Mouth of the Brazos

Do-gooders

2012-01-25T03:59:00.002-06:00

How many fucking times does it take for these stupid motherfuckers to figure out that muslim territory is no place to try to be nice? The only reason for an American to go anywhere around there is to shoot the nasty bastards.

Republicans

2012-01-08T08:57:00.002-06:00

Watched the debate last night. It pretty much sucked. I think I'm about to default to Romney. Not because I think he's so great, but because the rest of them are pitiful.

I just can not stand Gingrich, and I think he'd have a hard time whupping Obama.

Paul is just too much of a muslim lover and jew hater - and just between you and me, a hell of a lot of his supporters are eat up with that shit, too. Not to mention 9-11 truthers and other outre faiths. If you are a Paulist, and (I vote for the man every couple of years and sometimes in the "R" presidential primaries, too.) you don't like what I said, kiss my ass. I know this because I have been there, and I'm on some of the email lists.

Perry can't hack the national stage. For me, he can't even hack the Texas stage.

The latest "not-Romney", Santorum...I dunno. There is something a bit disturbing about the guy. Some of his viewpoints are not too conversant with reality, either.

But the main thing I wanted to note about the debate...Diane Sawyer makes me want to PUKE. She is the kind of woman that makes me want to be totally gross and rude and obscene, just to watch her squirm and desperately avoid any appearance of disagreeing with me, and show tolerance, and she's just so fucking nice on the outside...I bet she is a stone bitch in private.

Stephanopolous - I guess that's the correct spelling - is the personification of a dweeb. A prickly little dweeb, but a dweeb nonetheless. I mean prickly in the sense of being like a prick.

I don't know who the fuck the other guy was - he didn't seem as ridiculous as the other two, so I didn't catch his name.

Oh. Well OK, then. Everything is going to be fine, now.

2012-01-06T07:18:00.002-06:00

For sure. No doubt about it. Now that we have some Harvard people on board, smarter people running things, I'm sure the Astros next year will have to throw a few games just to keep the other teams from being too jealous.

Bah.

2011-12-27T12:57:00.003-06:00

I put up a Christmas decoration this year. I quit doing outside lights and etcetera some years back, after working a couple of days in a cold rain putting the damn things up, then going outside to find every other strand of lights was out. I decided to keep my lights and other decorations in the house, where any sane person would put them.

My wife/mate differs, and she does some little stuff outside - and bitches at me about my NOT doing more. But I can handle it, and so does she, since I am easy, i.e., helpful in doing the interior decorations.

I felt badly about doing nothing outsied, however. So, like I said, I did put up ONE decoration. This one:

At peace.

2011-12-22T05:05:00.002-06:00

I’m not sure if I posted about this or not. I did a search, but that don’t mean shit, because I don’t use key words or anything like them. So if you have heard it before, give me a fucking break, willya?

Guy that built my entertainment center died not long ago. I think he was what you'd call a semi-recluse. He was pretty cool, actually. Lived alone, out on Hwy 36, between West Columbia and Damon, back to the north (or east, if you believe the fallacy that 36 is a north-south road, when it's really southeast-northwest), toward the Brazos. Go down a side road a mile or three, hang a left on a graveled side road of that side road, down between head-high milo, then take another left off that side road down one of those dirt roads that is just two tire tracks through the field, wind around a bit, then you come to a shack that looks hand made. Portly fella sittin’ on the back porch with a guitar, wearing shorts and a sweat-soaked, sorta dirty, wife-beater undershirt comes walking out in his flip-flops with a big old grin on his face.

He took me out to the barn, not far from the back door of the shack and it turns out not to be a barn, but a workshop, filled with projects finished and unfinished, sawdust from cedar, pine, pecan, oak, all varieties of wood on the floor, walls, ceiling, coating everything in the shop. Lumber stacked and stored everywhere. He had made himself a sawmill, there. He could cut up a log and make his own boards from trees. He liked working in cedar, and pressed me pretty hard to make my entertainment center out of it, but I didn’t want cedar because I didn’t want the color. Didn’t go with the red pine floor of the living room and the furniture in there.

Anyhow, I thought he was kinda cool. I liked him and mostly admired what I imagined was his having come to terms with his existence and his choice of lifestyle. I was probably totally wrong, but that’s what I imagined. What I wanted to imagine.

My good friend txtd me that he hoped he’d died at peace. I txtd back that I doubted it. I figure he died just like most everyone dies. Fretting until the very end about things done and regretted, about things not done, also regretted, worrying about what you are gonna go about the bills next week and forgetting that you are fucking dying and your bills don’t mean shit any more, and realizing that, really, they never did matter at all, and also realizing that you wasted huge portions of your life sweating bullets over shit that, in the final analysis, don’t mean fuck-all.

But, maybe not.

Bible study?

2011-12-21T05:57:00.003-06:00

I keep half-ass remembering things I read in the bible and I don't know where to check myself to be sure I'm remembering it right.

I don't think I'm disremembering - I am pretty sure I remember it correctly, but not POSITIVE, if you know what I mean.

Like the other day on one of the fucking heathen TV shows they were talking about Israel vs muslims and claiming that the bible claims that muslims (Arabs) were descendants of Ishmael. I didn't think that was right. I re-read some of that this morning (0400, when I woke up and got up, which is pretty much the same thing for me. I wake up. I get up.) and I can see how that could be conjectured.

But it's only conjecture, as best as I can tell. The Arabs (muslims) could have just as well have sprung from Esau as Ishmael, far as my reading and understanding reaches. Nowhere that I remember does the Bible say the word "Arab". Could very well be wrong about that...but I don't think so.

One thing I remember reading and am not sure if I'm right: Where God tells someone who complains about the good fortune of one of God's favorites, telling God that his favorite is not worthy of God's favor. God says something like: it's none of your business who I like and who I dislike, so shut up.

Another line (and stay out of this one Scribbler, this ain't your part of the Bible, so how would you know?) is where Jesus is talking about why he speaks in parables and riddles and doesn't just come out and say what is what. He tells one of the 12, about the rest of the world, something like: it is not given to them to know. You (meaning the 12) know more than them, but even you are not given the whole truth. It is reserved for Jesus and God to know the whole truth.

There's gotta be some sort of reference I can go to to lead me directly (more or less) to these things when I question my memory, without reading the whole Bible again. Lord knows it wouldn't hurt me to read it again, I certainly have read plenty of garbage that doesn't stretch my brain enough, unlike the Bible, which definitely does stretch one's intellect, memory, and comprehension, more than any other book I've ever read. And I have read plenty of them in my 64 years, podnah, trust me.

On a slightly different tangent - I'm thinking about taking the clippers and cutting all of my hair almost off. If my wife/mate wouldn't shit a foot long stingin' worm, I would.

Capsizing

2011-12-18T07:22:00.002-06:00

This made me think of my uncle Hubert, who I always knew as "Hubie". I reckon everyone else called him that, too, but I can't say for his contemporaries, of course.

Reason it made me think of him is that it happened to him, and the guys he was working with, on a rig in Maracaibo Bay (Venezuela). He said his USN training saved him, because they taught them to run uphill on a capsizing ship - if you go downhill, it sinks on top of you, and you are a goner.

He talked about that some... I feel sorry for him, looking back. He had a rough time with women. His wife being the worst trial for him, splitting up and getting back together multiple times. Damn, she was beautiful, though. He was a functioning alcoholic, I believe. Made tons of money, lost it through various episodes and processes. Ended up living alone except for his (high-biting dog Coco) in a trailer by Lake Bisteneau. You hat to go over a couple of steep ridgelines accessible via a single dirt/gravel road that was impassable in rain, snow, or sleet to get there. He loved it there, and it was nice, I admit. He had a stroke and laid across his bed for three days before someone found him and pulled him back from the end, all to no real purpose, he never got much better before the second one hit him and ended it all.

When the sun gets high, and there's a pall upon the room...

2011-12-18T05:25:00.003-06:00

We had a sunny day yesterday, first one in quite a while that rain was not threatening or everything was damp from the fog, so I took the opportunity to get up on the roof.

We have a tin roof. Old-style tin, not the heavy gauge interlocking metal that I seem to see more and more of, any more. I wish we had one like that, but I don’t think the old (old) trusses in this house could take the weight. Same with asphalt shingles. We’d have to replace way too much lumber that’s been there for over 100 years, and all the square nails in those petrified boards would be gone forever. It just seems like a waste, and an affront to the original builders, a kind of a statement of a lack of faith, maybe, to remove the stuff that has endured that long and replace it with some more recent technology.

Thing about it is, the tin roof (tin, I’m sure everyone knows, is a misnomer. It’s a thin gauge of steel, actually. Ours variety is called “five point” tin.) Andyways, the grommeted screws that hold the pieces down, if the installer happens to hit a knot, or a nail, the screw doesn’t seat, and the grommet doesn’t quite seal, so you eventually get a leak at the head of that screw, especially as the heating and cooling cycle makes that tin expand and shrink, the coefficient of linear thermal expansion of steel being kind of problematic in this application. They have that problem with vehicles, too, by the way.

So, I’m up there trying the Flex-Seal that is advertised on TV. (The ad where the guy replaces the bottom of an aluminum boat with a screen door, then seals it with this miracle stuff and it’s way floaty. Doesn’t say how LONG it’s floaty, but still very impressive.) So I thought I’d try it. Let you know in 25-50 years how it’s working out.

Don’t you guys just hate it when I’m off work and have time and inclination to hack out this meaningless shit? I have come back in here and edited this post three times, now. Amazing what you can miss.

A whole new kind of ass test

2011-12-17T16:07:00.006-06:00

So I went in for the new doc’s report on the endoscopy I had last week. Now, they gave me a test kit for my ass. I never saw one like this before. I had those old ones, where you don’t eat red meat for three days, or something, and, hell, I just shit-canned those. When the fuck ever in my life have I gone three days without eating some kind of red meat? Maybe in Nam, when we all ran out of chow except for my emergency reserves (ham and eggs, chopped, water added). Other than that – I’ve gone a day, maybe even two days, but by the third day, I was headin’ for a fuckin’ cheeseburger, or steak, or meat loaf…some kinda REAL chow.

This one is different, though. I opened it up, and figured out what they want you to do. You’re spose to put a piece of real thin paper across the toilet seat. It even has little adhesive strips on each end so you can stick it down, and keep it from falling in the shitter. You’re spose to aim your turds, I reckon just one would be plenty, so that it lays on that little hammock, thing. It’s got a picture on the instructions. Then, you take this little vial with some kinda liquid in it, and (I guess, I didn't open it.) there’s a wand inside, because it shows a pic where you stick the wand in the turd in six different places, then put it in the vial, screw the cap on, and take it in to the shit-meister.

They caution you to NOT throw the liquid away. Don't know why. I speculate that their testing is actually done on the liquid.

I don’t know if I can do this. I have never attempted to aim with my ass. I have done some target-shooting with my piss, and I wasn’t too fucking bad at it either, podnah. I could piss about 20 feet, after I had had several beers. Haven’t tried it in a long, long time. Scared to, now. Something is liable to break in my old wore-out guts. It puts a lot of pressure on your pisser. It might be better if I go out to the back fence where Bosco shits and lay one out there to do the magic wand on. It'll have to be late at night, now, with all the new neighbors.

Two or three recently read books

2011-11-15T14:16:00.002-06:00

I read Hart’s War, by John Katzenbach, and it was OK. Just OK. It was a fairly good drama. I just kept thinking, “Why, oh why, does every (and I mean EVERY) book that features participants of both African and Caucasian descent have to have a super-Negro?” The black guy is better. He’s stronger physically. Almost god-like in his physical prowess. He’s better educated, though it was at his own efforts, not at any of the ‘white’ schools, and if he was in ‘white’ schools, he had to perform at double-grade “A” standards to receive barely passing grades from the prejudiced educators. When are whiteboys like Katzenbach going to learn that EVERY black person is not pure, not guiltless, not smarter, not better (or worse), not more of a badass, in any way? This stupid reverse prejudice is what got us motherfucking Obama, and it’s what will get him re-elected in 2012, because ignorant assholes like Katzenbach are incapable of seeing past their skin color, impregnated with the white guilt, which is gleefully exploited by black confidence men. Men who are a significant portion of all humans, regardless of race.

I am now reading Wagons West by Frank McLynn. I guess it has to do with him being a Limey. Maybe. Some of his phrasing has led me to that tentative conclusion, anyhow. I’m cutting a bit of slack on that basis, thinking that it may be a Britishism that I’m reading; when he states that the wagons in use on the overland treks were “only two feet wide.” What the fuck? Yeah. That’s what I said when I read it. Evidently the guy has no idea what a fucking foot is. Later, he has a (Brit) pioneer attempting to cross the Snake River on his own, and being “swept away upstream”. Huh? How the fuck do you get swept away upstream? Oh, well. It’s good enough to keep me plugging away at it.

I also picked up a Melville containing Typee, Omoo, and Mardi. I read the former two in HS, but had not been exposed to the latter. Mardi is a pitiful example of the MAN’s work. Lots of philosophizing, during which he completely and totally loses track of his plot. Typee and Omoo are (supposedly) loosely based on his real life adventures when he jumped ship in the Marquesas. Far as I know there is no way to determine any of the facts of his sojourns, so…still, makes a damn good story and his philosophizing is pretty much minimalized. Read them, skip Mardi.

There was one before the Melville...but I'm drawing a blank. I'll recall it directly, after I'm offline, and I'll never get around to writing anything about it. Don't worry, I have no intention of beginning reviews of everything I read again.

Lone Star Rally

2011-11-06T12:24:00.002-06:00

Went over to Galveston yesterday to the bike rally. Got drunk as a skunk, sometime between 1100 and 1700, then rode back.

Blue Water Highway is a nice ride, but you gotta remember to watch for sand blowing across the road close to the pass. The road is about six inches from the surf (Sometimes. Often, even.) in places, and the pavement ain't nothing to shout about, and the curves are not banked in the slightest degree. It is no wonder that guy lost it and was killed there a few weeks ago.

On the bright side - there were more bikes than I've ever seen. People were having a mighty good time. Banditos, Hermanos, Solatarios, I'm sure there were a bunch of "Os" I didn't take note of. I did see a hell of a lot of skin on some fine looking women, and a hell of a lot of skin on some women who were not so frickkin' fine, too.

The men, most of us, anyhow, were none of us worth writing home about, either. I don't know how the women stand to be around us.

OWS

2011-11-05T09:01:00.000-05:00

This should not be construed in any way that I am in support of the “Occupy Wall Street” gang or any of the ideals espoused by, for, and of the protestors or any of their running dogs, supporters, or apologists.

But.

They are right, in many ways. The great majority of us are fucked before we are born because of our financial situation and/or place of birth. The ones of us who make it out of lower-middle class on down to lower-lower class do so through a combination of luck, brains, talent, and/or our appearance. Appearance, brains, and talent you can put down as due to genetic fluke. Luck comes from who knows where. Further, these fortunate attributes must be coupled with ambition and perseverance, else they are as seed fallen upon rocky ground, never to sprout.

Through a great fortune (which those guys do not realize) they were born in the United States of America, and they actually have a shot at changing their circumstances through the utilization of the things mentioned in the preceding paragraph. Unfortunately, even were they given all the things they ask for, they would remain pitiful excuses for a human being, because being given what you ask for does not reflect anything but pity and disgust upon those to which it is given.

I might also point out that many people talk about the fonk surrounding these guys. Nothing they smell like can come close to the reek of a platoon of grunts after a month in the boonies. Trust me on this. Also, it seems incumbent upon me to inform all the disparagers of this group that I have often wished to take a big, old, hairy, shit on a police car.

So fucking there.

Same old, same old

2011-11-05T07:03:00.002-05:00

This happened to me in 1970, in Bay City, Texas. A Yankee friend of ours from Nam stopped at my house on the way to Bay City, we loaded his bike in the back of my truck, and came to visit another Nam friend.

We went to the beach at Matagorda and got drunk as hell. I lost my wallet. We were stopped the next day by the local law dogs, and they stuck my ass in jail for a couple of days.

Fucking cops. They are practically useless. Can't do any real job, so they fuck with those of us who can. Why? Because they can. Just like a dog licking his balls.

Don't EVEN try to tell me they prevent crime. If they actually did, we would have a lot less of it.

Series

2011-10-29T06:28:00.001-05:00

Texan's relief pitching turned to shit. Some credit must be given to the Cards' bats, but walking in two runs has little to do with batting, and much to do with pitching.

That's all that need be said.

No shit, Sherlock

2011-10-27T18:20:00.004-05:00

Ho-Hum. How many Chem E's have you ever known who did NOT think they were the smartest motherfucker on the planet? But in actuality, it was just because of that seminar they all have to take in their senior year - "1001 Ways to be a Stupid Asshole". 5 credits, one semester, MWF 2-330 p.m. (spotted my typo a couple of days later)

Out-fucking-standing, assholes!

2011-10-27T18:16:00.001-05:00

This is cool. I think they (meaning "we", nicht vahr) should definitely provide many footbaths, in various places around the campus.

You can never have enough pissers, you know.

Rules of Engagement, My Ass Hole

2011-10-25T17:40:00.002-05:00

I do not understand. I played under the rules of engagement in Nam. They changed about 3/4 of the way through my tour, to where you couldn't really shoot any of the little motherfuckers unless they had a really good chance to kill you, first.

Well, fuck that. Me and 99.9% of the grunts in my platoon decided that we'd rather be court-martialed than shot by a fucking dink.

If these guys would rather be killed by a fucking raghead, that's their business, I guess. But if playing by fucking Obama's (or McCain's, or Johnson's or Nixon's or Kennedy's or any other motherfucking CinC or any of their ass-sucking chiefs of staff right on down to the CO of your unit, means rolling over and letting them shoot you just so you can be sure about shooting back, then they deserve what they get.

Fuck an officer or politician that doesn't have sense enough to give the correct orders. War is not a fucking game. You kill the fuckers, or they kill you.

Series Notes

2011-10-23T06:21:00.003-05:00

I just have a couple of things about the Series, all of which should be taken with the caveat that I don’t watch these teams all year, and this last year, I didn’t even watch many Astros games. The Astros were just too frikkin’ painful to watch. And I never liked the Cards and La Russa. Can’t argue with their success over his reign, but I never LIKED that guy. Not sure what the deal is, but there it is.

At the risk of pissing off The Fat Guy and The Scribbler, the Rangers defense up the middle is not impressive. Andrus has made some sparkling plays, but he has blown more. Kinsler seems about average, maybe a bit less, for an MLB 2B fielder. Can’t fault their hitting, which is probably a good tradeoff, and (speculating) the main reason they are there.

Furcal at SS for the Cards seems (keeping in mind that I’m unfamiliar except for this series) to be channeling Ozzie. His glove, and more especially, his arm, are hot. Batting ain’t too shabby, either.

Freese at 3B for the Cards – gets an “F”. He needs to take about a million hot shots in the off-season to improve his glove handling. An MLB 3B needs to make some, if not all, of those catches on the balls that are blowing past him, under and over his glove. He’s getting there, mostly – he just isn’t getting his glove in front of the ball.

Berkman – the only reason I have any liking for the Cards, and the only player I really want to succeed on that team, doesn’t seem to have the pop in his bat he used to have. I know he hit lots of HRs in the regular season (38, I think it was) but I have not seen much power in the series. I pull for him, by the way, because of his overt personality traits when at Houston. Never blaming other guys publicly, while single-handedly winning several games for his team throughout the regular season, when other, more famous members of the Killer Bees were fading fast, for whatever reasons.

Prujols – I wonder if he’ll like New York after all those years in St. Louis.

Almost forgot to mention - the Fox team of announcers is painful. They don't have any idea of the real strike zone, for one. Letter high is not "high", a ball. It is a fucking strike, and a ball up their moving at less than 100 MPH like the one Prujols tatered last night SHOULD be slapped out of the park. Just because the umps haven't called it a strike for 20 years or so doesn't mean shit. And speaking of the umpiring crew - where the fuck did they get them? I thought they consensus picked the best of the league over the previous season for the Series.

Rain, man.

2011-10-09T14:30:00.000-05:00

Well, it’s coming a good old Texas October turd floater. You shoulda known it was coming. Gotta catch up on all the rain that was missed some time, if you think of average rainfall in those sorts of terms.

But you can’t, or shouldn’t, really. “Shouldn’t” because almost everyone does. It’s about like the hurricanes per year. There’s no real way to predict them, yet they do.

You can’t really “catch up” on rain that was missed. If you didn’t get it, it’s gone. Just like you can’t make up for lost time. If it’s lost, it’s lost. Once it is gone, you can never get it back. Plants and animals have it over us, in this sort of thing. I don’t reckon they “think” about making up for lost time. Or making up for lost rainfall. Or eating a whole bunch now with the idea that it’s gonna be helpful when famine comes. ‘Cause none of that can really be done. Not that animals know it. Or plants. There’s no way for us to know what or how much they really know. But they do live in the moment, and being human, we mostly fail at that.

Sometimes it’s a good thing. Sometimes, not. As for me, I believe I’m gonna have a drink or three, today. I’m in the mood to have a snot-slinging, knee-walker. I’ll probably fail at that, too, because I just hate the recovery curve, any more. Feel like shit for a week after I drink four beers in an hour, where it used to rankle me badly to have to drink that slowly.

Generational Chicks

2011-10-07T08:22:00.002-05:00

Not too awful long ago, I forcibly introduced my 18 year-old step-grandson-in-law to Elizabeth Taylor, via Giant.

He was suitably impressed.

However, he remains a Philistine, as he can not see the beauty of Marilyn Monroe. I don’t have a good movie to put him on, really. It seems to me that the only good thing in any of her movies was her. Some Like it Hot, Seven Year Itch, The Misfits, etc., I didn’t like any of the movies, per se. I just liked looking at her. Fuck the rest of all of those movies.

If I had a clip of the John Kennedy birthday song, that might do it. I’ll see if I can find that on the web somewhere for him...

Got it.

And still more...

2011-10-05T17:59:00.001-05:00

Horse puckey. I would be happy to serve on that jury. I could find a bunch of people for them.

Totally unbiased, of course.

Oh, come on.

2011-10-05T17:57:00.003-05:00

This has got to be a rhetorical question. He still has a job for the same reason Obama has his. He is black. Affirmative action put them there and will keep them there.

Dog trouble

2011-09-25T18:59:00.001-05:00

Some of the guys who were in Nam with me can vouch – do not wake me up in the middle of the night and piss me off. Bad things will happen…

Went to the vet this morning with Bosco (my dog). He was attacked about 0030 by three large black dogs, and they tore up his right ear, cuts all over his head, and another bad cut on his right foreleg.

Linda woke me up – always a bad idea for folks who are up to things not good for me and mine and I went outside with the 870, loaded up with bird shot.

Twice before I’ve had to go out there and run off these three black dogs. They have been running up and down the fence line by the street (evidenced by the broken limbs all over the ground under the pittisporium) and raising hell. Bosco and the dogs across the street were going berserk. I come outside and they haul ass.

This time, I figure I might bust a cap in the air, give them a good scare, and maybe they don’t come back. I rounded the corner of the house and checked the street – no dogs. Then I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye – they are in my back yard. I went in. Bosco is panting bad. He’s exhausted. He’s had heartworms, and in dog years, he’s about my age, so I can relate easily.

I drew down on the only sumbitch I see – but he’s doing the haul-ass around the house. Perfect – he heads for the only place where I can safely shoot, the side yard abutting the cemetery across the street. I’m thinking he has to come back, because, how can he get out? Wrong. He scoots under the fence like it isn’t even there, but while he's doint that, I pop one off at him. It’s only bird shot, and I’m 20-50 yards away, so no real harm done. Anyway, he’s gone, down the street.

I come back in the back yard, and be damn – there’s another one of them. I advance on him and he retreats as fast as he can to the back fence. I head down that way and he circles back up toward the house. I’m thinking, “yeah, go down toward the cemetery, you bastard.” But no – he runs back up to the carport and jumps the fence and hauls ass.

Bosco seems OK, but he’s panting like he ran a marathon. I figure he’s OK. When I come back to the front door, there’s a frickking Brazoria cop. Little girl, about the size of my sister. Gives me a ticket for discharge of a firearm in the city limits. Tells me how I should call animal control. Who works only weekdays. What a bunch of silly shit.

Bosco’s ear is messed up bad. His leg is still bleeding. I don’t care what the penalty is – if those dogs show up again, they die. I’m replacing the bird shot soon as I’m finished here.

Told ya, told ya, told ya so.

2011-09-25T10:57:00.003-05:00

The dredging of the San Bernard lasted two and one-half years, at $2,400,000. Restating so that even the “…U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Texas Department of Transportation, Texas Parks and Wildlife, Congressman Ron Paul, R-Lake Jackson, area city leaders and other local officials.” can understand, that is $960,000 per year.

Now you want to do it again.

As long as there is a new Brazos River the mouth of the Bernard will fill and Surfside beach will disappear (a process accelerated by the insane practice of scraping the beach). You can blame low water flow in the Bernard and Brazos. You can blame high water flow in the Brazos versus the Bernard. You can blame hurricanes. You can blame tsunamis. You can blame anything you like, but until the original configuration of the Brazos is restored, this will continue.

We can close the diversion channel. We can spend a million dollars (plus undetermined millions to keep Surfside) every year to keep the Bernard channel. Or we can keep the new river, with the invaluable harbor in the old river, and learn to live with the unintended consequences of our actions in 1929. The last is the only logical approach.

Dear Diary - 20110920

2011-09-20T18:11:00.001-05:00

I just gotta tell this somewhere…

I went, Sunday, to the Constitution Day celebration at the River Place in Freeport. Ron Paul spoke, Debra Medina, the guy from GOOOH, Sheriff Mack, and the Oathkeepers guy.

I could give a shit less about hearing Ron Paul. I’ve heard him before, and met him before, and I’m not particularly impressed. Sorry. We just part company on too many things for me to be one of his fans. I vote for him, and have voted for him, sure, but only because he votes “NO” so much. Which is a good thing, 99% of the time. I won’t go into all the things we disagree on. Muslims is one, the San Bernard trench is another. He is completely and utterly wrong on both of those issues. And I, of course, am right.

I did want to meet and hear Debra Medina. Not sure why – if she has some of the Ron Paul stuff in her makeup, then I wouldn’t be impressed with her, either. But I didn’t stay for her appearance.

I won’t try to summarize Sheriff Mack’s presentation – I commented to Buffalo Bruce that we lost the War Between the States, and that is when we lost 90% of our state’s rights, and I don’t think we’ll ever get them back via legislation and/or the courts.

I walked out on the Oathkeepers representative because I could not hear him over all the silly dickheads who ignored him entirely and kept their inane conversations going at full volume the entire time he was talking. But the main thing that caused me to walk out on him was that he did not have the balls to tell those motherfuckers to shut the hell up, and make them do it.

The Bell Curve Strikes - Again

2011-09-14T05:50:00.003-05:00

What this means is, of course, that there is a certain percentage of people who are going to wreck their cars through errors in judgement. No matter what. Delaying their driving freedom by laws restricting the way they do it, i.e., only at certain times, only with certain passengers, etc., does not eliminate those people from the driving pool.

Similarly, there are people who just should not have weapons, because they are not competent to be in a situation where they could fuck up and hurt someone else or themself.

Don't TV shows like Most Shocking, Jackass, Dumbest Drivers, etc. point that out every day on cable or satellite?

Like I said.

Good Lord

2011-09-13T05:21:00.004-05:00

If "Voters Are Frightened by Rick Perry" or any of the other republican candidates - they fucking deserve four more years of obama. Haven't read the article yet - the headline freaked me out. What a bunch of pussy motherfuckers we have become.

I did watch about half of the master debate - I DVR'd it. I am about to change my mind about Bachman. I think we need her to stay in congress. She has more balls than 90% of the rest of congress.

I quit right after the gang ripped Perry a new asshole over the Gardisil debacle. Take it up again later.

So that leaves me with Herman. I don't know though - a president named "Herman"? Not to mention "Cain". He would be eaten alive by pricks like Schumer and Durbin and Pelosi and Reid, I think. I don't see how he could have any idea of the depths slime like that would sink to in order to thwart any real plan for saving the nation.

Movies and shit like that

2011-09-13T05:19:00.001-05:00

I caught the tail-end (for you non-Southerners, that’s the last few minutes of the movie) of We Were Soldiers last night, waiting for Breaking Bad to start.

It moved me, of course, as it should. I had seen it before, in its entirety. It is a whitewashed account of the Ia Drang battle(s). Whitewashed to make it appear to be much less of a clusterfuck caused by the entire chain of command, from the President on down to the platoon commanders.

It started me thinking, again. A different train of thought than the author of the book (then) Col. Moore and the makers of the movie intended, I’m sure. The train left the station when he commanded them to ‘fix bayonets’, then gathered speed during their charge through the NVA lines, where they were butt-stroking dinks with their 16s. Their 16s with the plastic stocks – I don’t know if that is even possible. I do know that if they ordered us to ‘fix bayonets’ not one in ten of us had a fucking bayonet. Not many of us even had fucking slings for our rifles. Then, the dogies hopped on their Huey’s and flew away. We would have had to walk out, most likely, especially if there was any possibility of those old 34s taking a round.

We were sucking hind tit through the whole motherfucker, boys. And that’s for fucking sure.

I do have regrets about doing my time in Nam. I got a lot of pluses, too – the main one being that I learned to be very careful about who I trust, and not being surprised when I discover, usually at an extremely awkward moment, that I trusted the wrong person.

The main regret I have is that I didn’t get to kill nearly as many of the little bastards as I wanted to. I would still like to get some payback. The fucking muslims are up high on my shitlist, too.

The Debt

2011-09-09T09:44:00.004-05:00

Wait for the DVD. Helen Mirrin is outstanding, as usual, but the show is wearying. My wife went to sleep, then, at a point when the music came up suddenly and loudly, woke up going, "Turn that down!"

Embarrassed the hell out of her. Which is why I wrote it down. Not like anybody is going to see it in here.

Much later...

Come to think of it, I guess that sort of thing runs in families. My grandmother, Orie, mom’s mother did something similar one afternoon when I was a kid. Mom took me to some 3D cowboys & Indians flick up at the show. Orie went to sleep in there and woke up just in time to see a tomahawk coming at her. She hollered, “Waugh!”

See, that was Orie’s holler. She hollered “Waugh!” pretty much at times I might would holler “Fuck!” Grease catches fire in the kitchen, she’s hollering, “Waugh!” all the time she’s throwing baking soda, or flour, or dirt from a pot plant on it. Hollering, “Waugh!” or “Fuck!” for that matter, has nothing whatsoever with one doing something effective enough to stop the hollering.

See?

2011-08-31T06:05:00.001-05:00

Like I said. It's coming.

Irene

2011-08-28T14:38:00.000-05:00

You bunch of fucking Yankee pussies.

SCV

2011-08-27T14:58:00.002-05:00

One of my old podnahs (come to think of it, about the only old podnah I have left, due to all sorts of reasons, my attitude being, if not paramount, damn near so) put me on this article by Jerry Patterson.

My podnah is a Chronicle reader from way back - unlike me, he evidently doesn't mind suffering the slings and arrows of constant carrier changes. Or, maybe his carriers don't change as often as mine did. Whatever. Internet is better, and, anyway, the Chron suffers from terminal liberalism, and richly deserves to die the horrible death with which it is now in the early stages, i.e., and to wit, diabetes of the bunghole.

Fuck all yall, you stupid, lying, cocksuckers.

2011-08-20T11:29:00.003-05:00

This kind of shit is really getting to me. Every little spin of cloud cover in the ocean is now enough for these guys to claim as fitting into their global warming hurricane prediction scenario.

It's total bullshit. The entire prediction of any hurricanes, or tropical storm, formations every year is a complete bunch of horse shit. Nobody can predict that kind of shit.

They do moderately to very well in prediction of directions and intensity once a storm is there, but prediction of formation before one even starts is completely bogus.

As is determination of sea level rise of anything less than a few feet. Waves and tides make that completely unreliable. I don't care what kind of measurement they are doing, it's bogus, unreliable, and therefore unscientific. If you can't measure something - it's outside the realm of science.

And we are hearing about how the heat is causing deaths all over Texas and the nation. An old person dies, and if they don't have AC, it's put down to the heat. I got news for you peckerlips. Old people die. Some of them even die when it is spring, or fall, and the temps are in the moderate ranges. The only real heat deaths are from people working or playing outside and get heat exhaustion or heat stroke. I have not heard of any deaths of that sort, yet. I'm sure there are some heat exhaustion cases, but I haven't heard of anybody dying of it.

Ho-Hum

2011-08-20T09:54:00.003-05:00

I don't see why I should give a rat's ass. Is the USA lacking for good hiking trails? What the fuck were they doing over there?

If they were in fact our spies, which I do not believe for an instant - this is their job. They would have known what they were risking.

MC's List

2011-08-20T09:02:00.005-05:00

Since MC dared me to....

Some of these I read several times. Some of them are so short as to be novellas, or even long short stories.

Not to mention - a shitload of excellent SF was not on the list, and there are a bunch of Fantasy novels that are so sucky I refuse to read them, and there are some (which I did not bold)that look familiar enough that I may have read them and were unimpressive enough that I did not retain the memory.

Just my opinion, mind you.

(BTW - yanked the list into Excel, did string manipulations to get rid of the numbers and add HTML markups to the beginning and end of lines. Didn't bother to set up to remove the extra lines.)

The Lord Of The Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card (and the rest of them - though I lost my suspension of disbelief somewhere in this one, I soldiered on through)

The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert

A Song Of Ice And Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin

1984, by George Orwell

Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

American Gods, by Neil Gaiman

The Princess Bride, by William Goldman

The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan

Animal Farm, by George Orwell

Neuromancer, by William Gibson

Watchmen, by Alan Moore

I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov

Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein

The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss

Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut

Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley

Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick

The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood

The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King (only one of them - tired of his bullshit)

2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke

The Stand, by Stephen King

Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson

The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury

Cat’s Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut

The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman

A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess

Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein

Watership Down, by Richard Adams

Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein

A Canticle For Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller

The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, by Jules Verne

Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keys

The War Of The Worlds, by H.G. Wells

The Chronicles Of Amber, by Roger Zelazny

The Belgariad, by David Eddings

The Mists Of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson

Ringworld, by Larry Niven

The Left Hand Of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin

The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien (couldn't hack the whole thing - sucked)

The Once And Future King, by T.H. White

Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman

Childhood’s End, by Arthur C. Clarke

Contact, by Carl Sagan

The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons

Stardust, by Neil Gaiman

Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson

World War Z, by Max Brooks

The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle

The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman

Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett

The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson (though I confess I got tired of his leprotic, whiny, bullshit, and had to grit my teeth to get through it)

The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett

The Mote In God’s Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

The Sword Of Truth, by Terry Goodkind

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (not a pimple on the ass of any of his other work)

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke

I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson

The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist

The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks

The Conan The Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard (what? no listing of Norman's Gor books?)

The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb

The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger

The Way Of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson

A Journey To The Center Of The Earth, by Jules Verne

The Legend Of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore

Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi

The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson

Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke

The Kushiel’s Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey

The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin

Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury

Wicked, by Gregory Maguire

The Malazan Book Of The Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson

The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde

The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks

The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart

Anathem, by Neal Stephenson

The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher

The Book Of The New Sun, by Gene Wolfe

The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn

The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldan

The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock

The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury

Sunshine, by Robin McKinley

A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Vinge

The Caves Of Steel, by Isaac Asimov

The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson

Lucifer’s Hammer, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis

Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville

The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony

The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis

Getting pretty near the end

2011-08-20T08:56:00.002-05:00

Are you out of your fucking mind? This is so logically idiotic, there are so many totally bizarre assumptions, and ignorant projections in this it is too stupid to bother pointing them out. If people are stupid enough to swallow this shit...we are beyond hope.

Fooled again!

2011-08-14T13:36:00.000-05:00

I was listening to Rush a while back, and he mentioned that he was, or had been, reading The Jefferson Key, by Steve Berry, and Marine One, by James Huston, and praised both of them to the highest heavens.

Well, I’m about halfway through the former, and while I can not say that it sucks, I can say that it is not very good. There are several editing lapses, enough to irk an anal retentive like me, and the plot and layout is totally screwy. It has tinges of the Da Vinci Code, a bit of a copycat. The characters are silly, and have been beaten to death over the last Lord knows how many years. Secret agencies within secret agencies. Licensed to kill. What the fuck, over? It would be OK if these ideas were new, but the truth is that they are stale, stale, stale. Like a saltine left sitting out, on the porch of your bay house for a few weeks.

I do not mean these criticisms in a good way.

Fucking fooled again. At least I haven’t fallen for the other thing that is advertized on Hannity and Beck – the Easy Water system. Hawg-wash, boys and girls. Hawg-wash. There ain’t no way to make Mg and Ca (magnesium and calcium) ions into “good” ions. Either you swap them out with another (positively charged) metal ion (Na, sodium, is cheap and therefore commonly used) or they are gonna build up in your pipes and water heater when they match up with some other good shit with a negative charge. But when they talk about it, it sounds so good, so perfect, so reasonable!

It kinda makes you wonder about the other stuff they spout. You reckon they are right about all of that shit? Or is there a hidden agenda. I checked out the books, because I can do that for free. And he lied about the first one…we’ll see about the other, pretty soon.

And by the way, long as I’m talking books. Dick – if you happen to drop in, The Seven Days: The Emergence of Robert E. Lee by Clifford Dowdey is an oldie but a goodie. You might give it a shot if you haven’t already.

No, really.

2011-08-07T10:20:00.000-05:00

Bring it on, motherfuckers.

Tweedledee or Tweedledum?

2011-08-06T05:52:00.001-05:00

On the front page of yesterday’s Facts were two articles, one on each side panel. One was a plea for people to practice energy conservation else rolling blackouts would be likely.

The other was that expansion of STNP (South Texas Nuclear Power) is held up because of fears generated by the Japanese near meltdown.

STNP is down by Palacios. A couple or three miles from Matagorda bay. And it is, as most of that whole damn area, flat and only a few cincrimeres above sea level. I say it is not impossible for a tidal wave to hit there, but according to some government dick quoted in the Facts after the Thailand Christmastime disaster, it is.

Whether a tidal wave is likely, unlikely, possible or impossible, is not the question. The question is, “Do you want some fucking AC, or not?”

Turning it around, you could say, “Do you feel lucky, punk?”

My answer to both questions: “I do”.

I damn sure do want some AC, and I do feel lucky enough to say, "Build that motherfucking power plant, and do it fast."

The least environmentally deleterious, yet viable, power source currently available to us.

My candidate

2011-07-31T13:17:00.002-05:00

I know better than the FBI. It's gotta be this guy.

It happens to us all, I reckon.

2011-07-29T12:37:00.001-05:00

I may have to put Ol’ Bosco down. I am starting to think that he has completely lost his mind. He has always been borderline bonkers. Barks at airplanes, even passenger jets you can barely see overhead, heading north, to Houston, or south, to the Caribbean or Mexico, or South/Central America at Lord knows how many miles high.

I pay little mind to barking at bikes, vehicles with trailers, etc. That kind of shit is relatively normal for dogs of all varieties.

But fucking airplanes?

Now, he has developed an obsession with the shed. The shed was framed out by a local carpenter, and finished, outside, inside, and roof, by me. Hardie plank outside, ¼” OSB inside. The outside and inside are nailed directly to the studs, base and overhead 2” X 4”s. There is no way for anything to get inside the walls. I keep various bullshit in there, a bicycle my wife “needed” but has never ridden. A push lawnmower I used maybe twice. Chainsaw, weedeater, potting soil, chemicals, etc.

And Bosco’s food.

When I go to feed him, I always give him a damn dog biskit. I give him a big old scoop of dry food, then put two cans of dogfood on top of it, and throw another dog biskit, or two broken halves of one in to boot. He always comes in with me, making sure I do it right, and don’t short him on anything.

He has taken to rooting around the damn inside of the shed, knocking everything over and pushing it out of the way to get to the various walls, snorting and snuffling like he scents something. But I go and look, and there ain’t a fucking thing there. Twice this month, he’s woken me up barking like crazy at the lawnmower under the lean-to against the shed, and only quits when I get up, go out, and move the mower out so he can see there’s nothing under it. Thing is, when I’m thoroughly waked after I’ve had a few hours sleep, I’m awake. Then, I’m faced with a deadly decision: lie there in the bed from 0300 to 0530 (time to get up), or get up and read?

Neither choice does me any good at work the next day.

Somebody tell me where this is wrong, please.

2011-07-28T06:13:00.001-05:00

I think I mentioned that I listen to talk radio during the day, if it’s not TOO busy, via an ear bud, leaving one ear available to the rest of the working world.

I have heard Limbaugh and Hannity, and a few others, spouting about how we take in enough tax revenue to take care of the bills that must, by law, be paid by Obama and Geithner. Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, VA, Military, and the interest on our debt. They would be relived to hear that I agree with them. Plenty of money for those things, and some left over.

I have never heard them mention, though, that all the administration need do is NOT make those payments, and send their figureheads out to claim that “The republicans have made it impossible for you-all to get your government check.”

There would be a wailing and moaning and gnashing of teeth not seen since the Angle of Death took Egypt’s firstborn sons. And the republicans would never elect another anything.

“But that would be against the law”, you protest.

Since when has this administration, or any other, for that matter, hesitated to ignore an inconvenient law, especially when the result of ignoring one would be so helpful to their party?

I will construe your silence on this post to indicate complete agreement.

Imagine.

2011-07-24T16:24:00.002-05:00

If this were true..., even partially, and what's-his-face didn't waste him...what kinds of shit would he have done? Turn some freaks around 180°, I bet.

Outstanding. Please, go ahead!

2011-07-24T16:16:00.002-05:00

They want to off themselves, huh? Over this shit? Well, hell! Gofer it, yall. Anybody stupid enough to buy into it, that would be the very type of dumbass the world could well do without.

Not again.

2011-07-24T11:57:00.002-05:00

Not this time. Fuck Somalia. Fuck the Somalis. Every man, woman, and child in the whole heathen motherfucking country.

If they got their shit together and acted like humans for fifty years, then maybe, we should help them. As long as they are going to act like rabid wolves, however...

Dinged up my pride, is all.

2011-07-23T09:02:00.001-05:00

Dropped my bike Thursday after lunch.

I stopped, waiting for a break in traffic so I could cross 288B, on the right side of a car turning left. When I went to put my left foot down, it was stuck between the new footpeg and the heel-shifter, and there was nothing I could do but fall.

Dammit. Dinged up the butt of my left handgrip, bruised my ass. I hate when this shit happens.

I like the new footpegs, though, so they are staying. I did remove that damn heel-shifter, though.

Perry. Not the Admiral...

2011-07-18T18:16:00.002-05:00

I wish sometimes this blog was read on a national level. I mean, not enough to actually WORK to make it so, or change the way I do things enough to make it more palatable to, well, anyone, actually, but so that someone could know just the weeniest, little, old bit about this guy that the national 'conservative' media all slobber over as being the a party favorite. It's the same kind of stupid shit they did to Bush the Younger. Pumped him up as a big conservative - when it turned out that Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, and several more democrats were fucking him in every orifice all along.

He (Perry) might be a 'tea party favorite'. But he is for sure the reason there was a surge for Medina, last gubernatorial election. And, no, I have no fucking idea if the site I linked to is reliable. Just all I know is that I don't like or trust Rick Perry, any more than I liked or trusted GW Bush.

Is that right?

2011-07-11T06:06:00.002-05:00

Oh. So, we pay you, or you won't be our friend any more? I can not fucking believe this shit, the way our nation has become. The bad thing is, that people think that Bush and his predecessors would do better.

When did this shit start? This buying of friends? Under what retarded fool of an administration did this begin?

Tell them to get fucked. Let us have our final confrontation with the muslims. We'll take India and Russia and maybe China, and duke it out with the muslim world. Sadly, that probably means we'll have to fight Britain (no longer Great), France, and possibly Germany, along with 90% of Africa, 75% of Indonesia.

I figure it's us versus about 1.5 billion cowardly cocksuckers.

Whoa.

2011-07-09T07:27:00.003-05:00

I've worried about this myself. Some of the nose-bleed seating sections are scary, they are so steep. Minute Maid isn't awful bad, on the upper decks, and it's been so long that I am not for sure about the Dome, but in memory, it was worse. But the scariest section I ever had was when I went to a Rockets game at the Summit and had to look over the cliff, with a bunch of drunken maniacs (as was I) seated all around me. It was an experience staggering to the pisser and back.

I feel bad for the kid and widow. There's just no way to make it even marginally better.

Jax

2011-07-08T11:57:00.001-05:00

We have run through all the Sons of Anarchy seasons available, i.e., 1 and 2. 3 is supposedly coming out next month – but I bet it’s not immediately available on Netflix.

Streaming, not DVD.

I like the show OK, now. I tried it on TV, but it was all hacked up, no naughty words, minimal boobage and/or violence, etc., and it just didn’t make it, for me. I still think it has a touch of the old A-Team bullshit – a shitload of rounds flying haphazardly around, and not many striking paydirt. Whatever – that’s not why I mention the damn show.

It’s Jax. One of the, if not THE, protagonists. Every time they say his name, I flash back to the summer of 1967. I was 18, and had my freshman year of college behind me. We were drinking some serious beer. Beer of choice for all of our gang was 12 oz. cans of Bud. 16s didn’t stay cool long enough – this was pre-huggies, you know. It was barely pop-top time. When I first started making that run to Springhill, La., where the drinking age was 18, we all carried church keys. If you don’t know what that is, go to another blog, you aren’t old enough to be here.

Anyhow. We got to where we were tired of just drinking Bud, and decided that we’d buy fonky beer every weekend. We bought Falstaff. We bought Schlitz. We bought Lone Star. We bought every kind of fonky beer we could find, but the fonkiest beer we ever bought was Jax. That was some nasty-ass shit, yall. Could be that it was just old – and had sat out in the sun for a year or two. Just all I know is, that there was no “next time” when we bought Jax.

Same old stupid shit

2011-07-06T17:36:00.003-05:00

Sure, let's get rid of some more! We did so DAMN good getting that sorry-ass Lance Berkman off our team.

I have no problem with trades, per se. But can we not keep something with which to build the next team? Do we have to shitcan EVERY fucking body for guys like JA Happ?

Astros Notes

2011-07-02T08:25:00.002-05:00

Went to the last Astros/Rangers game, June 30. Couldn't believe it, the Astros won. Not only won, shut them out and whupped up on them.

I was not all that suprised that Wandy did well, but I was afraid that, as soon as he left, the bullpen would blow the game, like they did for Bud Norris and his 2-hitter last night (July 1, Red Sox game). They managed to hold on, though, and give Wandy the win.

I was kind of surprised to discover that Josh Hamilton is not just a hitter, but can actually field his position. He made a couple or three really nice plays in left field.

Guadalcanal

2011-06-30T07:23:00.002-05:00

I just finished reading The Battle for Guadalcanal, by SB Griffith. I have read other books on it, and studied several documentaries, but I never bothered to note the names of the Navy personnel behind the worst debacles. I wonder what happened to them? Ghormley, Fletcher, Turner, admirals all, participated in trying to kill the infantry they put ashore on August 7, 1941. They did not actively attack them; at least, I suppose the bombing and naval artillery that killed Marines was accidental. But they did abandon them, and even when forced to support them, they continued trying to starve them and deprive them of the war materiel they needed to fight the Japanese by dragging their feet in every possible way. Personally, I suspect that good old Dugout Doug had something to do with it.

There were several other admirals in the US Navy who were simply stupidly incompetent, but I’d have to dig back through the book again to list them, there were just too many for me to remember offhand.

I also kept thinking that while WWII sea battles, as has often been said, made the battleship obsolete, replacing battleship/cruiser technology with that of aircraft carrier technology, we keep on making better carriers – we need carriers, that’s for sure. But they are now obsolete, too. One nuke, land or sea based, will remove an entire carrier group, and they don’t even have to hit the carrier, just get somewhere close.

The only solution is to make damn sure nobody else has nuclear capability. But we’ve already given up on that strategy, haven’t we. That’s not a question…

Flars

2011-06-29T08:10:00.003-05:00

Early this spring I went over to the Old 300 Cemetery across Camp street from my side yard and dug up some flowering bushes outside the fence to preserve them.

They were, at one time, big bushes, underneath the old Holey (Live) Oak, and had red blooms in magnificent profusion when their blooming season arrived. I don’t remember when that was. They were evergreen, and they were about 12 feet tall, there in the shade of the oak, in front of, and completely screening, the above-ground sarcophagus containing the remains of the Stringfellows, one or more of them, I disremember both how many and the names of the entombed. At any rate, they ain’t no more of them of note; that gang is run by one of their descendents, long gone from these ancestral lands, with the impressive name of Percival T. Beacroft. He may have moved to some other of his ancestral lands, I don’t know, nor do I give a fuck.

Point is, they hacked down all those magnificent bushes. All that remained for the next year or so was the stumps, 4-6 inches in diameter. And, the roots. The roots from which, this spring, sprouted several shoots, of which I selected three of the more vigorous and set them in pots. I was afraid the stupid bastards would hack them down, too, and then they would be lost forever. Roots don’t send up shoots for-frickkin-ever, unless they are Chinese Tallow roots. Those fucking things are almost indestructible.

I put them on the north side of my back yard, in front of the chain-link fence dividing our property from that of the abandoned house on the other ¼ of the block. The part we don’t own. I want to buy it, and bulldoze the house, keeping the garage. Nice garage. Shitty house. It’s up for auction, now, and if I had an extra 20-30 grand I’d be all over that shit. Mainly so we’d own the block, and wouldn’t have to fuck with any neighbor that close. I’m not as bad as Daniel Boone, who is supposed to have said something like, “If you can see your neighbors chimney smoke, it’s too motherfucking crowded.”

Now, if the new sumbitches moving in there don’t go wild with Round-Up like the ignorant hypocritical bastards who lived there recently, those bushes will not disappear from the planet. They deserve to live. They did wonderfully for so many years, through drought and hurricanes and floods, and I want them to continue. I do have a pic of the bushes, though not in bloom, but it's on the desktop...maybe later I'll pull one and tack it here on the end.

Dumbass Drivers

2011-06-20T18:16:00.001-05:00

It was just a matter of time. Like I have said in several previous posts - there are a bunch, just search on "cops" if you are THAT fucking interested.

This County Mountie made a U-turn right in front of a teenage driver, who was, it sounds like from the story, driving the speed limit. This is my hypothesis: The kid, inexperienced enough to believe the bullshit story that cops are competent drivers, wasn't watching the dumbass close enough, and hit him.

What are the odds that they come up with some charge on the kid to intimidate him into keeping quite, then let the cop skate?

Sand

2011-06-13T18:36:00.001-05:00

Letter to the Facts about this.

Re: “Shifting Sands”, June 13 Facts. “Beach advocates say Surfside erosion doesn’t undercut renourishment project’s success.”

But that is exactly what it does. It exposes the muddy logic used in putting the sand there in the first place. Even the term used to describe the process is silly. It’s “newspeak.” That’s like spending a trillion dollars to save jobs. There is no “renourishment.” What you did was to take sand from elsewhere and pile it up so it can be washed away through the identical process that removed it in the first place.

If you think the sand that washed away will come back some happy day, there must be salt-water corrosion in your logic circuits. The only way you could get sand to stay on that beach for very long would be to steal the Bolivar Peninsula and put it down a couple of thousand yards offshore.

In the long run, it might be cheaper to relocate Surfside to the other side of the New Brazos River, where the beach is growing. We recently dug a new channel for the San Bernard over there because there was too much sand. Wonder if some of that new sand…nah.

Pawlenty, et. Al.

2011-06-12T15:13:00.000-05:00

I watched Pawlenty’s interview by Chris Wallace today, and I like him okay. Just okay. But he does the no-no, too. It’s the same problem with almost all of the candidates. They all want to frikkin’ smile that fake-ass politician smile. The only ones that are sort of believable with it on their puss are Bachmann and Palin. Or maybe it’s just that I’m not used to female politicians and haven’t learned to read that gender’s lying face yet.

Damn it, there is not a fucking thing funny, or humorous about what is going on here. I want somebody that looks like a serious man, with a set of nuts big enough to slap the mack-daddy across the lips when he starts shuckin’ and jivin’. The opposite of McCain last year – he pussied up to Obama, and laid back and let him win because he was afraid of him. I want somebody that is not afraid of saying something to a black man just because he is black. Somebody that is not afraid to call muslims terrorists.

Maybe Cain. Maybe Col. West. Maybe Bachmann. Some balls, somewhere, please, Lord, please.

Oops. Sorry. Nothing to see here. Move along.

2011-06-10T18:25:00.000-05:00

I heard there was a shitload of cops hunting over East Texas because of this shit. I reckon most readers I get here have already heard that it was found to be a hoax, just some nut that thinks they have ESP (I’m sorry, that is redundant.) got a vibration or vision, or whatever that kind of nut is prone to get now.

I understand they are desperately trying to find that nut, to press charges of a false report.

I think that is bogus. What they should be doing is looking for the stupid cop bastard that heard the nut say whatever it was – something like, “I had a vision that there were many body parts, many children, buried in a mass grave out by the pig farm.” Or whatever.

And believed in that stupid shit enough to round up a couple hundred MORE dumbass cops that believed HIM, and wasted our tax money on this idiotic shit. They could have been doing lots more important shit, like catching speeders on Hwy 59.

Free at last, free at last; thank God almighty, free at last.

2011-06-04T13:08:00.002-05:00

It's about time.

I know the Astros management has desperately tried for years to get some black players so they can shed the image of the "White Astros" and hopefully pull a larger audience from the area of Houston that Minute Maid Park is actually IN.

But DAMN! Hall has sucked all year. His hitting was nearly as bad as Towles'. Nearly as bad as Lee's. What where they thinking? Why did they wait so long?

One down. Two to go. Course, they have to hold on to Towles a bit longer, until Q and Castro get back from the DL. If Lee doesn't quit with the pop-ups and routine fly balls and double play balls, I don't think it's gonna matter how much his salary is, and he'll be gone, too.

A new US flag

2011-05-31T12:43:00.002-05:00

Here a while back I got a package from Kay Bailey Hutchison. I sat there and stared at it for quite a while, because I figured it was some kind of fund-raising gimmick, but finally I got a knife and opened it.

It was a flag. There wasn’t anything in the box but a flag, and a certificate that said it had flown over the capitol building.

I could not figure why she would send me a flag. I can’t stand the woman, nor her compatriot, Cornyn. They are both lying hypocrites, i.e., politicians. I’ve sent both of them letters (mentioned elsewhere in the blog) and was roundly disrespected by each of them. So, WTF with the flag, lady?

A few weeks after, I got a call at work from one of my old Nam podnahs. He had had Hutchison send the flag out. He had me sent one, and some other guys he had addresses for. It blew me away. Had no idea. He was told that there’d be a note from the senator in there, blah-blah-blah. The government fucked up again. Who woulda thunk?

Anyhow, the reason I haven’t mentioned it before (sorry, Brashear) is that I lost it. I could not find that sumbitch anywhere. Finally, today, I was in the back closet in the bathroom, getting ready to put some caulk and ¾ shoes on the baseboards, and there it was.

I feel much better, now.

Odds?

2011-05-30T13:33:00.003-05:00

What do you wanna bet this is another politically correct dick-smokin' motherfucker like the last one?

Far as Memorial Day - I don't know what I'm gonna do, yet, other than take my wife-mate on a little ride to the county line to get a bottle of Maker's Mark and a bottle of dark rum (NOT 151 - that shit tries to eat a hole in my guts).

We might have a drink somewhere, not sure where. I damn sure am not going to go sit out in some pasture somewhere and listen to a bunch of booger-eatin' faggots that were in some fucking office stateside for their two-year draftee hitches (if that) make speeches about how much they love all us veterans.

When the actions speak much louder than words.

Come to think of it, I ran into a guy at the grocery store the other day with two of those new-fangled applicances where his knees and shins and ankles and feet used to be. Him and another guy were buying some beers and such for what looked like a good, old, drunken weekend. I just said hidy to him. Didn't try to have any war conversations with him. I figured he wouldn't appreciate it, and might not even believe me about Nam. I wished him well, though. I hope the fucking cops leave him alone and let him drink off some of his weight, unlike they did me. But I figure the odds are way against that, there being so many more cops now, and so many more fucking do-gooders to report any extreme fun-going-ons.

Pfun stuff

2011-05-24T17:49:00.002-05:00

I texted my son up in Tulsa to keep his head down because I heard the storms were gonna hit there, today.

He texted me back, "All that shit's overblown, dad."

That's my boy.

And by the way, Scribbler - I just finished a book you might be interested in - Galveston, by (I think) PG Naegle. It's Civil Warhistorical fiction, somewhat reminiscent of Knoxville. I think it's not as good as Kville, and has a sort of juvenile feel to it - but lots of that era's people seem sort of juvenile to us, being jaded and perverse and cynical and all.

Somebody please!

2011-05-21T07:29:00.002-05:00

Bitch-slap this motherfucker. We have come to this shit from HST and Korea, JFK and Nam (and a shitload of other minor fuckups), Reagan and Lebanon, and Clinton and Bosnia.

We fucking deserve it, but we HAVE atoned in blood. Now would someone PLEASE in our pussy Congress slap this shit down? Please?

How old is the author of this article.

2011-05-20T06:43:00.002-05:00

Well, no fucking shit, sweetheart. I ain't reading the rest of it. The headline is enough to convince me that it could not possibly be worth it. Why the hell do you think the bastards want the power in the first place?

That's a rhetorical question. (I'll answer it for you, in case you are under 35, and dumb as a fucking post.) THEY WANT POWER SO THEY CAN MAKE THEIR OWN FUCKING RULES.

I guess it's not a new idea...

2011-05-20T06:30:00.002-05:00

Pulled this link from The Drudge Report, because I have seen several of these north of here, in the byways east of the George Ranch/Observatory.

I remember wondering if they would work. I decided that they would not, based on the fact that the ones I saw had at least one weak point where the driveway went through the levee, at ground level. I reckon they didn't want to go over the hump every time they left or returned home.

I guess, maybe, they had a tractor, front-end loader, something, to quickly build a good dam there, else they were just as fucked as them who did not build one. It's still a hell of a good idea, though, if you could knock out a temporary dam quickly enough.

Self-fulfilling prophecy.

2011-05-19T05:51:00.001-05:00

I did it to myself, I reckon. One of my favorite old bullshit sayings has always been, “Like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.”

I am effectively down to that one leg, now. I don’t know what the fuck. I’ve had knee problems since I was a kid in about the 8th grade, when I rode my bike down into a big-ass ditch at the bottom of the hill a couple of blocks over. There was a footpath there, in the red southwest Arkansas clay, and it was a little wet, not too bad, and I hit it too fast, and lost it. Landed on my knees on the edge of a huge concrete culvert and limped home pushing my bike for about a mile.

They commenced to swell up and turn black and blue, but it finally went away, it just left a hard knot just below my knees that I couldn’t stand to touch, and I could no longer stand to crawl around like a normal person, but had to hold my feet up to get that knot off the deck as much as possible. Still hurt, but it was bearable for short periods.

After the Corps, I started having short spells of aching, but they didn’t last but a day or two, and I could shake them off, mostly, and go on.

Recently, back when we sometimes had rain, I was wearing some Crocs to work in the yard, and hit a slick spot, and twisted the dogshit out of my right knee. I had some trouble for a couple of weeks, but it mostly went away.

Now, I don’t know what the fuck I did, but the sumbitch is acting like I have the gout in my knee. If you are afflicted with the gout, you know what I mean. If you are not, it is not something I can tell you. It has the pain of the gout, but not the redness, heat, and swelling, so I figure it’s probably not the gout. At any rate, I’m not gonna go to the doc and let the ignert motherfucker root around inside there with a needle trying to “aspirate some uric acid crystals” – fuck that. I’ll give it another week or two, see what happens.

Regular? Or Beef?

2011-05-16T18:25:00.002-05:00

I don't know if these guys are stupid or if it's a Britishism, but here in America, a "vice" doesn't close in on you (I could whup up some nasty analogies, but why bother). A "vise" closes in on you...

Goin' to the chapel...

2011-04-29T08:06:00.002-05:00

I rarely refuse my wife-mate anything, if I can possibly help it, but last night I flatly refused, not once, but several times, to DVR the fucking wedding of the royals.

Piss on all aristocrats, whatever country they live in.

Yeah, well, okay.

2011-04-27T06:02:00.002-05:00

Well, fuck, Michelle - if you are such a weenie as to be anything but amused by phone calls like this, we don't want you on our side, anyhow.

Like the kids in Sweeny - what's keeping the kids that DO stand up for the pledge of allegiance from kicking the asses of those little shits who WON'T? Bunch of pussies, all of them.

Don't go there

2011-04-23T07:58:00.002-05:00

I guess this really is saying that you should not do the European thing, and walk places when you are drunk. No matter how drunk you are, you'd still be safer in your vehicle. At least you could haul ass out of there. I mean, you might get a fucking ticket...

Where did THAT come from?

2011-04-11T04:58:00.002-05:00

So I'm over there at Clear Thinkers - who I got pissed off at and removed from my blogroll some time back, and I make a comment on this post - and the next comment after mine included a remark about how GWB caused 9/11. Now, last time I checked, it was fucking saudi muslim goat-fuckers that did the attack on the WTC that date. Lord knows, I ain't no fan of any of the Bushes, but the dude could not possibly have caused that terrorist attack. He was still wandering around the WH trying to figure out where the crappers were. Ain't had time nor inclination to do a fucking thing, yet, when all of a sudden, WHAM!

Wrong again, nut breath.

2011-03-28T18:27:00.001-05:00

See this is just stupid. You can tell by looking at the sumbitch that it is not "heart food" - it is obvious that it is "brain food".

Here we go again.

2011-03-20T17:54:00.000-05:00

No offense to any of you neocons, but what the fuck, over? We don’t have enough fucking pointless, undeclared, wars going on to suit your dumb asses?

Would you mind answering one question? What are we supposed to do when the Saudi’s decide that they have had enough of their rulers?

Leave the pore dumb bastards to take care of their own revolutions. We can NOT manage all this shit. We have shown over and over again that we can’t direct shit, over there. The fucking Iranians have amply demonstrated that. Not to even mention Iraqis. The only successful revolution that I think we have managed is the last one in Chili. Far as I know. Of course, a TRULY successful revolution is one where you get a guy in power who you want in power – but nobody knows you had anything to do with it. I don’t think that we’ve had any of those.

Am I the only one?

2011-03-12T19:31:00.003-06:00

That heard about the stupid bastard that went out to see to watch the tsunami come in? This is video that I want to see.

Like the video of the grizzly that ate the grizzly lover. Which reminds me - I have seen the word "grizzly" used in place of the word "grisly" in lots of places lately - the most prominent being fucking O'Reilly...

200 words

2011-03-12T08:24:00.002-06:00

Sent the below in to the Facts this morning. Every day, there is another article by someone, a columnist or their editorial board explaining why we need to continue to throw money at something or someone.

Smarter, better-educated, more articulate citizens must forgive us. We are too stupid to understand that our desires to cut spending are misguided and foolish.

We don’t see that making windmills overseas and shipping them here provides Americans jobs. We are too simple to grasp the idea that high-speed rail is the solution to jobs, energy conservation and ecological salvation. We are too dense to see that exponentially increasing government largesse is good for all of us. We don’t get it that eliminating offshore production and buying oil from unstable, oppressive regimes is the smart thing to do. We reveal our prejudice when we try to limit in any way groups of known terrorists. We can’t figure that “green” industries are good for us though they will always need government subsidies. We are unable to grasp that we must eliminate our weapons to eliminate all crime. We are too simple to see that we must continue to support almost every nation on the planet, without regard.

You smarter people must forgive us our foolishness and obstinacy in continuing to try to stop these things. We are trying to quit arguing about it, but it’s like trying to lose weight.

Am I losing it?

2011-03-02T05:21:00.001-06:00

I woke up thinking I wanted to say something at 0300 today. (I’ve been waking up at 0200 – 0300 for a couple of weeks, now, unable to go back to sleep. Wandering around the house, reading, doing meaningless little chores, watching movies I’ve seen way too many times, etc.) It was something I had been considering, turning over and over in my head for a while. Something to do with performance. It started with performance art, and the way the quality of acting performances are so variable, but then I began to realize that the general idea of that holds true for everything.

What I was thinking is that an actor’s performance in a role, the quality of his performance, that is, is variable. Sometimes and for certain roles, the quality is necessarily going to be superb. On the other hand, sometimes it is going to be bad. I was going to use another descriptor, but “bad” is good enough, and covers them all. Sometimes an actor’s performance is enhanced by chemicals, sometimes it is ruined by chemicals. Sometimes an actor’s performance is determined by his age; his life experiences bring nuances to his performance that he might not have as a young person. Sometimes an actor’s age is detrimental to his performance, too – there are some roles that a middle-aged or old actor can not justifiably portray. Indiana Jones by Harrison Ford would be an example. Ford is just too old to be convincing now. Hell, he was too old for the last Indiana Jones chronicle. It was evident, watching the show.

If you think about it, that idea can be generally applied to almost everything.

I think I may be at the point where trying to make posts is pointless. I find that I just don’t care to try to express my feelings and ideas any more. It seems like a waste of my time, and it seems like nobody gives a fuck what I say, so why should I?

Of course, it could be that I’m just kinda down, and I need some chemicals to perk my old, wore-out ass up. I don’t think that drinking is going to do it. I need some psychoactive assistance.

I don't get it (again).

2011-02-26T05:59:00.002-06:00

All over the web, at least, the parts that I bother to read, are articles like this one by Malkin.

I just picked this one, out of the many, because I like Malkin's writing style. She does get a bit hysterical sometimes, (after all, she IS a woman) like the hyperventilating over the blogger chick a few days ago that got shoved by a union prick – I mean getting your ass shoved back a bit when you are sticking your camera in anyone’s face is not fucking assault. Get a grip, Michelle. Now, if the guy had slugged her, or whacked her over the head with his sign… Well, now we’re talking!

What I don’t understand is, why we let these sorts of things go on. The chairman of the assembly there in WI (or whatever the title of the person running the damn thing, president, chairperson, honcho, hammer, who gives a shit, you know who I mean) allows a disruption of state business INSIDE the fucking assembly? WTF? Give them three minutes to get or suffer the consequences. Then be damn sure that they suffer some consequences.

Sure, it would look violent, and you’d look like an old meanie on the news. But lemme ask you just this one thing – ain’t it time to get mean yet? Cause it sure looks to me like it is.

Non-violent protests

2011-02-20T07:46:00.002-06:00

Bahrain, Libya, China, Iran - all the non-violent protests for democracy and freedom are doomed to end in the blood of the protestors. Non-violent protests just don't work if the power-holders don't mind killing the protestors.

If they are not prepared to die, they had best just shut the fuck up and stay home. If they are, they can succeed, but only if they are violent enough to take the guns away from the fuckers who are shooting them, in one way or another. You can take the guns away from them peacefully, if they happen to have a bit of humanity. If they don't, you are fucked.

Antropomorphism

2011-02-12T07:03:00.002-06:00

I ran across this yesterday. (Or was it the day before? Doesn't matter.) They touch on the problem in the article, but, in my opinion, they miss the critical significance of it. Anthropomorphism is THE crux of this whole idea. In dealings with animals, aliens, and in this case, machines of sufficient complexity to be considered living, we must not fall into the trap of thinking that we know how they think.

Same thing as the idea that, “God would not do that.” – we don’t know and can not know motivations of any other entity because their thought processes, if they have anything we would recognize as thought processes, are totally inscrutable to us. All we can do is maybe, maybe, intuit cause and effect based on anecdotal evidence. A risky business at any time.

An intelligent machine falls neatly into the category of an alien intelligence. So, why is it that we believe a super intelligent machine would have any consideration of what a human wants or needs at all? That would be somewhat like our consideration of the wants and needs of a cow. A worm. A plant. Bacteria.

Fuck this. Fuck them.

2011-02-09T06:20:00.004-06:00

I just can't fucking do it. I can not bring myself to make a post on the fucking retards who talked yesterday's Facts about how, actually, our federal taxes are lower than they've ever been.

I can't make myself figure out how to find the article to link to (too difficult to find in the local paper). It's not worth the fucking trouble any more. How the hell can you get through to gaping dumbasses like that?

It's not even the tax rates that bother me so much, and I'm thinking that is true of most people who hate ponying up every time we buy anything, every year when the property tax comes due, every year when they take our money under the direst penalties short of execution to do stupid shit like build high speed rail, foreign aid to nations populated with those who, far from being thankful, are overjoyed to the point of dancing in the streets whenever Americans are killed.

When that money is also used to make damn sure that those who take it from us are housed and clothed and fed in a manner which the vast majority of those paying can never approach.

When that money taken from half the population to give to the other half, the half which has no intention of ever trying to work for a living. Why should they when they can make more money farting out babies and holding their hands out for the free shit they are given? Fuck those motherfuckers.

Damn it, when you wear $200 sneakers and designer clothes you ain't poor. When you have cable or satellite TV with all the pay channels, you ain't poor. When you have high speed internet lines and top of the line computers in your Section 8 houing for which we pay 80% of the rent, you ain't poor. When you have cell phones for every memeber of your family, and each of them with full internet access, you ain't poor. When you can feed your various addictions every day by the dole or theft, you ain't poor.

Fuck that kind of poor. It's way past time to let other nations and the non-working half of this nation eat shit and die in the fucking cold.

Romney, hey.

2011-01-23T05:16:00.003-06:00

I don't give a fuck what the frozen assholes in NH like, I won't vote for that jackoff, or Newtron, or any kind of fucking preacher, or anybody related in any way whatsoever with any fucking bush.

I have no idea, at the moment. Palin is looking better and better. Though I have doubts about her, the very fact that she is so denigrated by the establishment republicans is attractive.

SF Austin Statue

2011-01-20T05:53:00.002-06:00

To fill in just a little bit...oh, fuckit. Just read this article and you'll get enough information. There have been several, and some letters to the editors, but this should give you the gist of it, if you are interested.

But nobody has given any guidance to anyone on how to ease the transition from a non-profit organization to a governmental organization. I am here to remedy that. I sent this in to the Facts Jan 18 at about 2100.

Anyone who has worked in a non-profit organization very long understands the situation confronting SFA 500. It’s not unusual. An imminently worthwhile project comes to fruition. Time passes, and the project begins to take more time and effort, while the members grow older, and some drift away, and suddenly it is more than the group can handle.

It seems only proper that government should step in and take over. After all, the city, county, state, even the federal government has plenty of money available that is wasted on projects at least as frivolous as a giant statue in a small park.

As certain as death and taxes are for the living, for statues, unfortunately, pigeons are inevitable. The statue will doubtless need cleaning for many years to come. To minimize the ongoing and escalating maintenance costs, how about laying Mr. Austin down? Man-lift usage would thus be minimized, and a horizontal statue would be unique, drawing more tourists. Plus, there is no way it can fall if it’s already down. You could even encourage graffiti, which would insure a certain minimum number of visitors while lengthening scrubbing intervals, and provide a popular item in the gift shop.

Boy, we just keep piling on, don't we?

2011-01-08T09:29:00.002-06:00

This shit is crazy. The worse our enemies get, the more we give them. I guess that's the product of our leadership, they got where they are by buying what appears to them to be friendship, never realizing that it is not, and they run our foreign policy in the same manner. (If you think the Pakis are not our enemies, you are making the same mistake. They are, and have always been, only purchased allies.)

Which is why we keep fucking up, over, and over, and over again.

This time they have gone too far.

2011-01-07T17:04:00.004-06:00

For some time now, I’ve been thinking that our old dishwasher (about ten years on it) has gone the way of all machines. It quit washing the damn dishes. I couldn’t find a damn thing wrong with it. There was some hard water buildup in the spinners, lower and upper, is the only frikkin’ thing I found wrong. I ran some of that dishwasher washer through it, and got rid of that shit, and it still was leaving a white scum on everything, which was most evident on transparent glasses and black coffee mugs. You could hand wash it off, but the dishwasher didn’t have the balls.

I had just about decided to go find a new one, then I figured I’d look into the GE web site, and see if this problem was in their database. Hey, why not? I found out how to deal with the “not draining” problem a couple of years ago. I found this:

Dishwasher - White Film on Glassware, Dishware and the Interior

A white film on glassware, dishware and the interior of the dishwasher can be caused by phosphate-free dishwasher detergent.

Automatic dishwashing detergents are now phosphate-free to comply with various state regulations that became effective July 1, 2010. The changeover in stores has been occurring gradually since late 2009.

Phosphates were added to detergents to sequester minerals in water and thus improve wash performance. Detergents without phosphates tend to leave mineral deposits on glassware and other items, leading to poor wash performance complaints. The deposits are in the form of a white film on glassware and other items, even the dishwasher tub itself. If you are using phosphate free detergent and recently observed a white film developing on your glassware, then we can safely assume phosphate free detergent is the problem. Please note that “film” refers to a mineral build up and not etching as a result of using too much detergent.

The easiest way for to remove the white film is to run your glassware and dishware through a dishwasher cycle using citric acid. Use a WD35X151 citric acid kit or purchase citric acid at the local supermarket.
Purchase a GE part or accessory on-line
Pour the citric acid in the detergent cup and close the cover. Place the filmed, but otherwise clean, glassware and dishware in the dishwasher. Leave silverware and other metal items out of the dishwasher. Turn the dishwasher on and let it run through a complete cycle without detergent. The glassware, dishware and dishwasher should come out film free and sparkly. Alternatively, a vinegar rinse may be used. Pour 1 cup of vinegar into the dishwasher just after the detergent cup opens and let the dishwasher complete its cycle.

The use of a rinse agent such as Cascade Crystal Clear may help minimize a repeat build up of film.

You may want to consider changing detergents. Independent testing has shown that tablets and packs tend to perform better than powders and liquids/gels. Cascade Complete 2 in 1 Action pacs is an example of a pack product.

The automatic dishwasher detergent manufacturers are working to eliminate the phosphate free filming problem. However, the problem will likely be with us for some time. Therefore, dishwasher owners may have to repeat the citric acid (or vinegar) rinse several times a year, especially if you are using a lower performing detergent or are using the dishwasher without a rinse agent.

Book Review: Phillip Thomas Tucker's

2011-01-01T14:13:00.002-06:00

Exodus from the Alamo: The Anatomy of the Last Stand Myth.

So I’m reading this book, and quit about ¾ of the way through, because I couldn’t stand it any more. The constant sniping got me down, along with the willful ignorance of the author.

Tucker has a PhD, in American History, and has written 20 or so books, specializing, they say, in history of the third kind, i.e., Southern. He was also a military historian, working for the zoomies.

If the guy were sort of retarded, I’d have given him a pass, but he doesn’t seem to be – his editor could possibly be a little slow, though. One example: Page 100, he is talking about the love affair of the Texian recruits for the Tejano women, the country, the Tejano lifestyle, etc., which is part of the reason he says they were caught by surprise and slaughtered so easily. “As never before, the young Anglo-Celtic men and boys basked in the greater openness, friendlessness, and courtesies of the Tejano life.” You don’t have to go far before you find more editorial blunders of that sort. I claim no better in my writing – however, I also claim no PhD, and I ain’t sellin’ any of this shit, either.

The worst thing about it is that I can’t argue with him. The Alamo was a stupidity on the Texian part, and even worse the gaping dumbass Fannin, over in Goliad. The fact that it was indefensible was proven by how easily we took it in the first place. Houston wanted it abandoned, after all.

But Tucker overplays his hand over and over again. The fact that the Texians were fighting for slavery and land is probably true – but the attribution of motive is something that I thought historians were supposed to avoid. The Mexican soldatos abilities and courage, and the same for the Mexican officers, which so impress him suddenly all turned to shit at San Jacinto? No, I have to call bullshit, Mr. Tucker.

There is no way to be sure of all the things that happened all those long years ago, when the forensics became unavailable long before because of development and lack of interest. After all, there can be no argument with the general facts. A small force composed of militia and regular Texians was crushed and slaughtered by a vastly superior force of Mexicans. He says at the outset that there are many reports, often conflicting of the battle. That is as can be expected. He also says he CHOSE which ones to believe. The only thing this book does is to propagate the anti-American, anti-white, politically correct viewpoint.

Personally, I say, fuck you, we won. So, it ain’t KEEN-tana beach, motherfucker. It’s QUIN-tana.

Coulda had some real fun.

2010-12-30T14:20:00.001-06:00

And dammit, now that I’m thinking about it, I almost had an altercation on the way to work last week.

A chicken-fucking dickhead got up on my bumper, so close I could not see the hood of his cream colored PT Cruiser over my tailgate, right up here across the river on 521, right about Bar-X. It could be that he was a God-damned muslim cocksucker, checking out my anti-muslim bumper sticker, I guess. Anyhow, we were rolling along like that at 65, him right ON my ass – I decided I’d tap on my brakes, just like a hog started to run out in front of me, then turned around and ran back off the road. Hey, it’s happened before, right along there.

I was watching. His tires went to smokin’ and that piece of Chrysler shit started fish-tailing, all the while I was no longer on the brakes, I was just cruising along. He was pissed, now. He got right back up there. I slowed, and slowed, and slowed some more, down to about 30. There was oncoming traffic, so he couldn’t pass. He was flipping me off, real good. Does it make it a better ‘fuck you’ if they are thrusting their fist at you?

He passed when the traffic went on by, only to slow way down in front of me. But I didn’t mind, because that made him able to see me flipping HIM off much better. He didn’t stop, he went on. That lucky bastard. ‘Cause I was just waiting to see how much I should bring to the party, i.e., should I get out with my pistol, or the sawed-off fishing rod, or the looped bootlace with the casting net weights on it.

Fucking stupid assholes.

2010-12-30T14:12:00.001-06:00

I feel so much safer, now that the LJPD has an Armored Personnel Carrier.

Last week, before Christmas, I had occasion to ride along with a friend of mine to the Bass Pro Shop at the intersection of Beltway 8 and Hwy 288. On the ride we noted five State Troopers monitoring traffic on the freeway, from Hwy 35 to the Beltway. That is, being generous, about 40 miles, which makes about one traffic monitor every eight miles.

The expense of that, whether the income from tickets issued makes up for it or not, is not even really relevant, and it’s not the worst of it, either. The serious question is whether the public is safer due to their presence. Somehow, within the eight miles between troopers, at least one incompetent or insane driver managed to pass everyone in we could see down the highway, weaving in and out of the 70 MPH traffic, without being stopped. He had to be doing 100.

Let’s assume that maniac was spotted and pursued. Which gives us one maniac flying down a freeway filled with Christmas traffic with a trooper in pursuit, who would naturally have to go faster, to catch the retard. That scenario does not make me feel safer, any more than LJPD’s APC.

What the fuck do we think we’re doing? We keep on adding cops and cop equipment to keep us safer and safer, and all the fuck that is happening is more speeding tickets and hassles for the marginally law-abiding public, with no increase in public safety. For sure there’s no decrease in thievery. When somebody can burn down the fucking Governor’s Mansion while it is being guarded by the State Troopers…does that signify anything to anybody else?

Red-Nose's Christmas Greeting

2010-12-25T08:57:00.001-06:00

To quote a late friend of mine, "Feliz Navidad, motherfucker."

The Pacific

2010-12-18T08:30:00.002-06:00

We're in the middle of viewing this from Netflix. Last night, it was the second disk.

It sucked pretty bad. The first one was fine, but it seems to me that they should have skipped to another unit that was actually involved in the war, instead of following the same guy(s) as they regrouped back in Australia.

The Pacific war did not stop after Guadalcanal. The 1st Marine Division took a break, like they said, but New Guinea was going on while they were in Australia. My uncle was a New Guinea vet. It wasn't any fun, I think, though he never said, to me.

Next Marine fight was Bougainville, and Tarawa, I think. But I don't know if the First Mar Div participated. I know Iwo was my Divison, the Fifth. I guess I could look it up, if it really mattered to me.

Gettin' old?

2010-12-17T07:09:00.003-06:00

In the interminable conversations we used to have amongst my four, more or less, room-mates back in 1971, we sometimes hit on how it was that we seemed to have more in common with our grandparents and great-grandparents, i.e., old people, than we did with our parents.

We often speculated that it was because we were stoned (really stoned) a lot of the time; that it was similar to getting old. Forgetting shit. Finding it hard to get up. Hard to ambulate. Hard to understand what you hear. Startled easily. Stumbling a lot. Dropping off to doze at random times. Et cetera.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that we were just fucked up and talking out of our asses. Getting old is not like being stoned or drunk. It is more like the hangover you have after knocking back several beers, doing some sort of speed, then doing alternating shots of tequila, schnapps, and whiskey until daybreak, then waking up on the floor of a strange bathroom.

In other words, it feels like dawg shit. Yeah, you’ve got a lot of that stoned shit going on, but it ain’t like it feels GOOD. So get that idea out of your fucking head.

POOSIE

2010-12-04T04:59:00.003-06:00

I'm sure you've seen this pic here and there around the web, so there's not much point, and besides, I'm not willing to spend the time and effort to make this copy of it zoomable, so that you can try to see something that isn't there.

But I gotta say - this ain't no 12-stitch wound, unless it is ripped wide open on the inside, and it doesn't appear to be. There isn't even much swelling.

I posit that he is a fucking pussy and went crying to the doc with a split lip, and his people had to justify it by lying about how serious it is.

Lord, what a bunch of fucking cunts we have as leaders.

Wikileaks

2010-11-30T18:26:00.002-06:00

I have almost commented in several places about this, but did not want to return to check it out and defend what I said. Too much fucking hassle. So, I figure I'll say it over here in my own damn place, where nobody gives a flying fuck what I say, because there ain't nobody there but just you and me.

And sometimes I ain't too fucking sure about you.

Andy-ways...Wiki is right. The leaks are mostly a good thing, more especially the "diplomatic" shit. The secrets these guys are keeping are mostly, and primarily, secret from US, dammit. They don't want us to know what they are really doing, and will do almost anything to keep us from knowing. If they had to live out in the open, we'd have a tenth of the problems we have. We might not fight pointless wars, and we might fight different ones, and make winning worth the sacrifice. What the fuck have we done when we win in Iraq? Afghanistan? Viet Nam? The way we're forced to fight them, how do we know when we've won?

Lord knows, I have zero objection to killing a shitload of non-Americans. Probably the most merciful thing we could do. But that's not what we are doing or even trying to do. I don't know what the fuck we're trying to do. Neither does anybody in the last five or six administrations, or anyone of the higher military brass since WWII.

If you think they did, well, line 'em up, buddy, and I'll knock 'em down for you.

Attaboy.

2010-11-24T08:14:00.002-06:00

The NK's shell a SK island, killing some folks, and desroying a bunch of stuff. So what is the response?

The time to have done something drastic about the Kims was way back in history. Sometime around Eisenhower's or Kennedy's administration. Like when we had some people with at least one fucking testicle running the show. Look at the fucking pussies we have had since then, and all their responses to anything. Don't EVEN try to throw the two Iraq wars back at me.

Food

2010-11-23T13:31:00.003-06:00

I don't know how big a circulation this blog has. Some time back, when it first began, and I signed on, I discovered accidentally that there were only about three members. Including me.

I got to finding out why, pretty soon, and ceased participating, but they are still one of my feeds, and you occasionally get some useful information. It's supposed to be "independents" - but they supported Bill White as a second choice, and many of their positions are indistinguishable from democrat positions.

Anyhow - I didn't know if Ol' Bob was on their subscription list, and I do know that he's involved in foodish matters - like all the major food corporations are trying to kill him, and his family, specifically (I think) - so I thought I'd link it up, over dere, boss.

Walkin' Dead

2010-11-22T10:33:00.002-06:00

I've been watching this series, and it ain't too bad.

It seems, though, in the opinion of the persons in command of the story, that there is one thing worse than a carnivorous, cannibalistic, contagious, ambulatory, partially rotten corpse.

“What could that be?” you ask?

Why, a redneck, of course.

NOW he's talking?

2010-11-07T09:38:00.003-06:00

After all the shit the dems and O'Bama have done in the last two years, NOW slimy cocksuckers like Bush jump out front to work for their REAL party, to try and rein in the tea party barbarians newly come to power.

See?

2010-11-02T06:14:00.003-05:00

This is wrong. What we are doing when we do it is paying the bastards protection money. What should be done? Why, stomp a mudhole in their fucking ass.

Pickles, eh?

2010-10-29T15:02:00.002-05:00

I have been ciphering on the Arlo Guthrie classic, "The Significance of the Pickle" some lately, and I am about to conclude that it is not real. That is, I think it might be at least partly fiction.

Right off the bat, so to speak, he comes out with a non-sequitur. He’s riding along a mountain road. One side of the road is the mountain. The other side of the road is “nothing, just a cliff, in the air.” All of a sudden, by accident, a string breaks on his guitar, and flies out from the guitar and wraps around a Yield sign. He doesn’t let go of the guitar, and it yanks him off the road.

So, how do you put a Yield sign in the air? I have to conclude that there was another reason for him leaving the road. Something he did not want to reveal. I believe a conspiracy is out there, probably hidden somewhere around the woodpile.

One clue: The integral use of a “pickle”, a huge, morphodite pickle, the size of three pregnant watermelons, with a cord coming out the end of it, leading down the pants and into the briefcase of a bystander…as the core, the kernel, if you will, of the story,...well. That imagery is in and of itself pregnant with allegory.

Huh?

2010-10-29T14:59:00.002-05:00

The Giants? The Giants?! The fucking GIANTS?!

What the fuck, over?

I never watched the Astros play them this year in SF, not the whole game, because those games don't even start until after 2100 our time, and the 'Stros were kinda sucky this year, and I didn't even consider the Giants worth disliking - figured they were pretty sucky, too.

Guess I was wrong again. Puke, man. Arng and blak. Gross.

'member?

2010-10-27T05:13:00.001-05:00

'Member when I was talking about how somebody oughta work out the math on the stupid-ass wind generators?

Check this out.