Stuff I like

Today is some random things I like; quotes, links and miscellaneous stuff.

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Friendship is like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get the warm feeling that it brings.
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Blues by Seasick Steve.
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Rules of the Blues. This is one of my all time favorites.
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Quick definitions.
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Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
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Famous last words.
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Most beautiful words. If you write fiction, here are more excellent places to visit.
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Why I always win arguments!
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Complete Calvin & Hobbes.
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The Dialectizer. Always good for a few laughs. I like the Redneck and Jeefe-a deeelects best. Following is part of yesterday's post translated to Redneck:

ah visited th' RA docko' today fo' a regular checkup, an' af'er th' exam we had a nice BS sesshun. We discussed th' medical situashun in th' US an' she brought up sumpin ah hadn't thunk of. It basically corncerned mighty sick varmints; th' quality of their lives, an' how much treatment they receive when their longevity outlook is bleak. Shet mah mouth! Sh'd varmints wif a pore prognosis haf a lot of tests an' procedures prexcribed fo' them? She used a patient wif advanced Alzheimer's disease as an example. Th' varmint is in a mostly vegitative state an' will not live mo'e than three years at most, so eff'n thet varmint corntracks t'other serious disease, sh'd docko's o'der a slew of expensive tests an' procedures fo' him? Does th' patients quality of life call fo' thet much extry expense t'be placed on fambly members an' th' medical we'fare system? In other than Alzheimer's cases, sech as causin' th' brain daid t'"live" by use of breathin' machines, etc., sh'd thar be a man'ated time limit befo'e th' plug is pulled? As mo'e an' mo'e varmints become older, these thin's will hafta be addressed, on account o' eff'n they isn't th' expense of treatin' th' terminally ill will bust th' treasury of even a junerous govment an' nashun.

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Medical plight

Meth lab in a box


I visited the RA doctor today for a regular checkup, and after the exam we had a nice BS session. We discussed the medical situation in the US and she brought up something I hadn't thought of. It basically concerned very sick people; the quality of their lives, and how much treatment they receive when their longevity outlook is bleak. Should people with a poor prognosis have a lot of tests and procedures prescribed for them? She used a patient with advanced Alzheimer's disease as an example. The person is in a mostly vegetative state and will not live more than three years at most, so if that person contracts another serious disease, should doctors order a slew of expensive tests and procedures for him? Does the patients quality of life call for that much extra expense to be placed on family members and the medical welfare system? In other than Alzheimer's cases, such as causing the brain dead to "live" by use of breathing machines, etc., should there be a mandated time limit before the plug is pulled?

As more and more people become older, these things will have to be addressed, because if they aren't the expense of treating the terminally ill will break the treasury of even a generous government and nation.
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The above photo was made in a vacant house where Carolyn did some cleaning yesterday. The house owner had to put his renters out after they were there only a couple of months. There were several of these boxes sitting around in various rooms, so I suppose a lot of people had chest problems.
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Presenting The Smoking Gun's Mugshots of the Week!

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Growing pains

This has been another "not much" day. I rode with Carolyn to do a little residential job, and have done little else except create a business assets sheet for the county. I detest doing business stuff when business is so bad; it has an "what the hell is the use" aura to it.
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One of my contacts has been reading on my writing blog, and she found one poem—My World—she really liked. Her nice comment made me feel very good.
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Would someone please tell Obama he can't have his cake and eat it too! He will not listen to me ... surely, he reads this blog each day.
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My friend Mark; aka yankeepez and Iconic Rambler has a new web site up and running. Mark is a very good photographer and wants to do a photo book with text on what he calls "fading America". If you have time, please visit and take a look at some of his best photos, and while you are there, don't forget to sign his guest book. Mark is chasing the American dream, and I wish him all the success in the world.
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Rambles

Is Barack Obama a President first and politician second, or vice-versa? Here is an Associated Press fact-check on last evenings BS session.
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I have become so bored with sitting home, I am actually thinking about doing some work. The weather is supposed to be reasonable tomorrow, so I may get out for a bit and see if I can find something to shoot at.
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Pat's Lady Vols are playing way below about everyone's expectations, including hers. I've seen this before with her young teams; they play scared. She has them so afraid of her butt-chewings and benchings to the point that they try too hard and mostly turn the ball over on offense, and stand around expecting someone else to do something on defense. Ladies, it will get better as you grow as a team, and with Pat, team effort is what matters most and that comes through individual dedication. I expect some of these women to transfer to other schools before they become Juniors, but when they do, they cannot expect to be as good as Pat would have made them. With her, the kids have to earn playing time.
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This blog's Technorati rating is back close to what it had been being. Maybe if I can draw in a few thousand more readers, I can sell ads here and become the Billy Mays of the bloggosphere.
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Cold, blogs, and happiness

We are back to the cold winter again with average temps running much below normal. There should be a couple of mild days this week, but by weekend it will be cool again, although closer to median. The cold has kept me indoors much more than usual for winter, and the strain is beginning to show. I have gleaned about all the photos from the archives that I can find which are anywhere near decent. Last year it was late March before the weather really broke for spring. Last year I broke before the weather did.
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I was looking through the blogs of people from Johnson City and the area, and some seem to be consumed by the number of hits they get each day for their efforts. I enjoy having readers and followers of my blogs, but it isn't why they are being posted. I've been doing this for more than three years, and for a long time the only reader I had was my friend Alice. Eventually more folks (mostly from Flickr) came to look and a few have stayed with me, some on a regular basis. I appreciate all of them and all of you. It is something I enjoy doing, and it is therapy.

My Technorati popularity rank for Loose Laces is 3,324,847th. Two days ago and for the past year it was about 2,500,000th. What does this all mean? It means I probably will not be making a living by selling ads here!
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The Associated Press reports that "... health care costs will average $8,160 this year for every man, woman and child ..." in the United States.

According to my math, people working full time for minimum wage will gross less than $13,800 this year. Deducting $1,056 for Social Security and Medicare from that amount leaves $12,744 net take home pay if federal and state income taxes are excluded. Subtract the $8160 for medical care and that leaves $4,584 to live on for an entire year. But wait Billy Mays; out of that hunk of change comes state sales taxes, local sales taxes, wheel taxes, auto license taxes, along with taxes and fees on everything else they can think of. America the Beautiful!

Why should people on low income be forced to pay social security and medicare taxes when it is likely they will never live long enough to use it?

On top of this, I heard one of the Rush Limbaugh clones saying that there is no way the federal government should regulate any big businesses, particularly the health care industry.

Phooey!
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I can see clearly now ... I wish!

Post-fire repairs on the Grindstaff castle


Do you Twitter? I can see where this little social networking site can be useful, especially if you have several friends or contacts to keep up with. If you decide to give it a look and join in, I will be happy if you become one of my Twitter contacts.
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Yesterday was not one of my most glorious days. I dropped my towel twice before I could get into the shower and once more after I was in, causing it to get soaked. Then I dropped the soap bar twice and finally said to hell with it and washed with shampoo!

After cleansing, I came here to the computer and could get exactly nothing done. I worked on Jerry's income taxes for a while, then worked on Jeremy's income taxes for a while, but neither got finished. My concentration was practically nil, and I will have to go over them again. I've been like this since Wednesday morning, and it is still much the same today. I drove Carolyn to Elizabethton and Piney Flats yesterday, and was semi-blind all the way. When the allergies are running strong, my eyes become very sensitive to sunlight, so much so that I have to shut the window blinds in the house. It all boils down to these nagging eye allergies, and medicines and drops help but little. I am writing this before it gets so bad today I cannot see the words on the screen.

If anything I have written in the past few days makes less sense than usual, it is because I cannot think clearly. I try not to be around people anymore than I have to be, because I do become quite ill tempered during these times, and Carolyn has learned to avoid me completely.
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Obama has appointed hired a crew to make sure the Federal stimulus money goes to the right places. That may seem like a big deal, but I suppose it is more of a political "covering his ass" thing. It will look good to taxpayers, but will be of little importance in the big picture. The problems will lie where they always have; too many dishonest people getting access to the money once it is doled out to states, localities, and agencies. Look for many billions to be siphoned off by bureaucratic thieves, unscrupulous contractors, and everyday workers looking to ease their way through a miserable life.
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February

Cold here this morning. February is a tough month to live through with extreme temperature meanderings and forceful winds. About this time two years ago, we had some of the most beautiful warm and springlike weather I have seen. A lot of flowers were up and some were blooming, then along came mid-March and the coldest temps of winter for several days on. A lot of our flowers and shrubs have not recovered, especially the hosta and azalea. Most of the hostas will be ok, but the shrubs were a total loss. We raised them from babies.
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I do not like nor trust Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai. He is too damned lazy (or cute) to put his arms through his expensive coat sleeves and wears the headpiece of a dink! Besides, he is a puppet of Dick Cheney's and hopefully, Cheney is long gone!
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The Smoking Gun's Mug Shots of the Week!
Those Tennessee gals on page one have a wonderful sense of fashion!
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I see the city leaders in cahoots with the Johnson City Development Authority have allowed site preparation to proceed for the new apartment complex aimed at college students. It is located between E.T.S.U. and downtown, and these apartments, along with a bike path, are supposed to send these kids and their money to local merchants in a revived center city. The apartments are being built on one of the last pretty and green places in town, but as always JCDA gets its way.
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Hard Drive Activity

Hair


Today I finally changed out the worrisome hard drive that contains all my photos from the past two years. It took only a few of my many swear words to get the new one up and running, and it is faster than the old one because it is SATA and the other was IDE. The files have been copied, and everything is in order ... I hope. Now I am pooped.
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Headline: Obama warns mayors not to waste stimulus money. Cripes, doesn't the federal government know where this money is going? Same old lack of oversight? They could cure a big part of the unemployment in this country by hiring enough people to see that the dough is spent properly. Paying those folks would be better than seeing most of it go down a bureaucratic vacuum like the ones state and local governments are used to creating.
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A lot of people are saying that we should give Obama a chance; I say he blew his credibility when he rushed to Washington during the presidential campaign and voted to give out money to Wall Street. Nope; I say keep his feet to the fire. The more we buy into a politician's rhetoric, the closer we come to losing any hold we have left on the direction this country takes. He is a savvy politician.
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Eye allergies!
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More economy garbage

From the Roan ...


I love economists! I particularly like the ones that claim to be experts, which includes the majority of them. There is no consensus among them about anything that really matters, yet their individual and collective opinions are used by all major players in money markets world over. Their forecasts and opinions dictate the steps which governments, industries, and corporations will follow for years into the future. The sad fact is that most of the time most of them are wrong. Years ago, several of them predicted the mess we are now in could happen, but few said it would happen. Too many variables, they said. Eliminating variables to get to the hard truth is their job. The concept for throwing all this money into the fray is based on their conclusions, so most variables must have been eliminated. Yeah; right! The one variable they cannot see through the dollar signs is people. Living persons dictate conditions; not money. The habits of people are what controls the economy, and until habits are changed, the economy will remain vulnerable. The United States is still trying to do business the same way it did in 1900, but at a much faster pace. Much has changed since then, but people are pretty much the same now as they were then; fickle. We as a people have chosen to follow a market based economy, yet people's thinking habits haven't changed much even as other nations join us in an accelerated trading market. We all still want our piece of the pie, but we fail to realize the pie was long ago eaten, and new ones are not being baked fast enough. People are what will change things for the good, and people must slow down on the the pie-eating. Corporate America will have to slow down on making and marketing pies when there are more than people can consume. Economists must learn to reconcile the want and need for wealth with the fickleness of people, because that propensity to suddenly change directions is the one thing which people can be counted on to do. Economists will never learn to count money until common sense prevails in their equations and two-plus-two again equals four.
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On February 19, 1986, my dad died. He was 65 years of age.
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On February 20, 1902, Ansel Adams was born. Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Adams for bringing a great visionary and artist onto the world, and rearing him so his mind could reach far beyond the mundane.
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Rambles

Finally went for my makeup shot, and from there to The Cottage for lunch. Carolyn was disappointed that they took deep fried oysters off the menu. As long as they serve a cold beer, I shall keep returning.
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My eyes are screwed up again ...
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Major League baseball would be well served to clean up its act; it is the most pathetic sport there is, but NASCAR is busting its but to lower itself to their standards.
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I don't think the $75 billion homeowner bailout will help me any. The mortgage holders should take some responsibility for this mess, along with the over-financed homeowners like myself. You—the average taxpayer—did not get us into this mess, but it is again on your shoulders to bail us out. When will they ever learn?!
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Poor, poor Comcast and Hewlett-Packard! Quarterly profits are down. I hope they never recover. Comcast is the sorriest company I've ever dealt with in customer service, and HP has gouged us to death with inflated ink prices for their so-so printers. Inflated? As of June 2008, some ink prices were equilivalent to $20, 000 per gallon! Screw them!
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Some GOP governors are threatening to not accept the bailout money for states. Isn't that the same thing as saying "screw you" to their struggling citizens?
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I better shut up before I get mad.
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New Model Time

Male pine siskin


Today I took Carolyn to see her new doctor for the first time as the one she had been with for many years retired. She seemed to like her, and she is in with several others in the old Nance building. They have their own lab and pharmacy, so it is pretty much one-stop shopping.
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Speaking of the Nance building, when I was little, my dad loved Buicks and Oldsmobiles. The local Olds dealer was Nance Oldsmobile and Cadillac located just out of downtown on East Main Street. It had huge neon signs on the front of the building that read Nance Oldsmobile and under that were letters just a bit smaller that read Home of the Olds 88. Every year in the early 50's, we would pile into whatever jalopy my dad had at the time, and drive to town and see the new 88's and 98's when they went on display in September. Look was all we could do, because new cars were way out of the range of wages paid in this part of Appalachia. In those days, the new car unveiling was a huge event for dealerships. A model would keep the same basic appearance for three straight years with only cosmetic changes, then the outer skins and inside trim would change completely, and each time there was usually more horsepower under the hood. Gasoline was less than twenty-five cents per gallon, so most working people could afford it. Every year, the dealerships would have searchlights, free ballons and refreshments, and later on in the decade, live entertainment which consisted anywhere from a hillbilly music band to a carnival guy with no arms that played a mean guitar with his feet and toes. The Chevrolet dealership was owned by Roy Faircloth and was a few blocks away from Nance. It always had the best entertainment and most refreshments. A couple blocks west of that was Norton Arney's Pontiac, Buick, GMC sales. Arney was pretty much a cheapskate, and didn't offer much at new model time except a hillbilly band, which in turn had a weekly half-hour tv show that was sponsored in big part by Arney Motors. The band was named Bonnie Lou and Buster. Besides Bonnie Lou and her husband Buster, other members of the group from time to time were Lloyd "ding-dong" Bell, and Chuck the Carolina Indian, along with Buster dressed as a fellow named Hump-Hyphen-Hammer with baggy pants, a too-big and too loud sport coat, and Craucho Marx eyeglasses, rubber nose, and a brush mustache. Novelty stores still carry them. Turkey in the Straw and Play me some Mountain Music were imbided upon at nearly every show and appearance. Not far from Arney was the Ford showroom, Tennessee Motors. Like Arney, they weren't big on giving anything away.
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A dose of nostalgia does me good from time to time ...

Slow Holiday

I dislike these mid-winter holidays as they serve no purpose but to get most government workers a day off from work with pay. No problem with that, but place the day in mid April when the weather should be milder. We've already had New Year's Day, MLK Day, and now this; all in the dead of winter when little can be done outdoors. Yes, put it in spring and rename it to Ken Day, or K-Day for short.
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Saw my first robin in our yard today; did I beat you this year, Alice? Also saw several high-flying raptors heading northeast. A chickadee posed for a photo, but he wasn't close enough to get a decent shot.
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NASCAR ran its premier event at Daytona yesterday, and it marks the first time since it was televised that I did not watch at least some of it, however I did listen to portions on the radio. I suppose Dale Earnhardt Jr. has made a living off of his dad's name and reputation for long enough, and decided to build his own by putting several cars into the wall because they wouldn't get out of his way. Atta boy, Junior! That Chevy isn't built Ford tough! Will the sanctioning body penalize Junior? It is doubtful they will do much to their biggest draw. Why is he—a good but not great race car driver—the sport's biggest draw? Because he is his daddy's boy, and no other reason. Hid dad was a down-and-dirty hero to the Budweiser drinking, Chevrolet driving, and Wrangler wearing rednecks who sport the "I'm with stupid" tee shirts. He took their pent up road rage and set it free each weekend, putting good cars and drivers in harms way by bumping them into a concrete wall at 170 mph, and these weekend warrior wannabe's applauded everytime he downed a cursed opponent. His final act was to kill himself while trying to block a string of fast moving race cars so his little Junior or his buddy could win the "Great American Race" He was bumped in the heat of battle, his car slid up the track and into the same wall he had intentionally caused others to hit, and he was instantly dead of a broken neck, brain hemmoraging, and other terminal misdemeanors. I don't miss him one iota.

Writing an publishing something like this won't make me popular in the neck of the woods where the good ol' boys live.
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What will Obama do about Pakistan? Big trouble is brewing in that semi-civilized country that has nuclear weapons at its disposal.
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Allergies

Beaver lunch counter

My spring allergies are in full bloom; and I can tolerate all of them except for my eyes constantly feeling like they are full of sand. They are sore and have a vicious discharge. It is just something to detract from my beauty!
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We rode up to Wilbur and Watauga Dam this afternoon; the road to from Siam is getting a lot of trash alongside. The TVA has raised the lake level some more, and it is almost as full as it was all of last summer. They were generating at Watauga Dam's powerhouse, and little Wilbur Lake was about filled. The bufflehead ducks were still there, but few geese were to be seen. We found beaver damage at the campground about a quarter-mile from their lodge. An 8" diameter hardwood tree that I leaned on a couple months ago was on the ground with all its limbs and most of its bark stripped.
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I saw two robins in JC as we were returning home, but still none at our place. We also have crocus well out of the ground.
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I cannot see to write more, so I will hush.
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Charlie and me

I give you The Smoking Gun's Mugshots of the Week—Valentine's edition.
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If you are as old as I (and I know that al least one of you is), you may remember Valentine's Day as a simple occasion, one in which small cards and notes were exchanged with your classmates if you were young, or a bigger card if you were older. It was a day of Charlie Brown type anticipation, full of smiles, frowns, blushes, and for some like myself, disappointments. Being putridly shy, I always hoped someone would approach me to be my sweetheart, but it never happened. I am traumatized!

Now this day is not so special; it has gone commercial.
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I don't know whether to bitch or weep, so I will shut up.
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Stuff

Lost and lonely ...

The Lady Vols handily whipped an outmatched Alabama team, but received a huge scare when Freshman and leading scorer Shekinna Stricklen banged her knee while going to the basket during the first half. She dislocated her kneecap, but may soon be able to rejoin the team.
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Scary and sad thing the plane crash in NY. One of the victims lost her husband during the 9/11 terror.
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Some big banks are holding off on foreclosures until the government bails them out again. They could be restructuring these mortgages themselves and still make huge profits, but why should they when a know-nothing government is willing to do it for them?!
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I am worried about my daughter again. She is diagnosed with way to much sodium in her system and is very ill. They are doing tests, but are thinking her kidneys may be failing. To top that, she has pulled ligaments in her foot; her life has been one medical problem after another.
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Didn't get my shot today, but will make it up Monday. Carolyn was with Chris, and didn't get back in time for me to go.
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I hope how soon we have a couple of warm days; I desperately need my spring bath at the creek. No amount of showering will take off all the dirt like a long immersion will, especially in brisk, running creek water. I trust there is sufficient water in the stream so that my pollution will not set off anymore alarms.

Lady Vols

Not much going on in my little piece of paradise. The Lady Vols play Alabama tonight; maybe they can rebound from the Florida loss. If Pat can keep this group of girls together until they are juniors and seniors, they should be very competitive with anyone in the conference. If she can get another good freshman class this coming fall, the team should be back on top nationwide.
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Looks like winter is back for another round, but maybe it won't be as bad as it has been.
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I cannot think of anymore earth shattering news, so I will shut up.

Tired

I think I will stop griping about the "stimulus", "bailout", "giveaway", or anything you want to call the rat. Obama doesn't have a clue about economic matters and none of his cabinet or staff seems to either. If his advisers are telling him this is what needs to be done, they are full of B.S. too. Same for Congress. Maybe I am wrong and I am the one whom doesn't comprehend the crisis, and I for darn sure am not an educated economist, but I trust my own eyes and ears a lot more than those of any politician.
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I am still feeling terrible from the RA, but not quite as badly as I was. Over the years, I have learned to live with much pain, but this soreness all over my delicate, young body is wearing me to a frazzle. Nothing lasts forever, 'though.
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Still springlike weather here, mild, cloudy, and windy; the heavy winds are a sure sign the season is trying to change. Still haven't seen a robin, but Maggie has some at her home, and she also had snowdrops blooming a couple weeks back.
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I do income taxes for family members using TaxAct software, and usually the tax codes change once or twice during the filing season, but they have already changed four times in the first month this year. It is mostly clarifications, but I am wondering about the impact the stimulus package will have. If you have already filed, and if you qualify for any of those big tax breaks, and if they are retro-active, will you have to file again? Of ... by... and for ...! Phooey!
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An Economic Opinion

The rolling tide of real economic change looks to be more of a wavelet than a sweeping reform.

The government seems to be relentlessly committed to throwing our money at the economic problems they created. I see there is $275 billion "stimulus" earmarked as tax breaks for business that invest in new machinery and equipment. That is well and good, but does nothing for the small businesses that are the backbone of economic America. Why should they go in debt for equipment they do not need just to get a tax break? I'm sure big business will suck this up by buying machinery they don't need and sticking it in a warehouse and then taking depreciation deductions for several years, or even show a loss of profit or even a net loss by making the expenditures.

Every once in awhile, you will hear of someone actually addressing the root of our economic mess, but they are quickly and quietly shushed by the ones that know "the real facts". The basis of the problem lies in the Ronald Reagan era when government deregulated big businesses that needed regulation, castrated the laws that would allow regulation when it is warranted, and brought the working man's power to bargain collectively for a fair wage and decent working conditions to its knees. Big business was given a free reign to do as it pleased, even with tax breaks for which working America had to pay and are still paying. George H. Bush just wanted to go down in history as being a President of the United States, and was incapable of doing anything positive. When he was running against Reagan for the Republican nomination, H. Bush called Reaganomics "voodoo economics", then did nothing to change things when he could have done so. Bill Clinton exacerbated the stink by shoving the so called North American Free Trade Agreement (N.A.F.T.A. or NAFTA) up our noses. Nothing was ever said about it being a fair trade agreement. I was for the law when it was first publicized, but I looked into what Ross Perot was saying about the bad things that could and would come of any such agreement; remember "the giant sucking sound" from south of the border? Mr. Perot was correct in a lot of his assumptions, because a huge amount of American jobs went south to Mexico and beyond. How many textile mills or furniture factories or consumer electronics producers now exist in the United States? I don't blame our North American neighbors; I blame us!

Then came the clincher; not only as wise citizens did we allow George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to steal the 2000 election, we allowed them to throw unwarranted fears into us that ended up getting them elected for real in 2004. We deserve every underhanded deal done by that administration which has resulted in the direness of the situation we are now facing.

In short, we need to address the root problems somewhere along the line before all that borrowed money is shoved into the hands of big business. It likely will not happen because there are too many politicians left in Congress that cannot admit they were wrong for so many years. We do need some stop-gap fixes before all is lost, but has anyone said "what if all this money doesn't work"? Remember this: big business in the United States is not for creating lots of jobs for a lot of workers; it is for creating a lot of wealth for a few. Just look at Wall Street if you want proof. Is General Motors creating jobs with its billions in bailout cash? They are actually cutting jobs and wages.
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Haircuts and heroes

I got my first haircut since early autumn; I figured now would be a good time with the temps supposed to get into the 70's today. Carolyn is my reluctant barber.
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If you don't see much of me on the net for awhile, it will be because I have some heavy-duty R.A. problems. They have been ongoing for the past two weeks, and have been worse for the past few days. On top of that, I have an infected callous on the bottom of my foot, and it makes walking that much more difficult.

I will try to keep this blog updated because I believe the world would come to an end if it didn't have a fresh supply of my B.S to run on and I don't want that on my already overloaded conscience. Actually, I enjoy writing so much that I would come to an end if I could not do so.
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I see that the crew of the airliner that made the emergency landing in the Hudson River a few weeks ago is getting all kinds of accolades. They did a good job keeping the passengers informed and as at ease as possible, plus landing the plane so everyone could be rescued. Designating them as heroes is a little beyond my comprehension because what they were doing was their job. What else could they have done? They did not put themselves in peril to save others only; they were also saving themselves. I suppose anything positive in times of ongoing bad news is good to hear.
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Later, Dudes and Dude-etts.
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Davy Crockett dam


I was privy to leaked contents of a White House memo stating the US may be planning a preemptive strike against the aliens living amongst us. To quote from the memo, "... the number of divisive acts by these beings has increased since this administration took office. We feel that now is the time to take action and remove their central command center where a large number of them have been observed plotting against the freedoms normal Americans are guaranteed and take for granted. All department heads and the Joint Chiefs will meet with the President and the Cabinet at 9:00 Monday morning, February 9. We expect there will be some panic among the general population, but we believe they will swing around to our point of view once the alien activities of Fox News have been completely neutralized." It goes on to say, "... US intelligence agencies have known for several years that aliens from planets beyond our solar system have been in charge of Fox News since its inception ..."

This has been building up since the Roswell incident in 1947, and I say we take them all out. I'm sure they are not looking to be peaceful, or they would never have loosened the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly et al. amongst us.
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Carolyn And I drove to Greeneville yesterday via highway 107. She spotted a sinister looking black helicopter flying just higher than a fencepost and very slowly along the banks of the Nolichucky River. It is widely known that Federal agencies fly such black machines, so it may have been D.E.A. agents looking for the stray pot plant or two. Or the F.B.I. may have been looking for Fox News space aliens.

We drove to Davy Crockett dam, a place I had not visited since about 1953. The weather was springlike with blue skies and warm temps, but there was still plenty of ice around the dam. We drove from there to Ashville, NC but did not stop until we were past Mars Hill on I-26. We crossed back into Tennessee at Sam's Gap and then on to home.
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A late but still great lineup from The Smoking Gun's Mugshots of the Week!

Doctor doctor

Just another icicle



I went to heart doc for a checkup, and all was ok I suppose. He had to leave the office on an emergency before he got to me, but he has a lovely nurse-practitioner whom checked me. I don't have to go back until June.

I went across the street from there and got my shot, and everyone in that office had head colds, so I am probably infected.
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Seven-point-six percent of America's job force is unemployed, and a lot more are under-employed. Is it a depression yet?
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I see where some tv stations are going to drop their analog broadcasts on the 17th and go completely digital. I do not blame them one bit. This knee-jerk extension that Congress passed and Obama wanted is doing no one any good. All of my local channels have been broadcasting in digital for years, except for the PBS station. It costs the stations a lot of money to keep both type of signals going, plus the analog signal eats up a lot of bandwidth that could be used elsewhere. Like my blogging associate Mark said, the tv watchers whom are not ready for the change now won't be ready in June either.
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Even with my poor hearing, I heard something yesterday morning and this morning I had not heard in several months: a male Carolina wren calling. We have had at least one pair or another of the tiny birds sharing our porch and environs ever since we moved here. I have named them Renfro and Renfrina. When mating time comes, the male will build several nests in various places and the female will make a choice of which digs she likes best, if any. If she doesn't like them, he will keep building until she does take a hankering to one. The male actually dances in front of or near each nest to attract his mate to give it a look. They have built inside of Carolyn's work van, under the hood of her vans and the Escape, and in our barbecue grill. After family raising is over with for the season, they make their night home deep in one of Carolyn's Boston ferns which she hangs on the porch. I love springtime.
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I almost have my entry completed for this year's Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. I would dearly love to receive a dishonorable mention award from it, although I would not gripe if I finished 1st or 2nd. The WWW in the net address stands for Wretched Writers Welcome. Anyway, it is much fun to compose an entry, and even more fun to read the winners and dishonorable mentions. If you visit there, read some of the winners from past years; some of them are outrageous. Try your hand at creating an entry.

Strategic Gripes

The Wanderer


"This recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse."
~President Barack Obama

Pardon me if I am a bit skeptical, Mr President, but aren't you one of those from last year screaming the loudest that Wall Street has to be bailed out to save the banking industry and America's housing market? Are the banks doing better with eight billion of our hard earned dollars pissed away? Is the housing industry on the upswing? Will you not learn that throwing our money at problems only feeds the greedy?

Show us some credibility!
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Carolyn is cooking today; Great Northern beans, mashed potatoes, macaroni salad, wheat bread, and chocolate cake for desert. Come on over!
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Maggie has begun a new Flickr group called The Pictorial Story . This new group will have stories in Discussion Threads based on photos, and photos based on stories. The stories may be fact or fiction. You can have your own story, or you may add photos and written segments to others' ongoing stories. I believe Maggie has hit on something that is going to be quite different than the regular Flickr groups, and it should be a lot of fun. She honored me by allowing me to post the first photo, and other members have story lines and related photos to the thread. Other members have also begun story threads. Check it out for yourself.
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I'm just another talking head

Got a phone call from Citibank today wanting to know why I didn't send them the correct amount on a payment for a business credit card. Apparently I misread the amount and sent them $10 less than was due. Instead of putting it and associated late charges on the next bill, they have a flunky in India whom speaks a sort of English language place a call to the US demanding the $10 and a $39 late fee immediately. I told him to hold onto his sorry ass and I would immediately send him $10 via their web site, but he could stick his head in his ass and suck out the late fee. He told me not to use such language, and I asked him for his name and he would not give it, probably because he knew I couldn't pronounce or spell it anyway. I then asked if he was calling from India, and he said that he was. I said isn't that the country where you folks sell your unwanted female offspring as prostitutes and I asked if he had any sisters I might be interested in. I then told him that he had some nerve to phone anyone in the US and demand anything and besides, it looks like Citibank is insolvent anyway, and he would be soon on the streets with a beggar's cup.

Take everything I said to him and sprinkle profusely with some of my favorite adjectives, and you will know what he heard. In the past, I've been known to kick open doors and say similar things to others of his type in this rat hole town I live in. I've also been known to have to pay for repairing said doors. I don't like being mean, and sometimes I regret things I say and do, especially in the heat of battle, but if the bastard had been nice, and if I could have understood his version of the English language, we could have settled it like gentlemen and I would have gone about a normal day. Instead of normal and mundane, it has turned into a great day and I regret none of the conversation I had with the Citibank representative.

Sometimes it is well worth getting out of bed!
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Mr. Obama and ladies and gentlemen of the United States Congress, don't be in any hurry to pass a stimulus bill. Throwing money at what you perceive to be the problem is going to help only a few people and only for a little while. Please think this thing through before trying to knee-jerk it away. You have plenty of time to do so. It took many years for us to get into this dilemma, and it will take many years for us to get out of it. If it was only the US economy that is involved, I might think differently, but nations worldwide are hurting more or less the same as we. Tossing out some funding to your constituents may make it look like you are trying to do something positive, and it may help you get re-elected next year, but think of the long term effects of borrowing from China and the Arab world which already has us by our energy-dependent short hairs. Any money you blindly use to try to alleviate the situation domestically is going to help with the worldwide crises very little, if any. Unless this is attacked globally, there is little chance of getting anything fixed anytime soon.
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Last Request

This quality poetry has been moved to my writing blog ...

Good Government

There just ain't nothing going right in my little world today. On top of all my woes, it is now snowing. Just life though, I suppose.
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I did manage to get a couple decent icicle shots before the wind ran me back inside. I must think about getting myself a coat someday. Icicles photograph a lot differently on a cloudy or partially cloudy day. On top of that, they were beginning to refreeze as I was shooting them, and it all made for interesting light and patterns.
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Is it my computer and internet connection or has Flickr been royally screwed up off and on for the past few days? Slow, "hiccups", features like "view on black" are intermittent.
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Looks like Obama can't find an honest person in Washington DC to help him run the executive branch of our government. If he or someone on his staff would take time to read some blogs such as this one and many others putting forth the thoughts of the people with the most to lose from high-up screw-ups, he wouldn't be picking good-old-boy Representatives and Senators for these important jobs in the first place. He's just like all the rest of our politicians; he has the DC mindset and won't admit it. Congress can be tamed, but it will take a man or woman with moxie to get the job done, and Obama is not the right person. Instead of picking "one of his and their kind" to help him plead, beg, and promise his way through Congress, he needs to keep his case constantly in front of the people. The legislators are scared about the 2010 elections, and the president needs to keep their feet to the fire of public opinion. The populace has already opinionated that they want change, and someone is going to have to have the courage to make the changes.

Why the hell does Tom Daschle need a chauffeur? Because we are willing to pay him a big salary for screwing us and he can well afford it.
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If I can't do anything but gripe, I may as well shut up.
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Happy Birthday ...

Carolyn on Unaka Mountain


Today would have been my dad's 88th birthday. He died this month in 1986. Happy Birthday, John William Anderson.
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My main PC is broken; a hard drive (HD) went bad. It wasn't the C drive, but the drive with all my photos from the past two years is in extreme pain; it may prove to be terminal. It started Saturday night when there was an extraordinary amount of HD activity. I shut down and cold-booted the machine, and it was ok Sunday, but this morning the HD activity was on. I tried to open the photo files, and the HD was missing from Explorer. Again I shut down and did another cold boot. This time, the drive was present when I checked the bios, and when I booted into windows it was still there. After a few seconds, the pc rebooted itself unannounced, and on reboot, the chkdsk (check disk) utility ran itself on the drive. It found errors, several corrupt files, and repaired or deleted them, and rewrote the boot sector where the root directory resides. It is now one hour later, and the drive is still performing, and I am checking to see what files are missing. I am downloading a utility to perform that task; it compares files between any two drives and reports the the duplicate and non-duplicate files present. Meanwhile, I made sure my auto-sync backups were present and up to date; they were except for the photos I made yesterday; an entire days shoot is lost ... maybe. I transferred the .raw files from the card to the computer last evening, but I didn't put them in the synched folder; I now have the photo temp folder synched. I also have a utility to find, access, and extract some deleted files on Secure Digital cards. A few software tools and a little knowledge can reduce the pain of these maladays that happen all too often.
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Out of bed, open the curtains, see sunshine, say dammit, and get prepared for six more weeks of winter. Do I put stock in these old sayings? Some, maybe. One thing for sure, in the place and time I was raised, not only did people put stock in the sayings, they planned their lives around foretold events and knowledge learned by and passed down from older generations.
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We didn't hit any of the football boards. Atta boy, Steelers.

Bankrupt banks

John Updike


One of my favorite authors has died; John Updike was taken by lung cancer on January 27. No other novelist handled tricky plot situations as well as he. He was an outstanding spokesman for the real middle-class America.
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I may try to watch the Souper Bowl this evening, but I have no connections to either team. I wish Carolyn had called Sonny at The Cottage and got her numbers from the $1k board, but she—along with most other women I've known—likes surprises.
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I want to try and go for some photo shooting today; I haven't been out to purposefully make photos since Jan. 4. Today's weather is supposed to be at least tolerable with sunshine and mild temps. Either Greenevile or back to Wilbur is on our minds.
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I read the following in Robert Reich's January 28 blog:

"Back in the banking crisis of 1907, J.P. Morgan got all the major
bankers into one room and forced a kind of reorganization on all of
them. We need the same today -- a giant reorganization of the banks, in
which their shareholders lose what little value they have left, their
creditors get paid 20 cents or so on the dollar, and their assets are
written down to about 20 percent of their face value. In effect, it's
an industry-wide reorganization under bankruptcy. This way, bank
balance sheets are cleared up, there's no run on any one bank, everyone
starts anew, and taxpayers aren't left holding the bag."

You should read the entire article to see what Mr. Reich is getting at.

The biggest fault I can see with this scenario working in present day America is that the banking industry is so huge and intertwined in the lives of every citizen from the day he is born until the day he dies. Back in 1907, Joe Average did not have a bank account along with an unreasonable mortgage and and other loans. Banking then was mainly for businesses, the wealthy, and the upper middle-class, but today it relies heavily on the private homeowner and car buyer. It has become too greedy to admit or accept defeat; it cannot fathom the possibility of banks doing the same thing they have forced so many of their customers to do and that is declare bankruptcy. Knowing our government, another failure of a bailout is probably in order.
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I am changing the last part of my new story, so it will be awhile before I publish it on the writing blog. I know you are on pins and needles.
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