Rose colored glasses

Depending on who you listen to or read in the U.S. today your probably have an apocalyptic outlook on the future: we'll either all be slaves to the tyrannical federal gubbermint or anarchists with no one to lead us down the prim-rose path.

Have you ever looked through a pane of antique window glass and seen a distorted version of what was really on the other side, or perhaps you've put on your Blu-Blockers and thought you could see the world more clearly. Does maybe the actual truth reside somewhere else?

One of the ideas presented in our group therapy sessions a couple years or so ago was the idea of questioning how we looked at and reacted to various pre-conceived notions long held.

I remember having looked at what used to be South Vietnam with the aid of Google Earth and seen towns where only villages were before. Where we had bombed into the stone age they were buildings and quarries and new roads. Fields were being worked where 30 years before only snakes, insect's and the NVA dared to go.

I was pissed beyond belief that as a country they had gone ahead with their lives while I and many others were still stuck in the past. Quite a shock to the mental system I must admit. I'd been looking at the world through glass colored differently that others and my vision was not clear.

It's the same with so many of us in today's political and financial climate. Because the glass we are looking through is colored by so many disparate versions of the facts we may well ask ourselves if we are seeing what is really there.

The following paragraph is from someone looking at us while standing in Hong Kong.

"The first action Mr. Bernanke should take is to resign. If I had messed up the system so badly, as he has done, I would have to resign. He has talked constantly about the Great Depression and what caused the depression but the problem is that he really doesn't understand what caused the depression, which was also excessive leverage at that time. I have to stress that in 1929 the debt to GDP ratio was of course minuscule in comparison what it is today. It was 186% of GDP but you didn't have Social security, Medicare and Medicaid and unfunded liabilities for Social Security and so forth. So, debt today, as a percent of GDP, is 379% and if you add the unfunded liabilities we are at over 800%. The Federal Reserve should pay attention to that."

If you ask our bean counters in the feeble gubbermint in the District of Criminals, their numbers are no where even close to those.

800% of GDP? WTF? One could be forgiven if they were to throw up their hands in disgust.

"The solution is, basically, for the government to move out and not intervene in the economy. There are economists who will dispute that the Federal Reserve is partially responsible for the crisis and there are economists that will still tell you that debt doesn’t matter, that deficits don't matter and they want to continue to intervene in the free market constantly. To these economists I respond: What about Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac? It was an intervention by the government into the housing market and into the mortgage market and the biggest bankruptcies—bigger than Citigroup and all the banks—are Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac—government-sponsored enterprises. The same economists will tell you that the government has to intervene and to these economists I say: Well, you have made so many mistakes already with interventions do you think that in the future your interventions will improve anything? Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, but these economists and the Federal Reserve think that by more interventions with fiscal measures and more money printing they will improve things. No, they won’t. They will make things worse.."

Where does the truth lie? Beats the shite out of me. You'll have to do your own research and voting.

One thing of which I am very certain. We have to make great changes and if you don't vote you have absolutely no business decrying anything that happens as you couldn't be bothered to contribute your opinion.

It's late

11:10 pm and my side of the king sized bed is beginning to call more urgently to me.

O'Course I'll likely have to shove the pooch off my pillow if he's slid down too low. I don't mind him sleeping above my head unless he starts one of his licking marathons where he licks the pillow over and over and over......almost as if it hypnotizes him and he can't stop.

There is lot's of news that I could work up a rightous rant about tonight, like What happened to Global Warming? But, the weather is starting to cool off here a little and it's just too nice to worry about.

And WTF is it about female School Teachers these days? It used to always be the male athletics coach that gave us all the problems. Do you think these products of our finest universities of higher learning have so emasculated the grown men in their lives that they have to turn to underage kids to get off. They could volunteer to tutor me......I promise to study hard and I'm old enough that they wouldn't be likely to get in to jail. Of course I might be shot by the wife, but perhaps it's a sacrifice I should make to keep the young boys from being abused like they have been.

The President is still on his mission to tear down the engine that runs the world.
Perhaps he should read Ayn Rand to find out what happens when TPTB try to do that. One day he'll look back and ask himself, "WTH".
Nothing more need be said about him and the dumbocrats.

Gold of course is setting new records for price every day almost. Understandable when the politicians and the banksters boast proudly that they are going to destroy the dollar.

That reminds me I need to pick up some more precious metals.......brass, copper and lead.

Mostly I just hear the news or read it online and shake my head in disgust or despair depending on my mood and then I go about my life.

I'm tolking with a friend who wants to sell his 100 + acres out in the country a ways. Nice place with lots of potential but it will all depend on the price I guess. I really like the fact that there are two little ponds dug on the place and just need some water diverted to fill them in. I've wanted to have a place to grow hybrid Bream for a while. They give a hell of a fight on a fly rod. Everybody else likes catfish but they're too much trouble to clean for my taste. The place also has an almost mountain like view without getting into the stratosphere of prices that those kinds of property fetch.

Life is interesting, which makes it fun, challenges energize me once more and I may jump into the deep end again........only this time with an inner tube to hold on to.

Ya'll come for breakfast, we'll have a couple of hen apples over easy with some kink of pig to go with them.......maybe even a cats head buttermilk biscuit.

Are We a Happy Nation?

Good question don't you think?

Right now I'd have to say that we're the least happy nation we've been in a long time.

Individually, we're probably thinking, 'well, I'm pretty happy', but as a nation we're a quarrelsome, bickering, kicking and scratching bunch of pissed off people.

No doubt there are plenty of things to be mad about.......national debt, personal debt, lack of morals, rectitude, fiscal responsibility among those sent to D.C. (Department of Criminals) and our heros of screen and stage seem mostly to have so few brains that we understand now why they have Directors telling them what to do. (Well, Clint Eastwood and John Wayne didn't have that problem but the Duke's not getting around much anymore and Clint.......well he became one of the Directors himself)

I have no immediate solution to all the problems that have us up in arms and spinning in a tizzy, but our First President offered a little advice in this regard.

""I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection, that he would incline the hearts of the Citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to Government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow Citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for their brethren who have served in the Field, and finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all, to do Justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that Charity, humility and pacific temper of mind, which were the Characteristicks of the Divine Author of our blessed Religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation." --George Washington, circular letter of farewell to the Army, 1783

Not a bad prayer.

September Surprise

OR.....Abandon Ship , swim for the nearest tax haven.

Quite a week for the yellow shiny stuff.

Is this a time to fear, or a time to reap the harvest (or whirlwind)?

Read the article and give me your opinion.

Alive and well.

Elvis Presley is alive and well, living in Mingo, W. Virginia, which for some strange reason is not in Mingo County, but rather in Wyoming County, which is not in Wyoming, but rather....
....Well you get the point.

Srsly, I saw the dude, standing outside a store as we drove down the street. Hadn't aged a bit that I could tell.....course I was watching the road more than the sidewalks since in the steep valleys there everything is built between a creek and the road or the mountain and the road.

Many of the little towns were no more than two lots deep between either the railroad and the road or a creek and the road with the railroad on the other side.

I remember where I was when they reported on the radio that he had died......standing in the milking parlor of my dairy farm, between 12 cows, six on the side with a guy we called "Chunk" because of his girth....well that and the fact that he had the IQ of a chunk of firewood.

For all that he was a faithful employee.....always there in the pre-dawn hours ready to start the milking. If the light wasn't on in my house as he sped up the driveway he'd honk the horn telling me to get up and on the ball.....another 16 hour day was about to start.

I was 27 and while I'd been half-way round the world in two different direction was still just a snot nosed kid with big dreams and no real plan other than getting up each morning and walking out the door into work.

Elvis was hot when I was in school....at least up until the Beatles came along and then every body wanted to comb their hair into their eyes. I'd practice curling my lip and looking sleepy eyed. Looking back I can see that I was better at it than I had sense enough to realize.

Ahh, wasted youth.......somehow it seems wasted on most. If we had only realized.

A lot of conspiracy theories back then about Elvis just wanting to drop off the radar and staging his death. Can't say I blame him much, he had his share of troubles and trials. They say fame and fortune won't make you happy if you don't appreciate them. I think he just wanted to sing.

I prefer to think he really is alive in Mingo.......fat, happy, singing in the church Choir on Sundays.

Been there........ Done that!

I have been to the center of the Universe........

...and I've eaten at the Dairy Queen there.

Hinton, West Virginia. I'm almost reluctant to write the name, lest too many people discover the perfect place to sit on the upstairs porch at my Sister and Brother-in-laws get-away place.

Sitting in the New River Gorge on the side of possibly the second oldest river in the world after the Nile River, I thought hardly at all about the political or financial situation in the rest of the world.

We sat there till midnight just listening to the gentle roar of the river and watched the lights come on and go out, the stars twinkle brightly, and occasionally the sound of coal trains or Amtrak remble, creak and groan their way to where ever they were off to.......

.....we cared not where, we were just glad to be.



Over 1000 miles of driving over 4 days. Seven and a half hours to get to Hinton....
....12 hours to get through Southern West-by-God Virginia and Southern Kentucky to I-75 just north of Knoxville TN........Another 6 hours to get back here to Athens......tired and ass weary, but happy that we were blessed to see wide rivers, steep mountain hillsides...valleys so deep it seemed impossible that the sun could reach the bottoms more than an hour a day.

Glad to go........Glad to return.....can hardly wait to go back.

A Small Inconvience

Arriving at home this afternoon after spending most of the late morning and early afternoon pounding the hi and bi-ways searching for shiny stuff to bring back to the nest, I found one of those pink USPS card announcing a package had been mailed to me and for whatever reason the postal carrier, today, after delivering 2 packages on each of the proceeding days the mail ran, decided to not come to the door and get whoever was here, and there were two people here all day, decided not to attempt delivery and instead leave the aforementioned little pink card announcing the (non)attempted delivery and I could instead just hi myself to the local monument to sloth and inefficiency and request it at the counter.

Which I did, after waiting until the local carrier would have had plenty of time to return to the post office.

After waiting only a short time (thanks to the two men ahead of me who were in the process of trussing up a box with duct tape graciously gesturing for me to proceed them) I presented the aforementioned little pink card to the attendant, which action had, hundreds of times in the past, resulted in them checking in the back and momentarily coming forth with the package and delivering it into my hands. Always to a grateful customer who thanked them politely and wished them a good day.

No more.

I was told in no uncertain terms that the package would not be delivered to the front desk before closing time and I could just take myself back where I came from and come back with hands outstretched on the morrow.

No offer, as in the past, to check in the back, no acknowledgment of my request that they just step back and check.

Oh, Hell no! I could just come back tomorrow at my expense of time and travel, no effort to redeliver on the morrow. Fuck No!

Come back tomorrow.

I ask you gentle people........if you worked for an organization which was going in the hole financially every year to the tune of over a Billion fucking dollars and every day the efforts of companies like UPS and FEDEX along with the rapidity of communicating via the interwebz rendering said organization more and more irrelevant, and your paycheck and pension and health care benefits depended on you remaining employed by said orginization.........wouldn't you think you would try to offer a bit of customer service to possibly ensure that organization would continue to operate into the foreseeable future??

Or I just the only one lost in a time loop of the past where customer service meant you would be assisted instead of just bent over and reamed time and time again?

It's time to call loud and hard for the elimination of the USPS. If not now, when?

Saturday at the Matinee

A Saturday at home in the Kudzu Grotto.

Woke up to Cheerios (well the generic version anyway) and a cup of caffeine. Just enough to get the day started.

The youngest daughter brought her daughter over to spend the day and night. She and SIL were supposed to go deep sea fishing but for some reason that fell through. But we get to keep the princess anyway.

Finding jewels out at the tool shed (the eye of and eagle she has), swinging in the lawn swing telling tales and following her script cause if you depart from it she'll stop you and put you in your place.

Watching The Wizard of Oz on youtube.com twice in a row, with hiding of the head at all the scary parts.

Now to get her to go to bed, all worn out but happy, because after all........

There's No Place Like Home.

Paranoia

I'll bet you thought that the tin foil hat was just for looks didn't you.

Slack Ass

I thought my ass was dragging 'cause I've been putting off emptying the coins from the Maxwell House coffee can and wrapping them for conversion to foldin' money down to the bank.....

......Instead when it started running over I just slide a plastic one gallon pail next to it and started anew.

But this guy in Norfolk has carried being a slacker to new levels...Not showing up for work in the last 12 years and still getting paid. Bet someone besides him is in line to lose their job.......of course he'll only be able to tell because his check doesn't show up.

Wait......now that I think of it there are hundreds of people in The Cesspool on the Potomac who were his American Idols.

Maybe I ought to put some security cameras around the coffee can.......this out of work thing might become an epidemic.

Knife Sharpening

Or in this case trying to hone my mind a little bit.

I did sharpen a pocket knife today, which, while not unheard of around here at the Kudzu Grotto, has become something of an oddity as most of the blades, other than the occasional bayonet designed more for poking and punching, have been worked to a razors fineness and used only rarely.

But a friend sold me this big bladed folding knife, ( for 50 cents, so as to avoid the superstition of never giving a knife away lest it hurt someone) and it needed a little touch up with the crock sticks. I'd mostly gotten away from carrying a pocket knife in favor of a pocket gun, which makes more sense as I'd just as soon never be caught bringing a knife to a gun fight anyway.

Never-the-less I sorta like the feel of this big flat sucker and will have to see if I can't make accommodations since it just makes a mess when you try to carve a stick with a gun.



But, to get back to sharpening the mind bit.....

I have a friend who has been given several mobile homes and a couple houses by his father in order to get them out of his possession since he's in the middle of a messy bankruptcy.

Long story and short attention span. I know.

The upshot of the story is that all the units have tenants in them which haven't been paying rent to the father, some of them for several years.

Mind you these tenants are not family moochers,, just moochers in general.

Question is, aside from the fact that property taxes have to be paid every year (the units are debt free) who is being hurt the most?

The owner who's property is being occupied without compensation, or......

....the tenants, who are being enabled in their slothfulness?

Question of the Day

Is the Economy going to Recover?

YES......


NO..........

Getting whacked

On by professional bloodletters is never any fun, although sometimes at your own request.

About 3 months ago I showed my Primary Care Doctor a mole under my arm pit that had been changing colors and on the day I showed him it was a nice pinkish hue.

With his usual sorry bedside manner he cast a quick glance and said, "I'll schedule you with the dermatologist down at Augusta". This at the VA Medical Center where I have to go for anything other than the common cold.

Pay Attention......this is government health care at it's finest.

Three months to get an appointment. Had this been a real emergency I'd have metastasized and died.

Fortunately the day after seeing him the mole turned a nice normal (?) color and mostly stayed that way.

Thursday last I arrive at the appointed place and time and after waiting for an hour longer finally heard my name called where a decent caring young Dr. looked, poked, consulted with an older Dr who told him to shave it and send it off.

So I stood there with my left arm atop my head while he gave me "a little stick" and proceeded to whack a quarter size chunk of skin and mole off and put it in a jar.

In due time I'm told I'll get the results in the mail, all of which is paid for by you the taxpayers and for which I'm grateful.

Cooler weather

What a difference 10 degrees makes even though the humidity is 100% and rainy every once in a while.

I'll take it.

Today and the weekend just past has been a little rainy with a few nice thunder bumps and one time damn near a tornado. Wind ripped down a few trees onto some electrical wires up the road and made the Georgia Power guys earn their keep.

Made my rounds this morning and back this afternoon just a little too late to help the wife get the groceries out of the car and into the house. I did however arrive in time to put a couple jars of mayo up in the pantry along with some cereal of some kind.

Got my stuff working and waiting on the morrow. I'm chilling out to the point that I ignore the call from Tyrone though I know he's wanting me to come see him. Bugs me to death over mostly junk that he thinks are the British Crown Jewels.

But I've been shooting signs off posts for the last half hour and am in no mood to have my chill harshed by listening to him. Damn I need to get to a range.

Who knew the Brits were such hooligans?

Siagon

Early October, 1970.

On the way to the mess hall of the new in-country orientation center.

"Hey, GI. You take my MPC (Military Payment Chits). Trade them in, bring back, you keep half", said the Vietnamese male waving a huge wad of MPC at me from the other side of the 10 foot high, razor wire topped chain link fence between he and dozens of young Americans.

"What th' hell", I asked the guy next to me.

"Aw, they're changing the Military Money today, so all those Vietnamese who have been paid in old MPC are just fucked unless they can get someone to change whatever they have over a certain small amount to the new stuff".

"How do they know someone will bring it back, not keep it", I asked.

"He don't, but he's gotta take a chance, else he's gonna lose out"

Forty years have gone by and we're having our own sort of an economic crisis here in the 'Good ol' Red white and Blue.

Oh, the money is still there, but no one wants to part with what they have on anything other than the necessities any more, and that assumes that they still have their job and aren't losing their house.

Where the hell did all the money from the stimulus go? Politically correct pet projects and some road paving on a local level.....the rest went to the big money people in banks and insurance companies and Wall St. big shots who were deemed too important to fail.

Let me ask you.....Do you feel better off now than you did 3 years ago? Rhetorical question of course. I know the answer.

What ya gonna do about it.

Vote, you say?

For who........the guys in elected office are not in charge of the show. Their Masters are generally never seen on TV or mentioned in the MSM. They're the one's that keep receiving their checks or payout regardless of who is in so called "Political Power".

Barry Obama doesn't have a fucking clue. Somebody told him he could change the world to suit his and his socialist buddies view of how thing ought to be, but neglected to mention that whatever was suggested that he do, would have to get their approval, and he'd never even feel the shaft as it was gently and lubriciously slid past his sphincter. One day down the road he'll notice the lube sliding slowly down the back of his thigh and wonder, "Where the hell did that come from".

The future is here friends, and no matter who we vote into office this year and two years from now, the same system will still be in place, and if you haven't identified the problem and the particular actions on your part that will place you just a couple steps above the chattering hoards.......why, you'll likely be feeling that same damp sticky spot on the back of your knee.

Thrashing and a clawin'

I come out of sleep, knowin' that th' Chinese food induced terrors will only be beaten back by incandescent lighting and calm reflection on the fact that the people and scenes were not really there, wishing tho' I might, that some of them I could hold on to.

Dad was there, and Grandpa........the cars and trucks were a decade or two too old for some strange reason....... and the houses where we lived were out of a Deliverance movie perhaps, with knotted old stumps that resembled long dead creatures from the Cretaceous period, and I, young and newly delivered from the horrors of a war I didn't feel particularly proud of, was trying all the time to reach something, a young wife......a life I'd left behind....the promised land.....something..

Dry mouthed as though I'd been snoring with my head back on the arm of the couch, tho' I'd been wearing the CPAP mask and sucking in force fed air through my nose.....

Fading already, tho' my Dads contentment and Grandpa's querulousness will remain, my heartbeat reduced to a more normal level, the drug of Morpheus drags at my eyelids and the recliner beckons............................

A word of caution, don't save some of the take out for later and then read of the cause of the problems, not just the ranting about the effects, just before bedtime..

Friday the !3th

I love Friday the 13th. It's always been a lucky day for me.

Today was no different. A very good day, busy as hell, running hither and thither in answer to the call for help in converting unused assets to usable.

I also went over 15000 hits. Thanks to the one out of five hits today that pushed me over that mark. Whoever and Wherever you may be

Not so much when compared to the thousands and millions of hits on some blogs, but to those 5 viewers who have clicked her an average of 3000 times each, (wait, don't I have 5 sisters? Nah, they don't all visit, they get enough of me on the once every year or two we get together).

OK! Thanks for coming by. I appreciate it. I prefer Quality over Quantity anyway. And My viewers and readers are Quality all the way.

Peeper's Creepers

Or.....
........Who Watches the Watchers

More and more people in this nation are finally waking up to the fact that we have some serious problems.......Politically......Economically.....You name it.

But are we waking up to the real Cause of these problems? Not so many.

Of course if your company moved its manufacturing jobs overseas to take advantage of lower costs of labor and no unions......your problem is that what you thought of as your J.O.B. is revealed to actually have belonged to the company and not a lowly worker bee. You were expendable because you didn't work your way up to the drone who flew off and mated with the queen.

Guess what........that job will probably never come back. Do you intend to spend the rest of your life blaming some guy in India for being more productive and cheaper in the process.

Do you not have a home now because you thought the good times would always roll just like everyone promised you and you could always draw money out of your ever more expensive house.
Try telling that story to the 30,000 or so people who showed up in Atlanta to put in applications for the 400 or so section 8 houses possibly available. Would your really want to live among that many moochers anyway?

The world is changing, and you had better change with it. Do you even stop to think about how it's changing and how you will not just survive in the new era, but possibly even thrive there.

If you haven't my friend, may I suggest you stop what you're doing and do so. Because the possibilities are still just as endless as they always were......there is still plenty of wealth to go around, but instead of the old way of doing things, new ways are going to have to be invented and put into play,...then adapted and changed in tune with the changes that are coming.

But if you don't study and learn the lessons that are there, and then put the answers into play, why, you'll remain one of those who is always asking, "what the hell just happened, and why is my ass sore and my butt cheeks greasy?"

What's in a name?

Nearly 6 years ago I started noodling around on this here interwebz thingy. A crazy time in my personal and professional life. (Of course I have no profession other than whatever I'm doing at the time, which has been everything from a dairyman, flyboy, cattle breeder, explosives user, (( I was never an expert)), house builder, pulpwooder, swampwader, insurance sales, sawmill operator to jewelry manufacturer).

I picked the name Red Hill Kudzu because we lived in the Red Hill areas and I'd recently given a talk about the Kudzu that can entangle a persons soul.

Pretty tenacious stuff and there is plenty of it still growing here even though we've lived in Athens 3 years and 11 months.

I joke around about taking my meds and trying to stay a little bit sane in an insane world where, as the poet said, "all around you men are losing theirs (Mind)". In a comical attempt "To be a man, my son".

Sometimes I succeed and sometimes not so much.

But sometimes you have a day that is like Balm_of_Gilead. also, also.

Today was such a day. To celebrate the Birthday of my Grandson Cody, his parents, his girl friend, his grandmother and I, his aunt Kathy and current beau with his son in tow, and two close family friends sat out to go 'tubin' th 'hooch. Not as some of you have done up in Helen, Ga, but lower down that lovely river below the Lake Sydney Lanier Dam unto Suttles Bridge where we disembarked and were bussed back to our cars and trucks.

The River is deeper here, not quite so bustling, but deep in spots and cold enough, about 45 degrees, to make grown men squeal like little girls, and little and big girls alike, have lip lock so tight you never have to worry about floating through a warm yellow patch.

Clear the water was, bottle green, and you could see trout swimming and avoiding the snares of anglers wading along the banks and watch the stumps of old trees as we floated gently and quietly past, standing sentinel along with a Great Blue Heron who flapped majestically off at our approach, squirting out a 5 foot long stream of shit, both to lighten the load and probably to express his displeasure with our intrusion.

The mood was joyous, we giggled and talked as the sun beat down upon us. Thank goodness for SPF-50 else my lily white legs, which have only infrequently seen the light of day for decades now, would have been char-broiled to medium rare perfection in the 3 hours it took us to reach the bridge.

Afterwords back to the daughter's house for grilled hamburgers and hot dogs, with suitable libations for the grown-ups while we children made do with diet pepsi and Mtn. Dew. Of Course the obligatory birth day cake (white with chocolate icing) then some playing with the Wii until time to return back here.

A warm day, a sunny day, a cold river to float lazily upon, good friends who are family (a combination which is a great blessing far beyond any expectation so many years earlier), and a peaceful, prayerful feeling, unlike so many other evenings at this keyboard for so many years.

Amen

It CAN be done

I spend a lot of time ranting about the problems as I perceive them.

Sometimes I try to cobble together solutions, but in a stream of consciousness, head to the keyboard, no proofreading, shoot from the hip kind of way.

Thank goodness there are people who can think, and do, out there like Borepatch.

If you're not reading him, try it. You just might like it.