REDNECKS ! !

Rednecks. The word has come to mean white trash, or tobacco spitting good ole boys who can't spit past the bib of their overalls. Or fat drunks wearing wife beaters, with a pregnant wife and a passel of kids running around in their dirty diapers, or wearing a tee shirt without any pants in a filthy single wide trailer with no screen on the windows and the front door open to catch any errant breeze.

Pictures are passed around the internet like these;

http://boortz.com/more/funny/redneck_pics.html

(If I knew how, I'd upload them myself, but because I'm a computer retard you'll have to do your own surfing.)

Funny stuff.. humans are amazingly inventive and creative but sometimes you have to wonder if they really thought that thru or if they didn't why you didn't think of something fun like that.

Maybe it's because I'm getting older and looking back in nostalgic rose colored glasses, but I can remember when it meant that you worked out in the sun all day. Plowing either behind a mule or on a tractor, cutting and baling hay and then throwing it on the truck or trailer by hand the carrying it to the shed to be unloaded again by hand. Post holes were dug one at at time by hand and the post set in straight and sure and then tamped in with the end of a model T axel rod. (I still have my dad's) You're neck got sunburned and your arms and face, but your hat left a white forehead and your chest under the worn work shirt never saw the light of day.

When a persons word was his bond come hell or high water. When he took care of his family and what he had worked for, the took the time to visit the neighbors and help them if he could. Where the worst thing you could do was have to go on the government dole, and if you did it was just till you could get the next job that came up, even if it was digging ditches.

Where people knew that you had to preserve what surplus you made in the garden so you would have plenty to eat and maybe some to share in the wintertime. I can remember my mother standing hours on end canning soups and beans, okra, corn fresh off the cob. Honey put up in 1/2 gal. jars from the behives in the back pasture. Wood from the untilled acres fed the wood burning stove. Milk from your own cows sat in the Frigidare, and ever refrigerator was call a Frigidare no matter the maker.

My father was a farmer. He had his own dairy, on 300+ acres. A couple hundred head of cattle that had its start in first one, then another, then still more Jersey, Gurnsey, Brown Swiss and eventually one of the best Holstein dairy farms in Georgia.
He got up before the sun, and many days didn't come in until it sat in the west. He was a proud man, a rough man. He had little tolerance for fools. Often I thought he considered me a fool.
I feared his anger. At times I hated the man I saw. But when I was a child I acted as a child. Now that I'm just beginning to grow up a little, I see a different man. A man of the earth. Red with the dust of the field. Red ears and neck from spending long hours in the sun. Struggling to build a business and provide for a family of 6 children. He was independent, proud, quick to take offence.
He was not a perfect human being. His faults were many. He was by God a REDNECK, but, maybe we need more of them today.

White trash of any color are not entitled to the epitath of ... "Redneck".

Oh yes, we grew Kudzu and were proud of it.

Trip to the VA

Here I sit, knowing that I need to get to sleep, so I can wake early and hit the road to hotlanta in the morning. Have to try and beat that awful traffic. I hate lots of traffic like I hate being in large crowds of people anywhere.
Alone in the truck, I realize that I'm pretty lucky not to have to make that insane trip more than 2 or 3 times a month. I try to leave early enough to miss the worst of the rush hour traffic.
I watch the people filing in and out of the VA. Most looking quite whole and sane. Many Dr.s and other personal that work there. Many old and sickly looking. WWII vets, Korean war Vets,
Many Vietnam vets, now lots of Gulf war and Gulf war II vets.
One thing I can say is I have a lot better opinion of the VA now. I've received nothing but kindness and respect from the people who work there. I know that I probably wouldn't be here if not for the concern of a staffer who answered the phone a year and a half ago. I wonder if I'm using up resources that would be better spent on someone else, like the SSG I met a few months ago who had run over an IUD in Iraq. Had his right arm out the window of a 5 ton truck when the device went off on the right side. Numerous operations, numerous opinions that the arm would have to come off. There he is every week working on physical therepy to inprove the function of his saved arm. No complaints, Just thankful to be alive and back with his family.
Many young and not so young troops over there in harms way, doing things we can hardly imagine. All volunteers, keeping the fight there rather than here. Are they heros? Of course many are. We should support and be proud of all of them.

Someone once said, "Peaceable men sleep peacefully in their beds at nights because rough men stand ready to do violence in their behalf".

My friend B. King said "the difficulty is coming to the realization that we're killers".

I think the difficulty is knowing that we have the capacity and the ability, and training, but restraining the beast within is what both tears us apart and makes us heros.

Therein lies the fertile field for the Kudzu that grows within.

Procrastination

It's funny how some of put off doing the things we need to do till the very last minute.
I've always been one to wait until the crisis can get no more critical to do what's necessary to fix whatever problem of the moment is going on.

I've always believed that I am going to live forever. I truly believe that as a part of my Christian religion. But, I have for many years told my children that I was going to live to be 192 ! That means that I'll die in this body in the year 2141. My grandchildren's grandchildren will probably have grandchildren by that time. Wonder if they'll even know who I am. Or Care.

Think of the changes that will come about by that time. World peace? Doubtful. World War? Also doubtful.

One thing that won't ever change tho is the fact that the PTB (powers that be) will still rule the world and 99% of the world will never hear of them.

What ever type of currency we use will problably no more exist in actual Fact than the money we use now
. Created out of nothing and worth even less, except we all us it (of neccessity ) everyday.

But I digress and will start ranting if I keep on.

What I really mean to say is that few of us start to think of the future until too late. Oh we have our IRAs , Our 401 accounts, and there is always the safety net of good ol' social security and medicare to save us in our dottage. Right ? ?

Do as I say and not as I do. Make a Goal for your future.. Plan for that goal. Work the Plan. Continue to refine the Plan as conditions change.

I have waited too long to use the slow plan. I must of necessity shoot for the stars. But, then I always have. At least I have the stars of 4 beautiful children and soon the 6th beautiful grandchild. But I don't want to have to spend what should be years of less effort and more time scratching for every dime. Or dependant on others.

I mean for 2006 to be the greatest year ever. I will set Goals, make Plans, Work the Plan.


And I will continue to reach out to the power in the Cosmos who's intention is for us all to succeed.

The Tangles may wrap their tendrils all over me, but my finger will be reaching out of the leaves and pointing UP ! !

Just Damn ! !

We tend to see things based on our life experiences. People we have known. Places we have been.
If our knowledge of the world is limited, then, our vision tends to be parocrical and limited also.
I've just been to a website where you can create a map showing what countries you have been to, also you can make a map of the states in the US you've been in.
Ive been in 9 different countries, some like Austria which I was only in long enough to turn around (we were exploring roads around the southern Alps of Germany, got on a road with lots of traffic but no place to turn around when we found ourselves at the Austrian border checkpoint. Thankfully the Guard recognized us as stoopid Americans and allowed us to enter and turn around and leave.
Vietnam, a most beautiful and at the time ugly place I ever saw. North Vietnam, (at the time a differant Country, and not officially).
The Netherlands (Holland) where we visited the museums in Amsterdam, went to the town of Gouda (where we naturally bought cheese, as well as a pair of wooden shoes for Hope). London England but only to the airport on the way back to the US.. Laos from the air ( something big and black fell thru the rotorblades, a most amusing tale).. Japan (bought a Camera in the airport)..
Guam (never left the plane during refueling). The US, natch.

I've been in 37 of the fifty US states. Some I spent a little time in, but most I just drove thru. Saw the painted deseret, from the front seat of our Ford Econoline, the petrified forest, the Navajo nation, passed right thru the Mojave Desert, up the central valley of California. I have lived in sight of Mt Rainer, and driven up it's foothills hoping to see Bigfoot. Passed within spitting distance of the Great Salt lake.

They say a life unlived is the most pathetic thing. There are many places I want to visit and really see before I die.

Just another tangle of Kudzu I'd like to untangle. Dang !

Go to http://douweosinga.com/projects/visitedcountries to make a map of your travels.

Read this, Ponder, and weep, or Cheer if so inclined

This from Fred on Everything;


FRED Columns
A Colony Again
"You Can Call Me Bwana, Ferguson."

January 18, 2005
I’m going to start a rickshaw factory. It’s so our kids will have a way to make a living, now that America is pulling out of the First World. Maybe I’ll put an iPod socket on the poles or a little tiny television, made in Japan. That way our puzzled offspring won’t inadvertently start thinking. Tradition provides an anchor in the circumambient chaos.
See, what’s going to happen is, all the design work and programming are going to Mumbai, except the part that already has. Manufacturing is pretty much in China already, Mexicans do all the scutwork, and blacks work for the government or not at all, or both at once. That leaves whites as midlevel bureaucrats supervising each other. Thing is, whites are getting so they can’t read either, so they’ll need rickshaws to pull, in case the Chinese engineers want to go somewhere.
It’s over, I tell you. The United Steak has turned into a mess of pale-faced bushmen mumbling in pidgin English, the young anyway, with Orientals as missionaries trying to civilize us. Yes, friends and neighbors! Ain’t it exciting? All the professors in America of anything practical are already Chinese or Indian. Or getting that way fast.You think I exaggerate? Ha. Checking the staff of the University of Central Florida’s school of Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering, I discover that most of Mumbai has already moved to America. Shanghai too. There follows an unedited list:
Ranganathan Kumar, Linan An, Quanfang Chen, Ruey-Hung Chen, Larry Chew, Hyoung Jin "Joe" Cho, Louis C. Chow, Kevin R. Coffey, Ted Conway, Vimal Desai, Jiyu Fang, A. Henry Hagedoorn, Olusegun Illegbusi, Roger Johnson, Samar Jyoti Kalita, Jayanta Kapat, Aravinda Kar, Alain Kassab, Christine Klemenz, Alexander Leonessa, Kuo-Chi "Kurt" Lin, Antonio Minardi, Faissal Moslehy, Jamal F. Nayfeh, David Nicholson, Eric L. Petersen, Sudipta Seal, Yongho Sohn, C. "Sury" Suryanarayana, Raj Vaidyanathan, Quan Wang, Fang Xu, Richard Zarda.
If that ain’t a hotbed of Anglo-Saxon achievement, I can’t imagine what might be. It’s probably just what ol’ Tom Jefferson had in mind. Who can doubt it?
What we see now is backslosh from the Raj. Used to be, you had a bunch of Brits in India and China and places, trying half-heartedly to lift the benighted brown rascals from their slothly ways and make’m into Europeans. The White Man’s Burden, all that. Of course, you couldn’t really expect the heathen Chinee to do much more than dig holes and wash shirts. The darker races were, well, the darker races. All right in their place but…limited. Everyone understood it.
Except, it would seem, the Indians and the heathen Chinee. Since they had limited understanding, it figures that they didn’t understand that they had limited understanding, and so acted like they didn’t, and so now they’re doing computational fluid dynamics in their heads because they don’t know any better. (A certain logical opacity informs sociological thought.) Today we have the Empire in reverse with Chandragupta Sahib teaching heuristic programming to the natives. Us.
The problem is that since neither England nor the United States any longer has a school system, the Asians will have to teach us remedial counting, probably on our fingers, so we can work for them. (I’m from West Virginia. We’ll have base-twelve arithmetic.)
All of this is well-thought-out, like a military campaign of blitzkrieg endullment. We’re returning to subhuman status in a pincers movement. While the Indians and Chinese and all are getting smarter, we’re getting enstupidated at a hell of a pace. It shows that international cooperation is possible.
There’s this thing called the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, which just came out and said that Americans not only can’t read but are vigorously getting worse. Here it is, from the Washington ever-loving Post, December 25 in the Year of Our Decline 2005:
“Only 41 percent of graduate students tested in 2003 could be classified as ‘proficient’ in prose—reading and understanding information in short texts—down 10 percentage points since 1992. Of college graduates, only 31 percent were classified as proficient—compared with 40 percent in 1992.”
That’s college graduates, brethren and sistern! They can’t read simple stuff. “See Spot run. Run, Spot….” What you think them other scoundrels can’t do that ain’t graduates? Halleluja, dearly beloved, idiots are us. Am us, I mean.
Now, sure, you can make excuses, and say, well, this dismal revelation counts all the Permanently Disadvantaged Minorities and affirmative-action nonstudents and all the other people who shouldn’t be anyway in what ought to be colleges but mostly aren’t. But you’re supposed to be able to read when you get out of freaking high school, aren’t you? If they can’t read, how did they into college, much less out the other end?
You reckon the Japanese are as dim as we are? I bet a better percentage of their graduate students can read English well than ours can.
The Post goes on, thump, thump, thump. “Literacy experts and educators say they are stunned by the results of [the] recent adult-literacy assessment, which shows that the reading proficiency of college graduates has declined in the past decade, with no obvious explanation.”
No obvious explanation? Oh no, not at all obvious—no more obvious than, say, advanced leprosy on a nekkid prom queen. How about: They can’t read because our schools are in the hands of low-IQ social engineeresses with the academic inclinations of cocker spaniels? If this darkness is the result produced by “literacy experts and educators,” what might we expect from them as ain’t? I taught my three-year-old daughter to read phonetically in about a month of a few minutes a day. It’s easy to teach kids to read (phonetically). It takes genius to waste twelve years of their lives, sixteen in the case of college graduates, and keep them from learning to read.
People deserve what they tolerate, say I, which is a frightening thought. Actually I love watching it. I’d sell tickets if I could. I’ve heard of countries going tits-up because they got stomped on by some other country, or got their trade cut off, but most of them don’t do it unless they have to. With us, it’s on purpose.
Meanwhile, you might be smart to get a wheelbarrow and fill it with cement and let your kids get a start on pulling it. Success after all goes to the economically adaptive, yet rickshaws may be trickier than we envision. Those who can’t pull will clean toilets. Have your children memorize the names of the streets while they still have you to read for them—unless, that is, you aren’t among the college graduates who can read.
We must look to the future.