A man walks into a coffee shop, and is given a huge mug. But when he
tries to drink from it, he discovers the mug contains a pair of beige
cotton trousers. He complains to the counter staff, but doesn't get
anywhere. So they call the manager. "But it's exactly what you asked
for," the manager says. Replies the customer, "How can this possibly
be what I ordered?" "It's a cup o' chinos," says the manager.
Go see my friend Jane. She's almost to 40K hits.
I received the following e-mail the other day.
Denny, love your web site although I am a little disappointed you haven't talked about your company in awhile. I can relate. Our company is in the middle of six sigma and "best practices" The most overused stupid phrase. what a bunch of bullshit. what they should really do for cost savings and best practices is fire all of the incompetent managers.
Oh! My! God! Is six sigma still around? I thought that bullshit was long gone. How 90's! At TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name) we went through six sigma over ten years ago. We had a joke about it.
The CEO, the senior VP, and a lowly programmer were taken hostage and held for ransom by Arab terrorists. The company was willing to ransom the programmer, but told the terrorists that they could keep the CEO and senior VP. The terrorists said it was all or nothing, so it was curtains for the hostages. They would all be shot. The terrorists did give each of them one last request before they would be shot.
CEO: I want to give one last speech about six sigma.
Senior VP: I want to give one last speech about best practices.
Lowly Programmer: Shoot me first!
Best processes. Have you ever had to scope a process? We had a freaking class on that. I cannot stand FQP's (Quality Programs).
I have done a lot of thinking over the past few months and my new friend Marcel ( the crow was rather tasty) was right. I am burned out and one of the reasons is all the FQP's and other bureaucratic bullshit I have endured over the last 31 years at TCIDNN.
Here's the best FQP, and I'm sure that as a small business owner Marcel would agree with me.
1. Hire good people.
2. Tell them what you want done.
3. Get the fuck out of their way and let them do their jobs.
4. Don't bog them down with excessive meetings, FQP's and bullshit Diversity Awareness classes.
Unfortunately, the larger the company, the more bullshit is involved with your job. I wrote about my experience with six sigma at TCIDNN when I wrote about Green Hat School.
Here's a warning: Whenever you walk into a classroom, the chairs (or tables) are arranged in a U shape, you have a Ken and Barbie and they call themselves facilitators, it's gonna be a long day (or two).
Green Hat School was a pain in the ass, because it was the antithesis of what it was trying to teach. Here's an example.
They put down a checkerboard carpet which was five squares wide and ten squares long. There were sensors under the carpet that beeped when one stepped on the wrong square. The point was to get everyone in class (Except me. I'm a cripple, ya know.) to be able to walk from one end of the carpet to the other without stepping on any of the squares that beeped. Oh! And talking was forbidden.
So, I sat and watched this exercise. There were people walking and people pointing. Finally, the class figgered out the system and people began confidently walking the carpet. After about half the class had made it across the carpet successfully, Ken flipped a switch and all of a sudden squares that didn't beep started beeping. Holy shit! Sumpin' changed! Now the class had to go back to pointing and walking to figger out the new system.
The point of this exercise was to demonstrate how markets change and we have to react to them. I went up to Ken and Barbie after the class and I asked them what would they have done if they had walked in on a class full fo people in wheelchairs. Their market had just changed. How would they react to it? They just looked at me totally clueless.
The sum total of all this was they wasted two days of my time. None of this bullshit really applied to me. I'm not in marketing. I'm a grunt. The people who need a lot of this bullshit are managers and marketing reps. The managers' Green Hat School was three days long. Unfortunately, I didn't notice any change in management. Most of 'em were just as fucked up as ever.
Later on, there was another Green Hat School follow on course. My manager told me I had to take it. Like I do with most FQP's is drag my feet and delay enrolling in the class. Sometimes they go away. This time it did. We had a management change and the new manager thought this was a waste of time and money. He was right.
Let's go back to my rules.
1. Hire good people.
There are a lot of them out there. I know. I've worked with them. I've seen a lot of them laid off because our management fucked up and lost business. Maybe their market changed and they didn't respond to it. Maybe they should have paid attention in Green Hat School.
2. Tell them what you want done.
We went to a bullshit system where we set our own goals and commitments. What a bunch of new age crap just like six sigma and best processes. What's a manager for? He's supposed to know the needs of the business and he should be tellling you what your job is not the other way around. One of my goals I set last year was remaining employed until May of 2005.
3. Get the fuck out of their way and let them do their jobs.
People should enjoy their jobs. If you have hired the right people and given them the proper motivation it should make the manager's job easier. I do not know why more managers do not understand sumpin' as simple as this. The best manager I ever had told me what he expected of me and got out of my way. He didn't bother me with a lot of administrivia and meetings. And here's a great quote from Thomas Sowell:
People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.
Amen to that! That brings me to number 4.
4. Don't bog them down with excessive meetings, FQP's and bullshit Diversity Awareness classes.
In the organization I work for now, I have to attend two meetings a week: My team meeting which is productive, friendly and informal and the Inquisition Meeting, which is pretty much a waste of time since it mainly duplicates what we have covered in our team meeting. The difference is this one is held with our manager and the PMICOUM (Peoject Manager In Charge Of Useless Meetings). Here we get to hear a recap of the other teams' meetings (Like I really want to hear that.) and some measurement numbers. What would make more sense and be more productive is for my manager (I have a new one since my old CDSMŽ(Clueless Dipshit Manager) was promoted to his manager's position. He retired right after the surgery to remove my CDSMŽ's lips from his ass. I always give a new manager the benefit of the doubt until he/she shows me that he/she is competent or an incompetent boob.) and the PMICOUM to sit in on the team meetings (which we conduct over the phone) and have the numbers guy join in. This would be one less meeting and allow the grunts to be more productive.
We have another fun meeting that I call the Waste Fifteen Minutes Every Other Tuesday Call. On that call, all the regulars call in and we tell the rest of the group about what projects we're working on. Like I really give a shit about what everyone outside of my team is doing. I DON'T FUCKING CARE! YOU'RE WASTING MY FUCKING TIME! Aaaarrrggghhhhh!
My department consists of one manager.
We have Four Project Managers:
1.The PMICOUM.
2. The PMICOABS (Project Manager In Charge Of Administrative BullShit) He's the guy who makes sure our SHTS is in on time and correct. He also monitors expenses and makes sure our expense accounts are submitted in a timely manner. I would hate his job!
3. The PMWAGSD (The Project Manager Who Actually Gets Shit Done). Whenever there is an important project that must succeed, he gets the nod. He does it with a minimum of meetings.
4. The PMTIDHACATWHD (Project Manager That I Don't Have A Clue As To What He Does) He has an office next door to mine and I still don't have a clue as to what he does. He manages some servers and he gets to use one of our Operations co-ops part of the time. That's all I know. Really. Honest.
We have about 15 regular employees and about 10 contractors and co-ops. <dirtyoldman> Some of the co-ops are cute, innocent looking college girls. Yowza!</dirtyoldman>
We are overmanaged. We need less meetings. Leave us alone! Let us do our jobs!
As I said, I'm burned out and all it would take would be another bullshit FQP and that might be enough to push me out the door. Maybe that's why they have 'em: To push old farts like me out the door.
It might work.
I haven't picked on the Clintons for a while, so for my Saturday rerun, here is a piece I wrote back when television executives were gonna go look in the Ozark or Appalachian Mountains to find some real hillbillies for a reality show. My suggestion was to look no further than Chappaqua New York.
At the end of this post, I started to write a song, but I wasn't inspired enough to finish it. However, loyal reader Greg did finish the song and you will find it at the end of this post.
I was reading the paper the other day and I saw that with the success of the Osbournes (the jury is still out on the Anna Nicole Smith show, but I say, just shoot her and be done with it) those imaginative TV executives are thinking about bringing back the Beverly Hillbillies as a reality show. Didja notice that the only people you can make fun of nowadays are hoosiers? Hoosiers? What? People from Indiana? No, white trash. If Chris Johnson happens to read this he'll know what I'm talking about. For some reason, in St. Louis and its surrounding suburbs, they call white trash hoosiers. I grew up in Webster Groves, a suburb of St. Louis, and I still talk like I'm from there. So, every now and then I'll make some remark about hoosiers and my friend Cindy will say 'What the heck are you talking about?' Down here in Georgia we call white trash crackers or rednecks. Ya might be a redneck if ...
So how come white trash hasn't been up in arms about people making fun of them? There should be protest marches. They need a white Jesse Jackson or a white Al Sharpton. Dammit, if y'all don't quit makin' fun of us we're gonna boycott the 711 and the Quicktrip. We're gonna quit buyin' lottery tickets. That will show you uppity white folks what we think of you. And anyway, I'm not white trash. I got me a doublewide. The trashy folks got them single wide mobile homes. Now leave me alone. I'm goin' back to the trailer and watch me some Jerry Springer.
So the brilliant idea for the Beverly Hillbillies is to scour the backwoods of Arkansas (Lot's of white trash from that state. I can think of a few.), and other poor states and try to find some dumb goobers and put them in a big house in Beverly Hills and film them like the Osbournes and Anna Nicole Smith. Look no further than Chappaqua, New York. We can have a series that combines the Beverly Hillbillies and the Osbournes. Not only was Bill Clinton our first black president and our first female president, he was also our first goober president.
Can't you just see it. There's old bumbling Bill, trying to boff anything in skirts, always wearing that stupid grin on his face, and Hillary trying to keep some type of order like Sharon Osbourne. And we have the dysfunctional child, Chelsea, who, according to the British papers has to be carried out of pubs dead drunk. Think about it. If Bill and Hillary Clinton were your parents wouldn't you have a drinking problem?
And Bill has a goober brother Roger. Can't ya just see the two of 'em out in a pickup cruisin' for babes? One thing I've never understood about Bill. He was the most powerful man in the world and he couldn't do any better than a chubby airhead intern? And Paula Jones back when he was governor. He thought she was attractive? We used to say about guys like him that he'd do it with a snake if someone would hold the mouth open. So I can see Bill and Roger scoring bigtime at the honkeytonk. Man, wouldn't he impress a couple of closin' time queens with the big house at Chappaqua?
And he has to have a wacky sidekick. Howza 'bout crazy James, the ragin' cajun, Carville? See the three of 'em down at the creek giggin' for crawdads? The possibilties are endless. We can see James runnin' through a trailer park with a twenty dollar bill.
Bill: 'What's ya doin' James? Yuk. Yuk.'
James: 'I'm tryin' to get ya laid ya stoopid goober.'
Roger: 'He sure ain't gettin' any from Hillary. That bitch is cold. Yuk. Yuk.'
Bill: 'Roger, you goober, how dare you talk about Hillary that way. But you're right that bitch is cold. Haven't had any since Chelsea was born. Hurry up James! Yuk. Yuk.'
There has to be diversity so we could show golf outings with his good buddy Vernon Jordan. I'd love to hear those conversations.
Vernon: 'Holy Mackeral Bill! I coulda gotcha sumpin' better that that stupid bitch, Monica.'
Bill: 'You don't understand Vernon. She snapped her thong at me. She was a female. After seeing Hillary naked anything looks good. I'm a hound. She was a bitch. Yuk. Yuk.'
Do you remember early in the Goober Clinton presidency he gave a speech and mentioned he had a pickup with astroturf in the bed? He said he didn't even want to say what that was for. Maybe now we'd find out. Maybe now we wouldn't want to know what it was for, but I'm sure the people enthralled by the Osbournes would be glued to the screen.
And what could be better than seeing the real Hillary? Wouldn't it be a treat to see her throw lamps and ashtrays at Bill? Now, that, I would watch. Hell, I'd pay big bucks to see that. Hey, I smell a pay per view here.
CBS was after Bill for a talk show recently. Bill said he wouldn't have time because he planned on spending too much time doing public service. Yeah, I know which part of the public he'd like to service. I bet that's what he means by public service. But this way, he could just be himself and he'd make millions.
And it's a win/win for Hillary. She'd get lots of money and the more Bill humiliated her, the higher her approval ratings would be with women voters. Being a victim got her elected to the Senate. This would be a slam dunk for the presidency.
Need a song don't we?
Listen to my story 'bout a man named Bill,
A poor ol' goober with a wife name of Hill,
Need some more work on that. Get a songwriter. Get the Dixie Chicks to sing it.
And think how much better the Chappaqua Hillbillies would be in the White House. This idea is worth millions and I'm giving it away for free.
So, you television network executives, if you want any more ideas for a series, just let me know.
I'll be here waiting.
Here's Greg's song. Roll the credits.
Gonna listen to my story 'bout a man named Bill A poor ol' goober with a wife name a' Hill and then one day he was truckin' at some poon when outta the woods came a bumblin' goon "Carville" he said. "James Carville. Follow me" Well the next thing you know, ol' Bill's the President the kinfolk said "Bill, start actin' like a gent " "cause now you could be gettin women by the ton" so he loaded up the truck and they moved to Washington DC that is. Bitin' Lips. Monica. Gettin' BJ's.
Beverly Hillbillies' Breakdown on the banjo. Yi haw!
Let's just say I was talking to the Atlanta City Council about the sad state of the Atlanta public school system and I said, "They were racist because they were a bunch of black people". Would I be branded a racist? Or let's just say I was talking to a group of Asians and I called them Japanese and one of them pointed out that he was Chinese and I said, "You all look alike to me". Would I be a racist? You can bet I would be branded as one. Then why is there no outrage about Representative Corrine Brown's remarks?
She said Republican leaders were "racist" in their policies toward the Caribbean nation, which is almost entirely black, and called the president's representatives "a bunch of white men."
And how did Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega respond?
Participants in the meeting said Noriega later told Brown: "As a Mexican-American, I deeply resent being called a racist and branded a white man."
Part of that statement is racist also, since he objected to being "branded a white man". But how did Brown respond?
She said Hispanics and whites "all look alike to me."
Think of the howls of outrage if a white Republican had said that about a group of black people. A white Dimocrat could get away with it, but not a white Republican. If he were a member of Congress there would have been screams for him to resign from Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Julian Bond, Kweisi Mfume, and all the other RWPP's (Race Warlord Poverty Pimps) who look for racism in any statement made by a white Republican.
So, she decided to apologize for her remarks.
I sincerely did not mean to offend Secretary Noriega or anyone in the room. Rather, my comments, as they relate to 'white men,' were aimed at the policies of the Bush administration as they pertain to Haiti, which I do consider to be racist," Brown said in a statement on Thursday.
Try this. I didn't mean to offend the Congressional Black Caucus, but I think they are a bunch of racists because they are all black men.
This kind of bullshit really makes me sick to see the term racism used by people who are themselves racists.
And as for Haiti, don't we need the permission of France, Germany and the United Nations before we can intervene? Otherwise it would be a unilateral operation and we know how much Dimocrats are against us taking any kind of unilateral action.
Corinne Brown's apology is not sufficient. She is a racist and has no business in Congress. her constituents should be embarrassed to have her as a representative, unless, of course, they are just as racist as she is.
John sent me this picture of the damage inflicted by our incredibly bad winter storm. Warning! This picture contains very graphic material and should be viewed with caution. You can see why they closed all the schools and many people stayed home from work.
Sent to me by Barbara and Clay.
I woke up this morning and looked out the window and the ground was covered with a massive 1/8 inch snowfall. In a town where 4 inches of snow constitute a blizzard I figgered this would just about shut the city down not to mention there being a run on bread, milk, and eggs at the grocery store.
It had really been blowing the night before, so when I opened the garage door, I saw that the wind had blown my trash can onto the lawn and had blown the lid on the other side of the driveway.
"Oh fuck", I said. "This sucks! Now is that shit on the driveway water or ice?"
I bravely made my way onto the lawn and recovered the trash can and put it back on the driveway. Screw the lid. I decided to get that when I returned from work.
I closed the garage door and gingerly made my way down the driveway to the truck without falling on my ass. It was only five feet, but with crutches it was an adventure. I fall on dry surfaces.
Got in the truck (I aways drive my truck on Monday and Thursday. That is so there is nothing in the driveway to block the view of my trash can so the county guys can see it OK and pick it up. Since I'm a cripple and DeKalb County is nice to us cripples, I don't have to take the trash down to the curb.) and headed off to work. I actually got into work a little earlier than normal because the roads were deserted thanks to the massive 1/8 inch snowfall which made everyone stay home.
Sho' nuff, I got into work and my office was dark. That meant my team lead, who shares the office with me, hadn't made it in. Pussy! I logged on and there was a note from him saying that due to the bad weather, he was working from home.
The cripple made it in!
Got a cup of coffee and ogled the cute girl who works in the cafeteria. Ahhh! To be 30 years younger!
Went back to my office and goofed off for a while. Did some more work on the Early Ship Program of z/OS that I'm testing for IBM. I could tell you what I tested, but the IBM police would come after me. This is CONFIDENTIAL stuff. Anyway, the feature was neat and works as designed. I'll tell my IBM rep how pleased I am with it when I talk to him on Monday.
Went upstairs and pulled out a couple of 100 foot fiber optic cables from under the floor. I can charge that time to the other division that split off from us. Heh. Heh. Heh.
Went back to my office and goofed off some more. Since I was afraid of there maybe being some freezing rain and the Weather Channel website showed a wintery mix for Atlanta, I decided to go home.
Wouldn't ya just know that on the way home my cell phone went off? A user couldn't get to some DASD. This was my fault since I have been doing lots of recabling as part of the RSHNLP (Reverse Synergy Hardware Non-Leveraging Project), which split our data center into two parts so we no longer share any of our hardware. This, of course, will wind up costing TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name - Our motto "When in doubt, reorganize") more money, but what do I know? I'm just a grunt.
I plugged in my laptop and logged on and found out what his problem was. I hadn't updated the configuration properly. Through the magic of HCD (Hardware Configuration Definition) and Dynamic I/O I was able to change his configuration. Then, I had to make sure the ports in the fiber optic switch talked to each other. I logged on to my master system and using ESCON Manager, a nifty program that allows me to change switch configurations remotely, I allowed the ports to talk to each other and got the devices online. Then, since we use a program like AOL IM called FART (Fast Available Real Time) I FARTed at him that he was ready to rumble. He FARTed a thanks back to me.
After that I logged off thankful that I am a highly trained, highly motivated and highly paid I/T professional.
And since this problem was related to the recabling I did to support the RSHNLP, I can charge the time I spent fixing the problem to the other division. Heh. Heh. Heh
I'm just glad that we didn't get an inch of snow. I would have probably lost power. Then I wouldn't have been able to fix anything.
It would have been too dark.
He's gotta like this one.
I stole it from Margi.
One of my blog friends (Nope. Not saying who.), got on another blogger about how he could still like Mark Steyn after this column and this particular passage:
As Ann Coulter pointed out in a merciless but entirely accurate column, it wasn't on the ''battlefield.'' It wasn't in combat. [Max Cleland] was working on a radio relay station. He saw a grenade dropped by one of his colleagues and bent down to pick it up. It's impossible for most of us to imagine what that must be like -- to be flown home, with your body shattered, not because of some firefight, but because you made a stupid mistake. Once upon a time, Cleland loathed the Silver and Bronze Stars he'd been given: He was, in his words, ''no hero'' -- which is true. He was a beneficiary of the medal inflation that tends to accompany unpopular wars. But Cleland learned to stop hating himself to the point where he's happy to be passed off as a hero wounded in battle because that makes him a more valuable mascot to the campaign. Sad.
My blogger friend says "picking on Cleland right now is silly". I'm sorry. I say bullshit! I discussed Max Cleland in an earlier post called I am Max, Hear Me Whine.
Steyn is right when he said Kerry was using him as a "mascot". He has ol' Max out stumping (Yeah! Pun intended. I'm a heartless bastard!) for him to try to make the Dimocrats seem like a party of war heroes. Remember, it was the Dimocrats who brought up this Viet Nam thing. They didn't want to talk about it for eight years while they had a fucking draft dodger as the head of their party. Now all of a sudden Viet Fucking Nam is important again.
With all the bullshit about Bush's National Guard records, howza 'bout Kerry's records? I want that phony sumbitch to open up his records. I want to know more about those three purple hearts he got that allowed him to get out of Viet Fucking Nam eight months early. Give me some details.
But back to mad Max. He became fair game ever since he started whining about how the Republicans said he was unpatriotic. I'm getting really sick of hearing the Dimocrats whine about how the Republicans call them unpatriotic when they point out their voting records. As far as I know, the only people whining about patriotism are Dimocrats. I have not heard one Republican call a Dimocrat unpatriotic. Bloggers? Yes. Republicans? No.
So Kerry was a war hero. As I read somewhere else, so was Benedict Arnold before he bacame a traitor. I despise Kerry for what he, VVAW, and Jane Fonda did after Kerry got out of the Navy. Guess what Kerry? I'm calling you unpatriotic.
It has been documented elsewhere about Kerry's record on defense spending. He has opposed almost every major weapons system in his tenure in the Senate. If someone points out that voting record, Kerry whines that he is being called unpatriotic. No, we're calling you weak on defense. If you think that is calling you unpatriotic, fine. If the shoe fits...
But back to Max (again. I keep getting sidetracked.) Terry McAuliffe whines about how the Republicans are calling Max unpatriotic because he left three limbs "on the battlefields of Viet Nam". That is not true and that slimeball McAuliffe knows it. Mark Steyn and Ann Coulter are simply setting the record straight. Remember "Dimocrat" and "the truth" are two totally unrelated things. They're trying to use Max to innoculate Kerry against his voting record and his actions with VVAW and Jane Fonda.
As long as Max is out stumping for Kerry, he is fair game. Yes, it's a shame that he had a tragic accident, but let's not use pity politics. Max was too liberal for Georgia. Chambliss pointed that out. He also pointed out that Max was more interested in union jobs than homeland security. Max lost. Max whines.
John Fonda Kerry is too liberal for this country. He's also weak on defense. That's his record. Does that make him unpatriotic?
If you point that out, the Dimocrats say you think so. They're the ones saying that.
Think about it.
I am in a really foul mood tonight. As a result of my spinal cord injury I suffer from dysaesthesia. This is phantom pain. I have a burning sensation in my feet all the time. I take three drugs for this: Neurontin, tryleptal, and amytripolene. None of these are addictive or have the side effects of Vicodin and Oxycontin. About three to four times a year, I get a throbbing pain in my left Achilles tendon. This really pisses me off since I have no sensation there.
Tuesday morning at around 3:30 I woke up with a throbbing pain in my left leg. I got up and took a percocet, but that didn't help. I was in agony at work most of the day and took off early and came home. I've had a few drinks and the pain is not as bad, but I'm afraid I'll wake up again in the middle of the night with the throbbing pain. So, yeah, I'm really pissed off tonight.
Let's start with gay marriage. Can we just get a fucking grip? We do not need a constitutional amendment banning it. C'mon, let's use some common sense here. Here's a compromise. Don't call it marriage. Call it a civil union. Why do you gay people want to piss off the Christians (or the Jews or whatever religion does not think same sex unions should be allowed)? Probably the only church that will allow gay marriage would be the Episcopalians who seem to think that the Bible is a "living document", much like liberals think that the Constitution is a "living document". And to Chris Johnson who has turned his site into all Episcopalian bullshit all the time, there's a Lutheran church on Selma right across the street from Webster Groves Senior High School and Holy Redeemer is right there on Lockwood. After all, an Episcopalian is just a Catholic who flunked Latin. Join one of those churches and quit blogging about Gene Robinson. It's getting old.
Anyway, many companies and gummints are already giving benefits to domestic partners. Call your committment a civil union and get off the marriage bullshit. Why do y'all want to be so in the face of so many people?
Rod Paige called the NEA a terrorist organization and then backed off. Well, kiss my ass! The NEA is a terrorist organization. It has succeeded in fucking up one of the best school systems in the world. Between the fucking NEA and the fucking Department of Education we have seen our gummint schools turn into little more than socialist indoctrination centers. Paige is black. Had he also been a Dimocrat, he could have gotten away with what the Dimocrats and the NEA is calling "hate speech". Fuck those socialist bastards!
I would really like to rant about the Middle East and the bullshit going on in The Hague but I am entirely too pissed off to do it justice. I could have sworn I left a comment on my new friend Marieke's site (And Godammit don't go flame her!) about my opinion on the bullshit going on. Yes, the Israeli's have killed Palestinians, but the Israeli's do not intentionally target civilians like the Palestinians do. Clinton bullied Ehud Barak into giving Arafat 95% of what he demanded and rather than negotiating further, Arafat left and started the latest uprising. So who are the bad guys here? Israel is building a fence to protect itself. So the fence is in "Palestinian territory"? They've had opportunities to negotiate since 1949 and their response has always been violence. Marieke, the Palestinians do not want a two state solution. They want the total annihilation of the Jews. They have made no secret of that. Is that what you want? Yassir Arafat is an evil old man who has led the Palestinians into nihilism. What are the Jews supposed to do? Give up? We surrender. Kill us all. If the Palestinians had the military might of the Jews, Israel would be destroyed. Israel has shown remarkable restraint.
I'd really like to do another Kerry rant. How I wish Rachel Lucas was still blogging. She could really do a righteous Kerry rant.
Oh Christ! Fanplex in Atlanta just went under. This was the former mayor of Atlanta, Bill Campbell's (You ain't got nuthin' on me. I'm innocent!) bright idea to have an arcade and miniature golf course outside of Turner Field. Yeah, that's just the thing. Turner Field is in a shitty neighborhood so people will want to come to that neighborhood before or after a Brave's game and hang out at a miniature golf course and arcade. There was $500,000 of Atlanta taxpayers' money flushed down the toilet. I'm glad I don't live in the city.
Yeah, I know, I sucked tonight. I was pissed off at too many things to do just one thing justice. I probably won't sleep worth a damn tonight either. Sometimes being a cripple really sucks!
Here is a good policy to practice when commenting on my site: Do not make stupid comments. If you piss me off I will ridicule you. And remember, I always get the last word. If you are a minor nuisance, I will simply edit your comments to make you look like an idiot. If you really piss me off, I will dedicate a post to you so all my readers can see just what a booger eatin' moh-ron you are. This is one such post.
In the comments on my John Fonda Kerry post, Bruce wrote:
Your nephew looks like a nice young man, and you have reason to be proud of him. It would be nice if you could grow old with his company, and watch him mature and contribute something more than his life's blood to his country. Don't misunderstand me - he is one of our heros - but I look at my 30 year old son, a Navy Veteran, and my 12 year old Grandson, and I hope that my son isn't recalled and that we're out of the desert before my grandson is of age. It is a foolish war, fought by brave men, at the direction of incompetents.
I'm sorry Bruce, but that is a bunch of ignorant bullshit! At the direction of incompetents? Two of the most successful military feats in history? The "quagmire" of Afghanistan and the "quagmire" of Iraq? Every life is precious, but we have only lost 500 men in Iraq. I'd ask how he felt about the Cold War, but he commented again.
And by the way, can't we EVER let Vietnam rest? It was a divisive war, and we ALL lost friends. No, I didn't serve, and no, I didn't go to Canada or attend Peace Rallies; I was just fortunate enough to draw a number 3 higher than the highest drafted in 1970: 178. If you served, and came home, you should be proud. If you protested, you should also be proud. If you did both, you are a genuine hero in my book. Some of us did nothing but work and vote and pay for it all. We could have done more. So, are we beginning to build a new divisiveness in this Country based upon the one that never healed from Vietnam? It sounds like stories from the post-Civil War days!
There is so much in that comment that sets me off.
1. And by the way, can't we EVER let Vietnam rest?
Sure. Tell Kerry and the fucking Dimocrats to shut the fuck up. It is John Fonda Kerry who has to work into the answer of every single fucking question that he is asked that he served in Viet Fucking Nam. It is the fucking Dimocrats who insist on bringing up Bush's National Guard service. It is not the Republicans who are trying to make Viet Fucking Nam or anyone's military record of that era an issue. It is the Dimocrats and their attack dogs like that fat fuck Michael Moore. So don't put shit in my comments about how we should just forget about Viet Nam. Talk to the Dimocrats. Put that crap on their blogsites. I thought it should have been a nonissue, especially by Dimocrats, after we had a Viet Nam era draft dodger as our president for eight years, but having it both ways seems to be a specialty of the Dimocrat Party. The main plank of their party's platform is rank hypocrisy.
2. If you protested, you should also be proud.
Yeah you should be proud for aiding and abetting the enemy. That's a lot to be proud about. You should be proud for the boat people who fled the country after we betrayed the South Vietnamese and left the country. You should be proud for all the South Vietnamese who disappeared into reeducation camps. You should be proud for the killing fields of Cambodia. You should be proud for being on the wrong side of history. Yeah, you protestors have one hell of a lot to be proud about. You too Bruce. Dammit! I'm glad there weren't more people like you around in WWII.
3. We could have done more.
Yeah. We could have won the fucking war, but the Dimocrats in Congress made sure that that didn't happen. Bunch of communist appeasing, traitorous bastards!
4. So, are we beginning to build a new divisiveness in this Country based upon the one that never healed from Vietnam?
It sure sounds like it. And where is all this rhetoric coming from? Bush was a deserter. Bush was AWOL. The Republicans have been very composed in responding to all these accusations. They have releaased all requested records about Bush's National Guard service, but it is never enough. How do you feel about this bullshit Bruce? Do you think Bush's National Guard Service is important?
But back to your "foolish war, fought by brave men, at the direction of incompetents " comment. I'm sure you probably thought we should have appeased the Soviet Union. This is not a foolish war. This is a war for western civilization and I'm sorry that you do not know enough history to understand what is going on. Islamofascism wants to implement their version of Islam on the entire planet just like the Soviet Union wanted to implement their version of Communism on the entire planet and Hitler wanted to implement his version of National Socialism on the entire planet.
The Soviet Union should have been stopped after WWII when they were weak. Hitler should have been stopped when Neville Chamberlain was busy appeasing him in Munich. These fanatical bastards need to be stopped before they get a nuke or a biological weapon and take out one of our cities and believe me, if they could, they would. It doesn't matter to me if Saddam had WMD's or not, we need to clean up the Middle East and that was a good place to start. You don't think we have scared the living shit out of a bunch of Arabs? Ask Wacky Kadaffy about that. Iraq got his attention. Seeing Saddam come out of his spider hole made more than one Arab leader think about cooperating with terrorists.
The Dimocrats were on the wrong side of history throughout the Cold War. They are on the wrong side of history in the War on Terror. Bruce, I'm sad to say, you are too.
And here is another picture of my nephew who is now in Kuwait.
Another pun for the music lovers out there.
The orchestra conductor had been having problems with the bassists;
they were the least professional of his musicians. It was the last
performance of the season, Beethoven's 9th Symphony, which required
extra effort from the bassists at the end. Earlier that evening, he
had found them celebrating a birthday by passing around a bottle. Then,
as he was about to cue the bassists, he knocked over his music stand.
The sheet music scattered. So he stood in front of his orchestra, his
worst fear realized: It was the bottom of the 9th, no score and the
bassists were loaded.
Hey folks, I don't make these up. My friend Richard sends 'em to me and I post 'em.
My sister and her husband came down for the weekend so we could have a pruning party. My crepe myrtles and other assorted bushes and shrubs needed serious pruning. Cindy does the crepe myrtles every year for me, but there were some bushes that hadn't been pruned since I moved to GOC Central here in Beautiful Dunwoody.
They said all I would have to do was cook them a delicious dinner and they would do all the pruning and other yardwork required. Hmmm! They work cheaper than Mexicans. And they speak English.
They drove down from Columbia South Carolina Friday afternoon and I took them out to eat. Fatten 'em up before I put 'em to work.
On Saturday morning, Ryan started on the shrubs in the front yard while Sherry and I ran errands. We had to go to Crate and Barrel over at Perimeter Mall so she could buy some cognac glasses. Then it was off to Fresh Market for some filet mignon steaks, shrimp, and strudel for Sunday breakfast. We had to stop at Dunwoody Needle Art so she could buy some needlepoint stuff. Then on to Kroger to do my weekly grocery shopping.
By the time we got back to the house, around noon, Ryan had already finished off the front and was working on the berm. I had stopped at Home Depot on Friday and bought some yard waste bags. Here in DeKalb County, the county will not take yard waste along with the regular trash. You have to purchase special bags for grass clippings, tree limbs, and the like. This kind of trash is only picked up once a week. In my case, it's on a Friday.
As Ryan pruned, Sherry and I started cutting the prunings into smaller sizes and stuffing them into bags. I also cleaned up my raised beds by pulling up the leftover plants from last year's garden and covering them with mulch from my compost heap. We stopped around 5:00 so we could rest up and I could cook dinner.
We had some smoked salmon before dinner. Our dinner itself was filet mignon cooked on the grill. Sherry had a baked potato. Ryan and I had rotini pasta with shrimp and mushrooms in an alfredo sauce. We also had corn on the cob and a tossed salad. I opened a 1995 Medoc to enjoy with the meal.
Afterwards, I opened up my Howard Dean Delamain cognac (the bottle that my friend Michael bought me for betting me that Dean would win the nomination) and Ryan and I had a few snifters of that.
Sunday, !0:00 AM it was off to Home Depot to buy some more trash bags, some landscape timbers (I needed to raise the bed where I'm moving my compost heap), and nails. We worked from 10:30 to 3:00, with a short break for lunch, cutting and bagging the prunings.
Since the county won't pick up this kind of trash until Friday and it's supposed to rain Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, we put the filled bags in my garage. We filled 18 of 'em and they're not small bags.
Ryan and Sherry left around 3:30 for the 3 hour drive back to Columbia. I took a nap. Even though they did most of the work, I got every bit as tired as they did.
Here's an example of just how beat I am. The Sommelier Guild was having a board meeting tonight where I would get a free meal and drink lots of wine and I was too tired to go.
Arrrgggghhhhh!
Here are some pictures from the Great Dunwoody Pruning Party.
It was much worse than that. But that is a good shot of the Great Wall and the Great Patio of Dunwoody. One day I shall have to relate the story of their construction and Big Ed, the contractor.
Ryan and Sherry. Photos by Ryan's digital camera and enhanced by his Photo Shop skills.
I got sidetracked in a Cats For Pumpman series to do Super Bowl stuff and Valentine's Day stuff. I'm now returning with my series. In case you don't remember, these are not cute cats like I usually post..
Finally! Here is a guide to what a woman really means when she says shit like "Fine" and "Nothing". Where was this shit when I was married?
Keywords and their meanings:
"Fine": This word is used at the end of any argument that the woman feels
she is right about but needs to shut you up. NEVER use fine to describe
how a woman looks. This will cause you to have one of those arguments.
"Five minutes": This is half an hour. It is equivalent to the five minutes
that your football game is going to last before you take out the trash, so
it's an even trade.
"Nothing": This means something and you should be on your toes. "Nothing"
is usually used to describe the feeling a woman has of wanting to turn you
inside out, upside down, and backwards. "Nothing"usually signifies an
argument that will last "Five Minutes" and end with the word "Fine".
"Go Ahead" (raised eyebrows): This is a dare. One that will result in a
woman getting upset over "Nothing" and will end with the word "Fine".
"Go Ahead" (normal eyebrows): This means "I give up" or "do what you want
because I don't care". You will get a raised eyebrow "Go ahead" in just a
few minutes, followed by "Nothing" and "Fine" and she will talk to you in
about "Five Minutes" when she cools off.
Loud Sigh: This is not actually a word, but is still often a verbal
statement very misunderstood by men. A "Loud Sigh" means she thinks you
are an idiot at that moment and wonders why she is wasting her time
standing here and arguing with you over "Nothing".
Soft Sigh: Again, not a word, but a verbal statement. "Soft Sighs" are
one of the few things that some men actually understand. She is content.
Your best bet is to not move or breathe and she will stay content.
"Oh": This word followed by any statement is trouble. Example; "Oh, let
me get that". Or, "Oh, I talked to him about what you were doing last
night." If she says "Oh" before a statement, RUN, do not walk, to the
nearest exit. She will tell you that she is "Fine" when she is done
tossing your clothes out the window, but do not expect her to talk to
you for at least 2 days. "Oh" as the lead to a sentence usually signifies
that you are caught in a lie. Do not try to lie more to get out of it, or you will get raised eyebrows "Go ahead" followed by acts so unspeakable that we can't bring
ourselves to write about them.
"That's Okay": This is one of the most dangerous statements that a woman
can say to a man. "That's Okay" means that she wants to think long and
hard before paying you retributions for what ever it is that you have
done. "That's Okay" is often used with the word "Fine" and used in
conjunction with a raised eyebrow "Go ahead". At some point in the near
future when she has plotted and planned, you are going to be in some
mighty big trouble.
"Please Do": This is not a statement, it is an offer. A woman is giving
you the chance to come up with whatever excuse or reason you have for
doing whatever it is that you have done. You have a fair chance to tell
the truth, so be careful and you shouldn't get a "That's Okay".
"Thanks": A woman is thanking you. Do not faint; just say you're welcome.
"Thanks a lot": This is much different from "Thanks". A woman will say,
"Thanks a lot" when she is really ticked off at you. It signifies that
you have hurt her in some callous way, and will be followed by the "Loud
Sigh". Be careful not to ask what is wrong after the "Loud Sigh", as she
will only tell you "Nothing".
I hope this clears up any misunderstandings...
But I bet it doesn't!
Whenever I don't have anything to write about or just need to dash off sumpin' quick (like tonight since my sister and her husband are visiting), all I have to do is go back in my comments and see what some of my more stupid trolls have posted. By far, the dumbest are usually French. Here's an example.
Oh, would you dare to say that in front of us ? Certainly not.
That's right. Since he is French, he would be too busy running away so it would be hard to say it in front of him since I would be looking at his back.
There is training camp near Cayenne, US troops stopped to train there, too hard. There is also a hill where some militaries training are practiced, alas US soldiers were so bad they stopped to be ridiculous in front of their European cronies.
In your dreams Froggy. We'd put a woman marine against one of your soldiers and she would kick his ass. Our soldiers fight. They don't surrender at the drop of a hat.
Nonetheless, we try to be polite.
Yeah. Sure. I've been to Paris. You assholes have elevated rudeness to an art form.
Racism, xenophobia is protected by the 1st amendment, well for us.
I guess that explains the rampant anti-Semitism in France.
So my comment is also protected by it and regarding History, France was in 1914 the 4th Nation regarding its economy, in 2004 it's still the case... For a country which has lost all (from your view), it's still not bad.
Hey how did that heat wave go last summer? You Frogs too fucking cheap to have air conditioning? And what about your 10% unemployment? Got news for you fuckhead. We have one state, California, that has an economy comparable to yours.
Anyway, another way, we use less soap because we use more cream and lotions,
Try using some water along with them.
the report you are talking about is from the Sun -1989-... You have to be brainless to trust the Sun.
But you just admitted that you use less soap. Make up your fucking mind.
You are wealthier ? Actually, France is regulary at the top in any poll by the World health organisation... Such as the health care system, the life hope. Also according to CIA, USA has 12.6 % of people below the poverty rate, here it's 6 %.
It all depends on what you mean by poverty. The average poor person in America has a larger living area that the average person in Rome, Paris, or Athens. A majority of the poor have air conditioning. Have you ever been to Florida, Texas, Mississippi, or Georgia? It gets hotter than hell and we don't lose 15,000 people due to heat. Your healthcare system was really at the top of its game last summer wasn't it? Keep an eye on this space. In the future I will be posting some statistics that will show living in "poverty" in this country is better than being well off in that shithole you call France.
I must confess we are really bad started to be a third world country even if I believe we'll quit soon our 4th power with the rise of countries which have 20 times more of people than us....
Do sumpin' about your Muslim population or you will be a third world country in ten years. Take more baths since your people smell like they are from the third world.
But we are well here, we live well. if you hate us, too well. Hate us, you won't be anyway able to do anything, too coward you are to try something against us (or me)... Apart launching some beaujolais bottles ! Wooooooooooo ! lol cramp.
Yeah. We're the cowards. We only had to bail you out of two world wars. We also protected you from Communism for 40 years so you didn't have to spend on the military and could work on your failing socialist system. You're welcome you ungrateful bastard. Anyway we didn't plant trees on our main streets so the Germans could march in the shade.
Fuck off!
The first two sweaters my friend Cindy knitted me were Irish fishermen sweaters. The first one was solid white and the second one was powder blue. Due to my upper body bulking up from walking with crutches, I outgrew them. She altered the white one to fit my sister and she will do the same to the blue one.
Below is a picture of the third sweater that she knitted me. This is the one that is, alas, beyond repair. I loved this sweater which was why I wore it for this picture. Some day I will reveal my head. And, yes, I flew the plane behind me in the picture.
I read somewhere that Eskimos have some gawdawful amount of words to describe snow. Well step aside you frozen folks, the gay community (or whatever we're supposed to call them now) is about ready to kick your ass as evidenced by this article from (Where else would you expect to see it?) the San Francisco Chronicle.
First, there was the term "homosexual," then "gay" and "lesbian," then the once taboo "dyke" and "queer."Now, all bets are off.
So I guess "faggot" isn't an option either.
With the universe of gender and sexual identities expanding, a gay youth culture emerging, acceptance of gays rising and label loyalty falling, the gay lexicon has exploded with scores of new words and blended phrases that delineate every conceivable stop on the identity spectrum -- at least for this week.
Oh shit! Am I gonna have to subscribe to some site on the internet so I can keep track of all this shit?
Someone who is "genderqueer," for example, views the gender options as more than just male and female or doesn't fit into the binary male-female system. A "trannydyke" is a transgender person (whose gender is different than the one assigned at birth) attracted to people with a more feminine gender, while a "pansexual" is attracted to people of multiple genders. A "boi" describes a boyish gay guy or a biological female with a male presentation; and "heteroflexible" refers to a straight person with a queer mind-set.
I am so fucking confused! Maybe Lady Jessica can explain this to me. She described herself as "bisexual . . . admittedly a bit too bisexual straight for most thinking women's tastes". There has to be a term in the lexicon that describes her. She also said that she is a good kisser. I would like a demonstration please at the next Blogger Meetup. But let us continue.
The list of terms -- which have hotly contested definitions -- goes on: "FTM" for female to male, "MTF" for male to female, "boydyke," "trannyboy, " "trannyfag," "multigendered," "polygendered," "queerboi," "transboi," "transguy," "transman," "half-dyke," "bi-dyke," "stud," "stem," "trisexual," "omnisexual," and "multisexual."
Holy shit! Who keeps track of this stuff?
"The language thing is tricky," said Thom Lynch, the director of the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center. "I feel sorry for straight people."
Why? For striaght guys like me it's pretty straightforward. Whatta babe! Looka them tits! Great legs! Nice ass! We don't worry about multigendered or polygendered. I'm a guy. She's a girl (I hope!). Let's fuck! You're the ones who have to figger out what the other person is and give him/her/it/whatever a name before gettin' it on.
Tricky, maybe, but also healthy and empowering, said Carolyn Laub, the director of the Gay-Straight Alliance Network, which links gay and lesbian student clubs in the state.
Empowering?
"We in society and in our generation are developing new understandings of sexual orientation and gender identities and what that means to us," she said. "We don't really have enough language to describe that; therefore, we have to create new words."
That's all we need is a bunch of new fucking words. English has the largest vocabulary of any language on this planet and we're gonna add more bullshit words. Why do I call myself a cripple? Because it is a word that describes my condition. I do not think it is demeaning. I am not handicapable or differently abled. I am a fucking cripple. Half of my fucking body does not work. There is a perfectly good word to describe my condition. Why invent other bullshit words? Aaaarrrrgggghhhhh!
For those back in the linguistic dark ages still wondering what's wrong with "homosexual," the evolution of queer identity language has progressed something like this: "Homosexual" sounded pathological and clinical, so activists went about creating their own words, starting with "gay" and "lesbian." That was well and good, but terms like "dyke" and "queer" had an appealing spikiness and served double-duty by stripping the sting from words that had heretofore been considered unspeakably nasty.
GMAFB! This reminds me of a comedy routine done by an impressionist in the 60's named David Pryor. He did an impression of Lyndon Johnson saying, "It took me 30 years to learn how to pronounce negro and then they go and change it to black".
"If you're not a man or woman,
Wait a fucking minute here! Did I just read that? If you're not a man or a woman, what the fuck are you?
words like 'gay' or 'lesbian' don't fit you anymore," said Sam Davis, founder of United Genders of The Universe,
United Genders of the Universe? Beam me up Scotty!
a support group and speakers bureau. "The words from just a few years ago aren't adequate to talk about who we are, where we're coming from and who we like."
I'm finally speechless! There is nothing I can say. So I'll leave you with some definitions. Better study these. We may be tested. In the age of political correctness it is very easy to offend.
Definitions of many words in the gay lexicon are hotly contested. Here is a sample:Genderqueer: Someone who views the gender options as more than just male and female or who doesn't fit into the binary male-female system.
Transgender: An umbrella term for transgression of the binary gender system. May include surgical, hormonal or nonhormonal changes that result in a gender identity different from the one assigned at birth.
Pansexual: Someone attracted to people of multiple genders.
Trannydyke: A transgender person attracted to people with a more feminine gender.
Trannyfag: A transgender person attracted to people with a more masculine gender.
Boi: A boyish gay guy or a biological female with a boyish presentation.
Heteroflexible: A straight person with a queer mind-set.
I can't make this shit up!
Oh! And one more thing. Here is a beautiful line that I stole from this guy
Oscar Wilde’s "love that dare not speak its name" has turned into a lifestyle that won’t shut up.
I'm not being judgemental, but don't get pissed off if I don't know what to call you. Gay works for me. If it doesn't work for you it's because I didn't get the latest memo.
Sorry.
Tired of hearing about the Super Bowl halftime show? I still have stuff that people have sent me. Here's another one.
There has been a lively debate going on in the comments of my gas prices post. It has been mostly polite and on topic. Part of the discussion concerns socialism and it appears that we are debating without a working definition of socialism. Here is what the dictionary has to say:
Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.The stage in Marxist-Leninist theory intermediate between capitalism and communism, in which collective ownership of the economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet been successfully achieved.
This is communism lite and the the definition the anti-socialism commentors are using. I think Marieke, and she can correct me if I am wrong, is working from a definition more like this:
An economic system that uses the power of government to moderate the excesses of capitalism and distribute resources for the common good.
This could explain why she says there are socialist parties that are center right. I have to admit that I know very little about the politics in the Netherlands. I do know about France and Germany, however, since I have to deal with them at TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name).
To us in the United States, France and Germany are very socialist countries and we are amazed that Chirac is considered right of center. Here in the United States he would probably be to the left of Dickhead Gephardt.
The problem with socialism is letting the gummint control the economy. Currently in France and Germany, the unemployment rate is 10%. We are bitching about a 5.6% unemployment rate. Why the big difference?
One of the reasons is all the gummint mandated rules and regulations and employee benefits. Look at what France is going through with its generous retirement benefits. Also, it is next to impossible to lay people off. So a company has to be very careful not to hire too many people during an economic upturn since they will have to carry them during a recession.
Another problem with socialism is it costs too much. Taxes are higher in socialist countries. Taxes are also a drag on the economy. There is a reason why we have the most vibrant economy in the world.
Who has the best medical system? We do, but probably not for long. We will eventually have socialized medicine in the United States based on the Canadian model. (Where are the Canadians gonna go to get their health care that Canada cannot provide then?) It is inevitable. Costs are skyrocketing (Due to gummint meddling and the high cost of medical malpractice insurance thanks to lawyers like John Edwards.). People are gonna demand that gummint "do something", and we will get socialized medicine which will have the efficiency of the Department of Motor Vehicles and the compassion of the IRS. Will it be cheaper? As P. J. O'Rourke said, "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.
I have often said in this space that socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried. I know Marieke disagrees with me, but the Netherlands hasn't quite hit full scale socialism yet. Neither has Sweden, but I remember reading somewhere that Sweden is experiencing some problems because their unemployment benefits are way too generous and that has decreased the incentive for many to work.
That is a problem that we are trying to solve here. It's not that our benefits are too generous, but our poor are able to survive OK. They get adequate housing, in most cases. They get foodstamps. They get medical care. They have color TV's. We have multigenerational welfare families. We have people who know nothing but welfare. Now that is sad, because these are wasted people.
I've written on poverty many times and I know what it is like to be poor. I didn't like it. my sister and I came from a dysfunctional home with an alcoholic as a father. We both overcame it with education and hard work. We both have net worths over $1 million. I love capitalism.
In a nutshell, here is why I hate socialism. It seeks to provide equality of results. That is impossible because people are not equal. If you tell people that they are gonna all get the same, no matter how hard they work, where is the incentive to work? What you need is a system that provides equality of opportunity. That is what we have here.
I mean, look at Michael Jackson. Only in America could a poor black boy grow up to be a rich white woman.
We live in a wonderful country. I really think that Europeans like Marieke don't really get the full story of America. I base that on some of her comments and comments I get from other people in Europe. We don't have people starving due to our harsh social policies. I had a troll try to tell me that. He was using Department of Agriculture statistics that were based on one question: Were you or your children hungry at any time in the past year? Hell, I'm hungry now. I guess I qualify.
Right now in this country our Republicans are becoming socialists and our Dimocrats are becoming communists. It was the Republicans who passed our latest entitlement, the prescription drugs for seniors. I can guarantee it will cost twice the estimated amount.
Lest you think that I believe in unfettered capitalism, you are wrong. Capitalism does have excesses. Monopolies come to mind. Some gummint regulations are necessary. Many are not. I'm a cripple and I think that a lot of the stuff in the Americans With Disabilities Act is total bullshit!
And finally, if you want to know what economic school your beliefs place you in, here is a quiz that you can take. I got the link from the Lady Jessica. If you plan on taking the quiz, set aside some time. It will take a while. In case you're curious, my score was 73. One of my answers was from the socialist school. For shame!
This is the card you get when she gets pissed and you ask, "What did I do?" and she gives one of the following replies:
"Nothing!"
or
"If you don't know, I'm not going to tell you."
Do y'all remember that I have posted about all the beautiful sweaters that my friend Cindy knits me every year for my birthday? Do you want to see the one she knitted me for my 57th birthday? Well here it is.
Believe me, the picture does not do it justice.
Tonight we had a Sommelier Guild of Atlanta wine tasting. Since I am the vice-president in training for president of the Guild, this was my first foray into setting up a tasting. We had had previous tastings at Portofino, which is an Italian restaurant in Buckhead, and that was the restaurant that I tried for my first tasting. It was awesome! For anyone who lives in Atlanta who hasn't eaten there, you are missing out on a great experience. Here is the menu and the wines we drank.
Gas prices are rising. If the press didn't have such a feeding frenzy over Bush's National Guard records, I'm sure that just like last time gas prices went up we'd be hearing about the poor father of five children who couldn't afford to feed his children and buy gas for his SUV. I'll say the same thing now that I said then, "Why the fuck did you have five kids if you can't afford them. Quit your fucking whining! I'm sick of it!"
If you think we pay a lot of money for gasoline go to Europe and see what they have to pay. Howza 'bout $4.00 a gallon? We get off cheap. The Europeans tax the hell out of gasoline to limit usage. Anyway, if you don't want to pay a lot for gas, sell your SUV and buy a Honda or a Toyota.
What I'm worried about is that someone is gonna tell the gummint they gotta do something. That's all we need. Everytime the gummint "does something", they usually fuck it up. Just like Jimmah Carter in the 70's with price controls. By the way, you know why Jimmah always lays on the bottom when he has sex? Because all he knows how to do is fuck up. Rim shot!
You folks in California dodged a bullet. Cruz Bustamonte said that if he were elected governor, he was gonna set a ceiling for the price of gasoline. Hello gas lines.
That's the thing about socialists. They always seem to think they can repeal the law of supply and demand.
Why have gas prices gone up in the United States? You! The stupid looking guy in the back with the Dean For President t-shirt on.
"Because the oil companies are gouging us."
Spoken like a true socialist. No, the reason gas prices have gone up is because the demand has exceeded the supply. When demand exceeds the supply, the price rises to create equilibrium. Gas has been cheap for so long that we decided that we could drive gas guzzlers (In this case SUV's) again. Our gas usage went up. The price went up. OPEC cutting production is gonna make the prices go up even higher.
I'm not saying that people shouldn't drive SUV's. I think they suck and wouldn't buy one, but that's just my opinion. I have one friend who has one for protection. She sits high on the road and has all that heavy metal around her. Many people buy them for just that reason. But, back to gas prices.
For those of you who were not around in the late 70's and early 80's let me relate a little history. Our gummint put ceilings on gas prices. We had more demand than supply and an artificially low price. This led to shortages and gas lines. Any Economics 101 student could have predicted that. Unfortunately we had a Dimocrat for president (Jimmah Carter) and a Dimocrat congress and they probably all slept through Economics or didn't take it. Ted Kennedy was probably drunk when he took it.
When Reagan was elected, he abolished the price controls. Oh how the Dimocrats howled. "This will hurt the poor!" bellowed Ted Kennedy. "Burp!"
Funny thing happened. Gas prices rose. People didn't want to pay that much for gas. They sold their gas guzzlers and bought economical Toyotas and Hondas and next thing you know we had an oil glut. I remember gas at 85 cents a gallon in the 80's. Amazing how that happens. Just like they explain it in Economics 101.
This is one of the failures of socialism. In socialism, you have the gummint setting prices. They try to repeal the law of supply and demand. Unfortunately, that is a law that can not be repealed.
I own two BMW's: a Z3 and a 325is. They both get about 25 miles per gallon on the highway. I also own a pickup truck that gets about the same. I make enough money that I can afford to fill up my cars and it doesn't bother me. If it did, I would buy cars that got better gas mileage.
And that's the thing. If you bitch about the price of gas and you own a gas guzzling SUV, you're part of the problem. STFU and sell your SUV and buy a car that gets 50 miles per gallon.
Or take the bus.
For all you music lovers.
The engineer of a train passing through Poland could see no lights
because the power had been knocked out. "We're running out of coal," he
said to his fireman, "but I think we're coming to Gdansk or Danzig, or
whatever they call it. Let's stop and send the porter out to buy fuel.
Can you see the sign on the depot?" The fireman replied, "It appears to
be Danzig in the dark." And the engineer shouted, "Buy coal, Porter!"
I was looking for this bumper sticker a few days ago and lo and behold, faithful reader Stephen sent it to me.
So now they're saying that the Jane Fonda photo with Kerry in the background may have been Photoshopped. So what? Hanoi Jane opened her big fat traitorous mouth and admitted John Fonda Kerry was there. I can just hear Kerry saying, "Thanks for the help, bitch!" BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
I went down to Green's on Saturday to buy a bottle of Champagne to give to my friend Cindy for taking care of my cats while I was skiing. I let her husband, Michael, who long time readers know works at Greens, pick it out. I was also gonna buy a bottle of Delamain Cognac, since I am almost out.
Longtime readers may be aware that Michael and I had a bet on the Dimocrat primaries. He thought Dean would get the nomination. I didn't think the Dims would be dumb enough to elect Dean who would get slaughtered in the general election. If I lost, I would give him a bottle of Delamain Vesper. If he lost, he would give me a bottle of Delamain XO. Realizing that Dean is toast, he paid off the bet. This was a bet that I wanted to lose.
Cindy took me shopping later that day. She knits me a sweater every year for my birthday. The third one she knitted me wore out on my left elbow and couldn't be repaired. She told me when she gave it to me that it had been to England, France, and California while she had knitted it. I really liked that sweater. It was immortalized on the cover of the Spinal Column, a magazine put out by Shepherd Center in Atlanta. They did a cover story on my flying and I wore that sweater for the picture. Out of the blue, she gave me a new sweater to replace it. She's taken some pictures, but she hasn't sent them to me yet so I cannot post 'em.
Michael and Cindy had me over for dinner on Saturday, so I got to help drink the Champagne that I bought her. Funny how that works out.
Occasionally I get e-mails asking for link trades. The person will link to my site if in return, I link to his (or hers). I seldom do link trades. If you like my stuff link to it. If you don't like my stuff, don't link to it. Here is how I find people to put on my blogroll. I look at my Site Meter referrals. I always follow new links back to their site. If it is an interesting read, I'll add it to my blogroll. I also look at the url's in my comments. If the person is not an obvious troll, I follow that link back. I have a few links on my blogroll who linked to me when I was only getting 5 to 10 hits a day. And, of course, I have Georgia bloggers. I have a very short blogroll. I can only read so many blogs a day.
So that brings me to an apology. I followed this link back from my referral log (And dammit! Don't go to her site and make obscene comments!) and saw that she had a post of my Miss Piggy poster (you will have to scroll down as the permalink does not work.) and said of my site that it
represents everything I hate about Republicans in America: one sided, personal attacks, uninformed and ridiculously patriotic to the extend the truth doesn't matter much.
And then she implied that I was a Christian Fundamentalist Republican which, of course, is not true. I felt very insulted! I am an atheist and a small 'l' libertarian. I support gays in the military, which is definitely not a Republican issue. I think Clinton was a coward by not implementing it. I am morally against abortion, but do not want it to be against the law. It doesn't bother me that Marieke is a lesbian journalist. Why is the fact that she is a lesbian even relevant? I am against the ridiculous war on drugs. Drug abuse is not a crime it is a social problem. Drug abusers do not belong in prisons, they belong in treatment centers. Legalize, regulate, and tax.
I admit I vote Republican most of the time but that is because they are strong on national defense. Dimocrats are the party of appeasement and appeasement never works.
Let's play a mind game. Do you really think if Israel were to move out of the "occupied territories" back to the 1967 borders, abandon all their settlements, give the Golan Heights back to Syria, and let the Palestinians have a state with East Jerusalem as the capital that there would really be peace in the Middle East? If so, I have a bridge in Brooklyn and some swamp land in Florida to sell you. Every concession that Israel has made has been seen by Yassir Arafat as a sign of weakness. Remember, the PLO charter has called for the total destruction of Israel. As part of the Oslo accords that was supposed to be eliminated. It never has been. It's still in there.
As for "one sided personal attacks", the left does that much more than the right. Unfortunately, since the lamestream American media is liberal the mean spirited stuff from the left doesn't get much coverage. I have never heard a Republican wish that "his wife would feed him high fat foods so he would die of a heart attack" as the odious Juliane Malveaux said about Clarence Thomas.
I have never heard a Republican say that we should go to Henry Hyde's house and pull him and his family out and stone them to death as Alec Baldwin said on one of the late night talk shows. Marieke, in America, most of the mean spirited invective comes from the left. I don't hear Republicans saying that they want to slap a black person. Charles Barron, a New Your City councilman said : "I want to go up to the closest white person and say 'You can't understand this, it's a black thing' and then slap him, just for my mental health". That is a fine example of mean spirited thought.
Black "leaders" like Al Sharpton get a pass for anti-Semitic remarks.
An ex-KKK Dimocrat gets a pass for saying nigger on national television. If you're a Dimocrat, you're forgiven for your sins in the past. If you're a Republcan you're not.
But I got off on a tangent. Marieke made some comments on one of my posts and after seeing what she said on her site about me, I assumed she was a troll. But, all trolls get at least one post before I start going after them. I called her stupid. For that I aplogize. I do not mind dissenting views as long as the viewpoint is presented politely and kept on point. She has done that in her latest comments. She is not a troll.
She did bring up a point about the reasons we have gone to war. She states that
the USA goes to war under the blanket of World Peace but in fact only goes to war to protect its own assets. If that is true, go ahead, but at least don't lie about it. That pisses me off more than going to war.
"War is diplomacy by other means". Actually we didn't start this war. It was started by the Islamofacists with the first WTC bombing. Then we had the two American embassies in Africa blown up. Then there was the Khobar Towers bombing. Then the USS Cole. Finally we had 9/11. What the fuck are we supposed to do? You cannot reason with these assholes. They understand only one thing: Overwhelming force. Of course we go to war to protect our assets. We don't want any more buildings blown up. We don't want any more Americans killed.
We went to Afghanistan since that was the base of operations of Al Qaeda. We went to Iraq because we were afraid that Saddam had WMD's and would give them to terrorists. Just because we haven't found them yet doesn't mean they do not exist.
We also went to Iraq for another reason. To end Islamic terrorism we need to clean out the snakepit known as the Middle East. The Palestinians are running out of money to support their terrist infrastructure. They don't have Saddam to give them money anymore. We need to show these assholes that we're mad as hell and we ain't gonna take it anymore. If they want a war, we'll give them a war. You saw that Libya noticed what we did. Do you think Qadaffy would have come clean if we hadn't taken out Iraq? He didn't want to end up in a hole in the ground like Saddam.
I look at this conflict as WWIV. (The cold war was WWIII) It is a war against radical Islam. We are slow to anger, but once you get our attention we will go after you. There has never been another country on this planet with our power and we have shown restraint in how we use it. We have been very careful not to harm civilians. Of course some have been killed, but this a war.
The Islamofascists hate our way of life. They hate us. It would be nice if we could sit around a campfire and sing Kumbaya with them, but they want the destruction of our society and the implementation of world wide Sharia. Watch what is happening in France. It is a harbinger of what will happen in Holland, and Belgium, or any other country that has a large influx of Muslims. They only believe in freedom of religion when they are in the minority. Saudi Arabia allows no other religions.
So Marieke, I'm sorry I called you stupid and I'm sorry that you don't agree with any of my views. Of course, I'm right and you're wrong, but I do respect your thoughts.
Oh, she also said:
And that, ladies and gentlemen, might be why I keep checking that site. Because either way, it always makes me feel disgusted.
I take that as a compliment.
Cheers!
Instead of a rerun this weekend, I'm posting a speech that some of us would like to hear our president give. This one's been floating around the internet and was sent to me by Ralph Gizzip.
WOULD IT NOT BE GREAT TO TURN ON THE OLE' TV TONIGHT AND SEE G.W. BUSH GIVE THE FOLLOWING SPEECH.....
My fellow Americans:
As you all know, the defeat of Iraq's regime has been completed. Since
congress does not want to spend any more money on this war, our mission in
Iraq is complete.
This morning I gave the order for a complete removal of all American
forces from Iraq. This action will be complete within 30 days.
It is now time to begin the reckoning.
Before me, I have two lists. One list contains the names of countries
which have stood by our side during the Iraq conflict. This list is short.
The United Kingdom, Spain, Bulgaria, Australia, and Poland are some of the
countries listed there.
The other list contains everyone not on the first list. Most of the
world's nations are on that list. My press secretary will be distributing
copies of both lists later this evening.
Let me start by saying that effective immediately, foreign aid to those
nations on List 2 ceases immediately and indefinitely. The money saved
during the first year alone will pretty much pay for the costs of the
Iraqi war.
The American people are no longer going to pour money into third world
hell-holes and watch those government leaders grow fat on corruption.
Need help with a famine? Wrestling with an epidemic? Call France.
In the future, together with Congress, I will work to redirect this money
toward solving the vexing social problems we still have at home.
On that note, a word to terrorist organizations. Screw with us and we will
hunt you down and eliminate you and all your friends from the face of
the earth.
Thirsting for a gutsy country to terrorize? Try France, or maybe China.
To Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Yo, boys. Work out a peace deal
now. Just note that Camp David is closed. Maybe all of you can go to
Russia for negotiations. They have some great palaces there. Big tables,
too.
I'm ordering the immediate severing of diplomatic relations with France,
Germany, and Russia. Thanks for all your help, comrades. We are retiring
from NATO as well. Bon chance, mes amis.
I have instructed the Mayor of New York City to begin towing the many UN
diplomatic vehicles located in Manhattan with more than two unpaid tickets
to sites where those vehicles will be stripped, shredded and crushed. I
don't care about whatever treaty pertains to this. Pay your tickets
tomorrow or watch your precious Benzes, Beamers, and limos be turned over
to some of the finest chop shops in the world. I love New York.
A special note to our neighbors. Canada is on List 2. Since we are going
to be seeing a lot more of each other, you folks might want to try not
pissing us off for a change. Mexico is also on List 2. President Fox and
his entire corrupt government really need an attitude adjustment. I have a
couple extra tank and infantry divisions sitting around. Guess where I'm
gonna put 'em? Yep, border security. So start doing something with your
oil. Oh, by the way, the United States is abrogating the NAFTA
treaty---starting now. (I'm against this part. I believe in free trade - GOC)
It is time for America to focus on its own welfare and its own citizens.
Some will accuse us of isolationism. I answer them by saying darn
tootin'. Nearly a century of trying to help folks live a decent life
around the world has only earned us the undying enmity of just about
everyone on the planet.
It is time to eliminate hunger in America. It is time to eliminate
homelessness in America.(Good luck Dubya! There has to be an attitude change among the poor and homeless for that to work - GOC) It is time to eliminate World Cup soccer from America.
To the nations on List 1, a final thought. Thanks guys. We owe you.
To the nations on List 2, a final thought. Drop dead.
God bless America.
Thank you and good night.
I would add the following.
Hey Islamofascist terrorists. This is the way it's gonna be. The next time you kill an American anywhere in the world, and that includes Israel, we will nuke Medina. That will be a warning to show you nihilistic barbarian motherfuckers that we mean business, so you better rein in those mad dog Palestinians and the godfather of modern terrorism, Yassir Arafat. If another American dies due to Islamic terrorism anywhere on the planet, say goodbye to Mecca. You fuckers want a holy war? We'll give you one. We are sick of your bullshit. We are not gonna take it anymore.
Thank you and good night.
Here's an interesting article that was in Thursday's Atlanta Urinal and Constipation.
Refugees want airport jobs back English-only test unfair, Somalis say
WTF?
A move to tighten airport security by requiring that workers read enough English to pass a written test has cost a group of Somali refugees their jobs at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
Tap. Tap. Nope. Sympathy meter reading zero here. This is the United States of America. We speak English here.
The workers claim the rule has been inconsistently applied and that they were blindsided when they had to take tests on security procedures without a translator last month.
You shouldn't need a translator. If you live and work here, you should learn the language. If I moved to Italy or (God forbid!) France and planned to get a job, my first priority would be to learn to read and write Italian or French.
Ten Somalis --- nine women and one man --- failed the test and were fired from their jobs as airplane cleaners. They had held the jobs for up to seven years.
So let me get this straight. Some of them have lived here for seven years and they still can not speak or read English? And I'm supposed to feel sorry for these nitwits?
"We'd love to go back to our job," said Safio Mohamed, 40, one of the Somali women and an American citizen.
Let me get this straight. She's an American citizen and she can not speak or read English? Huh? What is wrong woth this picture?
"We know the rules and regulations of homeland security," she said through an interpreter.
Because she was too stupid or too lazy to learn English.
"We didn't have any security problems at all. This is discrimination because of a language barrier."
Boo fucking hoo! There is an easy fix for that. Learn fucking English! That's the language we speak here.
"Our signage out here, all of our signs, are in English," airport spokesman Robert Kennedy said. "If something happens, they have to be able to react and direct passengers in case there's an emergency."Everyone who has a badge has the responsibility to help if something happens," he said. "What if there were a fire? How could they warn people of the danger?"
Quick! Find me an interpreter! Or maybe if people saw a bunch of screaming Somalis running through the terminal they could guess that sumpin' was wrong.
The Somali women claim they were able to use a translator when they took a test to renew their badges in March 2002. At the renewal last month, they said, were they told they could not use a translator to read them the test questions and multiple-choice answers. They also blame internal politics at Aramark, claiming their supervisor set them up to fail while helping others pass the test.
No, you set yourselves up because you were too lazy to learn English. Were there opportunities to learn English you may be asking yourselves?
Aramark has workers from Africa, Vietnam and Central America, Panell said. The company has offered English classes, and some Vietnamese workers took them and later passed their tests, he said.
So why didn't the Somalis?
Ali Omar, executive director of the Georgia Somali Community Center in Clarkston, said most of the fired women have three or four children. Between work on the night shift and family obligations during the day, they don't have time for English classes, he said. He served as translator for the fired workers in a recent interview that he arranged to call attention to their situation.
But somehow the Vietnamese workers, who probably also had family obligations, somehow found the time to attend the classes.
The Somali women said through their translator they are grateful America rescued them from the civil war in their country. But they are upset about the way they lost their jobs. They earn $8.10 per hour and still support relatives in refugee camps. Omar is helping them fill out unemployment paperwork."There are other Somalis who work over there, and they are worried they're going to be out of a job soon," Omar said.
Now that they are unemployed they will have plenty of time to learn English. I bet they won't.
Since it's that time of year when men are forced to be nice to the ladies and buy flowers and candy and shit, I've got a greeting card series that my friend Cindy sent me. Here's the first one.
Well isn't this special? According to Drudge, Kerry is getting more like Clinton everyday. Just can't get enough of them interns can we? I lifted the photo below from Michael M. Bates' site
What's neat about this scandal is it was probably leaked by a Dimocrat.
I'm just loving this Kerry stuff. And now, Hanoi Jane has opened her big fat mouth:
"Any attempt to link Kerry to me and make him look bad with that connection is completely false," the radical actress insisted.Although Fonda admitted that she and Kerry addressed the crowd that day from the same platform, she maintained that their contact was minimal. "I don't even think we shook hands."
From Newsmax.com
And here is Hanoi Jane in one of her shining moments.
I hate that bitch!
But back to Kerry. Harold Ford, an up and coming Dimocrat lost it on Fox and Friends.
"Don't bring that up," an angry-sounding Ford told "Fox & Friends" co-host Steve Doocy.Referring to the controversy over President Bush's military record, Ford threatened to "revive this thing on the National Guard" if questions about Kerry's Jane Fonda connection persist.
Wait a minute! Who brought up the Bush National Guard thing in the first place? Wasn't it the Dimocrats? Which of course seems rather hypocritical since the Dimocrats ran a draft dodger in 1992 and 1996. Military service didn't mean anything then. Why does it now?
"If you want to show pictures of him with Jane Fonda and other things, then the president ought to produce all the evidence [about his Guard service]," he railed.
That's just it. He has. But the only thing you hypocrites will settle for is if Mr. Peabody and Sherman fire up the Wayback Machine and we go back and see exactly what happened. Maybe then we could go back and see if Kerry shot the Viet Cong guy in the back for his silver star. And we could also see that Max Cleland was not a war hero but a dumb fuck who mishandled a grenade.
"I'm willing to put all of [Bush's Guard record] aside and not bring any of that up ... but you better do the same with John Kerry," proposed Ford. "It's clear where [Kerry] was [during the early 1970s] And at this moment it's unclear where the president was."
1. Have you cleared that with Bill Clinton and Terry 'sleazebag' McAullife?
2. We know where John Kerry was in the early 70's. He was betraying the men in Viet Nam who were fighting and dying for this country by hanging out with Hanoi Jane Fonda and telling lies about those fighting in Viet Nam.
By the way, you may have noticed that I call it Viet Nam rather than Vietnam. The reason that I do that is because we always put the word fucking in between Viet and Nam, as in Viet Fucking Nam. We did that with cities. e.g. Cua Fucking Viet. Da Fucking Nang. Chu Fucking Lai. Vung Fucking Tau. Yeah we hated that fucking war! But you know what we hated the most? We hated the fucking politicians who would not let us win the fucking war. We hated the fucking communist lovers who were against the war. We hated Jane Fonda. We hated the Viet Nam Verterans Against the War because those fuckers knifed us in the back with all the fucking lies they told about the 'atrocities' carried out by the soldiers in Viet Fucking Nam. That's why we hate John Fonda Kerry.
A lot has been made of John Kerry's service in Viet Fucking Nam. Just like Algore (Who served five months in a noncombatant role and had bodyguards) Kerry's tour was abbreviated. He served 4 months instead of the requisite year. I bet I spent more time in Nam than he did. And, yes, I got shot at. Unlike Kerry, I don't make a big deal out of my service.
Here's the deal. The real war heroes don't brag about their service. I did not agree philosophically with George McGovern, but I thought he was an honorable man. He was a WWII bomber pilot. I never heard him list that as a qualification for president. Bush 41 did not say that he was more qualified to be president than Bill Clinton because he was a war hero and Clinton was a cowardly draft dodger. The same thing goes for Bob Dole. When their country called, McGovern, Bush, and Dole served. Clinton pulled strings and then reneged on his deal to join ROTC. In 1992 the Dimocrats said this was a nonissue. Why is Bush's National Guard service an issue now? I thought we settled that bullshit in 1992. But then, if you are a Dimocrat, you have no shame. You can be a murderer (Kennedy), a draft dodger (Clinton), and a racist bigot and member of the KKK (Robert Byrd) and get away with it.
It's really sad what has happened to the Dimocrat Party. It used to have some integrity, but that ended with Clinton and McAuliffe. It is now the party of sleaze and hypocrisy.
I know some Dimocrats who still believe in the party's ideals, like Greg Greene whom I met at a blogger meetup and I really liked. I remember him telling me that some of his best friends are Republicans. Here is what he has to say about Kerry. And this is essential Greg:
I want to win, folks, but do we need to make fighting dirty our tactic of first resort?
That's true Greg. You and I agree on very little politically but I genuinely like you (I'm sorry I was unable to attend Kelly's meetup) and I admire your passion. You and your fellow Dimocrats need to take the party back from the Clintons and McAullife.
I had a bet with my friend Michael about Dean winning the nomination. I was hoping to lose that bet for two reasons:
1. If Dean was the nominee, he would replace McAuliffe.
2. The Dimocrats would be defeated so soundly that they would reexamine their beliefs, much like the Republicans did after Goldwater and decide what they really stood for.
I no longer trust a Dimocrat president to preside over foreign policy. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were disasters. But, having one party control the executive and the legislative branch has led to runaway spending. My friend Michael and I agree that gridlock is good.
And speaking of real heroes, here's another picture of my nephew.
His father informs me he is awesome with a handgun. I shudder to think what he could do with a 50. Eat your heart out Kim du Toit!
C'mon. I thought that this was one of the funniest ads. Thanks to Barbara.
Ring. Ring.
Material Slut: (Sleepily) Hello?
Babs: Hello, Madonna?
MS: Yes. Who the fuck is this and why are you calling me at this hour. Do you know what time it is?
Babs: It's me. Barbra Streisand, and of course I know what time it is. It's 8:45. In another fifteen minutes the West Wing comes on with that adorable Martin Short, who I wish was really our president instead of that horrible John Bush.
MS: Listen you dimwit, it's 4:45 in the morning here in London and you just woke my ass up. This shit had better be good you stupid cunt!
Babs: You don't have to get all snippy with me. And by the way, I've always wondered, is Madonna your first name or your last name? Are you like Doris Madonna or Madonna Smith or what?
MS: It's Madonna Ciccone you stupid twat! Now why the fuck did you wake me up?
Babs: You sure are grouchy. It must be from wearing those stupid conical bras. That has got to hurt your breasts.
MS: I don't want to talk about my tits. Why the fuck did you call me?
Babs: Well Weasley Clerk just dropped out of the race and I know how smart you are politically and I was wondering who you are gonna endorse now? I'm surprised People Magazine hasn't already called you about it.
MS: Why don't you call Michael Moore and ask him and leave me the fuck alone so I can go back to sleep?
Babs: He won't talk to me ever since I called him to talk about his autobiography, A Stupid Fat White Man. And now he has another book out called, Dude, Where's my Cunt. That's a funny name for a book isn't it?
MS: I cannot believe I am having this conversation. This has got to be some sort of bad dream.
Babs: I really wanted Jimmy Looberman to get the nomination because he's Jewish and I think it's gonna take a Jew to balance the budget. My tax lawyer is a Jew. Is yours?
MS: What?
Babs: I remember seeing some pictures of you where you had hairy armpits. Now that you live in London did you quit shaving your armpits? That's what Europeans do don't they?
MS: I can't take this anymore! Don't ever call me again you stupid bitch!
Click.
Babs: Hello? Hello? What an incredibly coarse and rude person. Why do people keep hanging up on me? Don't they realize I'm a rich, beautiful, international star?
Jim. Come on. It's almost time to watch the West Wing. Now there is a real president unlike that dreadful person we have in the Big House.
This one is for Michael who owes me a bottle of Delamain Cognac since I bet him that Dean would not get the nomination.
Sent to me by Barbara.
I'm sure y'all have seen this by now. I've been drinking tonight (Stoly on the rocks with two olives and a half bottle of a nice Spanish red from old grenache vines. Delicious, by the way.) and this picture just pisses me off.
Have I ever told y'all how much I despise Jane Fonda? Why is this bitch still alive? After returning from North Viet Nam, she should have been arrested, tried for treason, and stood up against a wall and shot (or hanged or however they execute traitors).
Look at her enraptured by the anti-American filth that is being spewed out by whoever is speaking. And look. There's John (Did you know that I served in Viet Nam?) Kerry. I am really getting pissed off at his and the Dimocrat Party's bullshit.
Look, we got over this Viet Nam bullshit back in 1992 when we elected a fucking draft dodger as president. If we should elect war heroes as president we should have reelected Bush 41 over the cowardly draft dodger Bill Clinton in 1992 and we should have elected war hero Bob Dole over cowardly draft dodger Bill Clinton in 1996. You Dimocrats are nothing but a bunch of fucking hypocrites. Viet Nam doesn't matter anymore! At least according to John Fonda Kerry in 1992.
Take a sip of wine. Get more pissed off.
Adam sent me an e-mail about John Kerry and his activities. He copied Atrios and that liberal asshole tried to put a good spin on Kerry's bullshit and attacked a Wes Pruden column. Talk about fucking semantics.
He took offence at the statement that Kerry left his fellow soldiers behind. Well duh. He did. I did too. When I got out of the Navy in 1969, I left and my shipmates stayed behind. When Kerry left, his boat crew stayed behind. That is a fact. But then, when has a fact ever been inportant to a liberal?
Then, Atrios implied that Kerry spent four years in Viet Nam. Sorry. The normal tour was one year. And Kerry even got to leave early. What's more, he even got out of the Navy early. Golly, this is the same bullshit that the left is accusing Bush of doing. But that's all right. Look at the difference between Bill Janklow, Republican from South Dakota found guilty of manslaughter who resigned from Congress and will serve time, and Senator Ted Kennedy, Dimocrat from Taxachusetts and noted swimmer, who should have been found guilty of manslaughter, but who is considered an elder statesman of the Dimocrat Party and keeps getting reelected every year. Or how about noted former Kleagle of the KKK Senator Robert Byrd who can use the word nigger twice on national TV and suffer no repercussions. I'd like to see a Republican get away with that. But I digress.
So after Kerry got out of the Navy, he joined the Viet Nam Veterans Against the War. I saw them on campus when I was going to college and I told those dickheads exactly what I thought of them. Pruden excerpted Kerry's testimony before Congress about Americans torturing and killing Vietnamese civilians. Here come the semantics again. Atrios says that Pruden left off the fact that Kerry said he was told by members of VVAW, that they had done this. Well, I guess that makes Kerry's testimony hearsay. So here is the big question. Did Kerry believe it or not?
During the protests against the war, Kerry supposedly threw his medals over the White House fence. Oops! Not really. They belonged to someone else. So this dickhead didn't even have the strength of his convictions to throw his own medals over the fence. This guys sounds more like Bill Clinton every day.
Jane Fonda and her buddy John Kerry and the VVAW were the people responsible for our veterans coming home and being called baby killers and being spat upon. For this I can never forgive them. Never! Ever!
I believed in the Viet Nam War. And history has shown my belief to be true. Look what happened when we left. Thousands of people left in boats to escape the tryanny of communism. Millions of South Vietnamese were sent to reeducation camps. And finally, we had the killing fields of Laos and Cambodia. Even a rabid antiwar protestor like Joan Baez had to admit that maybe we were doing the right thing by being there. She called Jane Fonda to ask for support to rail against the killing fields in Cambodia. Jane couldn't be bothered. She had more important things on her mind. Probably exercise videos. I hate that bitch!
But Jane Fonda and John Kerry don't think of all the people who have suffered because we left and allowed North Viet Nam to conquer South Viet Nam. They don't care about all the people who died. Just like they don't care about all the people whom Saddam Hussein killed and all the people we saved by going to war in Iraq.
Jane Fonda owns her own vagina. John Kerry is a fucking hypocrite.
I hate them both.
By the way, here is a picture of my nephew. He's twice the man John Kerry is. And Bill Clinton is not even worthy to hold his jock strap.
19 years old!
I finally got through to the DeKalb County Water and Sewer billing department. Fortunately, it was all menu driven so I did not have to deal with an incompetent gummint worker. I'm cool. The payment was received so I can continue to bathe and not wind up smelling like a Frenchman.
I don't know why. I don't think Janet Jackson's tits are all that great. This was from one of the Barbaras.
I got home from Breckenridge and as I was going through my mail I noticed what looked like a bill from DeKalb County. I opened it up and saw that it was from the DeKalb County Water and Sewer Department. It wasn't a bill. It was an ominous notice that if I didn't cough up the money to pay my water bill, they were gonna shut off my water on February 2. And what's more it would take 24 hours to turn it back on and the bastards would only charge me $70! Assholes!
So off I went to my internet bill pay service to see if and when I paid these buttheads. Sho' nuff! I paid them on January 29. And to top it off, I paid them $20 more that what was on the shutoff notice.
My water is still on, so maybe I'm OK, but they had a number on the notice that I could call to make sure everything is fixed.
I took the notice to work today so I could call the county offices and get this shit squared away. The first time I called, the line was busy. The second time I called, the line was busy. The third time I called, the line was busy. In fact, every time I called today the fucking line was busy! All I can say is I'm glad that my water hasn't been turned off yet. If it had been, I would have had to have taken off work to go to a county office in person to get this shit fixed.
Let me tell you about DeKalb County workers. They are too fucking dumb to get a job working for the TSA at the airport. If I had gotten through to an actual human today (after probably going through about 20 menus just to get to the freaking water and sewer department), I would have probably gotten connected to some rocket scientist who would have put me on hold while she was checking my account and promptly disconnected me.
Right after I moved to Beautiful Dunwoody, I started getting delinquent tax notices for a boat owned by a David Wilson. I tried to fix this problem on the telephone. Busy signal. Busy signal. Busy signal. Bunch of menus. An idiot.
I finally gave up and took the tax bill to the appropriate county office, and, after having to wait for 30 minutes, finally got to talk to a human (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) who, after struggling mightily with her computer, was actually able to fix the problem. And for this shit, my real estate taxes have gone up every other year that I have lived here.
Dontcha just love gummint workers? Go into any gummint office and you will always see people sitting around doing nothing. This is at the same time that there are long lines of people waiting to avail themselves of all the services the gummint offers.
About 25 years ago, in St. Louis, I was in a gummint office that had three ladies in it. One of them was reading the newspaper. Another one was knitting. I cannot remember what the third lady was doing but it sure as shit wasn't work. The lady reading the newspaper put it down and said to the person who was knitting, "Are you ready to go on break?"
Break? From what? It sure as shit wasn't work.
These ladies worked for a gummint organization called (if I recollect properly) the Defense Contracts Auditing Agency. Now I can understand why the Defense Department can pay $600 for a hammer.
Here's what I really get a kick out of. Remember during the Clinton Administration when Clinton shut down the gummint and blamed it on the Republicans? The press did too. Funny. When Reagan shut down the gummint, the press blamed him. Liberal bias? Naw. But, I digress.
I kinda liked it when the gummint was shut down. It was just like when Washington DC has a bad snowstorm. They put out an alert that says all non-essential gummint employees should stay home.
If these are non-essential employees, why the fuck do they have fucking jobs?
Just asking.
I'm interrupting my cat pictures in honor of the Super Bowl halftime show. This is what we can expect if the Muppets ever do the show.
With apologies to Humphrey Bogart.
In the depths of the countryside there lived a farmer who took care of
baby animals. The farm was very peaceful until one day the farmer's pig
was murdered. Now the farmer took the incident very seriously, so he
started an investigation. Unfortunately, the only witness the farmer
had to this murder was his pet bunny rabbit. Since the rabbit was
unable to speak and tell him who murdered his little pig, the farmer
lined up his four prime suspects, a cow, a horse, a goat, and a duck,
and told the rabbit to pick out who had committed the dirty deed.
The rabbit hopped up and down the line, checking each animal, and then
finally hopped forward three feet, and stopped in front of the goat.
"It wasn't me! It wasn't me!" yelled the goat. The farmer shook his
head and said, "The hare's looking at you, kid."
Here is the group picture of the Crip Trip to Breckenridge. You can click on it to make it a little larger. Look at the bottom row on the far right. The person there is my brother-in-law, Ryan. Right next to him in the blue skisuit is my lovable sister, Sherry. If you look right above Ryan you can see Julia. She skis very well. To the left of Julia you can just make out a helmet and goggles. That is the Grouchy Old Cripple. As in all the pictures of myself on this site, I am totally unrecognizable. All the people in the second row are on either a bi-ski or a mono-ski. The rest of the people are either relatives of the crips or instructors. We had more crips this year than last year.
I am not an athlete. I never was. I didn't play any sports in high school because I was not good enough. I can do physical things but to do so I have to practice, practice, practice.
When I got out of the Navy and was going to college I met some friends who had a ski boat. I always liked to water ski, but was not very good at it. I always wanted to learn how to ski on one ski. I never mastered it until a friend and I bought a boat together and rented a cheap cabin ($150 bucks a year! It was primitive and had no running water but the price was right.) at Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri. It took me most of a day to finally get up on one ski. My friend Mike did it in a hour. Bastard.
I would spend about three weekends out of every four at the Lake during the summer. After countless hours of practice, I finally got very good on one ski. I could even do tricks like taking my back foot out of the ski and use it to hold the tow rope. So, I guess I could do some athletic stuff but I had to work real hard to do it. That seems kinda stupid to work one's butt off to have fun, but, after all the hard work, it was fun.
I had the same experience when I took flying lessons a few years back. I started off using a rudder bar that fastens to the left rudder pedal on the right side of the plane. Therefore the instructor was unable to use his rudder pedals and he had to know how to fly with the rudder bar also. After taking a lesson in California, I found out I could use my feet on the rudder pedals. My only problem was keeping them on the pedals. What I really could have used were some stirrups that would keep my feet on the pedals.
The hardest part of flying is landing the plane. Takeoffs are easy. Once you get the trim down so is straight and level flight. But the landings. That's the tough part. So, there were lessons when all I did was fly the pattern and do touch and go's. There are some students who just hate pattern work because it is so dull.
Rotate at 55 knots and give the plane a little right rudder. Turn Crosswind at 800 feet above ground level. Turn Downwind at 1000 feet AGL. Trim for 85 knots. At the proper time put in one notch of flaps and turn Base. Back off throttle and trim for 75 knots. Drop to 800 feet AGL. Put in another notch of flaps. Turn Final. Put in the last notch of flaps, throttle down and trim for 65 knots and aim at the numbers. If you've done everything right you should just glide right on in.
The biggest problem is getting your flare right. Ideally, you want the plane to stall just as the wheels touch down. Student pilots have this annoying habit of starting the flare too soon and letting the airplane stall five feet above the runway. This causes the plane to drop from the sky onto the runway. This is not a good thing. It pisses off the instructor and is not good for the plane.
After putting the plane on the ground, it's flaps back up, full throttle, rotate at 55 knots and repeat the procedure. I had lessons where I did this the entire lesson. You're talking one-and-a-half to two hours of doing nothing but touch and go's. I loved it! It was a lot of work, but it was fun. And remember, this is sumpin' physical. It took me a long time to get this down pat, but eventually I did. I reckon my sister or her husband could master this in half the time (or less) than I did.
I did this in a Piper Warrior. I took a lesson in St. Louis in a Cessna 172 and the flight instructor told me if I were his student, he would solo me that day. For me Cessnas are much easier to land than Warriors. The high wing on a Cessna makes a big difference in flying the gound effect.
Six months later (as I said, I'm a slow learner) I finally did my first solo. It was just flying the pattern and doing touch and go's for an hour. My flight instructor was just as nervous as I was and I was sweating bullets. After that, I think I solo'd four more times and at the end of every solo I would usually do at least five touch and go's. I had to quit flying because I got a bad sore on my foot which laid me up for almost four months. Also, I started taking some (legal and prescribed) drugs for phantom pain in my feet and they are on the list of drugs that the FAA will not allow pilots to take. Bummer!
That brings me to skiing. Ryan and Sherry are both excellent skiers. They are also much more athletic than I am. Before my accident, I had just started to standup ski. After two lessons, on my second day of skiing, my sister took me on an advance run and tried to teach me how to ski a cliff.
Her: It's easy. Just traverse the slope, stop, and do a kick turn. Show him Ryan.
Me: In your dreams! How do I get off this fucking cliff?
I was planning on going skiing in the winter of 1988/1989, but I had my accident in the fall of 1988. I really didn't think about sit skiing until year before last and that's when I hooked up with the Shepherd/Skimore Tours/BOEC program.
This year, the last two days of skiing were hard work. Once again, I was busting my ass in the present, so in the future I could have fun. On the last day, my ski instructor wasn't pushing me as much as I was pushing myself. I was trying to use less and less of the hill to make my turns. As a reward for how hard I was working, he took me to El Dorado so I could really practice my short turns on a steep hill. Needless to say, I didn't succeed. I made a spectacular fall that my sister rated a 9.5. The ski instructors only gave me a 6 because I didn't lose any equipment.
What I needed was more practice. For a slow learner, non-athletic type like myself (not to mention being 57 years old) four days a year is just not enough. Practice. Practice. Practice. That's what I need.
I'm getting close to retirement. People have asked me what I'm gonna do when I retire. Some people think I'm too attached to my job and I will have a hard time giving it up. That may have been true five years ago, but my CDSMŽ (Clueless Dipshit Manager) mismanaged most of that attachment out of me. I'm now trying to hang on for another 17 months. At that time I'm hoping to have enough money to afford two SCUBA trips a year and two ski trips a year. I may even buy my own rig. When I was given a custom made water ski by a good friend, my water skiing really improved.
If I could spend at least eight days a year skiing and practice, practice, practice maybe I could make it up to the blue/blacks and ski with my sister. I know she gets really bored skiing green.
All it takes is practice. And lots of it.
Instead of a rerun this weekend, I'm posting sumpin' my good friend Pres sent me about the difference between how women and men take showers.
How to Shower Like a Woman
1. Take off clothing and place it in sectioned laundry hamper according to lights and darks.
2. Walk to bathroom wearing long dressing gown. If you see husband along the way, cover up any exposed areas
3. Look at your womanly physique in the mirror - make mental note to do more sit-ups
4. Get in the shower. Use face cloth, arm cloth, leg cloth, long loofah, wide loofah, and pumice stone.
5. Wash your hair once with cucumber and sage shampoo with 43 added vitamins.
6. Wash your hair again to make sure it's clean.
7. Condition your hair with grapefruit mint conditioner enhanced with natural avocado oil. Leave on hair for 15 minutes.
8. Wash your face with crushed apricot facial scrub for 10 minutes until red.
9. Wash entire rest of body with ginger nut and jaffa cake body wash.
10. Rinse conditioner off hair.
11. Shave armpits and legs.
12. Turn off shower.
13. Squeegee off all wet surfaces in shower. Spray mold spots with Tilex.
14. Get out of shower. Dry with towel the size of a small country. Wrap hair in super absorbent towel.
15. Check entire body for zits, tweeze hairs.
16. Return to bedroom wearing long dressing gown and towel on head.
17. If you see husband along the way, cover up any exposed areas.
AND NOW ....
How To Shower Like a Man
1. Take off clothes while sitting on the edge of the bed and leave them in a pile.
2. Walk naked to the bathroom. If you see wife along the way, shake wiener at her making the 'woo-woo' sound.
3. Look in the mirror, look at your wiener and scratch your ass.
4. Get in the shower.
5. Wash your face.
6. Wash your armpits.
7. Blow your nose in your hands and let the water rinse them off.
8. Make fart noises (real or artificial) and laugh at how loud they sound in the shower.
9. Spend majority of time washing privates and surrounding area.
10. Wash your butt, leaving those coarse butt hairs stuck on the soap.
11. Shampoo your hair.
12. Make a Shampoo Mohawk.
13. Pee.
14. Rinse off and get out of shower.
15. Partially dry off. Fail to notice water on floor because curtain was hanging out of tub the whole time.
16. Admire wiener size in mirror again.
17. Leave shower curtain open, wet mat on floor, light and fan on.
18. Return to bedroom with towel around your waist. If you pass wife, pull off towel, shake wiener at her and make the 'woo-woo' sound again.
19. Throw wet towel on bed.
I love living in the South, but sometimes the people here just go off the deep end. This is the 21st Century and we're still debating whether evolution should be taught in schools. In Saturday's AJC (no link because it is only good for seven days) they had an article about the latest furor in the Georgia gummint schools, which, by the way rank 50th in SAT scores.
Former President Jimmy Carter said Friday he is embarrassed that Georgia is at the center of a furor over evolution.
Sensible people in Georgia are embarrassed by Jimmy Carter, but that's not the point.
The state school superintendent's efforts to remove references to evolution from science teaching standards will handicap Georgia students and damage the state's reputation, Carter said in a statement."As a Christian, a trained engineer and scientist, and a professor at Emory University,
And the most inept president of the 20th Century
I am embarrassed by Superintendent Kathy Cox's attempt to censor and distort the education of Georgia's students," the former president said."Nationwide ridicule of Georgia's public education system will be inevitable if this proposal is adopted," Carter said.
So what is Kathy doing?
Cox, who could not be reached for comment on the issue Friday, proposed editing out the word "evolution" as part of a massive revision of the state teaching curriculum. The teaching plans for high school biology and sixth-grade Earth science would replace references to "evolution" with "biological changes over time," a phrase that scientists describe as meaningless.
GMAFB! Where do they come up with this bullshit? Biological changes over time? What the fuck is wrong with using the word evolution?
In defense of the revised curriculum, Cox said this week "evolution" is a "buzzword" that has the potential to derail teachers' efforts to teach the major concepts of biology. At a news conference Thursday, she said she wanted to avoid inviting public misconception about evolution instruction in the public schools."By putting the word in there, we thought people would jump to conclusions and think, 'OK, we're going to be teaching the monkeys-to-man sort of thing.' Which is not what happens in a modern biology classroom," Cox said.
The only monkeys involved here are the people who came up with "biological changes over time". No wonder the Georgia schools suck so bad.
And now the fundos have to weigh in.
Pastor William Sheals of Hopewell Baptist Church in Norcross suggested a true Christian cannot believe in evolution. He said evolution --- and creationism --- should be taught to help students understand science.But don't remove the word "evolution" from the curriculum and pretend that you're not still teaching it, Sheals said. "You're still teaching the fact that man evolved from an ape," he said.
Take your fucking bible and get the fuck out of my sight you dipshit! Evolution does not mean that we evolved from an ape. It does mean that we had common ancestors. And creationism is not science, it is fucking religion you asshole! Go back to your church and STFU!
But now all week long there were letters to the editor about all this crap that should have been settled 50 years ago. And in Friday's Atlanta Urinal and Constipation it seems that Kathy has changed her mind.
State Schools Superintendent Kathy Cox said Thursday she will recommend restoring the word "evolution" to Georgia's science teaching standards and apologized for taking it out.
Yeah, you really fucked this one up, Kathy!
But she did not commit to reinstating other deleted national teaching standards in the biology curriculum, which scientists say are needed if Georgia students are to fully understand evolution.
Here is just a small sample of the shit they are leaving out:
The basic idea of biological evolution is that the Earth's present-day species developed from earlier, distinctly different species. > Molecular evidence substantiates the anatomical evidence for evolution and provides additional detail about the sequence in which various lines of descent branched off from one another. > Natural selection provides the following mechanism for evolution: Some variation in heritable characteristics exists within every species; some of these characteristics give individuals an advantage over others in surviving and reproducing; and the advantaged offspring, in turn, are more likely than others to survive and reproduce.
Is is any wonder that we're number 50?
Scientists were further angered when Cox --- the state's highest elected education official --- seemed to advocate the teaching of "intelligent design," an idea that life came about through a planned sequence by a higher being.
Intelligent design = creationism. Look, I've talked about the design of the human body here. It is an artistic design, not an intelligent design. Any engineer would know better than to run the body's entire neural network through one pathway, i.e. the spinal cord. That is a single point of failure. That is not an intelligent design!
Cox's staff estimated she had received nearly 1,000 comments about the curriculum, most of it directed at biology, and almost all critical of the proposed change.Rebukes came from the National Science Teachers Association, Gov. Sonny Perdue and former President Jimmy Carter, who said he was embarrassed for Georgia.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we're embarrased because of Jimmy Carter. And speaking of Jimmah, here's a picture of him from his African trip.
I hope that if the Republicans don't dump Kathy Cox before the next election that the Dimocrats run someone who is at least as smart as a third grade pissant. That's about all it would take to do a better job than Kathy Cox.
You know things are going bad when even Jimmy Carter gets sumpin' right.
Do y'all remember when the gummint was setting up the TSA? Little Tommy Dasshole came up with the quote: To professionalize we must federalize. What a bunch of crap! Professionalize and federalize do not belong in the same fucking sentence. This was rammed home to me on my trip to Breckenridge.
We arrived at Hartsfield International (There ain't no fucking way I am ever gonna call the Atlanta airport Hartsfield-Jackson!) in plenty of time to get through security and get to our gate.
At the first security checkpoint you need to present a picture id and your boarding pass. All the dipshit gummint employee needs to do is match your picture to your face and match your name to the name on the boarding pass. A third grade pissant with the IQ of 80 could perform this job easily. Unfortunately, we didn't get so lucky. The professionalized and federalized TSA employee didn't even have the intelligence to perform that simple task.
There were some cripples in front of us in wheelchairs and obviously there was a problem that the professionalized and federalized TSA employee, who wasn't even smart enough to work at McDonald's (Would you like fries with that?) could handle. As in all jobs involving gummint employees, there were people standing around doing nothing whom the professionalized and federalized TSA employee could have asked to come over and assist her, but she just decided to solo on fucking everything up. The line grew longer while this professionalized and federalized TSA employee seemed to do absolutely nothing since that was exactly what she was doing.
Finally, someone in the line asked her what her name was. Since she was a professionalized and federalized TSA employee and realized she was fucking up and didn't really give a shit she refused. She wasn't even wearing a name tag and I sure as shit know why. Of course, reporting her wouldn't have done any good since she was a gummint employee and didn't give a flying fuck. To professionalize we must federalize my ass! Dear Tom Dasshole: Fuck off!
Now we get to the metal detectors. Do I have a fucking good time here or what? I can't walk through them so I have to take off my coat, my backpack, and my shoes and braces. I traveled in my wheelchair since I wasn't planning on trying to walk around in the ice and snow and break a leg. I did wear my braces so I could walk onto the plane by holding on to handholds and the seats. I hate those skinny little chairs the airlines use to get us cripples on to the planes.
I wheel my chair up to the special assistance area. The first thing these rocket scientists ask me is if I can stand up. Listen Sherlock, I just took off my shoes and braces and sent them through your fucking xray machines and I'm in a fucking wheelchair and you're asking me if I can stand up? (Would you like to supersize that order?) Jesus H. Christ! I could probably find a homeless person in downtown Atlanta who could do this job better than these professionalized and federalized gummint employees!
Even sitting in a wheelchair, these morons could wand me but instead they have to pat me down. What do these dipshits use for fucking brains? We're counting on these pissants to protect us? Be afraid. Be very afraid.
And as for little Tommy Dasshole and his "to prefessionalize we must federalize", I'd like to kick that little fucktwit in the balls! I'd fall on my ass, but it would be worth it!
I hate the fucking TSA!
I haven't had a chance to piss off Pumpman for a while, so I've decided to run another cat series just for him. These aren't cute cats, but cats with an attitude. These all came from my sister.
Got back on Tuesday night. Logged on. Got a new troll who likes to pretend it is Denita TwoDragons. Geez! The troll is not even proud enough to use its real name. Dickhead!
In the It's a Small World Department, I went to the same high school, Webster Groves Senior High School, in Webster Groves Missouri as Denita TwoDragons' mother. I was two grades ahead of her and didn't know her personally.
This was my second Crip Trip to Breckenridge Colorado. Last year's trip was Awesome. Last year everything was awesome. That was all I heard: awesome. This year, I only heard the word awesome four times.
Rick, and I'm sure some other people, wanted to know how cripples ski. We sit ski. For people who have spinal problems that do not give them much abdominal muscles there is the bi-ski. This is a chair that sits on two skis. The bi-ski offers great balance, but shitty maneuverability. For those of us who have good abdominal muscles, there is the mono-ski. It is a chair, called a bucket, that sits on top of one ski. The ski is the same ski that a standup skier would use. They use two, we use one. We also have two outriggers. These are poles that have little skis on the end. We use them for turning.
Here is a picture that I lifted off the BOEC (Breckenridge Outdoor Education Center) web site.
We stayed at the Village at Breckenridge which sits right at the foot of the Silverthorne run which is cool since that put us within easy walking distance (rolling distance in my case) of the Silverthorne lift. My sister, Sherry, and her husband, Ryan, liked that. Walk out of our building (roll in my case), walk (roll) a hundred yards, and we're there.
The trip out was uneventful except for one of the people who went with us whom I named Forest Stump. He was a triple amputee (two legs and an arm). He had leg prostheses that enabled him to walk. He also was a little slow mentally. Yeah, I know. I'm an asshole to make fun of someone like that. Read this blog's description.
Anyway, Forest, who was probably in his late 40's or early 50's had never been on an airplane before so everything was so new and wonderful he had to share it with the rest of us. Since we were in the same van with him travelling from the Denver Airport to Breckenridge, we got to experience his descriptions of his awe and delight for over two hours. His favorite phrase was, "Oh yeah!" It drove my sister nuts.
We stayed in a two bedroom condo this year. Ryan and Sherry got one bedroom and Andrew (my roommate from last year) and I got the other one.
I was expecting to pick up from where I left off last year, but alas, it was not meant to be. They put me in the same rig I used last year but I couldn't ski for shit. I had gained at least 10 pounds and that was part of the problem. Try as they might, they couldn't get me balanced properly in the bucket. Needless to say, I fell a lot.
On the first day one of my instructors, who was in a mono-ski rig, was Quinton. He was an actual paraplegic (something my sister didn't realize. I didn't either until later.). The other was Charlie who is an old fart (62) who only standup skis when he gives lessons. When he skis on his own, he uses a mono-ski since it is easier on his knees. My sister has a crappy knee and I told her she might want to learn how to sit ski. She's more athletic and would probably pick it up faster than I do.
On all of my first day runs, Quinton and Charlie kept giving me instructions (often at the same time), and altho' they were both giving me valuable info, it was confusing listening to two different people. I knew what I was supposed to do, but I couln't make it happen. At least I didn't injure my shoulder like I did on the first day last year. I did manage to ski right out of my ski. The binding on the ski allowed the bucket assembly to come out, so they had to change the ski before the second run.
The second day I had Charlie again, and a little slip of a girl named Amanda, a college student from Colorado Springs, who was interning. (Interning - Work your ass off for food, lodging, and lift tickets. Don't get paid anything.) They put me in a different rig and this time my balance was much better. I fell a lot on the first run, but that was partially because I was not strapped in tight enough and I was not able to lean far enough forward. After lunch we finally got all the equipment problems fixed. That is the problem with renting equipment. It is not as good as owning your own equipment that is made especially for you.
Sunday I had Quinton again and an intern from Australia named Rosie. Ryan and Sherry skied with us and Ryan was a big help assisting Rosie in getting me on the lift. Now that my equipment problems were fixed, I was able to make better turns. By noon Sunday I was finally back to where I was at the end of last year. I only skied half the day.
We sent out for pizza Sunday afternoon and watched the Super Bowl. The game was good. Halftime sucked! 'Nuff said.
Monday I had Quinton, one of the bosses named Bob and a volunteer named Bob. I told them I'd just go Bob-ling down the slope. Nah! They didn't think it was funny either. I told them before we started that we could probably replace Quinton with a tape recorder since he would say most of the day, "Look down the hill!"
One of the bad things about being a logical thinker is I have to know why to do things. The whole deal with looking down the hill at the fall line is to drop my downhill shoulder. By doing that, I could keep the ski flat and keep from catching the uphill edge of the ski and falling into the hill. This is a common problem with standup skiers also.
At the bottom of Silverthorne is Ballet Hill. It is the steepest part of the run. I could ski it using the entire hill, traversing across and back. Quinton wanted me to only use half of it. i.e. only ski halfway across and turn back. This would involve quicker and sharper turns. I had started this on Sunday and continued it Monday. Ryan even noticed that I was turning better.
In the afternoon, Quinton took me to El Dorado. This is a steeper version of Ballet Hill. This is where I made two incredibly fantastic wipeouts last year. This year I made my second best wipeout there. My best wipeout was on Ballet Hill on Saturday when I fell on my uphill side, bounced, and fell downhill. My sister gave me a 9.5 for my wipeout on El Dorado. Quinton and the Bobs only gave me a 6 because I didn't lose any equipment.
I quit early on Monday because I was beat. I made a lot of progress and hopefully I won't put on any more weight so I can get off Silverthorne and start skiing some intermediate runs next year. My sister says there are some nice long blue and blue black runs. Maybe in another four years I'll find out. It sucks being a klutz and an old one at that.
The flight home was fun. At least my sister thought so. She sat right in front of Forest Stump and raptly listened to him the whole flight. As the plane was flying over Memphis, he saw the Pyramid and said, "We're flying over St. Louis. I see the Arch." When Sherry told me that, after we deplaned I told her that I was amazed at the engineering project that not only turned the Gateway Arch into a pyramid but also moved it across the Mississippi River.
There were a few more exciting things that happened, but I will not relate them to protect the guilty.
The trip next year has already been scheduled and if able I'm going to go again. Maybe next year I'll make it up to Bonanza, the easiest blue run.
I wish I had started this when I was younger.
