Facing up to the pain

I stopped by a pawnshop owned by a friend today; Just to pass the time and see if there was anything worthy of spending a few shekels on.

He offered me a shiny silver looking mans bracelet.....supposedly of 14 kt white gold, it after all was stamped on the catch 14k. The feel was about right....73 grams. A quick check though prompted some questions as to whether there was any gold content after all.

"But it has to be gold, I checked it", he said. "I gave that guy $850.00 for it".

Considering that it might have been worth over $1400.00 scrap value it would have been a good deal for him. Had it been gold....

Oh, did I mention that he might have had a little bit of the grape coursing through his veins?

Oh Yeah.

I told him I'd be able to tell him with 100% certainty before dark tonight. It's not gold.

It seems that a large portion of this countries adult (and even some not so adult) population are beginning to realize that those golden gods we have installed in Washington, DC might not be as pure and as wise as we'd hoped for. Indeed, they're kinda like the watermelon the wife brought back from Wally World the other day. It looked good on the outside....when sliced open the smell made my mouth water a bit. But, when bitten into, with great expectations, was quickly spit back out by both the wife and I at almost the same instance.

Spoiled.....rotten to the core...awful it was. Quick rinses and gargles at the kitchen sink helped take the taste from our mouths. Quick dispatch out to the compost heap got it out of our sight. But the memory lingered. I'm sure we'll be a little more cautious about the next one we slice open.

Hopefully the electorate will remember the bad taste and odor seeping out of that swamp on the Potomac.

Maybe they'll choose with a little more care next time.

But......in the meantime.....do I call my friend tonight while his pain will be dulled from the grape, or wait until the morning when the pain will only be amplified by the harsh light of day? Will the pain be blamed on the messenger?

UPDATE: I waited until the next day. He moaned and groaned a bit, but not too bad.
Hell, we all make mistakes from time to time. What matters is that we continue on
on our journey, trying not to repeat them too often.

Looking for a bed in Athens

Not going to be too much longer. There is a pleasant kind of an ache in my shoulders and neck.
placed there by the drive to the mountain creek and back again, with a little help from trying to keep the dredge sucking water instead of air as the 10 yr old grandson and I tried to find the elusive bit of auric shiny-ness amongst the sand and rocks, with kibitzing from the wife and the pooch.

A week or so ago my friend Armando from El Salvador asked if I was watching the World Cup matches in South Africa beamed to a satellite and thence down to my waiting dish. I told him, "No".

"Do you watch baseball"?

"No".

"Football or college sports"?

Again, "no".

"What do you do for fun", he asked?

Do you know I had to think about that for a while. (This just prior to us climbing into the Red Ram and heading to Washington, GA to buy up a little scrap, which if you had to call anything my job, would be it.)

It surprised, and amused me both, to hear myself reply, "I like to work". And you know, I do.

It's not working on the space shuttle, nor saving lives in a hospital... nothing very important as all really, simply allowing people to convert unusable and unsaleable assets for a more convenient and readily accepted form of asset.

But, it's what I do. Going on 16 years now, off and on. Seen good times and seen bad times.
Sometimes I think I'd prefer there to be more good times.....but they all add up together, don't they.

So, today we went to a creek in the woods, the wife, the pooch, Lee and I, and although I could have been more tolerant of a 10 year old boy's fondness for just playing around while I was in a dead serious hunt for black sand and flecks of golden dreams, I was doing what I love the most. Working hard at whatever I'm doing.

I see lots of guys my age not moving around much and waiting on the day they retire from that dreaded J. O. B. To my jaundiced eye they seem much older than I, and I hope I never become one of them.

It just wouldn't seem like all that much fun.

Don't Taze my Granny

This, if true, and now-a-day I don't doubt it, makes me want to fire off a Scud Missle to the offending police dept. At the very least call for their firing.

Check it out

Just one more example of the them against them mentality that exist at all levels of gubberment service these days.

I'm gonna go play in the creek until I cool off.

Popcorn Farting

It rained in the Classic City this evening. In some parts it was like a cow pissing on a flat rock with cracks of lightning and booms of thunder.

Here at the Kudzu Grotto ...... ehhh... not so much. Just enough to settle the dust a bit and cause the grass to grow a little more. Swear it's the truth....I'm gonna cover my pitiful excuse for a yard with pea gravel and call it a Japanese Rock Garden. Crab grass and Dandelions we have in abundance. But will turf type fescue or Burmuda grass take a'holt........S**T no!

Been a while. The mood just doesn't seem to have hit me over the head in a while. All the thing I used to rant and rave about Glenn Beck is taking care of now. Time to pass the torch I guess. He's doing a much better job of it than I ever did. All I succeeded in doing was piss the in-laws and out-laws off with my bitching and moaning.

Blogging for going on six years now and I've had a few people visit, some even more that once, even an occasional comment by bloggers that I admire and respect. Those have fed my soul and nourished a timid desire to put my self out there where others can see, even take a shot at now and again. Churchill is supposed to have said, "There is nothing quite as exhilarating as being shot at and missed". Some truth to that although it's been many a year since I had to dodge and weave. They used to say I couldn't fly a straight line if my life depended on it. I always considered that it depended on my wobbling and bobbling through the air more than getting there the quickest sometimes.

The same ol' same ol' is going on in the political and economic news. I'm getting dammned tired of it. Perhaps a new direction will be attempted after this coming falls elections, but it will mean little. The powers that be are controlled by the banksters that be and to bet against them can mean as much as your life. Don't take my word for it.....Ask JFK. Hell ask BHO. He can't take a crap without them telling him which hand to use to wipe his ass. So much for the devout mussleman question.

Anyhoo nobody wants to listen to that shit from a nano-particle in the blog-o-sphere like me, so I'm gonna attempt to steer clear for a while and think about nicer things. Things like the rainbow over Home Depot as I was trying to get off the by-pass in order to pick up some Chef Ming goodness for supper. It was one of God's better light shows......then along came the cow and the flat rock.

If'n any of you are in the mood for Chinese, either take out or dine in you could do worse than Chef Ming's. Check them out over by Kroger between Home Depot and Lowe's.

It's been a little over and hour and I think there is some Mushroom Beef left in the icebox.

Son........ Gooooooddddd!

Triple Fudge Walnut Brownies

with a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Comfort food.

Needed quite a lot this evening.

An evening of thunder, lightening and rain. Much appreciated after the last few days of temps in the high 90's with humidity you have to slice with a sharp knife to walk through. A relief to hear the air conditioner cease sucking up the $ bills for a few minutes.

Of course the relief will be only short lived......already the thunder is becoming more distant and the rain not so fierce.

The need for the brownies occasioned by the absence of the pooch who is imprisoned in the local Vet's clinic for observation, re-hydration, medication all brought about by the finding of bloody stool this morning and a general off feed, whining, discomforting lassitude in our Toby Boy.

Hemorrhagic Gastroenteritis...... which is vet talk for bleeding in the intestines for one or more of possibly a dozen and a half possibilities. Did you know that it's not wise to treat your dog with those rawhide chew toys that are everywhere these days? Neither did we.

What ever the reason our pooch is not at home with us and the wife is not happy about it, especially as the rumbling and flashing would be driving him under the bed were he home and around his packmates (the wife, the ol' grump and I).

Who knows what torments he's suffering alone in his wire cage there a million miles away from home, with no one to scratch behind his ears or rub his tummy and no snoring from me as he sleeps on the pillow above our heads at night.

So while you're getting ready to lie in your comfortable beds tonight, give a moment of silence and possibly prayer for the little pooch, who will no doubt be as miserable without us as we without him.

Poor, poor, pitiful Obama

You just have to almost feel sorry for the guy.

Somebody probably told him that all he had to do to be presidential was stick his chicken chest out and hold his head up high and we'd all follow him blindly where-ever his skipping and flute playing would lead us.

Never mind that Americans don't particularly like someone who is always looking down their nose at us, telling us that we don't know what is good for us, that we're gonna get screwed like there was no tomorrow and we'd not only pay good money for the opportunity but would gladly hock our children, grand children and great-grand children for as far into the future as you care to imagine, all the while looking back over our shoulder trying to get a kiss.

Sorry Barrack..........John Wayne hasn't been dead that long.



Of course The Duke never had to come up with some one to blame for the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. If he had I expect he would have said something like.....,'Whatna hell do you expect me to do. I can't control the fickle finger of fate. If you want it cleaned up get off your ass and start mixing some loose hay in the water behind those fancy orange floaty things to soak some of that oil up. It's bad and gonna be bad......it'll be worse if you sit on your ass and point fingers, while doing nothing to help your own selves. Volcanoes erupt, floods come.....don't build on the side of a volcano or in a flood plain, don't start drilling 5000 feet below sea level without having at least two worst case scenarios planned for and trained for with all available equipment and personnel ready and trained ahead of time. Life is hard and it's harder when you're stupid'.

Politician exist because they convince us that they have all the answers and will always be looking out for our best interest.

I suspect if we could read their minds and knew what they were really thinking, there'd be an open season on them with no bag limit, bounties awarded for the use of the most creative manner in which they were lured into the kill zone and dispatched. Maybe we could turn it into some kind of a reality show, get those 2 British guys and some hot model to narrate it.

Should We Fear........

........or feel any remorse about possibly defaulting on our debt to the Federal Reserve?

Go yahoo and read, then analyze your feelings.

Am I a nut for considering the two largest Criminal Enterprises in the world to be;

1, The Federal Reserve System as part of a larger network of Central Banks around the world,

2, The current Government of the United States, as evidenced by the leadership of both houses
The President as well as top Bureaucrats at all agencies?

Tiny peeks inside my head on a Tuesday

If that title doesn't scare the 5 or 6 people that visit here on an average day away then they probably have a higher than average tolerance for boredom.

Thanks for coming, it was nice to see you.

I've always tried to keep people fooled as to my real ME by cracking wise or making off the wall comments. Maybe it's me that I've been fooling. No matter.

A couple days ago Yabu over at Bad Bad Juju asked the question of the moment.....

Are worldwide money systems beyond the point of no return? If yes, why, if no, why.

Dang ya Yabu, you planted an earwig in my head. Now I've got to scratch the itch. Not for anyone else, but to justify to myself the course of action I've undertaken to myself.

Very few people will read this in any event and I'm cossetted here in the inner recesses of the Kudzu Grotto (KG) where if the scratching gets personal no one will see.

If yes? Yes, they are. Why? In my opinion we have a greater hope of influencing the election results than of changing the world-wide system of fiat money-backed-by-nothing imposed by the (imho) Criminal Central Banks of the world.

That is to say that I hold out little hope of most of the worlds currencies becoming backed by any item of supposed value, whether gold or silver, neither of which can of course be eaten in and of themselves. The Swiss Franc was at one time fully backed by gold but they sold much gold while the price was lower. They still have that backing and with recent price increases may actually be in a position once again of have full backing, but I don't know if it is convertible by walking in to the local branch of USB.

Yes, when most of the worlds industrial countries spend more than they produce in goods and services, (which point the US has reached) and promise even more, they are in fact bankrupt, they just haven't filed the papers yet. Having filed those particular papers once upon a time myself I think I have a bit of an understanding.

When you rob Peter to pay Paul, eventually both Peter and Paul get pissed at you. Paul because you robbed him and Paul because you finally broke Peter and are no longer paying him what he has come to think of as his right. It's not of course, (his right), but he's gotten used to getting something for nothing. Witness the civil servants of Span lying down in the streets in protest at proposed cuts in their wages. (Can you blame them? They've habituated themselves to a certain standard of living and don't want to go backwards).

If, as is proper, many of the recipients of government largess in The USA were suddenly removed from the teat they had latched onto since birth in many cases, what would you expect their reaction to be?

Would our society become a lot less civil in the near term? Of course it would and the rioters would consider they had every right to then take by force what they were formerly receiving as a matter of course to them and not much protesting by the rest of us because we'd really rather not deal with them if we could help it. Interaction would then become very much more interesting and potentially dangerous. This takes no account of the millions who (supposedly) work for government and produce reams of laws and excessive regulation for the betterment of mankind and to ensure they have a job and a pretense at legitimacy when holding their hand out for their share. IMO once again many of the personnel and bureaucracies could be eliminated with no effect at all upon the majority of the American citizenry.

I'll give you one example.........The US Agricultural Extension Service. As a former Dairy Farmer I have has some dealing with them and as a parent I've had children who participated in 4-H.

At the time of establishment the Extension Service was to provide updated and innovative farming information to the farmers of this country (circa 1930's). A worthwhile venture to be sure as at the time much of the rural citizenry we somewhat less literate than their citified cousins (although perhaps less aggressive and abrasive) and the information highway was not even a gleam in Al Gore's eye. A network of shared information benefited both the farmers and the consumers to the point that the US fed not only it's self but much of the rest of the world.

Today that information is readily available in many media forms and while much research can be attributed to the Agricultural Colleges and the Extension Services, the local offices spend much of their time babysitting children, teaching them to shoot bows and arrows and going on field trips. Nothing wrong with that I suppose, but I suggest the time has come to reduce by 90% that agency. There are many more just like it and in fact much more useless as producers of value for the money spent on them.

beyond the point of no return? if no, why

NO. Does it surprise you to read that from me after all the above?

I guess I am an eternal optimist. I believe this world is going to continue spinning around the sun which is it's self spinning withing the galaxy through space and will continue short of Impact with an object large enough to pulverize things.

Will humankind be smart enough to avoid destructive scenarios such as total melt down?

I think we can. Much like the bankruptcy process, first you must face up to the fact that you have to make a change and either repudiate all your debts as well as ownership of any assets of any value and walk away to start over (Chapter 7 Bankruptcy), or recognize that you need to stop the destructive actions and put a plan in place to allow you with time and hard work to pay off your debts, while removing the temptations of credit, of which you will emerge with none. (Chapter 13 Bankruptcy).

This could be accomplished by:

1st, Kicking the current crop if incompetents out of Washington, State Capitals, and County and local leadership positions, replacing them with principled Statesmen/women who have and understanding of the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States and the 1st Ten articles of the Bill of Rights. Who recognize that rights are an individuals by right of Birth, whether you believe they are God Given, as I do, or they exist because you do. Life, Liberty, Property and the right to protect all of these both individually and collectively. Holding the civil Servants accountable to the people by methods both Draconian and Transparently.

2nd, Place a freeze on payments to holders of government debt and stop the interest accumulation until a re-organization plan is put in place to allow the debt to be paid and no new debt to be incurred.....period! If you can't pay for it out of available funds, you can't have it. This is just common sense.

3rd, Enact the Fair Tax. If you don't understand how this would completely fund the government with no more money coming out of the people's pockets and bring industry and corporations streaming back into this country, you need to do your research and read the two excellent books that have been written about it.
We would be in short order able to resume payments on the debts and eventually eliminate them and be debt free as a nation and people thus removing the shackles of slavery that have been fastened around our necks by those very elected representatives we places so much trust in. In addition it would totally fund the Social Security responsibilities to those who have paid into it as well as Medicare and gov't pension and disability funding although we would have to eliminate the fraud that currently exists in these programs. People should be taught that they are the responsible party for their retirement if any and allowed to accumulate and fund that retirement at their discretion, while educating them of the hazards of neglecting this important part of individual responsibility.

4th, Eliminate the Department of Education and return the control of the schools to the local level. Ban teachers from entering any collective bargaining groups and make them accountable to the parents of the students they are hired to teach. The old trite saying, "those that can do, those that can't, teach" is all to true in many cases. Require teachers to have a complete understanding of the subjects they teach and if at all possible require them to have a successful record of producing goods or services in their chosen fields.
Require student to demonstrate not just knowledge of their subjects but require them to use that knowledge to complete a period of apprenticeship using those same skills. There is nothing more useless than knowledge not applied and used. Likewise knowledge and education is worth every penny paid for it, if you use it.

5th, Establish standards by which this country will interact with other countries, making them completely clear and transparent, making if clear that we will not tell other countries and their peoples how to live and demanding the same respect from them. Trade with those countries that agree to these standards and refuse trade with those who do not. And By REfuse I mean no intercourse with them, no trade, no visas. If they want to be a part of a world that trades and interacts in good faith fairly and freely we desire it. If they want no part of our society, very well, we'll respect that and expect the same.
If they take actions that are hostile to this nation we will squash them until they agree to play nice, at which time they will be placed on probation for a period of time to verify their good intentions, or we will totally destroy them, making it clear to their population our intentions so they can (hopefully) exercise control over their own leaders.
In furtherance of these standards and objectives institute a system of service to the nation much like that in Switzerland, which has been able to remain neutral and unattacked for 400 years. If this requires a draft or a volunteer system, choose which is best.
Personally I like that proposed by Robert Heinlein in Starship Troopers where you voting rights depended on your degree of service to your nation for both men and women. This in an effort to make women feel equal to men in every way, although why they would want to so lower themselves I cannot for the life of me understand, but after 42 years of marriage I'm no closer to understanding the female of the species than when I was 6.

These are just some of the things that would allow us to overcome the current crises both monetary and political that I would like see come to pass and I believe it would allow us to honorably pay legitimate debts and put on the path of solvency once again.

I claim no divine revelations, greater understanding than the next guy on the street, certainly no higher education (although I have monitored enough classes at the School of Hard knocks to attain at least an Associates Degree) and would really welcome ideas of yours whether you wish to do it in the comments or would care to establish an e-mail correspondence with me. We've got to work on the problem......it will not go away on its own or because of wishful thinking. So Please, lets put our heads together.

Motivation

Be careful how much time you spend in the water this summer.

Monday, Monday

We can't trust that day.

So what else is new?

Nine Speakers Inc. has learned that you can't trust liberal moonbats like Helen Thomas to not eventually reveal their true feelings.

Good riddance to bad garbage isf you ask me. Hopefully this will stay in the media and interwebz until she get a bucket of water tossed on her and she starts melting....meellttiinngg away.

Iran is determined to keep pushing until Israel finally realizes their back is totally against the wall and the rest of the world is too cowardly to stand beside them and they'll make huge glass parking lots of much of Iran and a few other places. While our half-white, all Islamic, sorry excuse for a POTUS (piss be upon him) bows and scraps like a groveling dog to ingratiate himself to his masters, they look with scorn and laughter at him and think America has lost it's will. Better look at the Tea Parties ayatollah.

In other News President Barack Hussein Obama is poised to increase the U.S. debt to a level that exceeds the value of the nation’s annual economic output, a step toward what Bill Gross called a “debt super cycle.”

No nation can survive with debt like this hanging over their head.

The only solution IMHO is for the US to repudiate the debts to the Federal Reserve, all foreign and domestic holders of notes against the Treasury of the United States, Implement The Fair Tax which would allow keeping the promises to pay to Social Security, Medicare, Federal pension plans and Disability Payments, while encouraging business to flock to this country and the American Economy. If you haven't read up on the Fair Tax I beg you to go to Fair Tax. Org read all about it and then give it and candidates who support it your time, effort and money. It may be the only hope we have.
Our Show of weakness in our response to Iranian agression in Iraq will be little commented on by the gov't media and not at all by the white house.

The Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues to cause terrible damage. Perhaps somebody ought to take a hint from some rednecks on how to help clean up parts of it.





This might help the economy for the hay farmers at least.

Like they say........Monday, Monday.....

Ya'll go out there and do your part today. I'm gonna go outside and watch the grass grow while refining some placer gold found in NE GA yesterday.

This Evenings Report

Or perhaps I should call it this weeks rant.......

You can decide.

At the moment I'll take a break to swallow the BP pill and others that keep the pressure relief valve working so I'll not go on a breath holding, blue faced tantrum.

I'm back.....got em all down on one gulp this time.

What's first.......Oh yeah.

Why is this woman still alive? She's too ugly to live and her left-leaning mind which was never too sharp (she only got by because she'd ask questions designed to denigrate conservatives) has turned totally to mush.



I guess those who never bothered to study any history other than their own sad sack life want the rest of us to be doomed to repeat it. Perhaps Bill Gates could think of a way to make soap out of her, or something.

Or perhaps he would rather just give her a vaccine against life, much as he would like to do to many others on this planet..........or haven't you heard.

Gates’ Bilderberg presentation will also likely include information about his eugenicist projects to lower global population figures.

During a recent TED conference, an organization which is sponsored by one of the largest toxic waste polluters on the planet, Gates told the audience that vaccines need to be used to reduce world population figures in order to solve global warming and lower CO2 emissions to almost zero.

Stating that the global population was heading towards 9 billion, Gates said, “If we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services (abortion), we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 per cent.”

Quite how an improvement in health care and vaccines that supposedly save lives would lead to a lowering in global population is an oxymoron, unless Gates is referring to vaccines that sterilize people, which is precisely the same method advocated in White House science advisor John P. Holdren’s 1977 textbook Ecoscience, which calls for a dictatorial “planetary regime” to enforce draconian measures of population reduction via all manner of oppressive techniques, including sterilization.

Gates’ eugenicist zeal is shared by his fellow Bilderberg elitists, many of whom have advocated draconian policies of population control in their own public speeches and writings. Indeed, the Rockefeller family funded eugenics research in Germany through the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institutes in Berlin and Munich. The Rockefeller Foundation praised Hitler’s sterilization program in Nazi Germany. David Rockefeller attended the first Bilderberg meeting in 1954 and is now the head of Bilderberg’s “steering committee”.

The rest of the article Here.

Hey! I just rant and rave......you search out the information and you decide.

In other news I took a little road trip through some of NE Georgia today. I bought me a new toy with a small 4 stroke gas engine that I hope to get wet before too long. Visited some friends spent some money, wished the Portuguese Princess from New York a happy vacation as she prepared to leave for one week back in Gotham and another week in New York South, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Hopefully she will return to us but if those playboys down there get a look at the newly svelte her we'll be lucky to get her back.

Work on the agenda for this weekend, hopefully we'll get some more rain this evening and not so much tomorrow. The poor Pooch is moping around with his nub tail tucked tightly up against his butt because of the thunder and lightning. Refused to eat his chicken nuggets for supper so we know he's out of his mind with fear, but let someone ring the doorbell and you'd think he was 200 lbs of terror just waiting to chew a leg or two off.

The Rain

I woke to rain this morning, not a hard rain particularly, just a rain with the promise of more to come during the day. Gray clouds blocked the sun but were not hanging low enough to give that dreary, claustrophobic feeling......more a 'oh, it's raining, it'll stop in a few minutes and I'll step out back without getting wet, do some things that need doing and if it rains more I'll be dry under the tool shed or the canvas shelter.

And it did.....rain some more off and on.

Kinda like my thoughts.....off and on....on the task at hand....on the tasks ahead.

Off into the mists over Khe Sanh.....onto the hill just north where lie the ashes of Carl and John, for there wasn't anything left but a watch after hundred of pounds of JP-4 hit the hill a fraction of a second after they did..

Onto the rain dripping from the leaves on the trees.....off to that tall dead tree 20 feet higher than the surrounding jungle that was the last thing Wendall and his pilot Cpt. whose name I forget, saw.

On to plans for tomorrow, which is about as far into the future as I ever can get...
..off to Tony's house for a short visit.....back home to peel 4 spuds to be fried with onions and served with love and pieces of dead cow to me and the old grump by my better half. Better by far.....that she's still around after 4 decades is a wonderment to me.

On to the road for a 20 minute trip to buy a little scrap and some old coins that were around when the soldiers of the first and second World Wars went marching off to what they could not at that time visualize. Off to the thoughts that some things are worth fighting, living, and dieing for.

On to the interwebz to check up on the state of the world. Off into the dark corners of my mind when Borepatch led me to this......





And soon off to bed, glad to be there and listening........

to the rain.

For Carl, John Paul, Wendell........

And so many others that have fallen in service to this country and the ideals it was founded upon.




Ours was a small piece of the quilt put together by the thousands upon thousand who looked with reverence on the Grand Old Flag in it's many incarnations, and your names are engraved along with so very, very many more.

Thank you Brothers and to so many more, Thank you, you are not forgotten.

In Vino, Veritus

In Wine, Truth

I don't know if there was much wine consumed, if any this past evening, but there were plenty of cool brews and margarita's along with something called 'apple shots' (whatever that is).

The occasion a grand 'Deck Party' ostensibly for the purpose of celebrating the oldest Grandson's matriculation from high school which actually occurred on Friday in the Gwinnett Civic Center, the culmination of 14 years of hard work by the young man from pre-k to the 12th grade during which time he, hopefully, obtained the necessary knowledge and skills to begin to learn some of the really important lessons in life, graduation from which will, again hopefully, come at the end of a really long and fruitful lifetime with the hardest quiz of them all.

One question;.........answered by those left behind,... have I been a good man?

Good BBQ, corn dip, cheese dip and chips, washed down with diet Pepsi and Diet Mtn. Dew in my case and somewhat stronger libations in other's cases according to preference and in part by the time of night.

Much good conversation, reports on the latest safari to South Africa to include comments on the size of pecker on an old bull elephant, dwindled down to a hardy 4 or 5 discussing the state of the economy, the country, the world in general and the abundance of, or lack of in some cases, sufficient ammunition to withstand the Zombie Hoards waiting to descend upon the unlucky and un-wary.

All-in-All a good way to celebrate the accomplishments of as fine a young man as I have been privileged to know and to wish him God Speed on the trip of a lifetime that lies ahead of him.

He'll do alright.......he gives as good as he gets in our ritual hand squeezing these days. I think he may have been milking a few cows in his spare time.

Do you know your neighbors?

Have you got more firepower than they....or do you think they're going to consider your best interests if TSHTF?

Yuba says it all much better than I.

Home grown tomatoes

I does love me some home grown tomatoes.

Went out back to the postage stamp sized garden we tried to till into our rocky, rooty ground here this evening and sprinkled a bit more fertilizer around some of the plants that are up and growing, tomatoes, straight neck yellow squash, okra, and one row of beans that haven't yet made their appearance. Just a tad, I'd put some fertilizer down when the tilling was almost done and churned it in, but the plants are needing a bit more nitrogen right about now, along with a gentle sprinkling of water from the rain barrel that catches the gutter run off from the left back corner of the house. There is a chance of rain and maybe like washing a car, watering the garden will ensure it.

I was rewarded by spying the first quarter sized fruit on the Rutgers tomato plant. The Better Boy and the Goliath plants are just starting to bloom and I'm sure they'll be sporting some tiny green tomatoes any day now.

I really need to get some landscape timbers and make this a raised bed garden by next year. I'll have to bring in some potting soil to mix with some of the leaf mulch and a bit of cow manure to fill the beds since the dirt we have here is a mixture of rocks and gully dirt that will grow dandelions in abundance but grass, flowers and vegetables need something a bit more fertile to do well.

Maybe I can get the grandson to use the pick and dig out the rocks and build a stone wall...
..nah.......lets not get too ambitious.

In the meantime I'm gonna dream of tomato sandwiches on Honey Wheat Bread with Blue Plate Mayo a bit of salt and generous helpings of black pepper. You purists can have your white bread......I prefer a bit more substance to mine.

There is something immensely satisfying about watching your garden grow, and especially eating something you've grown yourself.

Might be it'll be good practice for the times ahead.

Where is my Muse?

Damnifiknow!

Actually since the word is used to mean the spirits which lead us to artistic expression, one could logically say that I've never had one, as I typically write about my frustrations with day to day life, seemingly, concentrating on things which the gubbermint has done on that particular day. Not too much artistic expression there.......outrage might be more correct.

Whatever the reason for the last two or three weeks I've not felt much like putting fingertips to keyboard and trying to construct semi-cogent sentences out of the deranged thoughts cascading willy-nilly from synapse to neuron amongst the convoluted twists and tangles of the graying matter between my ears.

Other than enjoying the company of wife, the ol' grump,the offspring, and theirs traveling to and fro for all too little remuneration, I've just sorta let the events of the days proceed as they will.....realizing that any comments I make either for are against will have as much effect as spitting into a tornado...it'll like as not be hurled back into my face, or be lost in the excitement.

Still, unless one wishes to crawl back in the deepest recesses of the grotto and pull the blackness and echos in around him like a cold, damp blanket as you suck on your thumb and pull at your earlobe you can't help but hear and see the events of the day unfolding.

The politicians have painted themselves into a corner with little hope of being able to pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat this last time. Their lack of caring about the Constitution which they swore to uphold, their only desire to be able to return every 2 years to Washington with the lukewarm approval of their constituents , there to seek their own remuneration and aggrandizement over the benefit of those they supposedly represent have led to an uprising by a significant percentage of the voters and as recent days have shown they have little stomach for keeping the same old tired assholes in control.

Yet as the events in Greece and the European Common Market countries are showing the time will eventually come when the pied piper must be paid, and he, savvy musicians he is, will no longer accept pretty pieces of paper representing nothing but hollow promises.

We, here in the good ol' US of A have not yet had disgruntled hostiles heaving Molotov cocktails at the police in the streets.......but it's still early yet......summer doesn't officially start for another month.

The simple fact is that everyone was too concerned with living the good life, consuming more than they produced.......after all it kept getting cheaper and cheaper down at Wally World, never mind that the labels all say "Made in China", besides Master Card and Visa would give you terms on anything you could think of as long as you made the minimum monthly sacrifice of old tired presidents who are in point of fact not worth the paper they are printed on.

Speaking from unfortunate personal experience I can tell you that when the position becomes increasingly untenable.......when the demands simply become too great to meet or bare....
..it becomes better to bow to the winds of fate and let yourself be blown away.

For much like the coconut floating on the sea, you'll likely be washed up on a distant shore, there to have an opportunity to send out a root and try to regain tenuous grasp of hope of growth once more.

Joseph Tainter wrote in 'The Collapse of Complex Societies'

"Systems of problem solving develop greater complexity and higher costs over long periods... the destructive potential is evident in historical cases where increased expenditures on socioeconomic complexity reached diminishing returns, and ultimately, in some instances, negative returns...where [the system] starts to become vulnerable to collapse"

Which is academic speak for The fixes are more costly than the problems.

W. C. Fields put it: 'If at first you don't succeed, try, again. Then give up. No sense in being a damned fool about it.'

Little appreciated are the benefits of giving up and letting things collapse. This is a pity. While successful fixes are celebrated, it is to the failed fixes that we owe much of our contentment and our progress.

Joseph Tainter explains, for example, that while the first fix may be beneficial, later ones often produce negative returns. Then, you're better off letting the whole system collapse. By examining ancient human bones, for example, he reports that nutritional levels actually improved, for most people, after the collapse of the Roman Empire.

We've allowed ourselves and our elected servents to in-debt the current and future generations to the point of futility. Why would any thinking, reasoning, rational being allow themselves to be subjected to this kind of slavery, and make no mistake about it, it will be slavery as the government demand greater and greater efforts to produce the taxes required to pay the obligations currently owed.

People go bankrupt all the time......hopefully they emerge on the other side a bit wiser and more resistant to the siren calls of conspicuous consumption.

Countries go bankrupt less often and the reports of those that do are muted by the controlled media so we in this country have little knowledge of how they do there after.

You might, if you are interested enough consider the example of Argentina in 2001 or Chile even earlier. Did their world end? Did they all put a gun to their heads? Or did they rebuild, wiser and better than before?

We'll survive the coming collapse of the debt bubble that has brought us to this pass.

But it will not be easy, nor will it be lessened by our attempt to patch things together yet another, and another time.

Me thinks it's time for a loping off of the gangrenous limbs that weaken us with their putrefying infection, set free the maggots to eat down to healthy tissue and take some of the anti-biotics that will enable us to regain our countries health.

Which limb or tentacle would you cut off first?

Back again.....

.......or an attempt to recall just what the hell I've been doing with myself.

An important exercise in knocking the rust, caused by standing in the rain wrasslin' with the black dogs, from the creaky working of a feeble mind.

When last we heard from the former boy sky warrior he had just advised everyone to go read much better writers than himself. This was and remains good advice and those who wish to exit now will have their entrance fee refunded in full except for a small charge used to feed the poor starving waifs in rural Appalachia....

40 million or so of them at last count according to official statistics on the number receiving food stamps. In the last 45 years or so thanks to the remarkable efforts of the Federal Government's War on Poverty the percentage of poor has not diminished one percentage point. I wonder what the number of people working on the problem has grown to?

Shortly after the last communique' from our intrepid hero we find him in the remote hinterland of Hwy 985 at the Hwy 52 intersection where he was beguiled by a most remarkable lady only slightly older than himself...

Still possessing all the qualities that drew men to her for thousands of years the Lady Liberty retains the ability to quicken a young mans heart and cause old men to smile at memories fondly recalled.

Some little time later a few moments were spent in attempting to teach the pooch to fly. Unfortunately the effort failed as the required lift over his ears was not sufficient at any of the speeds at which we could get him to stick his head into the slipstream.

The end of the week found the wife of my youth, the non-flying pooch and I trekking northward into the semi-rain forested area NW of Clayton, GA out Persimmon Rd. to the Tullulah River, there to spend a night camping out with the youngest daughter and her family to feast on freshly caught trout then sitting around a cheerful campfire later after the oldest daughter and her family arrived, dodging the smoke, roasting marshmallows and making smores (sic).

(at our age the wife and I find sleeping in a tent in 40 degree weather, even on a pneumatic mattress and with comfy sleeping bags a sure way to guarantee plenty of aches and groans for the next few days as we try to work the knots in our backs out.)

Mothers Day was spent catching more trout and watching the youngest granddaughter frolic in water that would keep beer and cokes chilly and cause manly parts to retire to warmer locales behind the nearest liver or spleen, but to her was just right for splashing in

Or getting mad at Paw Paw for not letting her out on the slippery rocks where every one else was fishing


But soon all was forgiven as she found pretty little flowers of blue to bring me.




Later the Son and his family would arrive and we would pile into the back of the trucks for the ride back to the campground looking for all the world like a bunch of Clampetts heading for Beverly Hills

There to partake of a non-traditional Mothers Day feast of hot dogs, hamburgers and best of all wild turkey breast, cubed, smeared with cajun spices and deep fried in the fish cooker.

Tell me and the grand kids that we don't know how to live.

REASONABLE MEN

As usual Bill Whittle hits it out of the ballpark.

Go Read

You can thank me later.

This little piggy went to market

It seems the Greeks, heirs to an ancient culture that celebrated freedom and individual expression both in politics and art, are reacting with the same outrage as any young child, hell, as even most people of any age who, being used to living the good life and consuming more of anything than they actually earned by the sweat of their brow, including metaphorically speaking, the seed corn for the next generation, will express.

MAY DAY protests in Greece turned violent yesterday as youths in gas masks and hoods set fire to vehicles, smashed shop fronts and threw molotov cocktails and rocks at police in an explosion of fury over austerity measures they claim will hurt only the poor.

Did the poor, the less productive, the less disciplined, the less entrepreneurial, the less inclined to live within, or below, their means, ever complain when the party was rocking along at full steam?

“I cannot help but blame my parents a little for what’s happened,” said Achilles Zacharoulis, a 36-year-old cardiologist. “They were here all that time,” he added, referring to the past three decades of mismanagement and fiscal insanity. “But what did they do to stop it?”

Vaggelis Gettos, 24, is just as alarmed at the burden being heaped on the young by austerity measures expected to be announced today, and has pledged to resist them in more protests this week against what he sees as a plot to impoverish Greece.

“We will live much worse than our parents,” he said. “Why should we be made to pay for their mistakes?”

You're 36 years old big boy. In the last 18 or so years did you speak out about the excesses, the freebies? Did you cry a warning and refuse your share of them in protest? I doubt it.
I'll wager that if you look at some of the old timers in the small villages who lived plain and simple lives, you'll be able to see many who saw the insanity, perhaps spoke out within their small circle of friend, yet realized the futility of stepping in front of the rushing freight train the gimme crowd were riding high on.

Economists regard the bloated civil service with its jobs for life and generous pensions as a cancer consuming the country’s resources. The older generation, the experts grimly concur, turned the state into a giant cash machine to be plundered at will.


Does that sound vaguely like our own country where the government sector earns more than most of the private sector? With no new jobs being created other than within expanded federal agencies grasping ever new and greater influence and power, is it any wonder that young people are applying in droves to those same agencies?

The unfortunate thing is that unless we are able to halt the growth of Leviathan within our own country the same outrage, riots, clashes, upheaval will soon burst forth in our own neighborhoods.

Perhaps not this summer, maybe not the next, but if we don't recognize and stop the same problems within our culture, one oppressively hot day soon the flames of ........what?.. will be fanned by an errant puff of wind into a conflagration that will make the wildfires in Yellowstone and the west a few years ago seem like only the spark from a lighter out of fuel.

And this little piggy cried, "wee, wee, wee all the way home".