What are you afraid of?

What are you afraid of?

That "tsk tsk tsk" as you sit in the Doctors office? Opening the electric bill at the first of the month? Of not hearing the car pull into the drive at 11:00pm the night your daughter has her first date? Watching the boss bring the checks out at the end of the week and hoping there's not a pink slip in yours? Standing at the grocery checkout and watching the numbers add up higher and higher?

We all, even those of us too proud to admit it, have those things which cause us a bit of concern, whether great or small.

I used to worry that my falling asleep before I got to the "amen" in my bedtime talks with God might show a lack of proper respect.

But there is one that most of us don't want to talk about, except in whispers, only with like minded friends.

Check out this article over at Whiskey & Gunpowder.

April 15th is coming soon. Don't tell me your heartbeat doesn't pick up about 2 beats per minute.

Always there.

I just came in from walking the pooch down the drive for his nightly sniff and snoop, combined, of course, with whizzing on ever spot he thought appropriate to leave his mark. At all of 18 lbs. (which granted is a little chubby for a Yorky) he thinks he's 10 feet tall and bullet proof.
Truth be told he owns the Kudzu Grotto (KG) and will loudly protest any incursion....... even if he only thinks he heard something approach. Woe betide any other dog that should approach the chain link boundary of his domain. He may not be able to get to them but you'll think he's gonna chew through the fence and gnaw them down to kibble size.

Some people live with delusions of being more important than they actually are also. For instance most all politicians of whatever stature.........even if it's only county marshal of Franklin County, GA, one step up from dog catcher, but he get's to ride around in a county truck that has Marshall painted on the side.

We've got a lot of deluded people up in D.C. also. They think they are great leaders, but take a look at the fine messes they've gotten us into.

Some of us think we have the power too........after all we contribute to the parties and pull the lever for the above mentioned bozos.

It's a clear night here close by the Classic City. A little chilly to be walking the dog in pajama bottoms and a cotton tee, but as I walked with the pooch back toward the house.... I looked up and thought to look for the North Star. I immediately spotted one that I thought was it. And then I second guessed my self and had to look for the Big Dipper, or Ursa Major, to confirm identity. I was gratified to see I was still able to spot the North Star (actually at my age I'm glad to be able to see it) and to know I could count on it to give me a sense of my direction.

It's hard to get lost when you know what direction you're headed in......

Maybe we all ought to look up in the night sky a little more often......

Maybe make it a requirement for any political office to be taken blindfolded out onto a hill on a dark night and pick out the North Star within a minute.......no second guesses allowed.

If they can't find it, make them walk home. Alone.

Tyranny? You decide.

While I might have chosen to call it something other than dollars, I hardly think This amounts to terrorism.

Heaven forbid that someone get the idea that the current Federal_Reserve_System"> notes (every penny of which represent a debt instrument obligation of our treasury to the Central Bank) issued coins and paper money are somehow less valuable than pure silver.

I wouldn't be surprised to find this guy disappeared to GITMO before long.

Who The Hell...........WTF

I would probably have wagered a smallish sum.......perhaps a nickel, against the chance of me ever agreeing with anything Louis Farrakan ever uttered.

Color me Embarrassed .

After a day of lounging in the shade of a pine tree on Fox Lake, watching those with more willingness to brave the sun than I, pluck crappie after crappie from the water, and come home to a TV dinner followed by homemade Banana Pudding, to see on the news feed that my government has launched cruise missiles into Libya........I have to ask the same question of Obummer. "Who do you think you are?"

I wonder what the reactions of the good citizens of the USA would have thought if after the last election when the GOP won a majority in the House of Representative and listening to all the caterwalling from the Left if Libya had launched missiles into Washington, DC in support of the Democrats?

What do you think the people of Libya think about what we unleashed on their sovereign soil?

For some reason, I don't think we won any hearts and minds even though we are supposedly supporting the rebels. We still sent bombs into their country because Obummer was embarrassed by media reports of how ineffectual he has been.

This will not end well............no matter the outcome in the short term.

Just my opinion.

Unintended Consequences they never quite turn out like you think they will.

I suspect the Muslim Brotherhood and Bin Laden are laughing their asses off right about now.

Consider

......the situation in Wisconsin for a moment.

With all the lay offs all over the country, what do you want to bet that double the number of teachers who are shutting down the schools there could be found among the unemployed and might me more than happy to fill those positions for 3/4th the salaries the protesters were making.
Fire 'em all and hire non-union workers immediately.

Could it be done?

At a loss

The is so much anger being shown by people around the world this week that I truly am at a loss for words.

Most anybody that's spent more than 5 minutes with me will tell you that's not an everyday occurrence. Give me an opening, no matter how small and I'll attempt to fill it with my tongue............wait that didn't come out quite how I intended it.......

Let's just say that I have an opinion on most everything, and mostly am not shy about expressing said opinions.

Lately, however, I've begun to think that maybe I should just keep my thoughts to myself. (Who says you can't teach and old dog new tricks?) The jury is not in however and maybe I'm leaping to conclusions a little too fast.

It has been said that change is inevitable and that our ability to change with the times has a lot to do with how successful we will be. (take a look back at the dinosaurs for instance, or the Native Americans......well up until they got the idea of running the gambling houses to get their due one mark at a time.)

By the time this coming summer ends I expect to see more traumatic change in the world than has occurred in many a moon.

Whatta ya think? Am I just whistling in the dark?

Wednesday

Early (for me) on a Wednesday morning.

I was awakened by the wife in response to a note left on the coffee maker. I've become much too used to awakening when the urge strikes me and have determined to get up at an earlier set time. We'll see how it goes.

One thing about my avocation.........not a job, as it's self imposed, is that I get to do a little traveling around North Georgia and see some of my friends made over the last 16 years. Yeah, we do a little business........but, I'd be just as glad to see them over a coke at the local convenience store. Most people are pretty nice one on one and it seems to me that if we could get more of that type communication going between peoples of the world that international relations might go along a bit better.

Of course for that to work we would have to keep the politicians and bankers completely out of the picture.

I know........ a dreamer I remain.

On the other hand, for some of the asshats in the world we just need to use a neutron bomb on them and take all their usable land and stuff.

This has the advantage of directness and efficiency and would soon eliminate either all the asshats or us........whichever came first.

Of course, I, as ruler of the world and Regent Potential of the Universe, would be in charge of deciding which ass hats would hear the gong.

We've had a couple of very nice days here in NE GA. Bright sun and warmish temps...
.. just a long sleeved shirt and it's pretty nice by mid day. A little cool in the mornings......I always check before starting down the ramp off the back deck, to see if there is any frost that might cause my feet to slip. A few more sudden smack downs of that nature and any brains in by buttocks will start slipping out the cracks.

Ya'll have a good day.........go out and make some money.....then convert it to gold or silver so as to actually have something of value.

It still surprises me that people will actually trade those items for pieces of paper with green ink on them.

The handwriting is on the wall and I have little faith the people in Washington are smart enough to keep us from going into default.

In The Garden

We got the ol' Grump planted today.

After several emotional days with lots of people to call......lots of people calling with condolences, questions about arrangements, visits to the funeral home, the viewing, the renewing of auld acquaintances, the sharing of memories, looking thru his picture boxes, (remind me to post the picture of Miss Panama City Beach 1971, my better half in her pink Bikini) (I'm thinking of making it my screen saver)), the murmurs of, "Oh, don't he look natural, just like he's sleeping", (and the Funeral home did do a good job ), the Au Capella singing by the members of the Shoals Creek Primitive Baptist Church of the always favorite In The Garden and Amazing Grace, 4 of the Fulmer Sisters blending their sweet voices in harmony, and a comforting message by the Preacher and his son Chris, who have for the last 5 years had made it a point to drive 40 to 50 miles each month to bring the love of Carl's brothers and sisters in Christ to him, we got the Grump laid in a clear area of the cemetary surrounded by oak and poplar trees, then partook of a delicious meal prepared by the ladies of the Church.

If that is a long, run-on, blurry sentence, it is exactly how it seemed. Time rushing past with much to do, much done, and finally we can look forward to taking a deep breath, a little bit slower pace, a time to adjust to having only two people and a neurotic pooch in the house. (It just may have been more stressful on the pooch than on the wife and I).

Several people expressed their condolences and sympathy here and I very much appreciate it. Very kind of you. While I've only met and known you through your blogs and your occasional visits to mine, you feel like family and I appreciate you much more than words on a screen can express. Thank you.

Tomorrow is another day. We plan to sleep late and take the pooch for a little ride which he loves to take.....if only for the opportunity to stick his fuzzy head out the passenger side window and get brain freeze as his ears and hair are pushed back by the wind.

After all is said and done.......here we remain. Projects waiting to be undertaken and accomplished. Leaning on one another for support. Looking forward to another 43 years of marriage...(well, at least I am. The wife is not so sure she'll make it that far).

And so it goes.......Another Saturday Night at the Kudzu Grotto.

R.I.P.

The ol' Grump passes during the night........sometime after midnight when I finally lay down.
He'd had a busy day with visitors and was tired. He'd gotten up around 7:30pm to eat 2 bites of an egg and cheese biscuit the wife had cooked for him...took his pills and had his first nebulizer treatment.
When I put him to bed he wanted to keep his quilted jacket on over his PJ's and apparently at some point he got too warm, sat up on the edge of his hospital bed...took both the coat and PJ top off.......put the quilted jacked back on, buttoned it neatly and simply fell back with his feet off the bed.

Quicker than maybe we were expecting, but more gently than I expected also.

So the end or one more period of time. New beginnings for us all as we'll adjust to the absence and he to the presence of those gone on before.

So: R.I.P Carl Edward Murphy (12-18-1928 - 2-8-2011)

A world gone mad

Who in their right mind 60 years or so ago would have predicted the messes we would find ourselves in today.

I expected anti-gravity levitation belts that would whisk me effortlessly anywhere I wanted by now. Not that I'm complaining about the ride in the Big Horn Hemi-powered Dodge in the yard.

We've been paying bribes to Egypt for the past 30 years to prop up the government there and what has it gotten us? A government that spent the money on keeping themselves and their enforcers in power and trickled little to none down to the population at large. Hit them with an increase in food costs past what they can afford and I'm surprised the resulting riots have been as small as they have.

What would we do here? With millions of privately owned weapons and vehicles to get places can you imagine the carnage that would have taken place?

On the other hand the fast food diet we subject ourselves to is now claimed to Lower Our IQ's


DUH. Huh.

Keith Olbermann is now going to send tingles up Pope Al Gore's legs.

Obama's people have no concept of the "open to the Public" idea.

Must be all those Big Mac's with super-sized fries.

Not only is Joan Rivers still alive , they feature her in a Superbowl ad that doubtless has teenage boys all over the country jerking off in the closet.

Oh sure we believe that's really her. She's had more nips and tucks than an Amish Quilt. Doubtless she has to shave her throat already, you can only imagine whats hanging between her shriveled dugs. Probably looks like the backside of an ol' Jersey cow. (shiver)

Ya'll come back when you recover from that image.

Another week gone by.

The past eight days have been a little hectic.

The news on the ol' Grump is that he's still kicking but not very high. Kidneys started back up somewhat, but circulation to extremities is decreasing. Feet are swelled past the point of being able to get his house shoes on him. Bigger size coming up.
The hospice nurse comes out twice a week and takes vitals, adjusts medication and consults with the wife. Tuesdays and Fridays are bath day and thank goodness hospice provides people to help with that. The first two had him laughing and giggling but the one today was older and a little more dour, although she did sing off key which aggrieved the Grump somewhat.
We continue to adjust to the changes. More of a stress on the wife of my youth.
Ya'll keep here in your prayers

Monday Update

The ol' Grump has been sent home from the hospital. He has had 4 days of people paying more attention to him and he's eating it up. Every memory he's ever had is told and retold.

The situation with the Kidneys has not changed, so they quit giving any medication for it. They also disabled the defibrillator he's had for the past 5 years.
A hospital bed has been moved into his room and the old double bed moved out back to the tool shop. The hospice nurse will start visiting tomorrow.

As they say, "time will tell", so all we can do is all that will get done and finally his preacher will get to preach him into the ground.

The Grump is OK with it.........it's been a long life with all it attendant ups and downs.

And so it goes.

Morning News in the Afternoon

The phone awakened the wife and I around 2:30am. After fighting with, and nearly being strangled by the mask and hose to the CPAP machine I finally made it to the phone before the ol' Grump's nurse hung up.

It seemed the ol' Grump was living up to his nickname and giving the staff at the hospital fits.

Accusing them of trying to rip him off and rob them for his money......the insurance companies were all thieves who weren't sending the checks when they should, how in the hell was he going to pay.......

I dressed and instructed the wife to go back to sleep. (does she listen.......NO)

Arriving at his room I calmed the ol' Grump down and finally got him to lie back and let me pull the cover up over him. It only took 40 minutes or so. I stayed til 6:30 and came back home since I had to make a trip to Cleveland this morning. The wife went to sit with him.

Trying to drain the fluid from him is not working......kidneys shutting down... Dialysis not much of an option...the Doctors about of options......friends and family coming round.

We'll see.

Ya'll pray for the wife.......and the ol' Grump, if so inclined. We'll see how it goes.

Friday Evening 1/23/11 9:56pm

Finally the week is drawing to a close. I'm ready.

Sunday started out with my left shoulder attacking me at odd times for no apparent reason. WTF (winning the future, Right, thanks presbo) is up with that. I know the rotator cuff is torn, so is the right one, but this would make my knees wobble and stop me in my tracks while I was just walking along.

Monday morning I hie myself down to the local bone popper, Dr. Hooper, Chiropractor, having figured out that if I turned my head to the left and down the pain would shoot to my shoulder. A quick ride on the massage table then a few well considered adjustments to the spinal bones and, voila' no more pains. This was great news since I'm a wimp when it comes to pain.......I mean come on, I take enough central nervous system suppressant to not feel being hit by a train, I don't have to take shoulder pain.

By Tuesday I'm all kinds of disgusted with the noise coming out of the talking boxes and the interwebz. If you are into that sort of thing you can check out Drudge Reports or visit your local leather clad dominatrix student of the school of Marquis de Sade. I'm ready to find 50 or 60 wooded acres with a bubbling brook and go sit myself beside it until the mushroom clouds dissipate from over the major cities or the smoke from the riots blows away.......whichever comes first. Don't bother me, let me listen to the water and the wind in the river cane.

Wednesday I'm wondering if gold is going to fall back to 1980 levels, and the coming financial, job, food, energy holocaust is indefinitely postponed.

Thursday, the ol' Grump needs to go to the emergency since he has swelled up with fluid 'til he can hardly breath and get around. The wife takes care of that while I take care of business, which I was glad of since my favorite thing in the world is to wait around in the hospital emergency room waiting for someone else to be seen.
He is admitted and kept overnight while they try with medicine to get him to take a leak larger that half a teacup. Wife is some stressed and the poor pouch having to stay in the house most of the day totally by himself is near catatonic with distress. His joy when the wife got back home is pure unconditional joy and love.

Friday, the ol' Grump is still no better, maybe a little the worse since he is more disoriented than ever and is afraid the cost of hospitalization will be too much. This from an 82 year old with money in the bank, social insecurity, a county pension which includes insurance in addition to medicare, a supplemental policy for everything else and holds a note on the rental home I bought from him. He ain't got to worry about money, but he does.

And I.....well I found this little item this morning.



1929 100 Lire, issued by The Sovereign State of the Vatican, 90.8% gold with a portrait of the then Pope, Pius XI.

Out of a mintage of 10,000 this one fell into my hands.

1929 was the year my father was born in Birmingham, Alabama. This one is probably a keeper. Researching a coin online will get you more information than you can use sometimes, but the end results are almost always interesting even if the coin has no great value.

Still it may be comforting to meditate upon as I sit in the cane beside the creek.

We'll see what tomorrow and next week bring, if I'm still around and if I feel like it.

Hope your weekend is great. Get off your ass and go somewhere and do something.

Once upon a time long ago

and not so far away, I owned a dairy farm. Well I owned the cows and equipment, part of the land with my mother and sisters, and all of the debt.

And life was good, well except for the getting up at 4am and getting slapped in the face by a wet shitty, half frozen bovine tail while trying to milk the ol' hussies. But, mostly good. Because we could sell all the milk we could produce, even if our government set allotment was lower, the Atlanta Dairies Cooperative, which not only bottled milk but made ice cream and had a Cheese plant to take care of any surplus over the demand for milk and ice cream.

A lot of dairies cooperatives were not so fortunate and were selling milk to the Federal government as powdered milk, Cheese and butter which the gov't would dole out to less fortunate countries, less fortunate citizens (read those on the public dole).

However even with all their largess the gov't still had to pay billions to store milk products, with the amount growing larger ever year. They did this because the farmers had an awfully good lobby in Washington, DC which funneled much moola into the pockets of congressmen and senators. And life was good for them and us.......

Well, up until the gov't in it's wisdom decided they couldn't afford the cost of storage anymore and sought to reduce the amount of milk purchased.

You'd think that would be easy enough, just stop buying the surplus milk, right?
The farmers were smart enough to figure out that reducing the size of the herds, feeding less high protein grain and other measures would work and within a week, voila' no more surplus.

Wrong that would be way too simple. No.......the gov't in it's wisdom would pay the farmers not to produce milk.

I'll not bore you with the process, let's just assume the gov't got to spend billions more. And the farmers went on to other profitable pursuits.

Today we have a problem with unemployment in the nation. Rates, depending on who you ask are over 9% according to the gov't figures and in actual fact are closer to 20%.

Many and varied are the solutions put forth by the experts, most of them long on predictions and very, very short on specifics.

I have a plan.

Want to really fix the unemployment problem? Listen up. Eliminate all bailouts, subsidies, giveaways and support systems - both to business and to labor. Abolish all employment restrictions and employment paperwork. All free labor - undocumented non-citizens - to compete equally with native-born workers. Cut taxes to a flat 10% rate for everyone. Abolish every government agency that begins with a letter of the alphabet. Then abolish the rest of them.

I confidently guarantee that the nation would be back at full employment within 30 days.

I can be confident because everybody except the criminal element would be busy working their fingers to the bone growing a garden on any available piece of dirt, and defending it with extreme prejudice to the criminal element many of which would be left to rot where they lay, or thinking green, we could use them for fertilizer. Or in more rational societies they'd be hooked to plows to till more ground.

As long as the feds take the pressure off labor to make adjustments. Giving food stamps, minimum wages, unemployment compensation, make-work, shovel-ready boondoggles - all these things cause workers to think they can continue as before...that a "recovery" of the good ol' days is just around the corner...and that they'll soon be earning as much as they were in 2007. Maybe more!

Tain't gonna happen.

Remember the cooking, gardening and canning advice your grandmother tried to give you. You'll wish you had her around for a little advice again.

I wonder sometimes.....

.....Why I ever try to put thought to keybord.

Especially when there are people like Vin around.

Go Here and read his "I like to pay taxes, with them I buy Civilization".

Necessities......

... What do you consider necessities.

Food, water, shelter, transportation (I love my Truck), a source of income that allows you to provide yourself with these things and hopefully a little more.

I could add chocolate (dark) but my body would probably be better off with out it, although my mental state might get a little out of kilter. (Heaven knows I'm not fit to be around most of the time, but deprive me of a source of comfort and I won't be held responsible. Just sayin'......)

From whence cometh this rambling you might ask? Well, you might although there are few enough of you that check in here, statistically we matter less than the gnats bite on an elephants ass.

But as we were riding by the public housing (welfare housing) the other day it was pointed out to me that *..... lived there now along with her off sprung because she is mentally incompetent. This led to me asking, "what purpose does it serve the government to maintain this waste of air and her equally useless youngun,for it too will never be capable of much, at the citizenry's expense"?

The answer came quickly, "They've got to have something to spend the money on".

Well said. But more correctly, the government has to have something to spend the tax money's and the money's they borrow on else how could they stand before us and say, "Look what good use we have made off all that money and beside, you are not having to take care of your own defects and self created problems yourself". Lord knows none of us want to take responsibility for our old, incompetent, burdensome relatives, repeatedly pregnant daughters, drug addled, alcohol besotted, or simply too sorry to work, sons. Do we? Well?

If the government didn't take at least half of everything you earn in some form or other, of which half or more is spent on the bureaucracy administering this clusterf*** do you think that costs of care for these individuals might not be greatly reduced?

Just wondering about the necessity........

A Confession.......of sorts

I must confess to stealing the following paragraphs from an email received from The Daily Reckoning.

Look...according to our new Daily Reckoning theme...political parties, voting, the blah, blah of partisan debates...as well as Paul Krugman...

...they are all almost irrelevant...all “products of the past”...

...relics...emblems...icons...symbols...

...full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing.

The real trends are bigger than that. What is at stake here is a model of government that began with Otto von Bismarck. It is a model in which the state supposedly serves the interests of the citizens. (Under the previous model, there were no citizens...just subjects who owed a duty of obedience to the sovereign...and in exchange received protection.) In Bismarck’s model, citizens give up a portion of their output...and stand ready to protect the state with their lives. In return, the state gives them the right to participate (through elections etc)...provides protection from foreign states and domestic outlaws...and makes sure that their physical needs are taken care of.

This model seems to be headed for bankruptcy. The big question is: when the state is unable to provide the benefits it has promised...what will happen? Will the masses accept less? Or will they revolt? Or will a new model evolve...peacefully?

You can get a free daily email, just google Daily Reckoning and I'm sure somewhere you'll be given an opportunity. Of course you will have to put up with your fair share of advertisements, but, I reckon (poor pun) it's a small price to pay for another view of the world.

Often after reading thoughts that are not programmed into my consciousness by the MSM I ponder how different input requires different outputs.

The question is......"Or will they revolt"?

Not so much of a question as I'm pretty sure they will, just when and how bad will it get seems a more pressing question. Which leads to further questions. Will the military be used against us on our own soil? Will the leaders of the military follow those orders.

Do I have enough of.............. (fill in your own blank)

How safe is my present location? If not how can I get to a better one.......and how soon?

Questions and answers differ.......or is the question relevant?

Noise

Noise is, it seems, increasing every day.

Not only the constant ringing in my ears, the one truly constant companion of the last almost 40 years, but the noise of planes, trains, automobiles and especially the noises from all the electronic devices that we have made such a part of our daily lives over the last 100 years.

We've taken the telephone, that I can remember from the late 50's as being a source of irritation because the curious neighbor from up the street would stealthily pick up when she knew it was our ring, to a constant companion that tracks us every where and is answered no matter where one is, whether in the middle of a conversation to the solitude of the toilet facilities.

Radios which once were listened to only in the evening, or perhaps only on Saturday night when the Grand Ol' Opry came on, to a little bud with wires growing out of them to remain in a persons ears 24/7.

You begin to see the trend?

We've become so interconnected, so used to all the information constantly bombarding us that we lose our perspective.

Last weekends shootings in Tuscon, while deplorable, and tragic to the individuals involved who were killed or wounded, distressing to those that witnessed the violence, horrible to those who's loved ones died or were hurt, has become another source of noise, eagerly jumped on by the media who's only existence it seems is to ensure that not a single, breathing human on the planet has not only heard about it, but is to react to it as if it had happened to their family and made to react in ways that someone else wishes them to react.

Way too much noise methinks.

For I, personally, am not so much moved by this latest event. Indeed had I never heard, read, seen any of the reports my life would not, and has not, really been affected.

I mean really, am I supposed to take upon me some additional burden in my life over a shooting in Arizona? Is this supposed to add to some collective angst we must all share in? Am I to bear some responsibility for what happened?

I think not.

Since before recorded history began, I suspect, there have been those, who for what ever reason, have wanted to pick up a stick, or rock, and bash in the head of someone or destroy something, for reasons the rest of us cannot truly imagine.

Perhaps their wiring is faulty.

So..........I shall continue on my way, vigilant to the same degree as I generally am, as oblivious to the same degree as always, trying to get through the day despite the ringing in my ears and the noisome world around me, living for the now, since I'm convinced that none of us are assured tomorrow, much less the next 60 minutes.

Still Cold

At least more of the ice and snow melted away yesterday.

I was awakened in bliss as only a grand father can be when the youngest grand daughter shook me and said, "Paw Paw I had a bad dream, tell me a story".

How's that for fearless? To have a bad dream and then expect me to tell a story that will make it all better. Truth be told, I can do that when necessary.

The best thing about stories for the g-daughter is that you just ask what story she wants to tell and she'll give instructions on what it is to be about, who the characters are and what they are to do. Simply follow along and the storyline will be given in great detail.

I did doze off a couple of times there and had to be roused by the question, "Paw Paw, what happened then?"

So the day is off to a bright shiny start. I've eaten my two eggs, (over easy) my bacon (not too crispy, just right) cheese grits (yummy).

Ya'll have a good day. I'm off to play.