RC

Running (hobbling) errands ... back later ...

Smell from hell

 Bumble Bee Butt

What is it with all these smell-well products that people are bringing into their homes? Uesd to be when you visited a friend's home, it smelled like your friend's home. It had the aroma of being lived in; of people being their everyday selves. They could bindfold you and take you to a random friend's house and you would know where you were just by the odors of the place. Now days, houses have become generic in smell because of mass marketing telling us we "should" have that "springtime fresh scent" in our abodes. There are scented candles burning, doodads sticking in every electrical outlet relieving themselves of some odious concoction, scented detergents for our clothes and soaps for our hair, hides, and hinnies. There are scented "stickups" stuck everywhere, even in the cabinet with the eating plates to keep the hiding roaches happy. Bathroom sprays, kitchen sprays, laundry room sprays, and even outdoors sprays for patio sitting. We use scented clothes softeners in out dryers, wicks of rose scents in our refrigerators, deodorant for our trash compactors and garbage disposals. Gadgets to go inside and outside our kitchen trash cans, and—god help us if the neighbors smell us—sprays, pads, and stick-ons for our curbside garbage cans. They manufacture and market "freshners" for everything we own. Home has taken on the smell of a $2 whore and our vehicles and workplaces are no better. Even the local pub has succumbed to the whims of Fifth Avenue snake-oil sales people. No wonder our allergies are becoming worse and worse; we are constantly bombarded by stinkies we never evolved to handle.
Has anyone stopped to think about these products and just what kind of chemicals go into them that makes them seem pleasing to so many people? What are we breathing? We go inside to get away from the smell of traffic and small engines around our neighborhoods just to subject ourselves on a constant basis to the poisons that saturate our homes. We try to eat safe foods and we buy purified drinking water yet we are committing slow suicide and possibly causing defects in our future offspring by sucking down copious quantities of of unknown chemicals. Our health in our homes is one of the things from the good old days that we should take back from marketing ingenuity. Scent is important for us; we have noses with two hols for sampling the air, and I would much rather sample the smell of the people I am around than those of corporate profit at the expense of our health.
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Spammers, scammers everywhere. If you didn't already know, anytime you use Facebook or Twitter for any purpose other than communicating simple messages and sharing photos with friends, you are putting your peace of mind in grave danger. Just linking up with a "good cause" can compromise your personal info and the info of your friends.
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Have a stink Thursday!
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Forsythia shadow

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I feel too ratty to write ...
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Holding hands with a little boy

"Why don't you grow up?" "You act just like a little boy!" These two statements have dogged me from a few of my family members for all of what I consider my adult years. As a matter of fact, I have grown up; like most people, I worked, I married, I enjoyed having sex, I had children, and I paid taxes. One thing I have not done is to move my frame of mind out of my early childhood years. Until I was about 12 years old and had to face the reality of growing peer pressure, my life was a dream. I had no siblings to contend with or share with or to grow with, but I did live with two uncles whom never quite grew up. They taught me of the things that counted to a bright little boy; they taught me how to listen to the trees talk among themselves, they told me that listening to and learning from nature should be my primary education; they made me laugh. Why should I want to abandon a place and time like country living in the late 1940's and early 1950's. I was happy then and now in my 65th year of life I am still happy when I allow the things I learned in my young wonder years to guide me in these old wonder years. I have grown a bit in wisdom; it is part of the natural process, but I still carry the naivety of the small boy. Being ignorant in the affairs of people causes me much angst and sorrow at times and when such happens, I am again a little boy in eternal summer where I belong; living here and now is a scary feeling and I will not do it.
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Have a great Tchewsdy!
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Ridin' along

Yesterday I had nothing planned as it was supposed to be a rainy, windy, and generally bad for shooting day. Jerry brought his mom a newspaper as he does on most Sunday mornings. The sun was shinning brightly so after Jerry left, Carolyn and I decided to get out of the house and see if we could find something to shoot. My first target wasn't suitable at that moment, so I figured it was going to be a day of lousy shooting. But, I did find a thing or two around the old Tweetsie RR station. The Salvation Army was giving out food to the needy and there was a very long line of people waiting. Those folks have enough problems so I didn't try to make any shots. I was shooting an old sign at the Shamrock and got lucky when a guy took a drink from his soda bottle just beneath the sign as I was ready to shoot. Carolyn had to make a pit stop, so I drove to McDonalds. We hadn't ate and she bought us a double cheeseburger; I ate mine but I wasn't enthusiastic about it. From there we drove over to Boone Lake and through the countryside. I spotted a pretty tree with white flowers standing all by itself at the edge of a plowed field and I got a shot of it. Carolyn decided she wanted to see if her cousin and her husband were at their "summer home" which is actually a fifth-wheel camper in a camp-park near the lake. They were home and we visited for awhile. Then it was back to downtown JC where I got a few more shots and by then we were both worn out so it was back home for us. I've spent most of this morning looking at Flickr photos and catching up on some commenting. On Megashot, I see that Cyrus has made and posted some more tutorials and I will try to link them here later on.
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May your worsh water be extra wet! Happy Monday!
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Sunday school don't make you cool forever

 Terrible situation with all the people killed by the storms and tornadoes in the mid-south. Just normal spring weather I suppose. We didn't get the hard part of the weather system like "they" said we would, but there was quite a bit of rain and winds.
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I've been feeling very poorly for the past two days; probably some kind of intestinal flu shtick. So far this morning I feel almost ok but I haven't begun my daily intake of nutritious calories, vitamins, and minerals. However, my eyes still are much like a sore-eyed cat's. Everyone is enthusiastic and mow their lawns often in early spring and that puts the settled pollen right back in the air along with the ubiquitous mold spores caused by damp air. I haven't been sleeping well so last night I took two Xanax and slept very fine but now I have a sleep hangover.
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The new blog went well yesterday, but I fear I wrote everything I was ever going to write in just one day. Actually those thoughts are stuff that pop into and out of my head while I am doing other things like writing or editing photos. Now you know why my pictures and prose look and read so badly; I have brain demons. Blogger has changed the way we decide how we get our comments; I've not recently looked at the setup for this blog, but I think I have Loose Moments fixed to where you can leave comments if you wish without having to enter some kind of code. If a lot of spam comes in, I will probably have to make the aggravating code thing work again. Spammers don't like to take the time go through the procedure, and I don't either. Also, Blogger has a new blog writer, and it is much better than the old one. I placed a link to Loose Moments on this blogs side bar in case you feel the urge to rush over there and see moment-to-moment insanity inaction.
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For the first time in more than 15 years, I am drinking municipal water from the tap. I have been drinking filtered water, but our system broke down and I am stuck with drinking chlorine, fluoride, salt, iodine, and whatever else the city puts in for my own good and "stuff" the Watauga river has in it that the city filters didn't remove. The water filtration plant is just downstream from the sewage plant's discharge. Yucky!
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Have a splendiferous Sunday!
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Title quote by Sly Stone.
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Loose moments

 Great news! Yesterday I got my shot! My life has become so dull that a bit of pain and inconvenience are about all I have to talk about. I wanted to go to the mountains this weekend because the trilliums and native iris should be in bloom. Right now the light is good for tripod work in the woods—high overcast but fairly bright sky—but the man is saying we will soon be having heavy thunderstorms and high winds. Up a mountain hollow with seven bridges to cross is not the best place to be during a possible flash flood on the creek. Several years ago, some folk had to abandon their cars when a sudden downpour washed out some of the bridges. I don't know how they eventually got their vehicles back to the main road; it was three years before the bridges were replaced. Even a downed tree could cause problems for the lame and infirm such as my ungainly self.
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I started another blog (groaning allowed), and I hope to keep it a bit "quieter" than this one. It hopefully will reflect more of me as a person instead of this mixed dose of literary castor oil you are presently reading. I will continue Loose Laces as my daily blog at least for awhile. Loose Moments will not be about politics, no disparaging of religions, and no mugshots of the week. The page layout is not yet what I want, but I do have a small banner in place and my dedication words to you, my friends.
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The Smoking Gun's Mug Shots of the Week!
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Have a great Saturday!
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Friday

Man, this has been a "nothing much happening" week in my world. Spring is wonderful and I've soaked a lot of sun but have accomplished very little. My eyes were out of whack with allergies yesterday so very little was done on the net until late in afternoon. Otherwise, everything seems in balance and I detest balance in my life; I need something to laugh about or to bitch about. A bit of good news today: Tammy's wrens have hatched and she and mom wren are all aflutter. I hope she gets some pics and will allow me to post one on this blog.
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Obama is considering a "value added tax" (VAT) for just about everything you buy with your hard earned money. Only the middle class and the fixed-income people will be affected to any degree. The wealthy and the poor have the rest of us to pay for their part.
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It is shot day again, so I suppose I will have to take a shower and do my thing. I had a shower last Friday, so I shouldn't be too dirty but I think my deodorant is wearing off. May as well get the hateful task over with!
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My facundity¹ fails me, but you have a fain² Friday!
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¹eloquence
²happy
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Earth Day 2010

Abandoned
National Guard--Army Reserve
Armory and Training Center

In the name of science

Head banner for my new Megashot Community

There is a report in today's New Scientist blog concerning research that claims humans interbred with other species 60,000 years ago and again 45,000 years ago. In my younger years, I did extensive research along the same lines, testing the viability of breeding with certain other species. My test subjects were all domesticated animals such as a sheep, two cows, and a pony. However there was one exception; a girl in my eighth-grade English class whom was considered very wild and looked somewhat Neanderthalish. I personally bred with all these subjects on many occasions in a purely scientific fashion and found that none of the domesticated cases showed the slightest interest in what I was trying to do but the sheep did struggle a bit when I picked her up by her rear legs. The cows and pony all ate their food offering near a convenient stump on which I was able to stand and do my experiments in the name of science. My findings showed that not one of these subjects became impregnated by me, therefore I feel that interbreeding with other species should be done only for the mutual pleasure of each. As for my eighth-grade classmate, she suffered from poor body hygiene and lice crawled on various parts of her anatomy, but was willing and had been previously stump-broken. Even from this union of teenagers, not one embryo was produced as far as I know. Therefore, I must pooh-pooh the findings of these modern "scientists" who mess around with cells and genomes and rely on my own evidence from down and dirty research. None of these subjects were harmed by my experiments, and none could be considered as wallydrags*.
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We are having some steady rains today which may put a dent in this mini-drought we are having. I hope it doesn't return to a drastic drought like we just exited.
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Have a wet, wild, and wonderful Wednesday!
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*wallydrag n. feeble or worthless person or animal
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Ashes to ashes ...

Glenwood Union Church cemetery

I've been wondering what will the economic consequences be if the Iceland volcano keeps on heavily spewing ash over Europe for months or even years. I suppose the stuff is highly acidic and a layer on the ground over vast farmlands will cause all kinds of havoc. If it does continue like it is or worse, look for prices in the US to go out of sight as our domestic farm products go offshore. Most of our food production and distribution is controlled by three or four huge corporations, so you know there will be shortages here if the European Union is willing to pay through the nose for our food supply. I wonder if life will even be possible in a lot of areas affected by the ash; those type volcanoes have been known to erupt uninterrupted for two years. Some places with the most fallout could become completely sterile as far as farming goes.
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We had a small earthquake near Maryville early this morning. Maryville is a town about 100 miles SW my location. Minimal damage ... this time. Small quakes are not uncommon around the area; I've felt two in my lifetime. These mountains are rife with geologic faults of varying size and I can only imagine what would be unleashed if the New Madrid fault again moves like it did in 1811. That series of quakes didn't do a lot of damage around here, but there were few people and no real cities here then. It did cause the Mississippi river to change its direction in several places, even flowing northward at times as the ground rose and fell. Reelfoot Lake in west Tennessee was formed as a result of the events.
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The photo shows part of one of two of the cemeteries in the community where I was born and half-raised. Many of my kin are buried here including my mother and father.
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Tuesday's "T" word is tolerance; it takes a heap of it to tolerate the many changes in this world.
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Have a tolerable Tuesday!
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The new world order ...

Want to see Bush and Cheney's highly publicized and "successful" Iraq War "surge" at work? Mark posted this link to a video called Collateral Murder on his blog. Watch and listen to all of it as US troops seem to be enjoying the random killing of Iraqi civilians. No wonder the rest of the world hates us. Thanks, Mark.
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Still dull times in my world; post-tax life is peaceful. Chris is moving again, she has been staying at a cousin's house for several months and her boyfriend and she have rented an apartment closer to her work. JJ is mowing yards for a lawn service company, Jerry is still kicking carpet, and all else is nominal. The house across the street where the college girls once lived is for sale and being painted. The ex-fashion model whom lives on the next block is walking her poodle dog along my street as she does twice each day. "Peaches", another young woman from the same street as the model rambled by earlier with her charges; she is a pet-sitter. A robin is singing from a nearby tree, and the morning temps remain chilly. I am bored silly and need something to arouse my curiosity; I feel not one bit magniloquent¹ this morn.
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Have a wise worsh day!
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¹magniloquent adj. speaking or expressing in a lofty or grandiose style; pompous; bombastic; boastful.

Still stinky

Got up this morning with intentions of going to Elizabethton to make a few shots and then back to Johnson City for more, but as soon as I went out I returned to the comfort of the computer and the bit of heat from the monitor; it was only thirty-three degrees F. So, here I am.
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Yesterday we drove around some local farm country before I took Carolyn to clean two buildings and I made a couple of decent shots. The light was pretty good away from the sun and I got some pretty good sunshine opportunities. The above photo of the old church was made almost into the bright light. It is located near our house and I've photographed it many times over the years. As you can see, it is needing exterior maintenance where tree sap is ruining the paint.
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I didn't go for my sporing bath Friday evening; Carolyn decided to wait until today to work and I didn't want her tagging along telling me I will catch my death of cold or pneumonia or some other sordid malady. I didn't want her to see me naked, either. She would have made a sackful of archaic remarks about certain parts of my anatomy and it takes the fun out of bare-butted strolling in the forest.
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There is a guy running for county mayor here whom is spending oodles of money to try to get elected. Dan Eldredge is financially better off than most people whom will be voting and is probably looking to use the office as a springboard to the big time in state Republican circles. He is a "farmer" and real estate developer, so knows very little about the real world of working people, but money talks and his is screaming. He seems to have all the qualification$ of modern Republican$ and should represent his party well, if not the county's citizens. It will be interesting to keep an eye on him if he gets the job.
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Have a Sunday!
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Splitting hairs

For some reason, there is not much going on in my little world at present. Taxes are over—at least the biggie—and the weather has been lovely but is about to cool down into dogwood winter after some rain last evening courtesy of a cold front moving in. I've become so disillusioned with politics that I get ill thinking about the state of affairs in our country. The tiny nation of Iceland has invaded Britain and continental Europe and brought the European Union's air transportation system to its knees. Starvation still confronts millions of people in Africa, gasoline prices are rapidly rising for no reason other than the fact that people are again investing in Wall Street and driving futures prices skyward, and A.I.G. still isn't showing signs of repaying the taxpayers for the tremendous and failed bailout. Banks large and small are still screwing over Main Street USA and last week I closed out my checking and savings accounts. Joe Sixpack still doesn't have a clue and will vote for or against whatever television news casts go overboard with.
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May your Saturday schizotrichia¹ be mild.
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The Smoking Gun's Mug Shots of the Week!
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¹ schizotrichia n. A splitting of the hairs at the ends.
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Hairy woodpecker on wild grapevine

Off to the the doc's for my fix.
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Thursday's boredom

Taxes are done and Carolyn is off to the post office with them. We ended up owing a substantial amount on form 1040 and to top that desecration Carolyn has to pay her quarterly 1040ES estimated taxes. I feel violated. To trump of all that, I have thelitis¹!

Kim—my Flickr contact—posted this quote on my tax photo: "We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle." ~Winston Churchill
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This forgetfulness that has overtaken my brain in these advanced years of aging is disconcerting as all get out. I am forgetting birthdays and anniversaries, appointments, and other things I once took for granted that would be remembered. I still recall dates and days that I memorized many years ago, but it is the things from the past two or three years that I cannot pull out of my head. Hell, in my family and among the friends I once had, I was famous for remembering important and many not so important occurrences. It is likely the onset of of short term memory loss where brain memory cells become like mirrors instead of sponges. Uh, what was I just writing about?
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Cyrus seems to be pleased with the growth of Megashot as we are getting one and usually more new members each day. My friends John and Milly in England have joined us, and I hope to pick up a few more before the end of the month.
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Writers seek solitude for their minds and company for their hearts. They seldom find either as both lie beyond veils of fluid awareness which are neither real or imagined. When both transcend the elusive for their instants of recognition, the quill is laid aside and the meaning of "I am" becomes a fleeting moment of exhilarating consciousness. ~BS
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May your Thursday not be a torporific² day.
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¹ thelitis n inflammation of the nipple
² torporific adj causing dullness or apathy

Tongue-tied and twisted Just an earth-bound misfit, I

Photography "Rule" of Thirds

Robin

Our grandson left for basic training yesterday for the US Air Force. His plane departed Knoxville bound for Dallas, Texas and then on to Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio Texas. We did not know he was leaving until thirty minutes before flight time when he phoned us. Carlyn and I along with is father and step-mother are very hurt because he did not let us know ahead of time so we could be there to hug him and see him off. Only his mother and step-father were present at the airport. He will have eight weeks of basic training and six more weeks of technical training. Somewhere in that last period he must decide if he wants to be a part of the elite Air Force Special Operations group.
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Most people I know are waiting until the last minute this year to prepare their federal taxes. I am usually done "helping" a lot of people by this date, but there are two more coming in today and one tomorrow. One of them is time consuming because they will bring me receipts and I have to do all the adding and subtracting before the tax program can digest the material. Personally, I still need to do one page of ours; the 1040ES estimated taxes for 2010 and in Carolyn's business and in the best of times, it is difficult to wave a magic wand and guess how much money she will make.
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Not much happening here; my bride is off to the hair dresser's for a wash, trim, and some color for her hair and eyebrows. Jeez; I catch hell when I buy a new $20 memory card for my camera; the old one has been inserted and removed from the camera and reader so many times is is physically worn out. Yesterday I made my 3,900th photo with the two-year-old Pentax K200D dslr. I've seen a lot and and enjoyed much through the viewfinder.
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May your wallfish¹ be few and your wase² be soft on on this mid-April Wednesday!
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Title lyric from Learning To Fly by Pink Floyd.
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¹ wallfish n snails
² wase n small bundle of hay or straw for resting one's head
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Barely inside a mine

Tragedy in the mines of Appalachia; why does it take tragedy to waken us to the cold facts that life in the hills is an existence of sacrifice from a few so the rest of us can merely flip a switch to get our light or turn a knob to stay warm? The bigger question is once we become aware of these people's borderline lives and misery, why do we so soon forget them? Folks, I've been in one of these large corporate mines near Norton Virginia, and I've worked around coal handling facilities there and at several power houses in West Virginia and I quickly realized the coal industry is one not made for humans; it needs all the mechanization possible. At first, I refused to go into the shaft. As far as I knew, I wasn't claustrophobic but I didn't want to go deep inside and then find out that I really was such. After a sweet promise of being fired if I didn't go in, I figured it best if my kids had something to eat whether I was dead or alive and I bravely "volunteered" to take the plunge. The large mine had a nice concrete entrance looking much like a highway tunnel, but just past that entry the floor began a gradual slope toward the darkest darkness imaginable. As we moved beyond daylight, the dirty lamps strung along the ceiling were mocked by the cold harshness of the rock walls and by the sheer intensity of the blackness and we had not reached the coal veins; they were many thousands of feet further and deeper into the bowels of the mountain. I could smell the coal, and there was an oppressive heaviness in the air as we walked deeper into the narrowing shaft. All the while trains of low coal-cars were moving in and out of the deep with the drivers of the electric tow engines lying nearly flat on their backs and sporting wide, toothy grins on their Al Jolson faces when they saw us flatlanders shakily entering their domain. We finally arrived at location of the broken conduit and after a few hours work had it replaced and electrons were again powering some piece of machinery far below. Even though I was tired from the work, and more tired from being scared silly, I walked much faster on my way to the outside world than I did going in. Yet these mountain people live with this and much worse everyday, and even though they may look like it is second hand to them, they always know in the back of their minds that each trip into the darkness may be their last; it is a very tough life and livelihood, but it is what they do because it is all there is to do. Each evening the families pensively await the return of their loved ones from the mines; it is a difficult life for everyone who cherishes or cares for someone. You may say they could leave the mines and seek better elsewhere, and many do so. I will say this though; if you are a part of the ridges and the ridges are part of you, it is nearly impossible to leave them. For these good human beings of the hills and hollows, it is much like selling their souls when they are forced to move away. The coal will keep going to the power houses and factories, the energy corporations will become wealthier and more powerful, and the miners will work until they die, one way or another.
As for my part of this saga; the next day the entire crew I was part of was fired.

Whimsies

Last Saturday when I was writing about my "interesting" Friday, I forgot one of the most important things I allowed to happen to me that day. Because of the blessed RA, I have large callouses just behind my toes in the center of my soles, and they at times become infected. Three years ago, I paid a pod surgeon $200 to lance the one on my right foot and while he was doing the procedure in his office, Carolyn was paying very close (I hope) attention. Since then she has become my defacto callous surgeon. On Friday morning I could barely hobble to do the things I had to do and after the lab work, she stuck my sore left foot into a bath of very warm water and made me soak it for nearly 30 mins. She then reached in my pants and whipped out my pocket knife, located her bottle of iodine along with a couple of tissues and went to work. For about 10 mins. she carved, cut, and peeled the tender knot, and finally it let go of its bounty of congealed corruption which was a bit thicker than toothpaste. It came rushing out of the callous like a little worm on a mission, curling and twisting this way and that and generally causing a stink.¹ She then put her thumbs to work squeezing more of the foul mess from my sole and when she finished, I could again put my weight on the foot without discomfort. If my foot doesn't become infected even worse from her spur-of-the-moment surgery, she will have saved me $200 or more. Although she isn't painless, she also does ingrown toenails and ingrown hairs, cuts hair, and to boot, she makes house-calls!
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Friday at dusk I am going to the creek for my long awaited spring bath. If you care to join me, I will be in the first hole you come to just past the place where I had my autumn cleansing. Just bring your skin; I have plenty of lye soap and the water is free.
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This diet I've begun makes me feel like I am a victim of dreaded tabefaction². I've cut back to two spoons of sugar in my morning caffeine fix, and I'm no longer using extra sweetener on my delicious and nutritious Sugar Bombs cereal which is an important part of a balanced breakfast. Says so on the box.
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If tabefaction doesn't consume you, have a Tom Terrific Tuesday.
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¹For some reason that sentence causes me to think of George W. Bush.
²tabefaction n wasting away; emaciation
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Heartaches by the numbers, troubles by the score ...

Barn and bale

Today is off to doc's for more blasted tests.
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Taxes are all but finished!
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I hope your wash day is filled with much mafficking*!
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More later if I get a chance ...
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*mafficking v To rejoice or celebrate with boisterous public demonstrations.

These photographs are
dedicated
to the families of our West Virginia coal miners
and
to the people of Poland
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May Peace be in their hearts

Happy weekend!

A good starting point

Yesterday was very interesting for me so I will attempt to peak your indifference with torridly lukewarm details. The morning began with fasting for the lab work I was to have done. I got to the lab before 9:30 and handed the phlebotomist my papers and she sent me back to the "drawing" room. After awhile, she came in and said the order had the wrong Medicare code and we would have to wait until the doctor returned her call giving her an acceptable code. I was in dire straits wanting a cup of heavily sugared coffee. After a few minutes, she decided to go ahead and draw the blood and have the analysis done when the new code came in. I got out of there shortly after 10:00 and drove on to the RA doc's office for my shot; no parking places were to be found. Went home and got a cup of thrice-sugared Colombian along with an egg sandwich on toast and rode with Carolyn back to the bank and grocery store and again to the doc's office. She let me out at the front door and double-parked for the few minutes I was inside. Homeward bound at last, we drove by the abandoned National Guard Armory; it is about to be demolished in the Holy name of Progress and I wanted a few parting shots of the building. I made my pics including the one above which I thought was a bit droll. Finally back to the house with renewed vim and vigor I was ready to fight the good fight with the tax forms. I loaded my tax program and again put off working on them until Carolyn left for her work at 5:00pm. I've still got a full day's figuring to do. I may work some more today or I may wait until Sunday; it is supposed to be another beautiful weekend. Don't advise me what to do because I may heed your words and be in deep trouble with my uncle ... I know where you live!
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This Saturday's "S" word: Saprostomous adj. - having foul breath; putrid mouth.
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The Smoking Gun's Mug Shots of the Week!
Glad you got your NC DL, Mark; No. 4 got busted for driving without a valid license and they done painted his whiskers pink! I like No. 7's 'do. I think No. 13 is an old bud of mine; is that you Jim-dog?.
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Have a wonderful S word day!
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Tax day minus six

Watauga Lake Sunset

Shot day and lab work day. Red bud winter is here with possible frost by tomorrow morning. The rain has washed some of the pollen out of my life and I can see fairly well today. I have to go out for another appointment and will write more later if I think of anything besides TAXES!
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This Friday's "F" word is flibbertigibbet: noun A silly, scatterbrained, or garrulous person. (American Heritage Dictionary)
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Have a fab Friday!
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Capitalist tarradiddles*

I am sick of the Tiger Woods shenanigans, but if I were Woods, I would tell Augusta National Chairman Billy Payne to kiss my humpin' ass! It is none of little Billy's freaking business what Tiger does when he isn't on his beloved Amen Corner golf course. Jerk! Leave this shit alone and the media will soon find someone else play with.
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I don't know what physically happened to cause the latest mine disaster in West Virginia, but I suspect the mine owner(s) are to blame for the most part. This will end up as another victory for carefree capitalism and another setback for individual and collective freedoms in the USA. When I worked there in the 1970's, WVa was one of the strongest pro-union states in the nation, particularly in the construction and mine industries. It was (and maybe still is) a closed shop state, meaning that if a place of employment had collective bargaining with a union, all affected employees must join the union and pay dues. Like most other places now, money rules and people die. Can't blame it all on business; the citizens of the USA allowed it to happen and it wasn't through their ignorance. The Fed Chairman whom pulled us out of the seventies inflation warned it could happen with Reaganomics, but we were putting some nice extra dollars in our pockets and paid the futurists little attention. We didn't stop to realize that those dollars were coming from a two wage-earner household whereas in previous times a man could support his family with his single paycheck. We allowed the things we could buy blind us to the reality that we were turning over the lifeblood of the nation to big business via lack of government oversight. When we think of these unfortunate coal miners and their distraught families, remember we are as much to blame as are the big businesses whom profit from our own greed. There will be no better time than right now while this disaster is making almost as big of headlines as is Tiger Woods and while we have a president whom at least is willing to listen and has sympathy for worker's plight and rights. The strongest dam in the river of worker's rights is state governments along with the US Congress and US Supreme Court; all are owned by greedy capitalists.

Mark wrote a good mini-exposé in his blog.
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*tarradiddle: lie; falsehood; nonsense; fib
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I am having a drizzly Thursday; I hope yours is a happy one!
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Puff, the Over-taxed Dragon

The sign piques my imagination

There is a nationwide push on to support the legalization of cannabis in California as many folk seem to think the Golden State could be a springboard for legalizing marijuana in other states. I haven't read the proposed legislation for Calif., but I would bet it is the normal "let's tax the hell out of it" type entity. I'm all for legalized weed smoking, but I am not in favor of unfair taxes being placed on it like those on alcohol. The only taxes I am in favor of for these "sin" products is just enough for enforcement to see that they are used wisely, in other words, seeing that children are not allowed to use them (In know; wishful thinking). I don't think they should be taxed to support schools or highway construction or such. Cut government waste and reduce taxes.

"If dope is legalized, I won't have to worry about going to jail or paying a fine." Yep; that is true. If you are a pot smoker—and I know none of you citizens are such—just how much do you worry about going to jail when you are rolling that doobie? How much money have you paid out in fines for sharing a bud with a buddy? I don't know what the statistics are, but I bet ninety-nine out of a hundred people who use illegal dope do so many, many times without ever being busted. I'm sure the other one percent that did get canned amounts to quite a large number of people. I'm also sure that most of us know at least one person that has been jailed and or fined for possession and most likely that person was doing something stupid in order to get caught.

Consider this: (1)-If pot is made legal for personal use, will it be cheaper than it now is? (2)-Will the quality be better? (3)-Will I be allowed to grow my own? (4)-Can I light up in public?
The answers to all these questions are "no". (1)-The price will go higher as more and more taxes are added over time. (2)-You will not have a choice of quality if you are forced to buy from a government source. (3)-Growing your own even with paying a permit fee will raise the price much more as taxes rise for enforcement to see that you do not have one more bud than you are allowed. (4)-There will be no toak bars.

Yessir, I'm all for legalization, but it is going to come with a price. Huge taxes mean more enforcement and as users try to buy from bootleg sources for a better deal, more people are going to be caught and more are going to jail and pay even larger fines than they would have when pot was illegal. Is that price worth it?

I could write a lot more about this but I would just become madder and madder and you would be bored even further.
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Congratulations to to the University of Connecticut Women's basketball team for winning the NCAA National Championship.
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Excuse the poorer than usual writing; my eye allergies are at full song today.
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I will be out the rest of the day as I have a received an official paper that insists I appear at the courthouse this afternoon.
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Have a waggish Wednesday!
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Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3 update

I would love to have this as my
"ride around and shoot photos" truck

In case anyone from Corel Corp. reads this, I've found a serious bug with my copy of Corel PaintShop Photo Pro X3. My lens has a pin cushion problem but I have always been able to correct it with PsP. The bug is not always present but is one that causes the program to semi-freeze with the "Move" hand sometimes displaying and not leaving after using the "Straighten Tool" and then using the "Pincushion Distortion Correction" tool. Even worse, it sometimes leaves a black space around the photo, particularly if I have the "Preserve central scale" box ticked. The program becomes unusable and has to be shutdown via Windows Task Manager. Even when restarted, the same fault is still there. I have found that by selecting the "Perspective Correction Tool" the program will at times begin acting normally. Other times I have to reboot the pc to return to normal operation. As I have to use pincushion correction on a lot of photos made with my everyday lens, it is a big problem. Save your work often! Rendering the photo of the Ford truck twice caused the failure while using the pincushion tool.
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Here is a link to a FREE photo editing program which is turning into a pretty good one. I tried it a couple years ago and liked it and now it seems to have more features and many plugins. It is a Windows only app and if you want to get your feet wet in a reasonably easy to use but powerful and fast photo editor, I recommend giving it a try.
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It is another beautiful mid-summer day in East Tennessee with temps to be in mid-eighties (30c). I've already popped a Claritin and am heading to the porch for my second helping of the day. I feel some better as much of the fluid has left my tissues and I can breathe semi-normally. I am feeling funky if not spunky.
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I will write more later if any earth shattering things happen around here. I need to have a good rant about the coal mine murders in my second home-state of West Virginia. Maybe tomorrow.
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Have a tantalizing Tuesday!
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Easter shots

In a JC artist's shop/studio


My hope is that all of you had a great Easter. Carolyn spent Saturday with my two little cousins whom have adopted her as their "grandmother"; she is their "Ganny Carolyn". They went shopping, spent some very good time at the park, and then back to their house to color Easter eggs. She was supposed to return to them yesterday for egg hiding, but she and I stayed out until evening. We intended to picnic yesterday, but got a late start so I drove back to Wilbur and Watauga Lake where there was very little going on. I wound up driving back roads until my knee told me it needed more room than what is provided under the steering wheel of the Escape. The Escape is a nice little SUV, but it does not have enough leg room on the driver's side for long-legged me. Anyway, Carolyn took over and I was happy. It is much easier to spot photo ops when I don't have to concentrate on missing the other roadway crazies. We drove back to downtown JC and found a few interesting things to shoot. I was in no mood for walking around on the sore knee, so every photo I made yesterday was from the Escape, save the last one where all I had to do was step out on the sidewalk. I want to go back when light is better and I can walk a bit easier. The weather was wonderful; sunshine so very warm and the trees do not yet have full leaves; the building shadows downtown provided a bit of relief.
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I wonder why Good Friday or Easter has not been made an official holiday in the US?
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Well, it is back to serious stuff; I have 10 days to finish our income tax and it is less than half done. Phooey!
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Is it just me or has blogger gone to being slow or inaccessible over the past few days? I am bound and determined to get this fine blog published this morning!
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Have a wonderful wash day!
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