AIRBORNE!!! HOO-RAH!!!!!

Lil' Toni posted yesterday in honor of all those fools who jump willingly out of perfectly good air-o-planes. As a former fling-wing pilot I look at them with a bit of disdane, but, that maybe because there is no good way to jump out of a helicopter that decides to discontinue beating its way thru the air.

I live only about 3 miles from Currahee mountain. During WW2 it was the training ground for the unit that was imortalized in Band Of Brothers. Now they have an annual celebration complete with the Army parachute team putting on a demonstration. I'd look up the unit identification but it's late and I'm too lazy.
Sorry Guys. No disrespect intended.

I'll bet there is so much ammo fired into that mountain that a metal detector would go crazy.

My friend Garfield was a young lad during that time. He said that every afternoon that they would just open up with the guns . The boys who could get leave or passes would come into town drink and just generally tear thing up until the MPs would arrive.

During my participation in the Southeast Asia War Games at Quang Tri, RSVN, our Avionics officer was a 2nd looey named Reginald. Reggie for short, and because he hated to be called Reginald.

An ROTC graduate with a degree in Electronic Engineering, he wanted nothing more out of life than to be an 'airborne ranger'. He begged the army to assign him to the infantry and send him to ranger school. But, they in their infinate wisdom knew that he would be so much more useful fixing (or more properly, supervising) the radios for our helicopters and command center.

Oh how he pleaded with them to make him a ranger! To no avail.

But not deterred, while attending the armys avionics and electrical school he coaxed, or more likely, bribed someone to cut him orders to allow him to attend ranger school at Ft Benning GA, down at Columbus, where he qualified and made about 6 or 7 static line jumps out of whatever airplanes they used in those days.

He arrived in Quang Tri all spit and polish and proud as a peacock about the airborne wings he wore on his chest and cover. Airborne he would shout as he walked about the camp. He would beg to be allowed to fly out with the infantry squad we carried in the huey that accompanied each hunter killer team.

No was the answer, he was much to important fixing radios. This only made him more determined to prove to himself and the world that he was John Wayne incarnate.

He bunked in the same hootch as I, and our bunks would have been next to each other except he pulled our wall lockers between us an made himself a cave in the corner.
He hung a towel over the opening for privacy. Since he was from up north somewhere, I called him a damn yankee, and he called me a damn rebel, which I took to be an honorable title.

Charlie liked to lob in a few mortor shells each evening between dusk and midnight just to keep us on our toes you know.. After a few times of running to the bunkers and being laughed at as FNGs, we soon learned to judge the closeness of the explosions and just lay in our bunks with a determination to simply roll under it if things got too close.

One evening we had mostly gone to our bunks, writing letters or reading, or simply wishing we were back in the world, when the shelling started up. As charlie started walking the rounds closer and closer I was considering that in a few more rounds it would be time to crawl under the bed.

Apparently Reggie was sleeping and unaware of the noise when one round got a little closer and woke him up. Yelling 'incoming' and trying to claw his way around the lockers and fighting the towel aside, he suddenly stopped and shouted "Don't move".
OOHH shit, what was it? Were the little bastards coming thru the hootch door?

As I stared at him with a modicum of concern and asked in a calm whisper "what is it" ? He replied "I knocked my contact lens out of my eye. Much hilarity ensued. With flashlights the errant lens was found and Reggie, embarrassed, creep meekly back to his bunk.

Reggie later had a chance to redeem his pride. A unit of APCs were just outside the wire and were pinned down by a lone sniper up in a tree. Un-freaking-believable. Armored personal carriers with at least one M-60 per track and possible a .50 cal. and no telling how many troops with M-16s and a lone sniper kept them pinned down for several hours.

Reggie hearing of this over the radio, and sensing his time had at last came, grabbed his rifle and jeep and sailed to the rescue. Arriving at the Tracks, he asked were the sniper was. Receiving the general direction, he using all the skills obtained in AIT sallied forth boldly, shot the sniper from the tree, and then told the APC unit they could proceed in safety.

I wonder where he is today?

For you Reggie. AIRBORNE!!! HOO-RAH!!!

Pitiful Pup

Wow ! Did we ever have a thunderstorm last night. Rain by the bucket fulls and thunder and lightening continiously for an hour and a half.

What made it especially bad was to watch precious pup turn in to terrified pup.
We of course know that he is afraid of loud noises, but, he was inconsolable last night. Around and around the inside of the house he would trot. From one room to the next hiding under the bed the table the computer desk.. Couldn't be held either, he couldn't get away from the noise there.

I walked to the door to look out and he ran up as is he had to go take a leak.
So....against my better judgement I walked him out on the porch and told him to hurry up & do his little thing. Oh No. He's not going to step off the porch without me going with him. So out we both went. Me telling him to hurry up and him trying to find the perfect spot. Finally the deed was done and we ran back inside.

As soon as we're back inside, he wants to go out again because I'm still at the door.
I'm as slow learner but this time I call for the umbrella. Out we go. Over toward the truck this time. Okay, I'll let him water the wheel. No, he wants to get in the truck. I figure he wants to get in to hide so, in we both go. I Crank it up and turn on the A/C which makes its own kind of noise. So he hides under my legs and the drivers seat and lays down. More or less calm. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst, he's probably an 8.

We sat that way for about and Hour. You tell me, who's the master here.

I guess he has his on patch of kudzu.

Did they wimp out?

Did the Israelis blink in their latest tete'a tete' with hissbolla (may pig piss be ever upon them)?

Sure looks like it at this time. But, I think that the fact that the US didn't outright come to their aid with material and other support had more to do with it than the fact that we have this UN imposed 'cease fire'.

In effect, I believe, the West backed down from Iran which was overtly shipping missles and supplies and also trained fighters into Lebonon. Had they sat on their hands the Israelis would have had an easier time of it.

What has happened in effect is to hand the Islamo-faciest-terrorist a major victory. Not in armed conflict but in preception in the arab and persian camp.

Until we in the west wake up, grow a set of brass balls, and start doing the hard things we will continue to receive the little supprises that the moo-slimes (may pig piss be ever upon them) have in store for us.

We need to carry the fight to them on their own terms. While it may go against the grain and offical policy of the government, we need to develope and send in covert operators by the thousands and kill the leaders, including heads of governments if necessary, by stealth, quietly, and sometimes by targeting by lasar from miles away.

We have the weaponery, we have some of the operatives. We just need to increase their ranks by many multiples, because many of them will not come back.

Just my view from deep in the kudzu.

Our Gang

Let me just start by saying that our "Group" at the VA this morning was most excellent in all extremes except one. (about which more later)

First off just let me say that I absolutly freaking hate to be in a lot of traffic.
My driving skills are of course above reproach. It's the other million and a half of the crazy commuters who have to make it to work on time or there'll be hell to pay, not to mention the mortgage and the car payments and the braces for the kids and the new boob job to keep the old chain and ball attractive to the pool boy to pay for.
That's why I live out in the country.... so every bug in the known universe can feast on my tender lily white flesh.

So there I am having gotten up before any sane person has a right to, to get on I-85 early enough so as to miss the "rush" hour traffic, even if it does mean that I get there from 1 1/2 to 2 hrs early.
So as to deny myself the joy of mixing it up with some idiot who was up half the night whacking off to internet porn and can barely see his eyes are so red.

When.............to my suprise right about half way between Indian Trail and Beaver Ruin Rd the Cell phone rings. And since I'm completly anal about the extension between my wrist and ear, I answer...hello?

Why's Bobby still in the trailer?

And it goes downhill from there.

So I was in a great mood when I got to the VA. Go into our little oasis away from all the sane and politically correct world for at least an hour.

Man, we were on a roll. We had most of the political and military problems in the known universe solved and were starting on the economic challanges of hard..ie Gold and Silver Money VS Good old greenbacked by nothing Federal Reserve Notes, when in walked Harold, about 5 minutes after we started (we being nothing if not efficient problem solvers, which probably explains why we are there every monday after all).

Now Harold is having lady trouble.........that is he got jelous of some dude who came to his birthday party thrown by his "then" girlfriend without his own dudette, and was whispering to his "then" gf.

Now in Harold's defense I must say that by his own admission about a bottle and a third of Bombay Sapphire had been consumed so things might have been a little hazy. So being all of about 5'6" tall and about 135 lbs he proceeds to clean the clock of said dude. Whereupon looking around and seeing the marveling and admiring gazes.......rather incredulous stares of the other attendees, he says to hell with all of this and leaves. I mean what the hell there is no way in hell he'll ever be able to get that girls skirt up again. But that doesn't keep him from trying lo these past three weeks. Of course we were all encourgaging of his persual of said ex-gf.
And all of our advice was all well intentioned and the best we could offer. You just have to keep in mind that between the twelve of us there have probably been no less than twenty five or thirty wives, so of course we could draw on our eperiences of many years to get him thru this tiny crisis. He should pay us for the help.

Oh, yes the one down part. The young lithsome, blonde intern with the exqusite ankles is leaving for more fertile fields. We wish her luck.

But I'll bet there won't be any kudzu there.

Didn't take long did it?

Whoa That didn't take as long as we might have hoped did it?

Yesterdays post was an attempt to wake up just a remnant of common sense people to the threat that the Islamic Jihadist pose to the west in general and possibly to us individually as well.

For instance........Just suppose a small group of terrorists were to cross the mexican border, either legally or illegally. Perhaps they meet as preplanned some people who have been in our country for years. Perhaps even nationalised citizens.
Suppose those citizens had spent a period of time collecting assualt weapons. Easy to do under the radar.

Picking up their weapons, ammo and transportation they disperse into groups of four or five across the country to cities picked not so much from a strategic position, as for the preception that it can't happen here.

Giving them time to all arrive at their destination, suppose that they take an innocent looking trip to the local Mall on a weekend say when the crowds are the biggest. When the food courts are packed or the movie theaters are crowded.

You'd be suppriesed how easy it is to hide weapons and spare ammo about your person, yet keep anyone from suspecting anything is amiss.

Supposed you had decided to take your preteen Children to get school clothes or to see a movie. You stop to get a slice of pizza at the food court, not noticing four individuals (not necessarily all men), who stroll to the center of the food court.

They suddenly stand back to back pulling their automatic weapons from under their coats or out of their shopping bags and start firing straight ahead while slowly circling to spread their fire all around the place or perhaps they have high explosives in those bags which they carry throughout the place before a single signal from a cell phone sends nails, tacks, glass or ball bearings into you and your child or children and dozens or perhaps hundreds of others.

How will you stop them? Can you stop them? Do we as a civilization do the hard thing?

Didn't take long did it?

whoops! My little finger got to flopping around like LL's little toe.
Sorry LL, hope it's better.

Does anyone care, is anyone listening?

Well, tonight we had ‘Last Comic Standing’, followed by ‘America’s Got Talent’.

That’s freaking wonderful. Just Freaking Wonderful.

Don’t mistake me people. I love to laugh and be entertained as much as anyone. Laughter makes you live longer. And if not at least you enjoy it more.

But doesn’t anyone in the freaking world of television have a freaking clue ??

What has to happen to the people in this country for them to wake up and scream as one voice that ‘WWIV’ is going on this very moment. Don’t they have the intelligence to recognize that we are right now, at this very moment engaged in a clash of cultures as great as desperate as War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells pretended to be……….
Only this is for real people.

I have all of about 3 people who ever click over this way, but if you do I hope you will read the following in its entirety and if it at all concerns you, please, for God’s sake, pass it on. Let’s try to wake up as many of the still sleeping as we can. Even if it pisses your liberal friends off.

I’m not going to put up a link to it, 1. because I don’t know how, and second I don’t want you to have an excuse not to read it.

by Justice Litle

"Going for the jugular" is an expression used in sports and business
life,
indicating a strongly aggressive move or an especially competitive
strategy. In casual use of the phrase, we forget the graphic nature of
what is being described. The external jugular vein carries deoxygenated
blood from the brain back to the heart. If the jugular is cut, death
from
blood loss is likely to follow.

We forget too that "going for the jugular" can carry significant risk
for
the attacker - be it man, mountain lion or terrorist-sponsoring nation
state.

In geopolitical terms, Iran is going for the jugular here and now.

With the Middle East pretty much a constant powder keg, it is easy to
imagine this recent flare-up is just another example of business as
usual
gone unusually bad. It is not. Through the proxies of Hezbollah and
Hamas,
with Syria as its lapdog, Iran has deliberately chosen this moment to
up
the ante.

As Iran sees it, the U.S. military is exhausted and overextended; the
American public's taste for military adventure is at low ebb; the world
community is more committed to Chamberlainesque pacifism than ever; and
the mullah's baby steps toward nuclear capability have not only gone
unpunished, but they have actually been rewarded with hints of
diplomatic
concession.

Smugness aside, Iran (and Syria and Hezbollah and Hamas) is taking a
very
big gamble. In one sense, they are reimplementing Saddam Hussein's old
game plan on a more subtle scale, calculating that the West does not
have
the will or the way to prevent their goal: the arrival and recognition
of
a new dominant power and force to be reckoned with in the Middle East.
Iran's ambition is to become the uniting force behind Shia Islam (in
competition with Sunni al-Qaida), a nuclear counterweight to Israel and
a
true power broker on the world stage.

This is a generalization, as it must be. The situation on the ground is
complex, and all players have their own motivations. (Sheik Hassan
Nasrallah of Hezbollah, for one, has waited many years for this moment
in
history to unfold and has spent the last few years preparing for it.)
The
bottom line is that the supposed good faith efforts to solve this
crisis
by way of diplomacy, the world's concerned nations putting their heads
together and all that, is a load of absolute nonsense. This is not a
regional spat between the Hatfields and the McCoys, in which the two
sides
can just set a spell and work out their differences. The situation is
far
more dire, far more calculated, and far more serious than that.

In his piece "War on Iran Has Begun," David Twersky writes: "Years from
now, the kidnapping of Cpl. Gilad Shalit will be regarded like the
assassination of Archduke Ferdinand." Many believe, like Twersky, that
full-scale war in the Middle East is now inevitable. Whether or not the
kidnapping of an Israeli soldier triggers a chain of events as
momentous
as the assassination that kicked off World War I, it is clear we are
experiencing a raging bull market in geopolitical tensions.

From an investing perspective, the knock-on effect of these events will
be
to remind Wall Street that not only are the reasons for $75 oil not
going
away, they are getting even stronger. Kevin Kerr and I have gone on
record
calling for triple-digit oil, as have other better-known
prognosticators,
like Jim Rogers. We've been beating that drum for some time now. Wall
Street is still waking up to this.

There are no easy answers to the situation we are in and legitimate
question as to what the hard answers should be. Military action against
Iran would accelerate and worsen the very problems that now have us in
their grip: sky-high energy prices, out of control spending and
inflationary pressures - not to mention all the horrors of war, the
question of how to measure success and whether success would even be
possible. Yet choosing to sit back and do nothing is a recipe for
nuclear
proliferation and, ultimately, nuclear exchange. Not to mention an open
invitation for further consolidation of a terror-exporting power base
and
future attacks on the West.

Of course, Iran knows all this. Iran knows how hard the answers are.
That
is why it is acting as it is; that is why it is acting now. Iran is
going
for the jugular. The country's timing gives it a powerful hand, but
there
is huge risk in this strategy. Some observers, such as Victor Davis
Hanson, believe that the mullahs are playing with a fire that could
wind
up consuming them. Hanson warns that if and when the West wakes up to
the
danger it faces, if and when the West decides that survival is on the
line, there could be an overwhelming forceful response of awe-inspiring
proportions - disproportionate force like we've never seen.

Regards,

Justice Litle
for The Daily Reckoning

I hope that’s sufficient credit where credit is due.

Now it’s up to you.

I just hope for our sakes the Western World wakes up in time.

We can’t all hide in the kudzu tangles of popular bread and circuses much longer.

Killin' ain't good enough

I don't know guys, and girls. I think of myself sometimes as a fairly tolerant guy. I'll let you believe as you like, if only you'll allow me the same privelege.

Even Moo-slimes (pig piss be upon them) as Denny of GOC calls them. As long as they act in a civilized manner, I'd allow them to worship as they please as long as they didn't try to force it on any . one . at . all.

Like I say, a tolerant guy. I've had people take financial advantage of me, and I remain calm. Besides revenge is a dish best tasted cold isn't it Jake?

Now for a guy growing up in the sixties, being trained to stuff our heads up our asses, er, uh, I mean under our desks in case of a bright light and mushroom cloud. Seeing wars, and assinations, and the Ed Sullivan show. You can hardly blame me for being a little apprehensive about the possibility of having children in that kind of world.

But, I loved all four of my children.

And now that they have children of their own, my heart like the Grinch's has grown, along with the size of my family.

But, when I read as I did about this pedophile who claims that men having sex with boys should be protected as some kind of religion,
on the Drudge Report this morning, my heart turns black and cold. Ice cold like yellow piss in the northern part of Greenland which freezes before halfway to the snow.

Nothing you could do to him will be punishment in my opinion. As my southern forebears were wont to say, " Killin's too good for th bastard.

Causes the Kudzu to grow thick and lush.

Wierd Wanda

Funny how something can spark an old memory.

I just thought about the fact that we had TV in Vietnam. Our own armed forces network up at good ol' Quang Tri. We could watch cartoons, the news. I remember seeing the 'Thrilla in Manila' live. Can't remember who won, although I believe Ali did..
Little bitty, probably 19 inch, portable with rabbit ears. Quang Tri had their own broadcasting studio. We could watch the air force weather people tell us it was either raining like a sumbitch, or that it was hot and dusty with 40 mph winds.

Don't let anyone fool you. Vietnam can be damn cold at 58 degrees, windy and raining so long there is mold growing on everything. Some one had a small portable cloths dryer he'd gotten from somewhere and bliss can surely be described as putting on warm dry socks. Almost better than sex although it's been so long for me that I'm thinking dry warm socks wins. They say your memory is the second thing to go and I forget what went first.

Anyway, back to the point of this little narrative. We did have the farthest North TV station in South Vietnam. And to keep the boys occupied when not raping and pillaging, they had a combination cartoon and weather show.

Now not all the americans over there were in the military. The good old USO is always there to boost the morale of the troops. So there were acutally round eyed american women over there. Not strictly camp followers per se. And not necessarily the prettiest you've ever seen. But, they were a reminder that there were better things than smelling burning JP-4 and shit in the morning.

Weird Wanda Wonderful hosted the 'Roger Ramjet cartoon show' every afternoon about 2pm. She had a side kick that our unit had provided. A skull would sit on a barstool beside her and she would speak to him. A straight man if you will for her girlish attempts at humour. She called him Wilbur. She'd ask "Wilbur do you want to watch a Roger Ramjet Cartoon?" He'd answer " Gee Wanda that's wonderful".

Maybe you had to be there to appreciate the show.

Wanda had a crush on Lt. Hunter, and he on her.

He was shot out of the sky NW of Kha Shan by a 12.5 mm.

One more little tendril around my soul.

Proof

Just to show some few doubters that the 50 # of tomatoes is real.

And I need to go pick some more before the wife gets home.

Maybe I'll take down the fence and let the wascully wabbits have it.

Is that a Gun in your pocket?

Or are you just glad to see me?

Always glad to to see an ass like yours darlin'.

A-man had nothing on me. Went out this evening and picked 50 pounds of ripe, or nearly so, tomatoes off of 8 plants. Not to mention the mess of okra, a dozen cukes, 2 cantalopes, 1 1/2 pecks of cherry tomatoes, an a good mess of snap beans.

To put in prespective, I had just picked the garden 2 days ago.

Who Knows?

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?
The Shadow knows.

And thanks to the wonders of modern communication, we all know if we allow ourselves to look at the blackness around us.

TV, the internet, movies, newspapers, infojournalism, all of these and more bring the most evil, sickening, disgusting and vile images either in print or visual, into our homes on an almost daily basis.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,204583,00.html

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,204601,00.html

If there is a hell such a those bible thumpers say, I hope there is an especially fiery place for such vermin as the rats who commit these crimes.

But, what of the blackness inside each of us?

I have pulled the trigger on fellow human beings. Seen them fall. Sent rockets punching thru torsos ripping them into unidentifiable bits of flesh.

I've witnessed ARVN troops abusing the bodies of female NVA soldiers by sticking their pointed little yellow peckers into every natural and scrapnel created hole they could find, after we finished our gun run.

I've seen dead bodies by the side of the road, left out in the tropical sun, to bloat and then to wither to shrunken shells when the gas leaves them.

War, you may say. Justifable at the time. But what of the images that come at other times?

I've imagined squeezing the trigger on someone who I preceive as doing me wrong.

I know how to kill with a knife so as to rip the heart and lungs to shreds, without causing the moans and gurgling of someones throat after having slit it from ear to ear.

I've read the writings of Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, that gargole that lives in Maine. Seen the thought processes of Oliver Stone brought to life on the silver screen.


The decision has already been made as to what to do to an intruder in my home, or to someone who harms one single hair of a loved ones head.

Do we profit by knowing what might be? By knowing what evil lurks within? Mankind doesn't seem to have improved in some respects over the thousands of years of recorded history. Despots have slaughtered their millions. Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Saddam Huessain, Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tae Tsung. These are only some of the ones who have lived and slaughtered within my lifetime. Who is to say that they couldn't do the same if given the chance. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutly. What causes one person to become a Billy Graham, and another to become a Mohammaud. One can value anothers life and rights and another to care only for power over others.

Is it that one can control themself, and the other wants only to control others?

There are within me black spots. Fertile as Wisconsin bottom land. Capable of growing either briars or roses.

Think I'll stick with Kudzu. The blooms smell sweeter. As I try to hide within its shadows.

Ol' Moose

I haven't thought of him in years. The spousal unit and youngest Daughter were scratching thru the boxes of pictures yesterday, and lo and behold who should appear but Ol' Moose.

I bought him while running the dairy farm years ago to breed our young holstein heifers to.
To ease the birthing process the first time since black angus normally throw smaller calves.

What a stud he was as you can see. Muscular as hell and horney as all get out.
We'd put a new bunch of young heifers in the pasture with him and as soon as they would come in heat he would have a new girlfriend. Stay right with them. Wrinkling his nose up when sniffing to see if they were ready. Lick it out of his nostrils with his tongue when they inevitably pissed on his nose.

After a few week with a new group he would be as bald on the top of his head as a billard ball.
Give him a couple of months of light duty and the hair would come out again

Every once in a while we would turn him in with one of the mature cows which we couldn't catch using AI, to see if he could get the job done.

Now you should have seen that. Picture Ol' Moose standing at most 4 1/2 feet on his stubby legs beside one of those big holstein cows standing nearly 6 feet at the hips. A sight to behold as he tried his damnedest to levitate his bulk up high enough to reach the object of his desire. If the old girl was really feeling the heat she would look back at him as if to say, "What's the matter with you "girly" boy"?

Not to be defeated Moose would keep at it, finally herding her around the lot until he had her backed up in a ditch which would allow him to pop that vaulting pole of a pecker to her. You had to give him credit for persistance.

Ol' Moose wouldn't let a little thing like a barbed wire fence stand in the way of a little romance either. Just let him get the slighest wiff of quim on a light spring breeze from a quarter mile away and he would just walk up to the fence, put his head between the strands of wire and simply walk thru, oblivious to the tiny scratches of the 1/2 inch long barbs. Many is the time we had to herd him back to his own pasture and hope he'd stay long enough for us to artifically inseminate the "in heat" cow.

This wandering eye of his finally got him in trouble one day. He was standing around one fine day surrounded by his young herem, when on the breeze came the unmistakeable, tantilizing arouma of estrus. His head came up and off he went, once more, into the breech, duty and pussy calling him.

Now you have to realize that unlike males of the human variety, a bull will generally leave his sword in the sheath untill time for action. This precludes it getting caught in the briars and brambles, and most especially barbed wire fences.

Not this time however. At approximatly half mast he made his usual stroll thru the fence.
Barbs and his bull hood engaged each other with disasterous results. Back into the sheath went his weapon. Blood poured forth and continued to run for a couple of days while he walked around kinda hunched over, all thoughts of romance purged from his mind.

While he eventually healed, he never again tried to crawl thru a barbed wire fence. He would however, stand on one side and call to his beloved of the moment. Much like Romeo calling softly to Julliet.

The Devil's beating his wife

“The devil’s beating his wife”

That’s what my mother would say anytime we’d get rain and the sun was shining.

I hadn’t thought of that in a while. Just came to mind when the wife asked me if my truck windows were up, because it had started raining, and I had to trudge outside in my slippers to roll them up.

Of course I said that I had deliberately left them down to dare the rain to come over the kudzu patch. No way, no how would I be so dumb as to leave them down accidentally.

Of course if we had a garage or carport there would be no problem. House plans call for a garage, but then it also calls for the first floor to be built over the basement.
One of these days… one of these days. I can hear my wife now….”I’ll believe it when I see it. After so many years in this basement, the kids all moved out, if the father-in-law didn’t live here we would be rambling around like two peas in a box car.

If we ever do build the top floor on this house we’d probably have to rent the basement out to 4 families of Mexicans in order to pay the power bill.

Men, don’t let your wife pick out the house plan. They have no idea of square footage.

Of course they’re not to blame. For years we’ve been telling them that this much…….

>I………………………………………I <

is eight inches.

Bless their little gullible hearts.


No kudzu there.

Happy 4th

One more 4th of July has arrived. A time of parades, fireworks, going to the lake, getting drunk, jumping in the pool. barbeques, and in general a free day off from work for millions especially government agencies. This year because it comes on a tuesday many took off from friday thru today.
Hopefully a few will take a moment to reflect on the reason for the day. Many blog posts will and have been written about it. One that caused me to think is http://www.neptunuslex.com/ .
I tend to get a little morose about the whole thing because too many people are working overtime to destroy what little freedoms we have left under that docoment and the Constitution which was written 11 years later.
People often seem too interested in the vague pursuit of happiness rather than protecting LIFE & LIBERTY.
Just my opinion, but it's one of the reasons for the tangles of doubt, depression and worry in my life.

On the upside, I'll be traveling down to Loganville to swim in the pool, see the spousal unit who is house sitting said pool, visit with the grandchildren and some of the children and their spousal units.
Have a great 4th of July, and take a moment to reflect on some of the reasons our forefathers pledged Their Lives, Their Fortunes and Their Sacred HONOR to fight to leave us the freedom we so cherish.

The okra needs picking, and beans too. They'll just have to wait.

I'll love you forever

Forever yours, To my wonderful wife (or Husband)
All of these sentiments I read on the inside of so many wedding rings.
I see them that were written years ago, and some that were given in wedding ceremonies only a few months ago.
I buy old, scrap and unwanted gold jewelry from pawnshops and refine and resell the gold to jewelry manufacturies and others.
It's amazing how many wedding and engagement rings are to be found there. All of the people they belonged to I'm sure meant every word of their wedding vows. What happened? Where did all that love and affection go? Probably started to go when the guys stopped holding their stomach in and their wives stopped dying their roots, ( or shaving their legs ), and had bloating and cramping for like 3 years at a time. Lack of affection in inverse relation to the amount of time their husbands sat on the couch watching wrestling, with their feet on the coffee table and both hands stuck down the front of their pants. As an aside, I used to have a brother-in-law who on friday nite would come home with like 15 hours of WWF on video from Blockbusters.
His greatest thrill was his job as bush hog driver cutting the grass on the sides of the road.
Little wonder that his wedding ring is probably a completly different type of jewelry now.
Sis divorced his fat ass and married a Canuck. (but otherwise a pretty respectful type of guy)
If only he'll stop pushing her down and breaking her leg. Just kidding Rick.
I sometimes think we should go to having the betrothed couple take at least 3 years of classes on how to stay married before they could get a license. Oh yeah!, mostly now they don't bother with a ceremony. Just decide, yeah we've had two dates why don't we move in together.

Oh well it gives me something to do and maybe I'll make a dime or two if I keep it up.
Keep on selling those rings and other jewelry folks to the local pawn shop owner for 1/10th of what you paid for it. He'll double his money and I'll make a little cut too. Besides I so love it when in a pawn shop a guy will come in with two rings, the pawn shop guy will say $20 and ring guy will shout $20, but I paid $500.00 for those rings. Pawn shop guy says only worthe $20 to me. Well ok, but you guys sure are making a killing, give me the 20. I just smile and keep on going.

We got some rain on the kudzu. Tomatoe plants nearly as high as my head.

The Great one passed

I started to just leave to title up there, but I have to try to work my way around the news of the passing of Rob Smith of Gut Rumbles.
I'm not sure, but his blog may have been the first one I ever read. Maybe not, but certainly one of the first I remember liking so much that I would return every day, sometimes several times thru-out the day to read. His honesty, his take no prisoner, damn the torpedos approach to life seemed to release some of the demons I struggle with.
Having finally faced some of my past in therapy the last 2 years, I could identify with some of the things he put up with by not putting up with.
The post by someone of his comment when leaving the Helen, Ga blogfest where he said, "I feel like Elvis leaving Las Vegas for the last time" as they carried him to the car and loaded him in, spoke to the yearnings I had been having of leaving all my troubles behind.
His finally coming to realize what he was doing to himself, gave me hope that, This too shall Pass!
His writing became more lucid and sharper after he dried out. He could write, a little. Far better than I ever hope to.
He had much hurt in him. You don't lose a son, no matter the reasons, without feeling like your soul had been wrenched from you.
He loved his family, from his ancesters to his children. His writing of them spoke to the feelings I have for my own family.
I'll miss him. Just as I miss everyone who has passed thru my life and left me for better or worse the man I am.
How ironic that in his last post he spoke of how tired he was of all the shit that had been going on in his life. When he wrote of how he would use a .22 to kill himself, you could feel some of the anguish in him. I believe that a benevolent God took him in his way, a kinder gentler way than perhaps Rob had in mind. We can be grateful for that.
I'll forget him in time, but when those memories are stirred up by what ever errant piece of bad beef, I'll smile and be thankful to have read him, Once upon a time.

Rob, I hope you smell the kudzu blossums every day where you are.

UPDATE: Nice tribute here.............http://www.youbitch.org/mt/archives/000643.php

coulda, wouda, shouda

Fathers Day.
Here I sit at the end of the day. I received calls from all my children. My wife gave me 2 pairs of new jeans (she's been washing the old ones and seeing the disintergration of same), and a lovely card.
I thankful to my wife for my children, and to an affair which yielded a remarkable young woman that like all of my children, I'm proud to call my own.
There are a great many things that I can look back on and regret either not doing, or, doing. But one thing I do not regret is the birth of each and every one.
I regret not having the time to get to know my own father. Sure I knew him for 25 yrs. but I was only at that time grown up enough to start to recognize him for who he was.
I knew my Grandfather for 8 yrs longer, and how I wish I had listened more to his advice.
Both of them loved us in completly different ways, and taught us lessons that will always remain with me.
I did the best that I knew how when they were younger, and I'm still trying to learn how to be a dad.
Wish me luck. It's a hellva ride.

But sometimes you get to see and smell the kudzu in bloom.

Oh yeah

Forgot to mention that it's been dry here. And since the old wive's tale is if you hang a snake on a fence it'll rain, I attempted same but since we have no fence, I did the next best thing. I tied those 2 snakes by their tails into a tree. Blessed rain from above today. If that's what it takes I'll be on the watch for more of the slimy bassards.
Maybe prowl around in the Kudzu.

Serves them right

I'm normally a laid back kind of guy. Expecially if I take the medication like the dr. prescribes. A pill for blood pressure, another to make me pee to go with the lst, a pill for anxiety (why would I be anxious?). Another to decrease my depression over the financial depression I've gotten us into. Another anti-depressant to help the first. And another for the carpel tunnel which I'm waiting on the VA to get around to.
So like I say, pretty laid back.
But the wife called me to the house, and said there was a noise coming from the attic over our bedroom and the dog was going crazy. For me to open up the attic and see what it was and remove it.
Naturally for my love, no sooner said than done.
So after a drink of water to cool off and a leasurly stroll to the bedroom where I couldn't hear anything, I go open up the attic from outside just to placate her, and prove that she's just imagining things.
So I crawl in with the flashlight and shine it in the corner. Damn, two big ol' snakes going at it like, well, like snakes. Which as you can imagine doing it with no hands or anything to grab aholt of is sorta a trick.
Now these were black snakes, nothing to worry about except how to convince them to leave.
Then I got to thinking. Who the hell do they think they are? Having carnal relations over my bedroom. They're gettin more than I've had in a while and seemingly enjoying it wayyyy too much.
That's when I called for the .22 pistol. Had to aim carefully since I didn't want a hole in either the roof or ceiling. And a shot anywhere other than the head wouldn't do more than piss them off, and cause them to bleed on everything.
Finally mission accomplished. Pics of Grandson with culprits follow.
Well maybe they proceed. Don't know how I managed to get two sets of the same pics. Does any body know how to put the pics where I want them?

They should have stayed in the kudzu if they wanted to be left alone.

Better late than Never

That's what they say, whoever they are.

The Baby arrived on Monday last. A Girl, named Callie Cheyene, weight 6 lbs 13 oz. Mother and Baby are fine, but, I fear the father is ruint forever. This big strong former Marine has been twisted around Callie's finger since birth.
He could go on secret missions to kill Al Queda even before 9/11, but he can't fend off one little girl who can't even roll over yet.
Such is the power of love for family.
I'll try to copy and paste a picture of the baby here

False alarm

Well, the youngest's 1st child was due yesterday.
Last night at midnight we got a call. On the way to the hospital.
Opps!
Seems the timing was off. False alarm.

Our first was due around the 10th of September. I had a reporting date in Vietnam of the 1st of same. Got a months reprive so as to be there for the happy moment. Wouldn't you know it. The baby was 2 weeks late. Hope was born on the 25th. My reporting date was Oct 1.

12 months later I got to watch her take her first steps. Glad Roy has his service behind him. He'll get to witness all the things I missed the first time around.

I don't need no stinkin' job

My father died when I was 25, still flying choppers for good ol' benevolant Unk' Sam. He slid in a ditch during an ice storm making the return portion of a beer run to the package store only 2 or 3 miles away. He sat there with the motor running and expired of carbon monoxide poisioning.

While on leave for Christmas he and I were talking and he told me he had something important to discuss, but would do it later. Later never came.

We moved on to Ft. Lewis in Washington State. A month after we got there we got the call.

He had a will and named me executor. I got out of the army and took over operation of his dairy farm which he had been building up since the early '50s.

He had started with about 2 dozen cows of various breeds and kept adding to it in both cows and land, until he had about 300 acres and 120 milking cows, which at that time were numbered in the top ten of all herds in GA of that size.

To me fell the gladsome task of listing all his assets at time of death, and getting appraisals of all, to be used to prepare the estate tax form which had to be filled out and filed with the IRS (peace be upon their blood sucking, beauracratic bloated asses).

Too much for a youthful, innocent, uncorupted, niave to the way of the real world, I hired his old attorney to help with the mountain of paper work.

We finally came up with the final estimate and found to our plesant surprise that we owed over $50,000.00 which at the time I thought was more money than existed in one pile in all the world. A third of his net worth. A freaking third!!!!!! WTF over.

Needless to say that put us on the road to eventually selling off everything that he had worked 25 years for. For I might say a mere pittance of what it would be worth now. I sometimes refer to it in moments of mirth, lighthly as my $6,000,000.00 mistake. Live and learn they say. Read um and weep.

I have held our blessed, benevolant, all caring and concerned fiddle gummint in the highest regard since. I determined that I would not live my life so as to have to bow to their every whim, and would only donate to their continuence as little as possible.

It's caused some hardship. Tax audits, harrassing phone calls, even the taping of what I mistakenly thought was a private phone call. I've been mostly self employeed. Making only enough to keep from going on welfare.

I'm tired of that lifestyle. I determine to live so as to prosper as much as possible.

But my determination to be free of control is undimmed.

That's why I support and urge every one to become with the Fair Tax Bill sponsered by Rep. John Linder of GA. If you haven't heard of this bill, please go to http://www.fairtax.org/

Thanks for taking the time.

OK, Maybe I rushed to judgement

I'll always admit when I've been wrong. There were and are reasons the appraiser couldn't get here. The man has been trying to put things back together. Even to the extent of using his own money or credit to help me out of a bind. You would think that his wife suddenly throwing up blood and being diagnosed with stomach cancer would make me cut him some slack.
You'd be wrong. I drive and hour to stand in his driveway and look him in the eyes and hash everything out.

Damn I hate to get in a fix like I did. When I was in 6th grade I overheard my teacher tell my mom that I had a high IQ and for years I thought I was smart. I can see now that I just had an inflated opinion of myself. Evidenced by the results over the years I may be one of the less intelligence forms of life on this ball.

Probably should go and hide in the Kudzu again, and ponder my navel or such.

Taking the Bull by the horns

Sometimes you just have to really put it all on the line. I've been trying to refinance our property to forstall foreclosure procedings. I contacted all the right people, one man said he could take care of everything. Nooo problem. Just let his appraiser come and take a look and the money would be there. Four months later I still waiting for the freaking appraiser. Now down to the nut cutting time. So I got in the truck and drove an hour to his house. I was determined to look him in the eye and discuss what is going to happen. Best thing I could have done. No excuses now. He has to come thru for me. A stranger a few months ago. But even though I probable dial his phones more than anyone else, he is unfailingly courteous and friendly when we do talk. He'll do it himself. We've become friends. Probably be a personal loan from a man who has had a lot on his plate. First his daughter was killed by her new lover when the old one broke in thru the window and opened the bedroom door. Two small children. Grandmother is his ex wife. She'll probably get custody.
Now it turns out that will be best.
His currant wife has what appears sure to be stomach cancer.
In spite of this he is going out of his way to make sure my problem is taken care of.
Character and principals will show every time and the world will profit by more people having them.

One sure way to cut away some of the tangled vines.

Do they have the balls?

Supposedly the AG and the Head of the FBI have threatened to resign if the president makes them give back the evidence found in congresscritter Jefferson's office............http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060527/pl_nm/crime_jefferson_dc_3

As I understand the Constitution. If a congressman has committed a Felony (which taking up to $400,000.00 would probably qualify), then they are subject to the laws of the country even though congress may be in session.

Here's hopin that someone in the cesspool of Washington, DC has both balls, intelligence, and courage to obey their oath of office.

I'll be holding my breath and chewing on a kudzu stem.

And th winner is...............

Me for being the most stupifyingly trusting fool on at least this planet. How can I hope to make it to Kolab if at the tender age of 56 I still can't recognize when I'm being conned.
"Oh, I'll call you right after I talk to the appraiser at 10 this morning", I'm told. No call. Not even after repeated attempts to contact him.
And Trip, never has there been a more pathetic excuse of skin holding crap that I can remember. Oh, wait. There is Rhonda, Danny, Jake, Bobby, Scott Hunter and numerous of their kith and kin and cronies.

The solution is simple. I'm going to have to start associating with higher class people.

Where does one go to find people worthy of association?

The Kudzu leaves blind my eyes and the vines wind amongst the obdula oblongata and keep the synapsis from communicating.

Yuucccckkk

And th winner is...............

Me for being the most stupifyingly trusting fool on at least this planet. How can I hope to make it to Kolab if at the tender age of 56 I still can't recognize when I'm being conned.
"Oh, I'll call you right after I talk to the appraiser at 10 this morning", I'm told. No call. Not even after repeated attempts to contact him.
And Trip, never has there been a more pathetic excuse of skin holding crap that I can remember. Oh, wait. There is Rhonda, Danny, Jake, Bobby, Scott Hunter and numerous of their kith and kin and cronies.

The solution is simple. I'm going to have to start associating with higher class people.

Where does one go to find people worthy of association?

The Kudzu leaves blind my eyes and the vines wind amongst the obdula oblongata and keep the synapsis for communicating.

Yuucccckkk

JOE BTFSPLK

That should be my name today. Nothing and I mean nothing went right. The builders don't have the decking on the roof resulting in more wasted time before the next job.
The appraiser should be out today, I was told at 7:45am. Now at 7:29pm we have yet to see them, and Eugene, who told me with so much confidence everything would be alright refuses to call me back.
The attornies who were supposed to close the loan my buyers were getting, (supposedly to close at 4:30pm) gave me bad, worse and worst news.
The refiners have still not sent the wire to my account.

And to cap it all off, I hear that the guy won on American Idol. What's up with that? Could'nt they see that the other contestant was a beautiful woman with breasts and everything. Have the people of america gone crazzzzy?
Ups! I just remembered that 51% of the population are female, and at least 20% of the rest are so pussified that you can't keep score anymore.

And if you can remember who JOE BTFSPLK is you're at least as old as I am which is 2 days older than black pepper. At this time nothing works like it used to. I've been thinking of asking Acidman where he got his bionic "roscoe".

Oh, and the cloud over my head has been full of rain and lightning and thunder.

Likely make the Kudzu grow faster.

One for two

Today has been quite a day for hearing from old friends.
Bobby B. ( he of take the nail gun and run for Boston fame) called last night and left a message about how sorry he was about the way he treated me and everything and he'd call back after work today.
Why do I listen to people who only want to cry on my shoulder and talk ad nauseum about how much they want to change their lives and how much better things would be if only they'd had a chance like other people.

Helllloooo!!?? What part of all men being created equal do they not understand. And what makes them think that I can change the effects of the decisions that they have made throughout their poor, poor, pitiable lives.
Note to self here; Not once did he hint that he would return the nail gun, pay the back rent he owed not to mention the electric bill he didn't pay. Nooo, all he could talk about was how he wanted things to be better. And how he'd been off alcohol for 2 weeks and was only doing a little weed now and again. Like every day.
Note to self; hit yourself up side head with 2 x 4 several times for taking the time to listen to him cry.

On a happier note. ( insert loud cries of jubilation and excitement).
LL has returned to Curses and Chrome http://cursesandchrome.blogspot.com/ after vowing never to return. A momentary lapse we had all hoped and prayed would be over when she returned to her senses or when all the cries of those less talented and dependant upon reading her blog to get us thru the day or night depending.
Glad to have her back. Besides where else would we go for HNT? ;-) ;-)

What kind of leader am I?

Oh My God !!!
I am he whom I dispise most in the world.

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Family

Today we went and had lunch and fellowship with all five of my sisters, my wife and children and Uncle Jim and Aunt Margaret. Various and sundry grandchildren, nieces and nephews, Grand nieces and nephews, various brother-in-laws, cousins, sons-in-laws and daughter-in-law. A great time as they say was had by all. Bound together by blood, marriage and love. Scattered over the country from Texas to Maine by jobs and other reasons. Rich and poor, young and old, we enjoyed the feeling you get when you are surrounded by loved ones. My two nephews from Maine we here. Soon they'll both be deployed to Iraq. The youngest 20 is a medic in the reserves. The older is a butterbar (!st Lt. ) in the quartermaster corp. But wants to be special forces. Pray for their safety.

Those of the blogsphere we read daily or frequently we consider family. We begin to care for them and their successess and failures. Most pour out their hearts and innermost feelings in an effort to find their way thru the tangles of everyday life. Hopefully we support each other even in the midst of occasional pissing contests.
LL has called it quits. She was the first blogger to respond to my puny attempts. She won my heart for that, even if it was to correct my mistake. I understand that there are dangers to putting ourselves out for the world to see. Sometimes the dangers outway the positive and people are compelled to leave.. I wish her well. God Speed. And if by chance you return I hope to run into you again.

Free at last

What a day. Started early checking on how the gold was refining, but couldn't stop thinking that I might have caused someone some pain.
Now I'm not usually one to really care whether some pain has been afflicted or not. The night of Bush's speech we were sitting on the couch watching and just after he had mentioned that the number of border patrol agents had been increased to 12000, I commented, "the problem is ease to solve. Just station an agent every 1/2 mile with a high powered rifle and let them start shooting anyone caught sneaking across". The better half looked at me in disgust and said, "you can't shoot people". Now why the hell not. Better a few bite the dust than thousands keep coming and breaking our laws. (Not that I'm any great believer in never breaking a law or two. Just don't believe in getting caught.) Plus if you're any good a head shot only hurts your shoulder.
Nevertheless I was much relieved to read tonight that I had not been at fault.

I'm a hunter not a fisher

Have you ever had to depend on someone else to get the ball rolling on an important aspect of your life. Say refinancing when your credit is bad, it's not a house in the 'burbs, and you have to operated on stated, not proved income.
Boy will that make your water weak.
When they say they will call and you have to chase them down and wind up leaving messages and paging them, to at last reach them and find out that it will be a while longer.
I waiting on a call this morning. If it's put off I will be found sharpening my Swiss Army (the Swiss Army) bayonets. Swiss steel and blood in the morning. Better than coffee, which I don't drink, to get the juices flowing. At least something would be accomplished.

This is why I don't hunt or fish anymore. Waiting on a deer to wander by, or sitting on the bank waiting for a nibble just doesn't cut it with me. I know many people who are avid hunters or fisherman. It's just not my cup of tea.
When I was young, in the spring the suckers, ( red drum) would migrate up the streams much like salamon to spawn. We would get our gigs and flashlights and wade the shallows and hunt them down without mercy. When the light would hit them even in water up to 3 ft deep they would shine like new money. That's when the gig would strike right behind the head pinning the to the streambed to be picked up and strung on a stout stick, while we looked for the next one.

That's my idea of going after something that you want and bringing home food for a week in one night

No tangles there. Short and simple.

Thank goodness for polluted air

If you can breath it without your eyes watering, or your nose burning and dripping like a leaky faucet. Give thanks that you don't live in the hell hole I was in tonight. Where the odor of rat piss and droppings and dog piss is so loud that the air is literally tinted a weak yellow color.
Just Daaaaammmmnnnn!!!!!
When you drive home with the airconditioner on full and the windows wide open just to carry the stink on you away, you know that you survived hell. If you cut your hand just a little as one did and you worry that you might die a horrible evil death, as your hand, then arm rot bit by bit and fall off inches at a time.
And people lived in this. And consider some of the items feet deep in piles on the floor of some worth. They even consider that anything missing or taken by the toothless scum who live around them , might have some little value.
I'm a pig. I admit it. As long as I know that what I need lies somewhere in the stacks on my desk, it's not lost. But compared to what I waded thru tonight my area looks like one of those sterile isolated rooms where computer parts are assembled.

They need more Kudzu to quickly overgrow that garbage pile.

Once again

Well, once again the idiots in Washington, DC have proved that they are a bunch of spineless, worthless, scum-sucking, money grubbing, weasling, two faced, lying, no good pieces of fecal matter, floating in a sea of self serving lobbyists and hands out welfare, government tit sucking beauracrats and sycophants.

Call it what you will the legislatition to allow criminal lawbreaking border jumping, wetback sonsabitching so called illegals to not only stay in this country after they broke the law, but to call it reform of the highest order would make any sane citizen of this country puke in his pocket to save to sleep with it under his pillow. That is if there were any sane citizens left in this country.

Our fore and founding Fathers who gave us a government of laws and not of men, must surely be spinning in their grave at the speed of light giving off sparks and light much like a cyclotron, capable of creating a gigantic black hole capable of sucking all the matter in the universe into it, when they see to what depths we have sunken.

This is surely the proof we've been searching for that proves there is no afterlife. For surely our forefathers would defy the veil and return blowing on the trumpet of liberty and shouting arise, arise patriot and countrymen turn back the foe, kick out the invader, water once again the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants.

Public outcry turned back the Dubia ports deal. Let's see if there is any commotion made about this.

We have been strangled by the vines and tendrils of the kudzu which afflict us and our screams of outrage stifled by the green velvety leaves stuffed down our throats by our oppressors.

I'm Just Thinking

I just watched (for the umpteenth) the Return of the King of the Lord of the Rings.
I'm sorry if you can watch that movie without experiencing a vast array of emotions culminating in pride of accomplishment and the nobility of man, then you're on a different wave length than I.

Then I read from Fred.........

http://www.fredoneverything.net/FOE_Frame_Column.htm

and I begin to think that I truly know so little, and am humbled by what God hath wrought.

And the Kudzu is both thick and thin. Smothering of somethings, yet, cooling and shading and protecting of others.

Old South, Forgotten World??

I was raised in the South! I'm proud to be a southern boy.

It wasn't the South of "Gone with the Wind", but the south of the 1950's and 60's. We were farmers. We live the farmers life. Up before dawn, milk the cows, feed the calves. Then back to the house for a country breakfast. Biscuits, country ham, red eye gravy, eggs cooked in the ham grease. Always a favorite. Sometimes biscuits with honey from our own hives. Sometimes for us kids, oatmeal or cream of wheat. (You can't eat like a king every day on a farmers pay).

The south I was raised in was changing with the times. It was a time of civil rights marches. Of desegration. Of rebellion of youth in ways not seen before. The world was shrinking before our eyes and it was not always pretty. Kruschevf pounded his shoe in the U.N. and promised to hang us with our own rope. We practiced covering our heads under the desks at school. Made about as much sense as anything else the government did.

Planes went faster and higher. Anything was possible. If you could conceive it you could acheive it. Television started showing things in color. Even the color of blood in far off battlefields.

I watched my father and grandfather. Some things didn't change. A man's good name meant more than gold or silver. I was very proud of my heritage and name. I had no idea of genealogy at that time, but was sure that I wanted people to respect my name as they did my grandfathers.

I thought that people would always live up to the things they promised to do. I was protected and isolated from people who had no respect, no vision of what they were looking for or to become. I heard of poor white trash but had little knowledge of what that meant other than the KKK neighbor we had who let his bull break thru our fence. It seemed unmanly for people to hide their activities behind sheets in secrecy and the dark of night.

So it is hard for me to realise that people will lie to you for their personal gain. They will look you right in the eye, shake your hand and know in their heart that none of what they say to you is anything near what they'll really do.

I had a friend named Bobby (I thought). Younger than I, he claimed that he wanted to change his life. He came from poverty and the inner city. Abuse and addiction were his suckling teat. Gangs were his family.

He claimed he wanted more. I offered my hand, my advice, my counsel. Even my money.

Now I know. He wanted more from me.

These things I can forget. Harder will be forgetting that he was too much of a coward to admit that to me.

Tangles and tendrils wind their way around my soul. They are hard to unravel, impossible to avoid. Slowly I try to pull them away and move forward.

If you do nothing else

If you do nothing else today, tomorrow, or the next day, by all means read this.

http://cursesandchrome.blogspot.com/2006/03/view-of-arab-world-by-arab.html

It's long I know. If your attention span is not long enough, go back to "Deal or no Deal"

TANSTAAFL, (translation by request for those whose education did not include Heinlein)

never was and never has been.

Those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are Doomed to repeat them.

Know your enemy. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. The better to manually strangle them and watch their eyes bulge out and their tongues turn dark and swell in their mouths.

The Kudzu is tall, thick and tangled. Dark underneath where I sit honing my bayonets.

Who's yo Daddy? ?

Those who have taken the time to know me realize that I am exceedingly mild mannered, I wear glasses, and know everything. Right there the resemblence to Superman stops!

Since I know everything, you have all heard me pontificate at great length on every subject under the sun. Especially politics, education or the lack of same in our government Schools. I almost called them government funded schools. But no they are funded by the citizens with funds taken by force by the only entity authorized to legalily rob and even kill you if they so desire.

One would think that with their vast resourses of money and the ability to call on the most advanced minds in the world today that they would turn out some of the smartest and most brillant minds the world has ever known.

For an example of what passes in some circles for cognitive thought, consider the case of Dallas, Texas;

Who's yo daddy?

When someone puts in for Child Support, the proper thing to do is to find out who the father is and see why he is not providing support. The following are all replies that Dallas women have written on Child Support Agency forms in the section for listing father's details. Or putting it another way...Who's yo Daddy!

These are genuine excerpts from the forms. Be sure to check out # 11 - it takes the prize and # 3 is runner up. However; I think # 5 is from another planet.

1. Regarding the identity of the father of my twins, child A was fathered by Jim Munson. I am unsure as to the identity of the father of child B, but I believe that he was conceived on the same night.

2. I am unsure as to the identity of the father of my child as I was being sick out of a window when taken unexpectedly from behind. I can provide you with a list of names of men that I think were at the party if this helps.

3. I do not know the name of the father of my little girl. She was conceived at a party at 3600 Grand Avenue where I had unprotected sex with a man I met that night I do remember that the sex was so good that I fainted. If you do manage to track down the father, can you send me his phone number? Thanks.

4. I don't know the identity of the father of my daughter. He drives a BMW that now has a hole made by my stiletto heels in one of the door panels. Perhaps you can contact BMW service stations in this area and! see if he's had it replaced.

5. I have never had sex with a man. I am still a Virginian. I am awaiting a letter from the Pope confirming that my son's conception was immaculate and that he is Christ risen again.

6. I cannot tell you the name of child A's dad as he informs me that to do so would blow his cover and that would have cataclysmic implications for the economy. I am torn between doing right by you and right by the country. Please advise.

7. I do not know who the father of my child was as all blacks look the same to me.

8. Peter Smith is the father of child A. If you do catch up with him, can you ask him what he did with my AC/DC CDs? Child B who was also borned at the same time.... well I don't have a clue.

9. From the dates it seems that my daughter was conceived at Disney World; maybe it really is the Magic Kingdom.

10. So much about that night is a blur. The only thing that I remember for sure is Delia Smith did a program about eggs earlier in the evening. If I'd have stayed in and watched more TV rather than going to the party at 146 Miller Drive, mine might have remained unfertilized.

11. I am unsure as to the identity of the father of my baby, after all when you eat a can of beans you can't be sure which one made you fart.

Yep, you guessed it right. You are all paying taxes to support these dim bulbs.

I know it's unfair to pick on Dallas. Toccoa, Georgia has more that it's fair share and to spare of the fine examples of gentile womanhood.

Shamelessly stolen from, http://cursesandchrome.blogspot.com/

My what fertile fields we have for the kudzu to grow in.

Look into the future

What do you see?

Are the average levels of intelligence increasing? Are the standards of civilized people rising or declining? Are the numbers of civilized people increasing? Are the time tested standards of morality and ethics holding firm? Or careening down the hill like a 1959 Edsil with the brake lines cut, an imbicle at the wheel yelling "damn what a rush" as the S-turns to destruction at the bottom of the cliff come closer and closer.

Western Civilization has endured and improved over millinia, but can we confidently look at it and say that it will endure another 4000 years?

In our pursuit to equality we tried to pull or force countries onto the pedestal with us, while some of them were not up to the heights and got nosebleeds, and others only wanted to throw rocks and see if they could knock us off.

Now we see Chinese and Indians graduating more scientists and engineers than we ever did.
Are we so arrogant as to think that genius is only a product of a white skin?

Where will we be when the almighty dollar is no longer the dominant currency in the world?
When others standard of living in their own country increases will they still want to come here and produce, or will they see better oportunitites else where?
When your house stops increasing in value because there are more on the market than demand can soak up, and you can no longer borrow against it to finance lifestyle purchases, what then?
Will you demand that your employeer increase your wages simply because you need more?
Will you stand with your bowl in hand asking "Please sir, may I have more"?

We have finally reduced our rate of saving to a minus percentage of our national income.
I ask you, did this nation become great because it was the biggest debtor in the world, or because it was the greatest producer in the world? Where was the last purchase at Wal-mart manufactured? Hummmm?

There are those who advocate preparedness. Is it such a bad idea to have a little money sat aside? Might some of it need to be in gold or silver or other trade goods, even hand tools?
Should you grow a portion of what you eat, and preserve some of it for when the cool winds of winter blow? Or when a Tornado or Hurricane strikes? Can we outrun the bird flu, or is that just hype. Are all around the world we living only with people who like and respect us and our beliefs?

Do you have money to sustain you for at least 6 months. If you couldn't afford to go to the store do you have clothes to cover you and a source of warmth, and ability to cook something to fill that increasingly hollow spot in your midsection?

Do you have something that will continue to bring in the necessities of life if you are laid up in the bed from illness, or injury, or simply becoming too old to do what it takes to bring in additional funds.

There is more to life than the next soap on tv, or the next sixpack on the weekends or the olympics. They may distract us. They may entertain us (nothing wrong with appropriate entertainment).

Do you ever just sit and consider the future? ?

Sanity or Insanity

At first glance the thought of having a foreign entity have control of SIX of our major east coast seaports produces the gut-felt reaction of "What the hell are those idiots in Washington Thinking?".

By now anyone who watches any news on tv or listens to the radio realizes that the British corporation which owns the business which has the port controlling concession has made a deal to sell that business to a United Arab Emirate government entity. Let me make that clear.
1. a privately owned British business is selling their business to a UAE Government business.
2. The UAE is a moslem State from which 2 of the 9/11 hijackers came.
3. The UAE is not a private business, it is a political business.

On the other hand, The UAE has been the friend of the U.S. in our so called war on terror.
1. They allowed our forces to base out of there.
2. They have condemmed the islamic terrorists. (note that I do not capatalize the word islam, they do not deserve it)

For a better discussion of this matter, may I recommend you read this;
http://boortz.com/nuze/index.html
I know that it may be a long read for some of you, but the practice will be good for you.

I don't have a clue as to whether this is a security issue for the U.S..

My Gut feeling is that it is something akin to milking a porcipine. Best done verrrry carefully, and with great trepidation, and reluctance.

My Intellectual feeling is that a soverign nation has to have as much of its infurstructure as possible owned by citizens of that nation. Not from a security standpoint. Rather from a SURIVAL STANDPOINT. An ECONOMIC STANDPOINT.

We have for many years been sending our jobs and factories to foreign lands. This may make sense in some minds. Yes, wages are cheaper there. Yes, foreign countries eager for economic stimulus to their countries will give incentives to companies to invest there and employ their unemployed. In many cases we built them housing an schools so as to have at least a semi-literate employee base. Our own government has a department which uses TAXPAYER MONEY to encourage business to move overseas or to foreign countries.

I just wonder if all of our jobs are sent overseas, where the wages to support our lifestyle will come from. Henry Ford, it's said, was asked why he paid his workers so well. He replyed that he wanted his employees to be able to buy his cars. He knew that in order for his product to sell well, as many people as possible had to have the means to buy what initally was a luxurey item. But which has become a neccesity. Why, it's not uncommon for our poor welfare recipiants in this country to have at least one and more commonly two cars in their driveway. And Generally at least one Television.

We cannot long survive producing only paper and producing mind-numbing reality shows on tv. The home building sector is sustaining this economy. When people come to the harsh reality that their biggest investment is in fact no investment, but a liability, when it no longer automatically goes up to keep pace with inflation or more, but in fact looses value, what do you think will happen?

I encourage you all to give this some thought and to express yourself to your congress critter and Senator. You can find how to contact them at this website,

http://www.vote-smart.org/index.htm

E-mail them, write them, call them on the telephone, send smoke signals for God's sake. Let's hold them accountable for things which they took an oath to defend.

Pass this off or pass it on.

I would be glad to see your comments and discussion.

Let's hope the Kudzu is not too deep to escape for a short time at least.

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.