Pole, Alaska. (it's warmed up to -5 degrees F there right now...)

Isn't it interesting the things you learn here reading my website?

Playing The Fiddle While Rome Burns

When Will We All Learn?


Excuse me, but I’ve just recovered from lapsing into a Coma during the replay on FOX News of President Bush’s speech tonight about Iraq.

I’m actually really sorry, but I’m afraid that I believe that the new policy is failed from the outset because…

In the end, when it is all said and done, that the Democrats will end up emasculating the effort and (sorry mom and sister and other sensitive female relatives and readers) I Personally believe that we should BOMB THE ASS OFF OF EVERYONE LIVING IN THE SANDS OF THE MIDDLE EAST THAT SO MUCH AS RAISE A MIDDLE FINGER TOWARD OUR FORCES…but then again I’m just one lonely white middle aged white man living the life of luxury on St. Simons Island, earned by the blood of generations of military forces deployed overseas since 1776.

Then there is this totally stupid, totally useless, #$%& Donald Trump--Rosie O'Donald BS argument that the TV media is insistent on holding up under our nose for us all to smell.

Gaggghhhhhh...

New Jersey Got It Right To Begin With

Now They're Going To Screw It All Up...


Being a good southern Redneck, I enjoy taking the opportunity to occasionally poke fun at our friends that live north of the Mason Dixon line.

Things like cooking and eating Grits, speach patterns, life attitudes in general--nothing is sacred when I turn my sights on your lifestyle regardless of where you live.

Now it has come to my attention that New Jersey has an interesting constitutional limitation addressing who or whom can vote in local and national elections.

It seems that New Jersey can currently legally keep you from voting if you're an IDIOT:

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (Reuters) -- New Jersey is to consider cutting the word 'idiot' from its constitution so that people with some mental disabilities won't be barred from voting.

State Senate President Richard Codey introduced a bill Monday that would remove language from the New Jersey constitution that was designed more than 150 years ago to prevent people suffering from mental illness or handicap from casting their vote in national, state or local elections.

Codey wants to eliminate a section that says "no idiot or insane person should enjoy the right of suffrage" and substitute with a reference to "a person who has been adjudicated by a court of competent jurisdiction to lack the capacity to understand the act of voting."

I say that instead of changing the New Jersey law, that we aught to vote the same language into the constitution of the other 49 states and the District of Columbia, then sit back and enjoy the results of our efforts.

In lieu of the "idiot" language, I think that everyone should at least be able to identify a picture of their state and national representatives/senators before they are allowed into the voting booth.

Wouldn't it be fun to eliminate the party affiliation designation from the ballot and see the outcome of an election where the voters had to actually know who and what they were voting for rather than just punching the button beside the big "D" or "R"?

Then again, maybe it's just me...

Is It The Thought That Really Matters…

Or Are You Actually Going To Second Guess My Intentions?


OK folks, suppose that tomorrow I run out and buy my dream boat, a 46’ Hatteras Open Cockpit Motor yacht.

Twin 500 HP Cummings Diesel engines, big generator, air conditioning, Radar, GPS, depth sounder, autopilot, and two or three thousand gallons of fuel tankage.

The next thing you know, I’m sailing to the Bahamia’s and on to Mexico on an almost non-stop basis, and my coolers and dock side freezers will be overflowing with Snapper, Mackerel, and Bonita, along with generous portions of caviar harvested from various species of fish that we encountered along the way of our journeys.

Then suppose that once I return home, I get the urge to do some charitable work, so I decide to run over to downtown Brunswick a couple of days each week and offer a free buffet of Sushi to the large population of ”underprivileged” and “disadvantaged” street people bums and hobos urban outdoorsmen that are commonly found riding around on bicycles and walking around on their poorly shod & shorn feet each and every day.

So Good so Far…Right?

What would you think if some stupid assed liberal-shit-for-brains federal judge distinguished jurist forbade me from offering my “free sushi buffet”, under the legal grounds that each and every homeless person didn’t actually like raw fish and raw fish eggs; and therefore it wasn’t fair for some people to enjoy my largess while others were forced to eat free soup and fried chicken at the other numerous canteens and homeless shelters distributed throughout the city of Brunswick and the county of Glynn?

I’d say that the judiciary should spend their time deliberating something for someone that actually gives a damn and deserves their intervention, but apparently in France the pitiful surendermonkeys Senior French Judges are more concerned about who can eat free food than they are worrying about who might be starving to death.

PARIS - A top French judge ruled that an extreme-right group cannot serve pork soup to the needy, saying the charitable handouts aim to discriminate against Muslims and Jews who don't eat pork because of their faith.

Judge Christian Vigouroux of the Council of State, the country's highest administrative body, said late Friday that such giveaways by the far-right group Solidarity of the French threaten public order.

His ruling approved a decision by Paris police to refuse permits to the group on the grounds that such handouts could spark angry reactions.

France is home to more than 5 million Muslims and some 600,000 Jews. Both Islam and Judaism prohibit eating pork, and Vigouroux said the group had shown "a clearly discriminatory goal" with its charity.

I swear to God, people, but this whole political correctness thing is completely out of hand, and if it keeps going down the path we’re on we’re all going to wake up one day with our own wild eyed Muslim living in our basement or garage, for free, under government mandate.

Think about this concept with me for a minute.

If I own a pig farm, do I have to sell my pigs to buy Fillet Mignon, Goose Liver Pate, and/or Fois Gras; because there might be some militant Muslim towel head or a radical Jew in the crowd that couldn’t eat from the charity that I’m willing to deliver without offending their religion?

Well then, I have a simple solution.

I say that if you don’t like what I’m serving, in MY establishment, on MY street, in MY country, for FREE, then get the &%$@# OUT.

Go back home or back to where ever you came from.

LEAVE!!

Right Now…

Don’t you dare come down to my door asking for free food, then bring your sheister hack legal council ACLU representative Barrister with you purporting to have some grievance against my charitable efforts.

What the hell are they thinking over there in France any way?

Sorry, but I’ve got to go now, before my brain explodes…

Insignificant Significance

Thank GOD That It’s All Over With For A While…


Well, the college football season drew to a belated conclusion last evening with the University of Florida’s pounding of a smug Ohio State University team somewhere in the arid lands called Arizona.

Does anyone but me think that Arizona senator John McCain looks like he just had dental surgery and has a mouth full of cotton balls every time he’s seen on TV (or perhaps he looks like Felix the Cat that just swallowed a Canary.)

Even if he calls himself a Republican, and even if the Viet Cong drove bamboo spikes under his fingernails and into his urethera, I still hate him for his so-called campaign finance reform legislation that may end up causing me to have to quit blogging else risk the wrath of the campaign funding nazis; and for his grandstanding on President Bush’s Supreme Court judiciary appointments last year.

I’d almost consider voting for Hillary before I’d vote for McCain if that’s all the GOP can muster as a presidential candidate in 2008.

Any way, that son-of-a-bitch had to get his stupid mug on my TV screen last night by his participation in the tossing the coin for the kickoff decision, and just in case you didn’t know it we (the taxpayers) had to pay the entire congress for another day off of their leisurely schedule so that members of the Ohio and Florida delegation could spend time kissing asses spend the evening attending the game.

At least this year the vaulted BCS ranking system produced a consensus #1 team for a change. My team lead the pack of whimpy “also-ran’s” and crumpled under their own weight in December, making their January 1st bowl appearance a mere footnote in the anus annals of college football history.

I’ve got to go now, because if I get any grumpier I’m going to embarrass myself with profanity laced ranting about things that really don’t matter to anyone but me.

Just call me a cranky old bastard, I guess…

Tactical Bullshit

Why Don’t We Just Hand Them All Of Our Plans?


Picture me slumped over my keyboard, with my eye’s rolled back in my head and drool running out of the corner of my mouth, dripping onto my stomach.

Now picture me as a professional journalist…but I’m being redundant…

Now let me ask you this question:

How the hell can the so called “war on terrorism” be successfully fought if the media and the politicians insist on broadcasting to the so-called terrorists our every move, weeks in advance of our efforts?

Seriously, if we want to actually win this military engagement, why do we keep on telling them what we are going to do and where and when we are going to do it well in advance so that they can prepare for it?

If a football team had to play every game with a TV news reporter looking over the coach’s shoulder and one standing in the huddle with the players, and before each play they announced “option run to the right” or “long pass downfield on a post pattern,” how successful do you think that their offensive scoring efforts would be.

Then if you told the defense that they had to try to stop the opposing team from scoring, but that they couldn’t tackle anyone without causing a public uproar, wouldn’t you expect to be on the losing end of the score?

Our current fiasco is the debate over the "surge" of 25,000 extra US troops into Iraq sometime in the near future.

Blaa Blaa blaa, blaa, blaaaaa blaaaa blaaaa blaaaa...

"OK Mister towel head terrorist...go ahead and run away or hide because if you wait a few months the status will be quo again and you can go back to placing roadside bombs after Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats cut funding and we all head for San Francisco to attend another Grateful Dead concert."

Unfortunately, Israel is in the same boat as the US, with the publication of the latest British Newspaper’s accounts of possible strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities with small scale atomic weapons.

Of course Israel is denying making any such plans BUT, if the story were TRUE, the stupid %$#@& British pacifist press has put Iran on notice and if they are smart their fighters are on heightened alert status and like Iraq they are probably moving personnel and equipment/materials around to prevent possible destruction.

I swear to God, I wish that we could just divide the country up based on political ideology, build a wall around the states containing all of the left leaning anti-war, anti-law enforcement, anti-death penalty crowd, and let nature take it's course.

I guaran-damn-tee you that within five years they (the leftists) would be bankrupt with the loss of MY tax dollars (and those like me of similar mind), and Canada and Mexico will have invaded and taken over what was left after the crack addicts and thugs got through raping and pillaging the lovely leftists' asses.

My opinion may be unpopular and politically incorrect, but I know that I'm RIGHT, and I'll die defending your right to disagree with me.

I truely wish that the feeling was mutual...

.

The AMIGO Course

Lempio means “Clean”


I spent the early morning hours doing some design sketches for the next theater set I’m working on and watching FOX news with one eyeball.

A commercial for something called the “Amigo Course” just came on and I'm forced to ask…

"Why the heck should I buy some language class named “Amigo Course” that purports to teach me, a native American and English speaker for a little over 45 years, to speak Spanish by reading words that have been re-spelled so that they read in English like they are pronounced in Spanish?"

Am I missing something here or WHAT?

If this method of language instruction is truly effective, and IF anyone needs to learn anything regarding linguistic skills in this country, THEN I want to come out with my own language class called the “Friend Course” that would teach all of the wet backs illegal immigrants guest workers to speak the King’s English.

After all, it is still the United States of America, not Mexico North right now, isn’t it?

Well...I'm waiting for you to answer...

If I developed such a course, here’s an example of some of the curriculum:

Deodorant = Deodorant

Clean = Clean

Sanitary = Sanitary

Fresh Towels = Fresh Towels

Extra Soap = Extra Soap

No Room Service Needed = No Room Service Needed

Mop = Mop

Broom = Broom

Lawn Mower = Lawn Mower

Go back home = Go back home

Get out = Get the #@&%* out

Stay Out = Stay the %$&*#@ Out

I don't know for sure, but it seems to me that we're all being forced to bend over backwards (or sometimes forwards, grabbing the ankles) for the accommodation and benefit of the masses of our south of the border friends when in reality it should be the invaders that are doing the learning.

For me personally, it makes my head explode when I have to search the box or the instructions contained therein to find the English language description of what I am buying or trying to put together after I get home.

I've got to go now and do some more drawings, thinking about this makes my head hurt...

Strap Me In Mommy

I’m Going Home To Jesus…


Take a look at this AP news article talking about most infant car seats miserably failing a recent Consumer Report’s crash test:

YONKERS, N.Y. - Most of the infant car seats tested by Consumer Reports "failed disastrously" in crashes at speeds as low as 35 mph, the magazine reported Thursday.

The seats came off their bases or twisted in place, the report said. In one case, a test dummy was hurled 30 feet.

Of the 12 car seats tested, Consumer Reports said it could recommend only two, and it urged a federal recall of the poorest performing seat, the Evenflo Discovery.

Evenflo issued a statement disputing the tests' validity, saying, "The magazine's test conditions and protocols appear to conflict with the collective experience of car seat manufacturers, NHTSA (the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) and the scientific community."

To be sold in the United States, an infant seat must perform adequately in a 30 mph frontal crash, and Consumer Reports found that all but the Discovery did so. But it noted that NHTSA crash tests most cars at higher speeds — 35 mph for frontal crashes and 38 mph for side crashes — so the magazine tested the seats at those speeds.

Is anyone else but me not surprised at this revalation?

Leave it to the government to demand that cars pass tests at 35 MPH, while seats designed to hold the next generation of citizens are tested at only 30 MPH--and even the passing results of those tests are now suspect.

Heck, I grew up traveling to California and Utah on extended summer vacations LAYING ON A BLANKET IN THE BACK OF A 1968 CHEVY NOMAD STATION WAGON (with all of the luggage lieing unrestrained in a carefully constructed pile behind me.)

In the event of a head on collision, I would have been crushed between the luggage and the rear passenger seats. I didn't worry, because I call that kind of travel a real adventure. Who needed DVD's and video games back then any way?

I honestly believe that the key to my longevity was the fact that my test pilot father didn’t drive like a maniac. No fancy air bags and car booster seats could have defended me from the other idiots on the road that my dad couldn't avoid. In fact, my dad never had an accident in his entire driving career (if you don’t count the time the Brahma Bull ran into the side of that same Nomad station wagon--don’t ask…)

Remember a few years back when everyone was apparently strapping their little bundles of joy into an infant car seat in the front passenger position and having the airbag snap their limber little necks?

Government intervention ensued and the media crapped their pants and had written conniption fits about the hazards of technology, but in the end I think that only a few dozen kids and short adults were killed by the “mutant homicidal airbag phenomena.”

I find it incredibly stupid that you and I can get a ticket for driving around without wearing our seatbelt/shoulder harness, yet every single school day in America almost 100 percent of the school aged kids that ride public school busses sit on metal framed seats in a giant metal box which hurtles down the road at 55 MPH, only occasionally stopping for RR crossings and liquor stores...without seatbelts?

And another thing...

What about all of the families traveling on commercial airliners?

How many times have you had to sit a seat or row or two from somebody’s sweet little drooling darlin’, with the parent choosing to SAVE MONEY BY HOLDING THE LITTLE TURD FACTORY IN THEIR LAP RATHER THAN SPRINGING FOR THE COST OF AN EXTRA SEAT in which they can strap the little bugger down in?

Let’s see, 30 MPH in a car is illegal unless you use an approved device, but 500 MPH at 30,000 feet is just fine with the public, the media, and the government because, like school busses, it’s an expedient solution that the Volvo- driving, tree-hugging , kum-ba-yah singing crowd can deal with.

I personally, have my own unique solution to the problem, and you can acquire the materials to build your own version of my “child restraint system” at your local UPS store or U-haul dealer.

The good news is that it works on planes, trains, and automobiles, and it’s cheep!

Ready?

Duct tape and bubble wrap…three layers of each. Just cut a hole near face level for a straw or sippie cup, and then hose the whole thing out when you get to your destination…no diaper changes in route.

I know, I know, I know...It's so simple, the government would never approve it.

(Dang I’m insensitive, aren’t I?)

I'm Tired

Roof Clean...Surprise Birthday A Success...


OK folks, let's take a look at my New Year's holiday scorecard to date.

One clean roof and set of rain gutters.
One new floodlight timer on out buildings.
One new security timer in main house.
Two new sections of wooden board fence repaired after removal of fallen pine trees (I got to use the chain saw.)

And finally...

One extremely surprised Mother (mine) who at 6 PM this evening walked into a room of 24 close friends and relatives, not having a clue as to our intentions.

She was almost speachless, but not quite. Two hours later everything was loaded into our car and everyone sped off into the evening.

Tomorrow we head back to St. Simons. It's a good thing, because I'M TIRED.

(Photo's to follow)

New Year

Same Old Football Team...


Well, Georgia Tech managed to do it once again...take an 9 & 2 win loss record and turn it into 9 and 5.

Their latest effort involved sqandering an 18 point lead--TWICE--to lose 38-35 to a sluggish West Virginia team at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville.

I was tempted to delay my trip to Alabama to stop by the stadium to attend this afternoon's fiasco, but then my better judgment took over and I decided to not waste my time and money and just watch the game on TV.

I trust that everyone's New Year's celebrations were as quiet and satisfying as ours spent at a friend's home throwing darts and talking until about 2 in the morning.

A couple of more days are to be spent down here in lower Alabama, then it's back to our little island to try to figure out what to do with the rest of 2007.

Regards Y'all...

Reflections On The Old Year

Hopes For The New One


Well, here we all are--posed at the end of the old year, looking at the beginning of 2007.

If you’re like me, you’re sitting there scratching your rear end head and wondering where most of 2006 went. I guess that the old adage really is true that the older you get, the faster time seems to fly.

Doing a quick calculation, I just figured out that I have thus far lived 17,274 days, so surviving another 365 sunrises and sunsets keeps getting incrementally smaller and smaller in the overall total of things.

For me, the year 2006 saw some fairly substantial changes in the planet in general and in my life personally--many good, and some bad.

The lowest point came in April when my Father’s Mother, my beloved 93 year old Grandmother Bessy, passed away after a short illness. In one day, with the passing of the woman who was married to the man I am named for, my immediate family went from four generations to three.

Then this summer my childhood friend, former Air Force fighter pilot and American Airlines captain Mike Parker, died of Stomach Cancer. I traveled back to southern Alabama from the Georgia Coast to celebrate his life with my friend Mark with several dozen of my high school classmates in attendance at the graveside ceremony. I guess that it is true that “only the good die young.”

On the personal health front, I managed to avoid spending any time in the hospital this year, after nearly buying the farm in August of 2005. That’s most definitely a GOOD THING. This fall we purchased two new Electra Townie bicycles and, while Pat is several hundred miles ahead of me on the odometer, I think that as the weather improves and the days get longer we’ll both see the health benefits of riding on an almost daily basis.

I wish I could just turn off the TV and let the world take care of itself without commenting because I am so tired of yelling at the TV picture tube while I watch highly paid STUPID PEOPLE say STUPID things that at least 51% of the population takes at face value. For that reason, I’m quite happy to have never reproduced and be closer to 50 than I am to 25. I’m just gonna die some day within the next 30 or 40 years and let the rest of you worry about things from there on out.

It looks like that the year 2007 will see my reentry into the engineering consulting business in a substantial fashion, with design opportunities coming at me from all sides. I hate having to admit that I’m excited to go back to work at the expense of my beach bum lifestyle, but a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

Later this morning we’re heading over on I-10 to southern Alabama to celebrate the New Year with some old high school friends, then we’ll move on to the northwest to spend most of the week with my mother while I do a little work on our farm. The cool weather will hopefully allow me to crawl around in the attic to replace a fan that’s been dead for years and do some work on outbuildings without dieing of heat stroke.

I guess that it is appropriate that I begin the new year in the area of the planet where I began my life--I’m very comfortable there because everything and everyone is so familiar. Best of all, it’s generally a low stress environment, and that’s my number one priority these days…

Avoiding unnecessary stress.

Here’s hoping you can do the same in YOUR New Year.

.

That's Gonna Leave A Scar

More Photoshop Insensitivity...Saddam's new look:







I know, I know, I know...I'm so mean.

.

Public Service

Working Incognito...


On Wednesday night Pat and I helped our friends Bruce & Ski host a pre-nuptial party for the Daughter and soon to be Son Inlaw of some of Bruce's real estate clients.

Your's truely tossed on a tab collar formal shirt and a red bow tie and played the part of BARTENDER.

Here's some photos of the results of the evening:

First there is the snack table:

Here's Ski and Pat and another of our girlfriends...


Here's a staged photo of Ski and the bride's mother mis-behaving...

Bruce & Ski and the proud parents of the Bride yucking it up...

At the end of the evening, this strange guy showed up and scared off all the women...



(That isn't me, by the way)

In the end, a good time was had by all, and I successfully dispensed libations for over thirty people without anyone knowing that I had never done it before.

Hah...

Close Encounters Of The Leaf Blower Kind

The Torture Continues...


Well, we're only back in town for a little less than 48 hours and I've already been tempted to kill three more men wielding leaf blowers in one form or the other.

Within the first FIVE MINUTES of arriving home on Tuesday morning, the morons employed in our own yard crept over to our car while we were inside unloading our luggage and proceeded to blow all of the leaves and rainwater puddled beside the car onto the driver's door and hood.

When I walked back outside they tried to ignore me and act like they didn't know what they had done as they slithered out of sight. Seriously, we'd not been there for FIVE MINUTES, and they couldn't bother to wait so that I could move the car out of their way.

Then, on my way home from the Post Office this afternoon, this other idiot was doing the old "blow it out of my customer's yard into the road" maneuver, wherein the aforementioned rocket scientist lawn maintenance technician considers his task finished when all of the debris left over from his efforts are resting across the road or in someone else's yard.

When I was a kid, we did something called RAKE the leaves and grass clippings up into a pile, then we MOVED them by hand to somewhere else in the yard (like a compost pile) or loaded them into bags and hauled them away.

Not anymore...

That fool didn't even have enough sense to stop blowing everything across the street into the neighbor's yard and move out of the road as I approached.

He made me stop and watch his artistic efforts.

I somehow resisted the urge to hit the throttle and risk spending 20 to life in the Georgia big house for smashing him and his little gasoline powered noise maker flat.

Be advised that if I hit you once...

I'M BACKING UP AND HITTING YOU A SECOND TIME!!

You'll be dead so you can't sue me...

Just stop it...dammit...

And Then There Were Three

President Gerald Ford Dies...


I was sitting here this morning doing a little reading for a consulting project I'm working on when word came across the news sites that former President Ford has died.

He was 93.

Now we're down to three living former presidents--Carter,Bush 41, and Clinton.

Regardless of my political and personal differences with some of our former chief executives, I join the rest of the nation in mourning the loss of any of these men that carried the burdens of the world on their shoulders.

RIP President Ford:

I’m Back In The Saddle On The Sofa On The Keyboard Again

It Wasn’t An Easy Process


Can you guess where the worst weather in the country was about 2 PM yesterday?

Central Florida.

Can you guess where we were starting to drive from about 1:15 PM yesterday?

Central Florida.

Had it not been for Pat forgetting to pack some important personal items, resulting in us turning around to retrieve them from our host’s home, I would probably be sitting in a hospital or morgue right now because the weather was FIERCE for several hours during what would have been the first half of our four hour drive.

Instead, we caught the local TV news channel’s belated warnings of two tornadoes and a line of severe thunderstorms running up I-4 and I-95 and I made an executive decision to abort our mission and reschedule for a 4:30 AM departure this morning.

We arrived home at 8:30 and after a restful late morning nap and a little internet surfing, and here I am again for your loathing or enjoyment.

We’ve got a short week ahead, then it’s off again to Southern Alabama to visit Mom for a long New Years’ vacation. I’ve got a bunch of work to do on the farm if the weather holds out, but I’ll have to endure her slow dial-up internet service so I’m preparing myself mentally.

All and all a good holiday season thus far, and just like James Brown said it...

"I feel Good, na,na,na,na,na,na,naaa...Like I knew that I would..."




Ever wonder where Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson got their moves?

RIP Mr. Brown

.

I Think That I'm Going To Explode

God Save Me From The Food...


You should have seen all of the food we had laying around on the tables here this afternoon and evening.

First a small group of family and friends that were Pittsburgh Steeler fans gathered to watch the team's hopes for a wild card spot in the playoffs vanish with the loss to the Baltimore Ravens. By the time dinner was served I couldn't eat anything because I spent the earlier hours gazing on the colossal boiled shrimp and other smacks.

Now I have to sleep off my stupor and take my turn at the stove tomorrow morning doing cornbread stuffing to go with a 7 pound turkey breast and a small spiral sliced ham that we hauled to town with us on Friday.

I've already taken one nap, and I feel another three or four hours of sleep coming on shortly...and let me again be the first to wish everyone a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Christmas Break

A Little Time Off


As you have probably noticed, I missed a couple of days writing this weekend.

The reasons are twofold. I'm staying in a house full of teenagers, and there is only one phone line and two phone jacks--one in the master bedroom and one in the kitchen.

Blogging from either place is practically impossible, and using the DSL from the kitchen with a cable running across the kitchen and dining room floor to the living room is a pain in the butt for the cooks, thus my delimma.

Any way, just in case I don't get back online until we return home Christmas evening, I hope that everyone has a Merry Christmas and is safe on the roads in their travels

Regards Y'all

Vacation Coming Up

Of Course It's Gonna Rain In Florida...


I'm afraid that my Blogging will once again be hit or miss starting on Friday while we drive back to the Orlando, Florida area for Christmas.

I've done a bunch of work on Pat's Mustang (20 MPG versus my Suburban's 9 MPH) and had the oil changed and tires rotated this week, and once I have a couple of coats of RainX on the windshield we should be good to go. If you've never tried RainX, go buy some right now before you head out to GrandMa's house or where ever you're spending your Christmas because the stuff is GREAT!

On the professional front, I'm working on a new lighthouse for the Atlantic coast of Florida. Actually, it's an industrial chimney that's over 100' tall and will be designed to look like a lighthouse to the innocent bystander. We're just budgeting and bidding the project right now, but I really want to do this one because of where it is and who is buying it.

Hopefully Miss USA, Paris Hilton, and all of the Islamic terrorists will give us a break for a few days so we can visit with family and friends without FOX News and CNN interrupting the celebration, but you never know.

I'll be fairly close to the keyboard, and if something bad or stupid happens be assured that I'll be here to comment and explain things.

Leaf Blowers--Part II

Where Are My Ear Plugs?


I've had a significant revelation this week.

In the big picture of things, apparently I really don’t matter.

Neither does Pat.

You see, for the past almost three years that we’ve lived here in paradise, we’ve been assaulted almost daily with the sounds of …

get ready…

LAWN EQUIPMENT.

I swear, if one of our own people isn’t standing under my window with a hedge trimmer or lawn mower or weed eater or edger or leaf blower in his hand, then the condos on either side or the Mexicans working on the golf course that borders the other two sides of our property are clipping or trimming or pruning or chopping using something powered by a little screaming gasoline engine.

FIVE &%$#@* DAYS A WEEK.

Isn’t there something wrong with this picture?

After all, we’re part of a few dozen people that actually LIVE here in one of the 48 condo units 365 days a year (vacation days excluded.)

Instead of listening to the sounds of traffic on I-285 in Atlanta, now I’m condemned to attending a Homelight convention every daylight minute of every day of every year--rain or shine.

It has finally occurred to me that our Executive Board and property management company runs things based on the needs not of the full time residents, but rather it accommodates people that are either here on weekends and holidays else rent their property to TOTAL STRANGERS that drive into our parking lots to enjoy the landscaping and peace & quiet we rarely enjoy.

Of course most of the members of our Board are closer to age 100 than they are to age 50, so you could set off a two megaton nuclear blast on their back patio and all they would feel is the ground shake a little--they can't actually HEAR the goings-on on the property.

If I‘m not careful, I swear that I’m going to be convicted of murder by hedge clipper if I have to keep listening to the whine and smell of two cycle engines every waking minute.

Please, give it a rest already.

And regarding the leaf blower thing, why not take the time to tap on my door and give me the opportunity to move my car or truck before you create a dust storm over and around my freshly washed vehicle?

Right now my Suburban looks like it hasn’t been washed in three years because, in spite of resting comfortably in our covered carport, the idiot yard guys insist on assaulting it weekly with their leaf blowers. I haven’t driven it in the rain since I last washed it, but the sticky salt air down here grabs every bit of dust and attaches it to the paint finish, and it’s FILTHY as a result of our lawn maintenance efforts.

If they keep it up, I'm gonna steal their sparkplugs...

Baby Raccoon

Look Who Came To Visit


I found this little creature wandering around our yard by his/herself last evening:




The little raccoon was so busy eating that it let me walk up within a few feet of it several times. I just talked to it softly and moved slowly and it let me get several good photos like this one.

Our resident armadillo and opossum aren't quite as hospitable.

Leaf Blowers

Don't Make Me Have To Hurt You...


Be hereby advised that if you own and/or operate a leaf blower, and I find you in my yard before 8 AM or anywhere near my cars, I will pick up the nearest tree limb or piece of lawn furnature and beat you within inches of your life.

Thank you for your attention.

That will be all for now...

The NBA

Why Bother To Play?


I’ve only attended a couple of professional basketball games in my lifetime. If you gave me free tickets to the finals next year I wouldn’t go.

Even if you paid me.

I might even burn the tickets in a show of disinterest and disgust if they weren’t worth so much money.

I would probably end up selling them…to someone I either didn’t like or didn’t know.

You see, I have a several personal problems with the NBA--starting with the character of the players and their rap/hiphop culture. I also can’t stand most of their fans that attend the games.

Can you say “Punks”? Can you say “Idiots”? Can you say “Thugs”?

My real problem with the NBA is that they steal young players from college basketball programs like my beloved Georgia Tech after they’ve only played a year or two.

While pro football will only take a player after they have played out at least three years of their college scholarship commitment, the so called basketball pros will take a guy after he’s signed a four year scholarship commitment and only played one season on campus. Heck I bet they would take a guy after two games if he was good enough and wanted to leave.

The problem for the colleges is that they only have a limited number of scholarships, and the mix of players that they get is limited by and determined by who takes a scholarship to any given school.

Sometimes recruiting the very best player in a given position will cause other good players in that same position to look elsewhere for an opportunity. Georgia Tech’s program has been decimated a number of times over the past twenty years by guys like Kenny Anderson leaving after only one or two seasons when the team was on the verge of greatness.

I don’t understand how Coaches Smith at NC and Dukes’ Krzyzewski keep their players for four years, but Bobby Cremmins and now Paul Hewitt lose the good ones after only two or three years.

The other thing about the NBA that should bother everybody is the criminal background and behavior of an unfortunately large percentage of the player population. The fight this past weekend that has been widely reported and endlessly shown on TV is a good example. (I can’t remember the teams and I refuse to do a Google search to find them.)

If I acted like one of those players at work, I wouldn’t be fined…I’D BE FIRED.

But these spoiled, pampered assholes will just laugh it off, pay their fines out of their pocket change, sit on the bench for a few games, and then it’s back to the status quo.

What kind of message does that send to our kids, especially “minority” kids that are already growing up without fathers or otherwise quality supervision and often see the NBA and the NFL as the only avenue to success?

I think that if you throw a punch at a coach, fan, or other player you should be suspended for the rest of the season and forfeit all of your pay for the season.

If you do it again, you should be banded from further play.

But that’s just one man’s opinion, I guess…

Strike The Set

It's All Over...

I went back to the theater this afternoon to shoot a few more posed photos after the show, then reduce the set back down to the original sheets of foamboard and sticks of lumber.

It only took a little over an hour and a half, and by 6 PM the stage was clear and you'd never know I'd been there. Here's a couple more photos.





Next up is a giant staircase for the play "Little Foxes" in April.

Theatrical Misbehavior

Things Are Going Along Nicely


Pat & I attended the GIAHA's performance of "A Christmas Carol" tonight. They put on a darn good performance. We were also invited to attend the cast party afterward at my friend Mayor Thompson's house.

All and all a good evening, I think.

Here's a little peek at what we saw (click on each picture to enlarge):











I really like the looks of the final touch I put on the set last week, the sign there center stage that says "Scrooge & Marley".

What do you think?

Thing's I'd Liked To Have Had

Free Stuff...But No Where To Put It


I came home from my foggy photo shoot this morning with the trunk of Pat's Mustang full of chunks of wood. I just couldn't resist their beauty.

There's also a marvelous chunk of Eastern Cedar stump laying within two miles of our Condo that's headed for the wood chipper or woodpile unless I can find someone to help me pick it up and haul it to some as yet determined location for storage.

Sometimes I hate not owning a house these days because of times like this.

My big "K Street" tree was saved by the City of Brunswick and has been moved and stored at their expense.

Back in the late 1980's when they were clearing land to build the new Georgia Dome football stadium for the Atlanta Falcons a lumber company offered me a working boiler and working STEAM ENGINE that they had used to saw logs, for FREE, if I would come in, dismantle the equipment, and move it off site before they demolished their 100 year old buildings.

I begged and pleaded for help, but everyone just saw a bunch of stinky old iron and steel and I couldn't find a home for the wonderfull antiques.

My ex-wife wouldn't let me put it in my back yard, so I guess it went to the scrapyard.

I sure hope I can save this old stump.

Foggy Morning In Georgia

Here's What I Saw This Morning









Perhaps the only sad thing I found was this old Cedar that was being removed from Gascoigne Bluff Park because of it's poor health. It's about four or five feet across at the bottom and seven feet long.



I want that piece of tree trunk, and I'm calling my County Commissioners to talk about saving it

More Christmas Carols

Yes, I know…I know...I Won’t Let This Idea Go


For your enjoyment this morning, I have a few more selections of my Muslim friendly Christmas Carols available.

How about this old favorite:


Away From The Danger
(sung to the tune of “Away in a manger”)

Away from the danger, some rocks for a bed,
The little Osama, laid down his turbined head,
The Drones in the bright sky looked down where he lay
The little Osama asleep in the Cave.

Cruise missiles are soaring, the satellite phone rings
But little Osama, has already moved his things
The flashes and explosions are over the next hills
But little Osama knows that we’re after him still.


Or how about:

It’s Beginning to look a lot like Jihad
(obviously sung to the tune of “(It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas”)

Feel free to make up your own words


Or maybe this one:

Wreck the Walls
(sung to the tune of “Deck The Halls”)

Wreck the Walls with blocks of C4
A la la la la la la la lah
Make every thing just like here before
A la la la la la la la lah
Don we now our desert apparel,
A la la la la la la la lah
Troll the ancient Muslim carol,
A la la la la la la la lah.

See the blazing Hummer before us
A la la la la la la la lah
Strike the infidel, bomb the tour bus
A la la la la la la la lah
Follow me to meet our Virgins
A la la la la la la la lah
While I tell a Jihad story
A LA LA LA LA….La La La La Lahhhhhhh

I could go on forever, but I think that the novelty has worn off now.

Unless I come up with something else special, I think I'll move on...besides, I've got to get to work mailing out the rest of my Christmas cards.