Fast And Furious #1

Why are the Democtrats in Congress questioning and making a ruckus over the firing of seven US Attorneys? Why are the attorneys whining like little crybabies?

Where was the outrage when Bill Clinton fired EACH AND EVERY US ATTORNEY, SAVE ONE, on staff (93 of 'em) when he took office in 1993?

Morons

Tragedy On Two Wheels!

When I was about 10 or 11 years old, we lived in Vidalia, Louisiana.

Vidalia was a small town, maybe 4,000 or so folks, and in the late 60s and early 70s was one of those places where the kids could just wander and do what they wanted for the most part.

Big Sis has a horror story of something that happened, or almost happened to her, so she probably would disagree with my innocent, small-town assesment, but the parents at least were pretty trusting and let us do whatever back then. My memories were mostly sweetness and light.

The result was that, if we let our parents know where we would be and for how long, we were good to go. (Oh, but if we stayed longer than we said we would, or were not where we said we would be, belt-whipping city, baby.)

My best friend, Rocky, and I would ride our bikes all over that town. But right across from our neighborhood, across the main highway that went through town, was the big shopping center in town. Grocery store, dime store, OTASCO, etc.

Even back then, this shopping center had been around a while. The parking lot was getting pretty rough.

Then one day, the whole parking lot was repaved, the whole thing. Nice, jet-black asphalt. Smooth. Fresh yellow lines for parking.

It was Easter weekend, of 1973 or 1974, I can't remember which, but that Saturday before Easter, Rocky and I rode our bikes over to Calvary Baptist Church, in another part of town.

Rocky and I attended Calvary and were in the boy's group there called "Gallileans." Kinda like a boy scouts for Christian kids. We had to do service things for people and the church, so we would ride our bikes over to the church every Saturday, clean out and sweep the innards of both the church's old school buses.

The quickest way from our neighborhood to Calvary Baptist was to go across the highway and through the shopping center parking lot, now nicely re-paved, and on to the church.

We did our cleaning duty, and by the time we were on our way back that Saturday, the shopping center parking lot was filled with cars due to the stores' Easter sales.

And to top it all off, one of the radio stations from Natchez, Mississippi had a mobile unit out there too, broadcasting and trying to drum up business for the stores.

Rocky and I rode past the DJ, who saw us and called us over. He was talking to two girls who were also on their bikes, and challenged us all to a race, the winner getting a prize.

Hey, free stuff! I'm there, dude.

We all four agreed, and at his direction, went to the other end of the new parking lot, in front of OTASCO, and lined up side by side, to await his signal.

When he dropped his raised arm, we were to race and pass in front of him, and come back for the prize. If it was close, he was to be the judge, as the finish line was right in front of his mobile unit.

In the distance, the arm fell, and I zoned out. I've talked a bit on this blog about how I become a different person on a bicycle, and this day was no exception. When I zone out like that on a bike, human powered vehicle mayhem and pain usually results. I definitely remember Rocky starting faster than I did. I think his bike was geared slightly lower than mine, which was good on the starting part, but if I had distance, I could usually catch up with him.

What happened to the girls, I have absolutely no idea. To this day, I can only remember thinking I had to beat Rocky. In my mind, I can best remember them at the DJ's mobile broadcasting thingy when he first called Rocky and I over. Maybe I was an 11 year old sexist, but I guessed I could beat a girl in a bicycle race! Plus, I was on my beloved Sears Gremlin. The Gremlin and I were hardy race veterans; having known the triumph of blowing other bikes/kids off the road, as well as the heartbreak of defeat. We knew instinctively Rocky was the man to beat.

So we start, and Rocky jumps into the lead, he's just to my right. We're standing on the pedals and pumping for all we're worth. I start to pull up beside Rocky as I gain my full speed...

...POW!...

Next thing I know, I'm face down, legs tangled in my bike frame and chain, and sliding to a stop using both forearms and elbows as brakes.

Turns out that my chain broke in the stress of the race, and standing and pedaling when it happened, I went down hard. Really, really hard.

I literally tore the skin off both forearms and elbows, from the elbows to about half way to my wrists. Bad enough that blood was dripping pretty good.

Rocky won the race, and after collecting his prize, came back to check on me. He hadn't known I wrecked so badly.

At the same time, his Mom and Dad happened to be pulling through the parking lot, looking for a good spot, saw us, and my damaged condition, and said they would take me straight home. It took us a while to get my right foot untangled from the broken chain that had also wedged between the rear socket and the frame.

Rocky and his Dad put my bike in the back of the truck. I remember crying and telling them, "My Mama's gonna KILL me!" And Rocky's Mom saying, "No, no. Now I know she's not going to do that. It was an accident."

Anyway, Rocky's parents, with us and our bikes in the back of the truck, took us the short drive to my home.

I remember riding back there with my arms bent, hands in the air, and dripping blood in the back of the old pickup.

Mama was home, and no, she didn't kill me. I remember Rocky and his Mom telling her what happened and her leading me to the kitchen sink to try to clean my wounds.

My arms and elbows and wounds had jillions of tiny black specks in the raw meat there, from the freshly paved parking lot. We literally had to stick my arms under the faucet and wash the wounds with soap and Mom rubbing the arms, pain notwithstanding, to try to clean all of that tar out. I can still remember the bottle of liquid Ivory dish soap she used to suds up her hands and try to wash my arms with.

With four kids, Sainted Mother kept a good supply of rubbing alcohol around, but by the time she got the hamburger meat of my forearms clean, I was so tuckered out, that the final dousing of alcohol wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.

At least that's the way I remember it. She might remember it with me freaking out totally about the alcohol, but I find it strange that the initial washing and the Ivory soap is so vivid, but the alcohol being poured on them being a dim memory.

Whatever.

For the next four to six weeks, we had to keep bandages over that whole scraped area of each arm. I would forget when I sat down and would put my arms on whatever chair's arm rests and would instantly regret it. I remember having to be careful in school too, around other kids and even how I wrote on my desks in the classrooms. I even had to miss an evening of roller skating in Natchez, during the time I was healing, which killed my soul. I sucked at skating, but I loved doing it anyway. I remember sitting there and watching though, it was cool to get to go with the other kids from church even if I was too afraid of falling on my raw arms.

After that bike wreck, although that new parking lot was smooth for riding, I knew it wasn't really very smooth.

So that's one of many dramatic bicycle wrecks I've had over the years. In my right elbow, I still have a really hard small lump, either from scar tissue, or as I thought as a youngster, that a small rock got ground into the flesh and not washed out, and eventually healed over. It definitely feels like a little rock under my skin there though. When I'm nervous or just thinking, I tend to rub that lump near my right elbow.

I like to think of it as a piece of shrapnel from my personal battles that I'll carry until I die.

Close Encounter of the Fishy Kind

Scans of slides from late summer of 1984, when Lovely Wife and I were living in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.

A storm had come through the area, and the next time we were at the beach, the wave action of the storm had washed the sand around until, as you entered the water of the Gulf, there were "pools" along the length of the beach. As you went out farther, the water got shallow, to just a few inches and then gradually deepened to the normal Gulf depth.

Now the Gulf of Mexico is like a big ol' lake on most days, really smooth and many days the water is a beautiful, clear, turquoise. I had bought myself a decent mask and snorkel set. Louisiana boy plays Marlin Perkins.

So this little water-filled trench along the length of the beach that had been formed by the storm had quite a bit of fish and underwater life trapped in it. All I had to do was float on the water with my mask/snorkel and the depth was such that I just pulled myself along the bottom of this new trench with my hands.

Just slowly moving along in the water, looking at a few fish, looking for cool shells, and the water was warm, the day was warm, it was after tourist season so we had the beach almost to ourselves. Perfect.

As I continued to slowly and gently pull myself forward with my hands in the bottom of the trench, I touched something and immediately there was a flurry of activity right under my hands, about 3 feet from my face.

It was about three flounder who had burrowed themselves slightly under the bottom sand and were just laying there. I hadn't seen them until I touched one of them. All of a sudden, they're kicking up sand and darted away from me, while I pulled my legs back under myself and shot up out of the water.

Total elapsed time, about 2 seconds, from calmly floating there to standing in the water with my heart at about 180bpm.

Of course I realized what had happened right away and started laughing, but realized that Lovely Wife was also laughing.

I don't know if flounder scream when scared, but apparently I do, and did, and Lovely Wife said that the sound of my scream through the snorkel was funny, so there she stood laughing at me. She said that the snorkel gave my scream a really peculiar tone.

Good thing I don't take myself too seriously, and I don't get mad when folks make jokes at my expense, but it was kinda tough proving that I was a girly man when encountering a flounder, and screaming in front of my new bride.

Picture Post, Sunday March 4, 2007

More slides from the summer/fall of 1984. That's where I am in my scanning of my slides, and thought I'd show a few more of them to y'all.

The photos with the Hobie catamarans in them were from when Fort Walton Beach hosted a world championship for the 14 and 16 foot Hobies.

If I Were A Rich Man

One of the drawbacks of blogging and typing is that you can't hear me sing If I Were A Rich Man from Fiddler On The Roof. But then again, it's probably better for you if you can't hear my singing.

Anyhoo, I'm putting some pictures of some beach homes in this area that I really like. Now I have to tell you, that the REALLY snazzy homes are pretty much all gated or something else like that to keep riff raff like me out. So these are homes that I can get close enough to for photographing.

I wouldn't mind living in one of these shacks. This is where the rich man part comes in, the cost of living on the beach, and the cost of beach property and car upkeep in the salt air is tremendous. Definitely have to have a healthy bank account to live on the beach in one of these homes.





This final home isn't a beach home, but since I'm showing houses, I thought I'd throw this one in. It's an old home in downtown Melbourne, Florida. There are fewer and fewer of these old Florida style homes around here. The property that the house is sitting on has increased in value so much, that many people buy a home, tear the old house down, and build something akin to the above beach homes on the land. This old house is surrounded by businesses and wouldn't really be a great place to live, but the old house is pretty, and well kept.

A New Religion and the Return of Indulgences?

Bring on the show down.
How long will you waver between two opinions?
If the Lord is God, then follow Him
But if Baal is god, then follow him

lyrics from the song God of Elijah by the band Disciple

We've really gotten goofy in this country. I really, really think that conservatives and liberals are just flat-out wired differently from one another.

A quick example of this is to compare all of the brouhaha that erupted last fall, just before the mid-term elections, over Ted Haggard, supposedly some Christian big shot (though I'd never heard of the guy) with the lack of brouhaha over the Virginia ACLU muckety-muck that was caught last week with child rape movie pornography on his home computer. One story caused dancing in the streets, and the other is being ignored. The predominately liberal media hates Christianity, and loves the ACLU.

I think that liberals are trying to not only knock down Christianity, as evidenced by James Cameron's (of Titanic fame) upcoming "documentary" on the bones of Jesus, his wife, and kids that were supposedly found; but they are also forming a new religion, called Global Warming.

Bear with me here, ok? My older brother, as a teen, had a motorcycle. This motorcycle had a kick start method of cranking the engine. Although I don't ride myself, it appears to me that almost all motorcycles and the like these days have electronic ignition. Push a button and it just starts. But do y'all remember the sound of someone trying to crank a motorcycle with a kick start? It rarely cranked on the first try, and you really had to put some effort into it.

Brrrrhh. Brrrrhh. Brrrrhh-wanngannganng!

I personally think that on Sunday night, that sound ripped a hole in the space-time continuum, and the worshipers of Global Warming got the motor cranked on their religion when Al Gore won an Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth.

The Oscars had long ago lost my interest. It was, as the Grammys and most other awards shows have long been, a gala of the actor's Mutual Appreciation Society. They don't give a hoot about what the movie going public watches or likes, they're now into "making a statement" with choosing certain films. Like the Grammys awarded all those statues to the Dixie Chicks, not for the album, but for "sticking it to Bush." All of these awards shows are out to make political points instead of truly trying to reward the best. It's which movie or musical group best represents our liberal world view best? And then the award goes to those people. It's why I can't watch that crap any more.

Seriously, how many of the nominated films have you seen? Yeah. Me neither. The only one that looks worth watching is Letters From Iwo Jima.

Al Gore was coronated as the true prophet of this new religion on Sunday night. Yeah, the environmental movement has been around for decades, but it's grown to the point that anyone, like, say, me for instance, who dares look at such a mighty prophet as Al Gore with the squinty eyes of an unbeliever, or, horror or horrors, voices my exceptions to the Global Warming mantra, is immediately shouted down as a tool of the oil industry.

I have talked about my problems with the whole global warming thang here, and my problems with Al Gore, here.

But after the Academy Awards the other night, it was brought out, yet again, how Al Gore preaches, but doesn't practice what he preaches. His mansion in Nashville is x-square feet, and uses more electricity in one month than the average American home uses in well over a year.

Al wants me to cut back. The big thing we're being told now, is we can do something small to help, like switching to fluorescent bulbs like Al and the Gore family. Wuh-hoo! I'm really helping the environm…..Wait. If I recall correctly, fluorescent bulbs use mercury in each one. Aren't we supposed to take fluorescent bulbs to special places for recycling because of the dangers of mercury poisoning? Holy Dilemma Batman!

And the list goes on.

But what really got under my skin about the whole thing is when Al Gore's spokesman came out in his defense. First of all, as predictable as could be, the people who revealed Al's home electricity habits were quickly labeled as tools of the oil industry. (Excuse me while I stifle a yawn.)

They throw out the accusation as if it means something to people. Don't liberals understand that most Americans DO NOT think that oil companies are evil environment destroyers, willing to destroy the earth and all life on it for the sake of profits? I guess not. I guess to liberals, oil companies are evil, and that's a given, not to be denied or disputed. I guess they're in denial of exactly what propels their limos and provides their mansions and various vacation homes electricity and makes a private jet go zoom!

Only problem is, liberals like Mr. Gore, are warning us and trying to guilt-trip us into a certain lifestyle, that they have created in their own religion's holy of holies, that they themselves will not live up to.

See now why I mentioned Ted Haggard? These same people held the man up to public ridicule, heck, maybe rightly so, but when it's their own religion's prophet Al Gore who is shown to be a hypocrite of massive proportions, he is to be given a free pass.

Liberals in general, and worshipers at the altar of Global Warming in particular, give Al Gore a free pass, BECAUSE HE IS TOO IMPORTANT TO THE CAUSE TO HAVE TO PRACTICE WHAT HE PREACHES. Men and women at the top of the Global Warming fear-fest hierarchy are allowed to travel in private jets and other polluting practices because they are vital to the cause.

The few, the proud, the Global Warming Apologists are just too dang important to have to live up to the expectations they require us mere mortals to live up to!

Oh yeah, and India and China and places like that get a free pass on the whole harmful emissions thing, well, because they've basically laughed in the Global Warming/Al Gore's faces when asked to stop building power plants and stuff like that. But China and India are the world's largest polluters and they WILL. NOT. STOP. OR. SLOW. THEIR. INDUSTRIES.

Basically, if we did everything humanly possible, in the the western countries to stop CO2 emissions, the ever increasing industrial might of China and India would more than negate anything and everything we could do, and destroy our economies by the back breaking cost of trying to lessen emissions.

But the one that really made me stand up and take notice was that Al Gore's p.r. guy also said that he buys "carbon credits" to offset his family's carbon footprint.

Best I can tell, this basically means that the Gores have invested money in endeavors that are "green" or that try to lessen CO2 emissions. Guess who is on the board of the green carbon credit corporation that Al Gore gives to? Yep. Mr. Gore hisself.

Haven't people pointed fingers at the Catholic Church for centuries because of their middle ages practice of indulgences? That's one of the things that caused Martin Luther to nail up his Theses and start the protestant reformation. The Catholic Church of the time basically allowed people to do what amounted to buying a piece of paper from the Church that forgave them of some sin or restitution that needed to be made.

So these days, we have this new religion, all kick-started and gunning the throttle, and they already have a system of indulgences in place so that rich people, who sin against the tenets of the Global Warming faith, can pay some money to other people just like them and receive absolution. For liberals, it's the rhetoric that counts, the hollow absolution of throwing money at a "green" company. Actually living a carbon neutral lifestyle? That's for the unwashed masses to adhere to.

It's also funny to see that video clip where Al Gore showed some emotion (finally) in the 2004 election, talking about President Bush, and screaming, "HE PREYED UPON OUR FEARS!!!" Oh really Al? And just what do you think you're trying to peddle with An Inconvenient Truth, but FEAR? Takes one to know one I reckon.

What strange times we live in.

Now I don't really care if you believe in Global Warming and are a charter member of that religion. I don't even mind if you want to stop by my house and tell my about your new god, I'm actually really open minded about discussing such things with people, despite what the one-sided nature of my blogging may lead someone to think. But if you do, I'll expect you to let me tell you why I believe in the God of the Bible. I don't expect you to convert to Christianity, just that, if I hear you out, at least have the courtesy to hear me out too.

But I've been reading and seeing what the church of Global Warming espouses, and though I do believe we're in a period where the earth's average temperature has risen just a bit, I don't buy that man is the cause of it. And I'm certainly not ready to see the economies of the western world destroyed under heavy requirements to meet the tenets of the Global Warming religion, while China and India pollute all they want to and grow strong at our expense.

Oh, and are all those rich actors going to stop giving money to Scientology and start buying forgiveness for carbon sinning with "carbon credits?" The church of Scientology better beware.

Heck, I might set me up wonna dem shell corporations and start selling me some carbon credit indulgences. I might just be able to retire at 50!

Hollywood does occasionally make a really good movie, but as to their religion of the day, Global Warming, and their newly anointed prophet, Al Gore, well, I'm not converting.

Thursday Thirteen #29

Thirteen of JAM's Favorite Quotes By Great Philosophers 1. Some days, it just don't pay to get out of bed. - Foghorn Leghorn 2. That boy's about as sharp as a bowling ball. - Foghorn Leghorn 3. Always carry a litter bag in your car. It doesn't take up much space, and when it gets full you can just throw it out the window. - Steve Martin 4. If you fill a swimming pool with dry ice, and let it melt, can you then swim in it and not get wet? - Steven Wright 5. I wish I had a Kryptonite cross, because then you could keep both Dracula AND Superman away. - Jack Handey 6. I bet one legend that keeps recurring throughout history, in every culture, is the story of Popeye. - Jack Handey 7. No one can pull the wool over my eyes. Cashmere maybe, but wool, never. - Thurston Howell III (Gilligan's Island) 8. When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned. - Mark Twain 9. I'm a little mean, but I make up for it by bein' real healthy. - Ernest T. Bass (Rock throwing genius on The Andy Griffith Show) 10. Gun-drawing practice, ten minutes every day. If I ever have to use this baby, I want to teach it to come to papa in a hurry. - Barney Fife 11. Nip it. You go read any book you can find on the subject of child discipline and you'll find every one of them is in favor of bud-nipping. - Barney Fife 12. If brains was lard, that boy wouldn't have enough to grease a skillet. - Jed Clampett 13. I've got a wife, two kids and 10 finance companies to support. How am I supposed to pay my bills? - George Jetson The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!