This blog simply is what it is.

It is nothing more or less than the musings and an Old School sailor, just like it is advertised to be.

I have a high school education and 42 years of life experiences, mostly along the road less traveled. I do not have a degree in religion, politics or business and on top of that I am a lousy typist which accounts for so many errors on my posts.

The way this blog is generally written when I am at home is that I wake up, turn my ham rig on, click on the coffee pot and as the coffee is brewing go and pee. Then I pour myself a cup of joe and park it next to this laptop, take a sip, look out the window to get my bearings and start in on anything I feel like writing about.

At sea things are different. Sometimes I'll have a little time so I will write a post and save it until the following morning. Occasionally I will write a post and save it for a busy day when I only have a few seconds to post it.

All of this comes to a case of having to switch to Plan B when I am out of internet range. When that happens I generally still write a post every day and store it until I get back into internet range and then post the missing posts individually to make up for the days I have missed by getting out of range.

I recieve no pay or compensation for this other than most likely keeping my sanity (priceless) and the readership varies from day to day, ranging from about 100 to about 350 a day, depending on a number of things.

My post about the maid walking in on me has generated almost 23,000 hits because it was picked up by a popular blog. It still gets a couple hundred a month even though it was written and posted about a year ago.

None of my other posts have gotten over 1000 pageviews according to the statistics the blog people keep.

I got started on this when I was visiting my sister over the holidays about 3 years back. I was there and there was a lot of activity going on that I wasn't a part of as I was a visitor. My sister turned me on to this as a way of killing a little time. My nephew encouraged me and I just got started and do this because I enjoy it. I suppose if my readership was only a couple of people, or even none I would still do it because it give me a creative outlet and helps keep my sanity.

Anyway, what you see is what you get and if you don't like it it you can get your money back

I suppose it is one of the few things where there is no real false advertising. It is nothing more than the grumblings of an Old School sailor.

I suppose I could say that this is a deal at twice the price and be 100% honest.

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

What kind of cleaning service needs bulldozers,

 sheetrockers, dump trucks, cranes and hires iron workers, carpenters, electricians and plumbers?

Superhero Clean up Company does.

Superman is a slob. He is always making colossal messes and everybody always seems to wind up cleaning up after him. While
Batman, Robin and the Green Lantern and the rest of them generally beat the holy hell out of the forces of evil they are really not to awfully bad about the damage they cause. Superman, however, is terrible.

So we now have Superman trying to head off Lex Luther in his latest evil plot and the Man of Steel is booting along at about 3674 feet per second which is, of course, faster than a speeding bullet and he heard the cries of a baby in a carriage that is heading down the hill on the sidewalk and into a busy intersection. The man of steel heard the cries, adjusts the doppler shift of the cries, and changes course directly toward the runaway carriage and makes a beeline for it.

He has to. I saw a pretty good History channel program on superheroes one night and Stan Lee explained that superheroes always have to stop what they are doing to rescue babies and toddlers. Stan seems pretty astute on superheroes and I'll take his word for this.

Stan also pointed out that superheroes public behavior has to be snow white so as to set an example for the youth of the community to follow. (This may account for Clark Kent's drinking and whoring.) Yet you never see Superman pitching in to fix the hole in the street he made when he drilled himself straight down through the pavement to chase Old Lex who was hiding out in an underground bunker. He doesn't even have the decency to put up signs to keep motorists from driving into the world class hole he has just created.

If I ran my car into a hole like that you can bet your boots he's be hearing from my lawyer.

Of course, the shortest distance between two points between Superman and the baby is a straight line and the Metropolitan Building happens to be in the way so Superman simply goes through it.

Now the people of Metopolis have grown used to having Superman around so when the startled office workers jump out of their skins, the boss, who was reading the Daily Planet comes out of his office and surveys the damage and looks at the startled workers. He's seen this before. It happened three issues ago.

"Superman," he says. The enormous hole through the building draws a passing glance. "Tom, call building maintenance and the rest of you get back to work."

He goes back into his office and continues reading the paper.

So who pays for all of this damage?

Who cleans up after him? You never see Superman show up with a tool box to repair the gaping holes in the building. Ma Kent is back in Smallville and is not there to pick up after him.

Now that I think about it, Ma and Pa Kent didn't do a very good job of raising him if he can't even clean up his own messes. My mother taught me to clean up after myself. Navy SEALS, Green Berets, Delta force guys all clean up after themselves. Ever seen a SEAL barracks? Neat as a pin. Those guys are heroes, too, yet they clean up after themselves.

So if SEALS, Rangers, Green Berets and other guys like that clean up after themselves, why can't Superman?
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

One of the things that has been asked me

                                         is why I didn't make a bigger stink to avoid getting hauled off by the MPs the day after I got out of the army. Most likely I could have talked my way out of it if I had tried even though they didn't believe my initial protests.

For one thing although I was most likely pretty tanked up I still realized that the two MPs were a lot bigger than I am and that getting the living dogsnot whaled out of me would not be a whole lot of fun.

I also was sharp enough at the time to realize what the eventual outcome would be because the MPs actually had no authority over me to speak of. While I knew I was going to get a ride down to the Fort Carson stockade, I knew that there really were no charges they could make stick and they would be forced to release me and return me to the den of iniquity they had found me in.

It actually made no sense to argue with them.

It also made no sense to threaten them with trouble because if I was patient and went along with them I knew damned good and well that they would manage to get themselves into trouble for being a stupid. It is always fun to watch someone get themselves into a bind and I really didn't have to even help. All I had to do is sit back and watch as they self-destructed.

What made sense then and still does is that I took a "Yeah, OK. Let's see where this goes. I can use a good laugh. This ought to be good." attitude. I knew I wasn't going to wind up in any real trouble.

I don't recall what it was that I did to warrant their attention but even then I seldom acted too far out of line. I know it wasn't fighting. I think I had said something loud or crass and they heard it and told me to settle down. I had probably smarted off at them and made them look bad and they wanted their pound of flesh.

Of course you have to be a little cagey when you go this route.

Even insinuating that you were going to make life difficult for the MPs by accusing them of false arrest would be a waste of time because the local police most likely had a deal with the post that would most likely permit MPs to hold desperate criminals they encountered until they could drive down to post and take custody. I figured I'd be taken back to the ginmill if I didn't push the issue.

If I made a big stink I would probably be turned over to the Colorado Springs PD and charged with drunk and disorderly, and spend the night in the cooler. I knew I really wasn't in a position to raise too much cain, but if I kept cool I knew I would be entertained for the night and have a pretty good story to tell about in later years. All I had to do was go with the flow and play innocent.

Entertainmant like I got for free that night comes along every once in a blue moon and it sure is a lot of fun watching the system come to a screeching halt and turn itself inside out when something it doesn't have an easy mechanism to deal with comes along.

An opportunity like to watch a couple of people make fools out of themselves on such a monumental scale like that doesn't come along very often so when it does sometimes it's just a whole lot of fun just to play along.

As for fingering Fister to the MPs after I got back?

I'd bet Fister is home with his grandkids telling his grandkids about the time his good buddy Pic fingered him to the MPs and he got carted off a week after he got out of the army. I don't think he was really too mad at me at the time as I had told him what had happened to me and he thought it was hilarious.

Still, if he was upset about it at the time I'm sure that 35 years has made him see how damned funny it was and most likely he's grateful because he has a pretty good whacked out tale to tell.
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One of the things I have noticed over the years is that the human race really does not do a very good job when it comes to working together.

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

What do you expect?

The other day someone showed me a video of a group of Marines that got drunk ashore and when they came back to the ship they started fighting among themselves. The person showing me the video looked a bit uppity and 'gosh-golly-gee-whiz' about it.

What did he expect? The guys had been aboard a cramped Navy miserable pile of rust and rivets for some time, they were pent up, bored and frustrated. They had just been ashore and had their first opportunity to tip a few and of course there were few if any young women there to tend to matters that might have calmed them down a bit.

You have a group of men in their late teens and early twenties full of testosterone, vim, vigor, vitality with more energy that a perpetual motion machine and nowhere to expend it.

What do you think is going to happen? The energy has to go somewhere.

A while back there was another scandal with the Marines.

Seems the Marine Scout/Sniper community was using the SS lightning bolt 'runes' as a symbol of the Scout/Sniper community. Apparently they stole the emblem from the WW2 German SS. Someone got bent out of shape and raised holy hell and turned nothing into a major issue, claiming the Scout/Snipers were a bunch of Nazis which is pretty far removed from the truth.

None of the young guys involved were even born until at least forty years after the war and it is most likely that not a whole lot of them even had fathers that had ever fought the Nazis, if any. It was their grandfather's war.

Looking at it, the lightning bolt runes probably were a pretty good emblem for the Scout/Snipers other than the fact that there are too many crybabies and whiners in the country these days that have nothing better to do than create problems out of thin air.

Have YOU ever been stuck aboard a ship berthed in canvas and pipe racks six deep? I sort of doubt it. Are you 20 years old and in tremendous physical shape? Probably not. Most likely your too damned fat and out of shape to get out of your own way.


We ask normal people to put themeslve in totally abnormal situations and expect them to both go into and come out of these situations and be nice little boys. It simply isn't fair and I'm damned tired of everyone and their cousin that is sitting back in the states with a Ring Ding in one hand, a soda in the other waxing fat behind the tube passing judgement on these guys.

Those guys are United States servicemen. Now leave them the hell alone or sign up and join them. If you don't want to get behind the troops, fine. Find a nice free-fire zone and get in front of them.

Bet you if you DO enlist, you'll be doing the same damned thing they are.

Now let's leave these guys alone. They have kept the wolf away from the door for a couple of hundred years and they deserve a little privacy.
　
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Years ago in Alaska I was sitting at the bar of a ginmill that sported a sawdust floor when in walked a New York tourist. Indignantly she asked what all the sawdust was doing on the floor.

"Lady, that ain't sawdust. That's last night's furniture," I replied.

It was funny seeing the look on her face as she and her husband took off like a shot.
　
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Soldiers! Sailors! Marines! Airmen of the United States unite!

There comes a time when the Joint Chiefs of Staff have their hands tied and it becomes the time of the men in the ranks to take action.
In the light of the new age of cell cameras, digital photography and uTube videos there comes time for a new policy to be instituted by the ranks, of the ranks and for the ranks.

I propose thet the unwritten policy be accepted into the norm of the servicemen as of now.

In the future any fellow serviceperson in an unofficial capacity taking any pictures or recording members of the service doing anything that would discredit the service be stuffed into a matteress cover, hung from a rafter and be roundly pummelled, Socks and padlocks are authorized. Their recording device is then to be smashed into unrecoverable smithereens.

After such a beating has been duly administered, all service people are to leave the matteress cover suspended for the authorities to find and leave the area immediately as a unit so they can be each other's alibi for plausable deniability purposes.

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

Someone asked me if the tipi I lived in was smokey.

It wasn't.

The Indians knew what they were doing without a bunch of MIT graduates to give them directions which is something that may be surprising to a lot of people that are firmly entrenched in the idea that only scientists know how to make things work.

The process of having an open fire in a tipi is fairly simple. It is all about draft.

Most people do not realize that there are two layers to a tipi. There is an outer shell that everyone sees.

On the inside there is a liner that goes up about four feet.

The inside liner is firmly held against the ground and the outer liner is a few inches above the ground allowing air to enter and be driven upwards to the smoke hole at the top.

The smoke hole is actually kind of a slot that has a flap on either side and the smoke flaps are manuvered ont position by poles to utilize the outside wind to add to the draw effect that is created by both the rising heat of the fire and the air entering the base of the tipi and going up the liner.

It's a pretty slick system and it works well. The flaps are long enough so they can actually loosely wrap around the smoke hole in case there is a wind coming in directly from the east, which is the direction the door of a tipi traditionally faces.

The harder the wind blows the more draw is created and the more efficient the system is.

Of course, if it is dead calm the system still works like a charm as the heat rising from the fire creates its own draw anyway.
It is a pretty foolproof system.

The other thing about a tipi is that it is conical and as a result has no flat sides and when the winds pick up they simply swirl around the tipi. It is a pretty foolproof wind cheating design tha enables it to stay up during pretty fierce winds.

While it looks pretty simple the entire set-up is pretty ingenious when you look at if from a scientific point of view.

All in all it isn't a bad design from a people that never set foot in a classroom.

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

The term crackpot to me doesn't necessarily have a bad connotation.

 To me they come in three sizes. The nutcase, the dreamer and the experimenter.

While for most people the term drums up a picture of a wild-eyed, Einstein haired mad scientist type in a white coat trying to make some outlandish and generally useless idea work, there is a little more to it than that.

To me the term simply covers those that have chosen the road less traveled and have decided to follow their dreams. Some are builders and others are curious people that have a desire to test things and come up with their own results. While some are certainly nutty types, others are simply interesting builders and experimenters.

I have a lot of room in my heart for all 3 types, the nuts, the dreamers and the experimenters.

My favorite nut was the guy that hooked the weather balloons to the lawn chair and found himself looking DOWN on passing airliners while sipping on a cold beer seated in his chair. None other than good old Lawnchair Larry.

Some time ago I wrote about another guy that built a hot rod and took it to the Bonneville Salt Flats hoping to break 175 mph. He didn't. I believe the engine threw a rod and it sent him back home again to try again. This guy wasn't a high toned designer with a bunch of corporate sponsers, just an average joe with a garage in his house and working on his project on weekends.

I wonder if he tried again this year and how he made out. It would be interesting to find out if he made his dream come true.

One of my favorite experimenters is a guy from Texas by the name of Don who likes shooting things and is constantly trying out different kinds of ammunition and checking out different firearms.

On an internet forum I frequent he goes by the non-de-net of Old_Painless. To check his activity out just Google 'Box O' Truth'. It'll take you right there. This guy is GOOD.

While Don does a pretty good firearm review, my favorite posts are when he tests ammunition in different scenarios or tries to bust a myth. One time, much to my amusement, he dispelled an old myth about the US carbine bullet being stopped by frozen Chinese army overcoats during the Korean conflict. He did this simply by buying an old Chinese Army overcoat, soaking it and leaving it in his freezer for a couple days and taking it to the range. He had an old US carbine and shot through the coat several times and busted that myth pretty quickly.

While that was amusing there are several ammunition tests that he has done and what is interesting is that he generally winds up pretty close to getting the same results the FBI crime labs get, more or less.

He's not always 100% dead on, but he's generally pretty damned close which says a lot when you look at what he puts into it.
The FBI lab has a pretty good budget but Don just pulls a few bucks out of his wallet for ammo and gallon bottles of water and tries things out.He doesn't have a controlled lab and ballistic get is pretty expensive stuff so he simply goes with what he has. The results are pretty damned impressive if you ask me.

If it shoots a projectile he'll test it out.

I once mentioned that I was achieving different results with different weights with the slingshot I use for stringing antennas over obstacles and trees. I suggested he try out different sized weights and see what happened.

Sure enough the seeds of curiosity had been planted and a couple of weeks later I got an email with a link and there it was. He had tested out a couple of different slingshots with interesting results.

Every now and then someone will try and argue some small point with him. Occasionally the arguer may even have half an argument that hold a little water but you have to remember that we're not talking about picky details here. We're talking about ball park figures and generally Don not only stays inside the ball park but is pretty darned close to the big money lab guy's results.

While picking the FBI crime lab to death is fair enough, picking at a guy running on a small budget like Don does really isn't fair. You have to remember Don is working with readily available household items and pocket change. The FBI labs have basically unlimited resources.

It's interesting to see a guy dig out a $20 bill, run a test and maybe have change left over and find that the results match the big boys tests closely.

Sometimes it makes you wonder why the big boys go through all the time, money and trouble what they could probably just ask Don.

Maybe Don ought to grow a beard and sell beer on TV because he sure is....interesting.

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

One of the things I notice

 is that government really isn't too successful unless they obey the wishes of the people. While I suppose there are a lot of people that need to be told what to do there are an awful lot of people that would do just fine with little more than some basic guidance.

What happens when government steps into things like morality is they never seem to succeed.

Right now in New Zealand they are thinking about taxing cigarettes to the tune of about $100 a pack or something ridiculous.

The first thing that came into my mind was that there is a buck to be made smuggling and setting up a black market. I've seen this before and I'll see it again. The minute the price goes up too high to buy something legally someone with a yen to make a few fast bucks comes in charging to fill in the hole.

Prostitution is illegal but you can find a hooker just about anywhere.

Drugs are illegal but they flourish and an awful lot of nice neighborhoods have heroin addicts living there. A cop I used to know let me in on the fact that there were a couple of junkies in my area. Pot can be found anywhere.

Since abortion is pretty much legal you don't hear of a lot of back alley abortionists any more, though. You used to quite a while ago.

Alcohol used to be legal then it was illegal and when it was illegal the mob made a fortune and an awful lot of people died in turf wars over bootlegging. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre was over illegal hooch. Brewers and moonshiners went to work full time working under the table and not paying taxes.

Then they made alcohol legal again and brewers and distillers went back to work legally and paid taxes.

Right now there are pot growers all over the place and you can bet that not a whole lot of them pay a dime in taxes. Even the income taxes these growers skip out on is a pretty penny and I wonder how many of them justify their existince simply by getting on the welfare rolls.

You would think that the people in government would know this and smarten up and make the system work for them instead of spending millions to fight basic human nature but then again look who ends up going into politics. Sometimes I think that the wrong people ride the short bus to school. I have met any number of Down's Syndrome kids that have a lot more social grace than most of out politicians.

As far as most of our so-called leaders go,there are not many that I would follow across the street to go to a discount liquor store with road guards posted in both lanes.

Truth is I think I do a pretty good job of running myself and I really don't need any help from some stuffed shirt in Washington.

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

The black social justice set can shove it.

 They don't have a leg to stand on anymore.

I fail to see a whole bunch of Klansmen running around burning crosses. I fail to see a mob of bigots. Instead I see an awful lot of people of all races that would just wish they would shut the hell up and go away because they simply do not want to be seen with these people.

Ever bother to notice who seems to hate the black social justice movement the most of all?

Successful black people because they are tired of these people dragging them along with them.

By successful blacks we are not only talking about Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell and Condeleeza Rice. We are talking about people like the machinist I met a while back that just sent his daughter to college or the woman that I met running a successful greeting card shop or Gunny Thibidoux, USMC. You don't have to be famous to be a success. You just have to be good at what you do and work at it.

I wish more successful blacks would start to speak out.

The only way blacks are going to receive any form of social justice is when they stop hiding behind their color and get off their dead ass and onto their dying feet and start producing something other than a bunch of irritating noise and trouble.

Ever occur to anyone that the rest of us want these people to be successful even if it's only because we're tired of paying through the nose to take care of them when they should be taking care of themselves?

Stop whining.
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Sometimes I wonder if those quarters I helped collect during the early sixties was worth the effort. They were for the Freedom riders, a group that went into various places, mainly in the south during the Civil Rights movement.

When I listen to Al Sharpton and the rest of the social justice whiners I tend to get pretty regretful that I did. Sometimes it makes me feel that we should have picked our own damned cotton.

Then I think about the woman running the card shop or the college kid I yakked with a couple of weeks ago or the machinist I met at McDonalds or the guy that runs the barbecue pit or look at some Marine Gunny that has made a career of looking out for me. I think about one of the guys on the dock that helped me along as a young seaman and encouraged me to climb up through the hawspipe.

Yeah, it was worth it helping collect the quarters. I did the right thing.

What I do wish is that the black social justice set would stop giving me second thoughts.
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There is an interesting man out there by the name of Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson.

While he doesn't sell beer on TV or have a distinguished looking beard, he is still.....interesting.

I guess he has crossed swords with Jesse Jackson which means he can't be all bad. I like the guy. He has called for the arrest of the members of the New Black Panther party that put out the $10.000 reward for the head of George Zimmerman. Look this guy up. He seems like a much needed blast of fresh air.

When I was a kid growing up my youthful idealism wanted to live in a world where one didn't even notice a person's color. There is only one race and that's the human race and that would damned well be it.

A man would be judged by his talents, abilities and character alone. I still live this way.

I'm going to look into this guy a little more because he simply gets it.

Yeah, he does get it. Any black preacher that came up with 'National Repudiation of Jesse Jackson Day" has to get it. I just wish he'd add Al Sharpton to the list.
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One other thing about getting into the yacht club as a minority.

They like people that are 'just doing it'.

Several years ago when I had my little boat, Karen Lee, I was sailing down the Tongass Narrows going like a bat out of hell in the little 24'7" full keeler with the stern squatting down in the water obviously pushing her past the design parameters.

Her hailing port, Kodiak, was painted on the stern and it was obvious I was a long way from home. It didn't take a highly skilled celestial navigator to figure out that the reason I was there with the little puddle jumper is because I had sailed her across the Gulf of Alaska.

Another sailor in a bigger and faster boat came by and offered to meet me at the ginmill at the end of the pier when I tied her up. I took him up on the offer and found out the man was a member of the local yacht club and invited me to join the local club. I took him up on it.

I showed up at the meeting and joined and was voted in.

Everyone there knew I was driving cab for a living and that I wasn't some kind of social big shot. I had one thing going for me, though. I was interesting because I was living the dream most of them shared. I was out there in an undersized cruiser with some experience and adventure behind me.

Looking back on it I realize that my race wasn't taken into account by too many people in the club as also neither was my line of work. Had I been black, or any other minority I truly believe I would have been invited to join.

I also do not think I would have been invited into the club no matter how much money I had or if I had the biggest boat in the harbor if I was a jerk. The 'Caddyshack' Rodney Dangerfield types never seemed to be invited as they tended to be loudmouthed jerks.

These people invited me to join because I was interesting even though I was (and still am) a pretty salty character.

While I'm pretty sure there were a couple of people there that may have wanted to keep the club snow white, I'd have to say that the overwhelming majority of the membership still would have gladly voted me in if I was black, red, purple or pink. They didn't care.

They invited me to join because I shared a love for sailing and I was interesting and they respected the fact that I was a pretty competent sailor that brought along something to add to the club.

It's as simple as that.

Just be good at what you do and persue it with a passion.

Do this and the yacht club will find you.

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

The Shooter's Amateur Radio club.

                                    of which I appointed myself the vice president of, has gotten the OK to set up a special events station at Camp Perry, Ohio during the National Matches. Maybe it will become an annual event.

The SARC became an entity when a bunch of shooters that also are hams were yakking on an internet forum and the subject of the possibility of bringing a radio and setting up shop at Camp Perry during CMP week came up. A couple of the guys were a bit overwhelmed as to how to go about this and my answer was that we simply form a club and I immediately started pointing and saying, "OK, you are the treasurer, and you are the secretary," and so on. I simply appointed officers.

Actually, what I did was told one guy "You are dictator for life. This is an annually elected position. I'm vice president which means I make sure all the booze, blow, hookers are divvied up evenly and the card games are kept honest, you are treasurer and I will send you $1.57 to take charge of. You are secretary. We now have officers and we are now a club. Quick fix."

The appointed officers took to their real duties without being given too many instructions and started providing much needed feedback and ideas. A couple of days later one of the guys had whipped up some stationary and the secretary ran out and found us a PO box so we could have a bona fide address.

This is actualy one of those start ups that sounded pretty whacked out with the "You, you and you." appointments and all of the chaos that went with it but the actual reality of it is that a number of hams got together and decided to team up and do something.

We're all shooters and almost all of us have shot at Camp Perry before and pretty much know the drill and take our roles as both shooters and hams fairly serious. I forsee an interesting little special event station setting up at the National Matches and I'll just bet that we'll be asked back again.

What is interesting is how just about all the members are pitching in, even those that can't make it. I just got a 1000 foot roll of neon pink paracord donated by my nephew and I think I'll snag a roll of 14 gauge wire to drag along. I was seriously considering neon pink, but because the antennas will be up in the air I will likely go with black as I can use any leftovers at home.

A lot of you readers will wonder why I chose pink, which is somewhat of a significant color to me. I chose neon pink because it stands out in the twilight and most men tend to avoid just about anything that is that color. It ought to help keep someone from plowing into a guy wire or antenna support. I know a smoker that buys pink lighters so that nobody will steal them from him at the bar. (There is a method to my madness.)

Another guy is going to get us a deal on the QSL cards which we are sure to be asked for, and another has offered to take on the chore of stuffing envelopes and things of that nature. It is interesting because the membership is strewn out all over the country and yet at this stage the entire thing seems to be coming around and getting off the ground.

The final OK just came because the secretary just took it upon himself to go to Camp Perry and meet with the people there who he reports are enthusiastic about it.

Of course, I am going to bust his chops about taking off the feed store overalls and camoflauge t-shirt and wiping the tobacco stains off of his chin and putting on a pair of shoes before going to Camp Perry but that's half of the fun.

The people at Camp Perry are far from fools. They know shooters. Shooters are responsible people or they would not be at Camp Perry. The very few irresponsible ones that have ever showed up there have been thrown out so fast it will spin your head. They also know that ham radio operators are licensed and as such have a license to lose.

I suppose if they read all of our communications they would most likely jump out of their skins because they do sound a little strange. I'll admit the entire project at first sounded pretty half-baked. It's all there for anyone with Google skills to look up and although the way it was put together may sound odd, you can read between the lines and find what's most likely a pretty good group of guys getting together to use the National Matches as an FCC licensed special event.

My guess is that is why they decided to let an ad hoc ARC set up field operations there during the National Matches. Besides, there will be a little good PR for them at least from the ham community.
I heard the CMP people are going to mention that we are planning on showing up which is a little notice for us, too.

The spot they have alloted us to set up shop is a bit out of the way but it has one thing that will make portable field operations a little easier. There are trees there that we can utilize to string antennas from. That ought to make things a little easier.

This is an interesting project and I am looking forward to it even if I have to go it with only a couple of people. Maybe I can create a couple of new hams out there or get a couple of existing hams into portable operations. Who knows?

The thing I find most interesting about this is setting up a project with people I have communicated with over the web for a long while and I get to work with these guys face to face. It is always interesting meeting people face to face.

Still, there's a lot of work and a lot of organization that has to take place to make it a go and I'll most likely spend several damned hot, sweaty days at Perry setting things up and running a rig in the sun but that can be a lot of fun in itself. I hope the bands open up.
　
Anyway, I'm looking forward to it.

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

Another day and I am still too damned busy to write a good post.

I see a little window of opportunity coming up and I want to answer one of the questions a regular reader asked me regarding firearms and youngsters.
Incidentally I never had any kids so enjoy me while you can. When I am gone there will be nobody to take my place....Whatever.
　

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

One of the things that amazes me to this day is why people would post something illegal on Facebook.

I just read where some kid was stealing gasoline from a police car which is stupid to begin with, but the stupidity didn't stop there. His girlfriend took a picture of it and pasted it on her Facebook page.

An arrest ensued.

How stupid can you be? It doesn't get any dumber than that...or does it.

I guess I'm getting a little worked up because as soon as I see something that out and out stupid, all I have to do is look around for a while and I'll see something stupider come along.

It is going to be a few days until I can sit down and write a decent post as life has gotten hectic and I am running 24/7 which is nothing new for me.

One thing, I wonder if the ham I QSO'd from South Dakota will send me a written signal report of some type. SD is the only state I lack a QSL from so I can bring my cards to the QSL card checker and put in for an ARRL Worked all States certificate.

I think after that I am either going to try my hand at Morse and work all states in CW (Morse code) or start tryig to go foriegn and see if I can join the DXCC (Distant Exchange Century Club) by working 100 different countries. I already have a few under my belt, including Northern Ireland, which I worked on the PRC-320 with only the 2.5 meter whip for an antenna. I had a pretty good signal across the pond that day.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

Someone asked me about Nebby Larry the other day and I guess he is doing OK.

I saw him wandering by several times over the past couple of weeks but I wasn't doing anything when he was passing by so I just ignored him.

The cop who has taken some of Larry's calls has been by, though. His kid just got a ham ticket and he wanted to ask a few questions about the International Space Station and setting up a 2 meter rig to listen to it.

The cop wanted to know the best way to buy stuff as there are not a whole lot of stores around here that cater to hams. I gave him the names and contacts numbers, websites etc for a few of the places I have done business with and in addition to that I hooked him up with a local club. The members there seem to be pretty good about helping kids out so I guess the kid will make out OK.

This is a short post today because I am jammed up with a LOT of stuff to do.

Life just got hectic.

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

One of the terms I like is 'limosine liberals'.

It hits the nail right smack on the head.

There generally are the people that live in gated communities and have an awful lot of money and can easily afford security coming out the ears. The privliged set, so to speak.

A lot of these people spend an awful lot of time running their mouths babbling on about how the rest of us should behave and that the rest of us peons have no right to take care of ourselves because it is the job of the police.

Now this is all well and good if we can afford our own private security but in most cases the average working stiff can't. Like a lot of things we have to do it ourselves from time to time.

Now I want to make it clear here that I am not bashing the police but the truth is that generally the police are a reactive force. They react to a situation. They do not prevent it. One seldom hears of the police arriving before a crime is committed and preventing something from happening. They generally arrive and pick up the pieces of shattered lives. Most cops will readily admit this.

There is a lot to be said for the old saw that when seconds count the police are only minutes away.

Generally when some poor slob that decides he doesn't want to be a victim decided to defend himself and the criminal committing the crime against him takes second place in the ensuing debate there are a number of people that will come charging in to defend the criminal. This holds true especially if the criminal is either severely injured or outright killed.

The limosine liberals are right out there telling everyone what a damned shame it is that the little thug got a hole in his head and that it should be illegal for anyone to own tools that are capable of such violence.

Several years ago on the firing line at a shooting match the guy next to me asked me if I knew how to turn a liberal anti-gun woman into a pistol packing momma. I said I didn't.

"Rape her," he said.

I was shocked for a couple of seconds until I thought about it. Sadly enough he was right. A woman that has been a victim of a crime like that is very well apt to decide that enough is enough and to learn to use a handgun and start packing. She does not want to undergo that sort of an ordeal ever again and she has probably decided that it is time for her to accept responsibility for her own security.

Of course, when she does decide to arm and train herself the limosine liberals step in and try and tell her how wrong she is. None of these fine people, of course, have ever been raped.

The truth of the matter is these limosine liberals are unwilling to get their hands dirty taking care of themselves. They just hire security guards and body guards to take care of them. They use the same violence or threat of it to keep the forces of evil at bay. The only difference is that they are not do it yourselfers. They simply hire the job out to someone else to take care of them.

Of course you can bet your bottom dollar that the security guards they hire are generally a whole lot better armed and trained than the average working guy.

You do not hear of a whole lot of attacks on these celebrities and wealthy people for pretty good reason. It is common knowledge that these people in their gated communities surrounded by bodyguards and security people are not easy pickings. The criminal element knows it.

The criminal element is not stupid. They are not going to go after someone that is surrounded by bodyguards living in gated communities when they can find someone else that is unarmed and vulnerable.

This puts the limosine liberal in a safe position where he or she can sit up on their high horse and pass judgement on some poor slob working stiff that is simply trying to take care of himself.

It must be nice sitting up there in your gated community looking down on the rest of us and telling us how to live our lives and defending our attackers. We, the working class in most cases are the people that bought your record albums or went to your movies or concerts. In a lot of cases we are the poeple that put you where you are now.

Why don't you just shut up and stop biting the hand that fed you.

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

Pro tip; ALL babys are beautiful and they get their llooks from their mother

Last night I went down to the garage to close the door and I saw a pair of loving parents walking their 20 month down the street in a baby buggy with rubber baby buggy bumpers on it.

I swear the guy looked like that Country and Western singer Julia Roberts was married to a while back, Lyle Lovett. He must have been Lyle's twin brother and the kid was the spitting image of his father.

I wandered over to them and looked at the little one and smiled at the kid.

"Did you buy those good looks from the good looks store?" I asked the toddler.

Of course the kid didn't answer.

"What, you say?" I answered, pretending conversation with the infant. "You got your good looks from your mother? I thought so."
I looked at the mother. "There it is,"I said. He got his good looks from you."

Both parents beamed proudly.

Pro tip here: No matter what, ALL babies are stunningly beautiful AND they ALL got their stunning beauty from their mother.
Trust me on this one.
==============================I'm German, Polish and Russian. I have a strong desire to invade myself, but am usually too drunk to bother.

A comment from someone about his ethnicity

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

The night after I got out of the army

 I went downtown to get royally toasted and I do not remember exactly what it was that I did to merit the attention of a pair of MPs, but they thought I was still a GI and picked me up. I don't know why, but when I told them I had been discharged, they said, "That's what they all say!"


Now most guys would have fought tooth and nail but I simply decided to see what would happen so I didn't argue a whole lot and just got into the jeep with them and thay carted me off to the Ft. Carson slam. I figured that it was a whole lot easier to have these two clowns make fools of themselves than it was to get into a fight that I would likely lose. These two were a lot bigger than me.

When we got there the NCOIC asked me for my ID and what unit I was in and I told him the unit I had been discharged from the previous day and told him to call the CQ and ask him about my status in the army. The NCOIC glared at me a minute and looked the number up and called the CQ, all the while glaring at me.

Suddenly he looked pale and angrily looked up at me and demanded to know why I didn't tell the MPs I had been discharged a day earlier. I told him in my best hillbilly tone, "I done tol them boys I wasn't no sojer no mo' but they din't believe me. Mah daddy done tol me never to fight wif da man an so I figgered we could jist come here and figger this here little old mess out."

He gave me a real dirty look and then he blew a fuse with the two MPs and ordered them to take me back downtown. I was treated to watching the pair of them get a particularly spectacular ass-chewing and they were ordered to make damned good and sure they both bought me several drinks for my trouble.

When we got back downtown they took me into New Joe's and bought me a couple of drinks and I invited them to join me. They refused and took off.

About ten minutes later I spotted Sp/4 Fister who had gotten out of the Army a couple of days earlier than I had. He had been in my battalion but in a different battery. He still looked like a GI and when I told him about what had happened to me he howled gleefully.

About a half-hour later the same pair of MPs were ambling through and I spotted them as I was leaving the men's room. I waved them over and quietly told them that Fister was an AWOL and had ruined the battalion record and cost us a 3 day pass.

They immediately picked Fister up and carted HIM off. As they were leaving, Fister saw me with a look of self-rightous indignation on my face and shouted, "You bastard! You fingered me!"

Of course, that made him look even more guilty.

I managed to keep a serious self rightous look on my face as Fister was carted off.

The next thing I remember about the night was waking up the following noontime in a motel as sick as a dog and looking over and seeing what (maybe it was a who, but I'm fairly certain it was a she) was next to me. I started chewing my arm off until I realized it wasn't under her and I could get away cleanly without the risk of waking her up. There are toothmarks on my arm to this day. I snagged my clothes off the floor and left the room bollicky bare-assed and dressed in the parking lot and then took off like a gazelle, stopping only to puke twice.

I haven't seen Fister since but I would sure like to run into him and find out what happened to those two poor MPs when they found out they had carted off ANOTHER civvie a couple hours after they nabbed me.



my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

I got an email from someone about the fact that I made a lousy call the

other day. The writer was surprised.

I'm not. Nobody bats a thousand. Everybody misses the ball every once n a while.

Add the fact that I was making a guess on the American criminal justice system and all bets are off.

=========================
I just took a little break to wander outside which I do almost every morning. A lot of little things get done when I do this. I decide on the uniform of the day, and let my instincts predict the weather for the day. I'm generally pretty accurate.

This morning I took a littlle timme to listen to the birds and the sounds and look across the street at the big oak I have watched for almost two decades. It is budding and when I return from this upcoming tour of duty it will be pretty much filled out. Spring is springing and when I return, spring will have sprung.
=========================
Last night something funny happened. Neighbor Bob somehow managed to snag two Budweiser 40 oz bottles of beer and dropped by. They were both in brown bags and I looked at them and laughed when he suggested I get us a couple of glasses. I told him there was no way in hell we were going to drink them out of glasses and to leave them in the bags.

Bob was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and I grabbed mine along with 2 pairs of sunglasses. We put the shades on and the hoods up and than pulled our pants down and sat in the driveway in lawn chairs watching the dog walkers shuffle by looking like a pair of old man dressed like gangsta wannabes brown-bagging a pair of 40s.

Most people were too preoccupied to notice, and of the few that did, we drew a couple of confused looks and a few smirks.

Then the Black woman down the street wandered by with her dog, took one look at the pair of us and said, "Well, there goes the neighborhood!"

Bob and I couldn't help it. We laughed ourselves silly over that comment and then pulled off our shades, lowered our hoods and pulled our pants back up.

"Thank you," she said and shuffled off with her dog. I suppose we were lucky not to get a reprimand for setting a bad example for her kids. When you think about it we had it coming.

I've met her a couple of times and late last spring or maybe early summer we chatted about gardening. I noticed she had a pretty quick wit and an awfully dry sense of humor. I kind of llike what I saw of her. She seemed to be one of those people that has grace under fire. I hope I run into her again.






my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

It si Saturday morning and I have a few things to do today.

I have to go over the property taxes today.

No comment.

I also have to start getting the grub together to go back to work. This is going to be a mild pain because I have to freeze some of it.

I have just had breakfast and am enjoying my morning coffee as I sit here. I have not turned on the Icom yet to check into the YL net which I generally do as I am making my coffee. It is a quiet day.

The mail has yet to produce a QSL card for either WA or SD and I'm a bit annoyed because both of them are overdue. The Washington card isn't quite as annoying as the fact that South Dakota hasn't responded to me yet. I have QSO'd the station more than once and sent him a card every time and at least twice they have been accompanied by a SASE so as to not cost him postage.

No answer and since the first QSO it has been five weeks or maybe more. It ain't right.

I don't need a fancy card, just a scrap of paper with a signal report and his callsign. My QSL fromm Alaska was hand made and is actually a favorite of mine. It shows someone cared enough to take the effort to at least give me tangible proof toward my Worked All States project.

It's common courtesy and I guess there are people out there that do not have any.

I once commented that the poorer the state the faster they resopnd and I suppose that in a sense this is true because I Googled the guy for the hell of it and it looks like he owns a damned airplane. As usual, money for an airplane but no time for the basics of good manners.

Before we go on here this particular contact has come through a WAS net where the members are expected to QSL one way or another. Almost every other person I have QSO'd with on this particular net has QSL'd rather quickly.

A couple of months ago I recieved a card from an SWL (shortwave listener) so I sent him one in return. This guy isn't a ham, but likely a kid with a shortwave band receiver and he gave me a signal report from Idaho. I suppose I made his day when he got my card. Years ago SWLs used to be about 5-10% of the card requests and a good ham would send out a card.

Another ham and I have chatted about the way some people do not respond and the truth is that there is one group of people that get a pass and that is old hams on a fixed income. Postage has gone up and there are still a few older retired hams that are on the air with the old patched up rig they put together years ago our of either a Heathkit or GI surplus components and they enjoy themselves.

These guys have a hard enough time just getting out of bed in the morning and can most likely barely afford the electricity needed to run theirrigs. I almost bought a rig from a guy similar to this that was going blind.

Guys like this get a pass.

Still, I have not figured out why the poorer the ham the more likely to get a QSL card in the mail.

Then again, this is actually a pretty god country if I can afford to gripe about something like this.


my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

It is morning and it is cold out.

We just had the warmest winter in history and now spring is pretty cold. Par golf.

There are no freebies in this world. You always wind up paying for things somewhere along the line.

I think that one of the most important things you can do to a kid is to teach him that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Sommebody somewhere along the line is paying for it somehow.

I just got an email from a friend that came from his daughter-in-law. His son is an army sergeant overseas and I guess the wife got somewhat of a semi-false alarm from the Army regarding her husband's health.

It is somewhat of a dirty trick I figure as the best thing to do is leave army wives alone when their husbands are deployed. No news is good news.

In fact, when I was a GI I filled out a form tellling the army that the only reason thay had to notify my wife about anything is if I was killed, missing or so torn up I couldn't call her myself. The last thing I wanted to have happen is for her to get word that I had been slightly injured.

There is an old WW2 Bill Maudin cartoon of Willie or Joe  telling a medic, "Just give me an asprin. I already got a Purple Heart."

And while Old Willie really has only been zinged lightly, he most likely refused the purple heart so the Army in its indinite wisdom does not generate a casualty report for the folks back home. The last thing a wife needs is to have a chaplain show up at her door and scare the living hell out of her.

I once heard a Marine say once, "Marine wife. Hardest job in the Corps."

I believed him then and I believe it now. They aso get no credit at all for this. Wives are taken for granted.

When a GI is deployed he is generally pretty busy doing his job. His mind and generally his body are occupied with the task at hand, even those in non combat roles. If he is a grunt life cycles around three basic thiings. He is generally either getting ready to fight, fighting or cleaning up after the fight. A payroll clerk is generally busy taking care of the massive amounts of paperwork required to field the guys in the lines.

In short, the GI is generally pretty busy. What is equally important is that he is on scene and generally knows what is going on. He's right in the middle of things and thinks little of it.

Sure, he may be tired, hungry, scared and hurt but he has the luxury of being busy, involved and he knows what is going on. His wife back home, while being fed, rested and safe has no idea as to what is going on and is most likely scared out of her wits. Can't say as I blame her. Not knowing what is going on is damned difficult.

 She's at home with the kids and the demons. She's checking the news constantly to see if there is any sight or news on her husband. Of course if the unit her husband is in makes the news she instantly starts worrying. Her man is in the middle of something and it doesn't look very safe from her viewpoint.

A few years back I was chatting with an old woman of the WW2 generation. Her husband had served and also she had a son in Vietnam. I asked her whiich one caused her the most worries and she instantly replied that her son in Vietnam worried her the most. I asked why.

She explained that back during WW2 there were only the letters to keep her posted and what little she could gleam from the newspapers. The letters were generally cheerful and upbeat. During Vietnam she was glued to the television set twice daily for the drama of the first war to be televised.

During WW2 she had the luxury of not being terrified every single day while the 6 pm news showed gruesome close-ups of GIs being torn up. I can sure see her point. She is wondering if some night she's going to see her son live and in person getting torn up.

Sometimes the Army seems to get it all wrong as much as they try. Any kind of false alarm can send a wife into fear. The last thing she wants to see is a man in uniform showing up at her door unexpectedly.

I suppose if I were some sort of support-type soldier or Marine that had to deal with the wives of the deployed I would call ahead first and make the call sound as non official as possible.

"Betty Smith?  Piccolo, housing NCO. I've got a form for you to fill out. Either you can drop by or I'll come out there."

At least if you have to go out there she knows you are coming and when she sees you walking up the walkway she isn't going to go into panic mode.

I have to agree with the Marine that commented that being a GI wife is the hardest job in the service.





my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

Well, yesterday I was wrong.

I based my conclusions on logic and I found myself mistaken. I didn't think the special prosecuter would hold a press conference to file charges because generally the way it is done is that press conferences are generally used to explain why charges are NOT being filed.

Generally when they are being filed, they announce that the defendant is in custody.

Coupled with the fact that it has been well over 45 days since the incident took place and generally they charge a lot faster than that.

It looks like Mr. Zimmerman is going on trial and that is that. This is going to get interesting. He is being charged with 2nd degree murder which may or may not be an overcharge.

I can hear it now, "If the head has been hit, you must acquit."

The American public is now in for yet another three-ring circus.
====================
Right now I will go out on a limb here and say that the real reason George Zimmmerman is going on trial is because Holder and the Federal justice department have twisted the arms of the State of Florida threatening to take juristiction of the case away from the state.

Either that or they would do something else.

I went out on a limb yesterday and I was wrong. I might be wrong today but somewhere along the line I smell a rat.

====================
One of the things that irks me is the picture of Treyvon as a little kid. He's not a little kid, he was a young man. We have GIs serving that are younger than him. Let's see a few more pictures of him with his gangsta grille.
====================
In other news. If any of you have tried to check into any of the WAS nets you probably know what happpens the instant he starts asking for check-ins. Everyone starts talking at once and there is a big pile-up.

A while ago I noticed that it sounds like a lynch mob outside the sheriff's office in an on B grade western.

It is going to take an awful lot of self discipline to keep me from busting into the middle of them and saying in my best Johw Wayne voice, "They'll be no lynchin' so long as I'm the marshall of Dodge."

I wish the special prosecuter of Florida had said the same thing yesterday.

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

Well, I'd have to say George Zimmerman is off the hook to a certain degree.

The Prosecuter has announced a press confrence in a day or two and is most likely to come out and announce that there is not enough evidence to take to a grand jury. If it were otherwise she would have announced Zimmerman was in custody.

As soon as I heard Al Sharpton jumped ship and headed back to Harlem I figured something might be amiss.

This has been an interesting case to watch and although it is not over and in reality for Zimmerman will most likely never be over, it is drawing to an end.

What has been interesting to watch is the disgusting way the media handled this and the truth is I will never trust the media ever again.

From now on I will get my news from the internet. There are a couple of forums full of pretty sharp people that do an awful lot of digging and generally get to the truth pretty quickly.

The entire  thing was handled by the media in such a way that the truth was obsured from day one.

They painted the teenaged Martin as being a sweet little kid that was a regular Beaver Cleaver of honesty and kindness and they painted Zimmerman out to be an angry thug. At least one network altered tapes to put words in Zimmerman's mouth hoping to turn this into a hate crime. It looked like a cut and dried case of bigotry and vigilantism.

Then people started digging.

It should be clearly noted that an awful lot of the people that started digging were not highly paid journalists, but a number of average joes that simply had access to a computer, a little time on their hands and just plain old curiosity. They unearthed one or two little things and saw a chink here and a crack there so they started looking a little more. They saw a funny looking rock and turned it over and something ugly and wiggley appeared so they looked a little more.

I just saw an internet poll and as of an hour or so ago 57% of the respondents say that Zimmerman should not be arrested. Interesting. A couple of weeks ago the numbers were a lot lower than that. Almost everybody wanted to hang the poor guy. It would not surprise me to see the numbers climb in Zimmerman's favor over the next couple of days.

What the media did was obscure an awful lot to put Zimmerman in a bad light and obstruct justice. I would imagine that their little agenda was to put the Stand Your Ground laws in a bad light among other things.

The media isn't about justice. The media is about ratings and advertising revenue.

They are perfectly willing to see George Zimmerman spend the rest of his life in jail for ratings. They are perfectly willing to start a race riot and see millions of dollars worth of damage and numerous lives lost in the interest of ratings. They painted such a picture that was sure to enrage the public when in reality the case apppears to be one where a peron that was savagely beaten managed to break it off and the beater pursued the victim who simply ender the scuffle with a single well-placed pistol shot.

It will be argued for years over if Zimerman had a right to shadow Martin and the truth is, Zimmerman only did what I have done myself. He saw something he just didn't like the looks of and started investigating.

I have done this a couple of times over the last two decades. I've seen something I didn't like, grabbed the family .45, stuffed one in the pipe, crammed the piece in the small of my back, covered it and gone detecting.  There is nothing wrong with that.

While my first piece of go-to gear is the cell phone, there is nothing better than a  firearm to back it up. When second count, the police are only minutes away.

Nobody wound up shot, but I have run off a couple of people over the years and surprisingly, I wound up taking one of them in.

The latter was a young man looking to see America and I fed him and let him get cleaned up, did his wash while he chopped up some wood for me. I let him sack out in the back yard that night and the following morning he broke camp and went on his way. He was an interesting young man. Frankly, he reminded me of me back in my youth.

While I would imagine Zimmerman probably was a little more agressive than I was when I checked things out, it is pretty much the same idea. He saw something suspicious and acted on it.

It is a shame that the event unfolded into a shooting but it appears the shooting is not a crime, but an act of self-defense.

I give no credit whatsoever to the media for keeping me honestly informed on this.

I give the credit to the internet sleuths






my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

Today is an interesting day because I have a lot to

do and as soon as I am done  here I will get right on it.

Yesterday my travels didn't take me very far. I went to the airport and picked someone up. It actually went rather smooth because of the amazing invention called the cell phone. I parked in a makeshift cell phone lot and when I got the call I simply zoomed into gate 3 and made the pickup. I was in and out and I think I was actually stopped for only a couple of seconds.

To me this is what cell phones are for. They make things happen easier.

Of course, 90% of what they get used for is nothing but a bunch of hot air. The averaage small town probably produces enough hot air to fill a balloon and take Phineas halfway around the world.

Yesterday's post seems to have been read and appreciated because I recieved a few comments about it via another website.

Right about now I think it is high time for an awful lot of members of the Black community to come forward and speak out against the racism being supported by people like Al Sharpton the New Black Panther Party.

A lot of people are getting pretty sick and tired of the race card being played and if a few successful Black don't start to speak out they will all wind up being victims of a backlash that is fairly certain to come along sometime soon.

It isn't even tax time and I am already beginning to see the signs of a long, hot summer coming up. It doesn't look good.

Yesterday I recieved an email from a very near and dear old friend questioning a post I made regarding WW2 as being the biggest change in the country. She countered that the biggest change in the country very welll may have taken place before we bacame a nation when we imported the first Black slaves from Africa.

Ouch. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard that one coming from my old friend. I think what was said holds some water in some ways but I can't allow myself to cop to condemning an entire group as there are too damned many Blacks out there that simply get up, go to work, do their jobs, take their money and go home just like everyone else that is successful.

Unfortunately it is the squeaky wheel that gets the grease and right now the race card players are making a pretty good racket. They are doing a lot more harm than good. Racism isn't going to go away until people stop trying to tell others how different they are and buckle down, get over it and get too busy to bother with how different they are.

Anyone can be successful in this country if they want to be. Apple was started as a real fly by night operation and about $1300 worth of capital according to someone that read it somewhere.

Still, you have to define success carefully or there are going to be an awful lot of miserable failures out there.

A while back over a cup of joe at a McDucks I chatted with an older Black guy that was clad in a work uniform. He is a machinist and was talking to me about his upcoming retirement and his plans for it. He planned on staying active doing a few fairly interesting things.

I asked him about his kids and he told me that his daughter had gone to college, one son was a career Navy man and that the third son, his oldest, had completed an apprenticeship and was also back in night school learning the business end of his trade. Look for an independent plumbing business to open up one of these days.

My my reckoning this guy is a success. There is a lot more tobeing a success than amassing a fortune. He did it by learning a skill and working at it. He raised three kids that by his say-so are out in the world taking care of themselves and most likely are too busy with careers and family to run off somewhere to raise hell over something stupid.

I think it is well past time for these people to speak out against the Al Sharptons and other stirrer-upper-ers that are making a fortune at their expense.

Then again, maybe their strategy is to simply stay busy and fly under the radar and quietly watch the whole thing unravel.

Al Sharpton has returned to Harlem and supposidly preached at a church there to make sure he keeps his preaching credentials up. Of course, this means he has broken his promise to have a mob occupy the town of Sanford, Florida.

My guess right now is that he thinks that they are not going to find enough evidence to try George Zimmerman and Al does not want to wipe the egg off of his face in front of all of the people he got stirred up. I could be wrong, but that is my guess. The other guess is that he doesn't want to wind up in the slam like he deserves for inciting a riot which is likely to happpen if Zimmerman is not charged.

Speaking of Zimmerman, I know right now if I was the Florida DA I would probably release George simply because he can't get a fair trial. An awful lot of people would succumb to throwing old George to the wolves to prevent a riot and a lot more would be intimidated by the threats of the Spike Lees and New Black Panthers.

I know that it would be pretty hard for me to be fair in this case because I generally have somewhat of an attitude that does not succumb to perssure. Even if the evidence presented to me led me to believe that Zimmerman was guilty of something I might very likely to push BACK at the pressure and let him go simply out of spite.

I am one of those cantankerous people that makes up his own mind unless you push me and when you do you generally do not like the results. While I would never under any circumstances hang an innocent man, I am capable of letting a guilty one go free simply out of spite. I would not be a good member of a grand jury in this case. I'll admit it. I generally do not succumb to pressure well.

It is probably because I have an attitude that I will try and appease people. If they want something to cry about I will simply give them something to cry about.

I guess I'll just post this now because I these are my morning musings.

Here's a guy that gets it.

http://www.mrctv.org/videos/zo-trayvons-left-forgot

I like this guy. He makes excuses for nothing and I wish there were a whole lot more people around like him. I wish he would move in to my neighborhood. He would be a welcome asset and pretty good company because at least he thinks.

In fact, I wish this guy would marry my sister, not that she needs anyone to take care of her because she knows how but just because if he did I'd have an excuse to drop in on him.

One of the things I have finally figured out after all these years is that the overwhelming majority of our problems in this country is that people make bad excuses for appalling behavior. We permit bad behavior.

If we didn't permit it there would not be a whole lot of it. I get pretty tired of everybody whining about how so and so had a mother that didn't buy him an iPod of some other foolishness. We enter this world with a life and the right to use it as we see fit and if you want to throw it away and get wrapped up in stupid you have only yourself to blame. The world is full of people that have decided to be successful and have done so.

We can gripe about the expense of college and things like that but the truth is that the opportunity is still there. The GI bill is still there and so are college loans for those that want them. There are still apprenticeship programs for those that want to learn a trade although they are not as plentiful as they used to be. I suppose they will return in time, though. We sure need competent people that know how to use their hands.

Ever try and find a halfway decent handyman? They cost a fortune and they are booked up for months. I suppose that maybe I could have done that for a living and I very well might as done better than I am doing now and I'm doing pretty well now.

There's pretty good money to be made in fixing things for people and I'd just bet that after a couple of months a handyman service business would take right off here becaause there are an awful lot of people out there that either do not know how or are too busy to fix basic things like a leaky faucet or a busted electrical outlet. The word of mouth advertising would travel at the speed of light if you were any good at that sort of thing.

The other thing we do is help a whole lot of people that do not need to be helped.

It seemms the government in it's infinite wisdom has stopped doing the things that people can't do for themselves and started doing what people ought to be doing for themselves. Of course an awful lot of people have started griping about this because the government hasn't done enough for them.

A person should be rightfully expected to take care of themselves. They should be able to feed, clothe and shelter themselves and generally take care of them and their family. If you can't support children, do not have them.

The government shoud take care of the things the individual can't. Things like securing the borders and general infastructure, the latter of which is rapidly going to hell because of basic maintenance. The money that should go there is being diverted to various social programs that shouldn't even exist. Meanwhile the borders are being over run and people like Jan Brewer in Arizona are being forced to do what the federal government should be doing in the first place. Arizona is trying to guard the border.

Of course, the feds claim that guarding the border is their job and not the job of Arizona but they are not doing it. They might have something legitimate to say if the were doing it and the Arizona people were getting underfoot.

A lot of this is like having an unattended kid running through your garden and you go out and give him a boot in the ass. You can bet the boot you kicked the little whelp with that you're going to hear from the parents. While hammering a kid with your fists or clubbing him would be just plain wrong a good soaking with a garden hose or a swift lick in the pants certainly fits the bill. It gets the point across in a fairly harmless way.

For the 'you can't do that to my kid' set I do not have a problem whatsoever. Bring your check book and write me a check for what the landscaper is going to charge me for repairs. Chances are after you see what the landscaper has charged you're going to go home and do a whole lot worse to the kid than soak him with a hose or chew him out of give him a boot in the ass.

The feds are acting like the parents of a kid that has just been booted in the ass. The only thing hurt is their ego but they do not like having to face up and admit they are not doing their job.

If we would stop wasting time and money making bad excuses for lousy behavior and start making the individual responsible for himself we'd all be a whole lot better off. There would be a whole lot less violence because a lot more people would be doing things they should to take care of themselves instead of doing things they shouldn't.

my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

Happy Easter

I am taking the day off.


my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

Today's post is specifically planned out for this particular morning.

It's Saturday and you are more apt to have a little more time to read it. It is going to take a little time.

The first part is Martin Luther Kings 'I have a Dream' speech and is worth re-reading if you have read it before and if you have not it is required reading for all Americans. It is one of THE most eloquent pieces of oration that ever came out of an American orator.

The second link is one to Dr. King's Playboy interview and is definitely a good read.

I pretty much believe what King said, both in Washington at the Lincoln memorial and during his interview.

I suppose that because I believe in both of these by today's standard I am going to be called a racist which is fine.

I can live with that. My shoulders are broad.


http://www.famous-speeches-and-speech-topics.info/martin-luther-king-speeches/martin-luther-king-speech-i-have-a-dream.htm   Here's a copy of the "I have a dream speech".

http://www.playboy.com/playground/interviews/playboy-interview-martin-luther-king   MLK Playboy interview.

I'd just bet he is spinning in his grave now.

Now the Congressional Black Caucus

is demanding an end to Stand Your Ground laws.

This, of course, is a result of the shooting death of Treyvon Martin which is beginning to look more and more like a justifiable homicide. It has been over 40 days since the shooting and no charges have been filed yot.

With all of the pressure you would think that the authorities in Florida would have at least trumped up something to shut Fat Al Sharpton and the angry mob up.

This leads someone to believe that there is a lot more to this than a simple case of murder.

The Stand Your Ground laws are not there to simply permit murder on the streets. They are there to allow a person to simply go about his business and not have to turn tail and run if you are put in danger. You are simple allowed to protect yourself.

It also insures that you can not be sued for doing this. It prevents a person from being robbed. An example of this is that prior to the law being enacted a criminal could try and rob you. If he was repulesed with the use of force he could sue. This enabled a person to be robbed one way or the other, either robbed on the streets or robbed in court.

We have a similar thing here in Pennsylvania that is not quite as far reaching as the FLorida laws. It is called Castle Doctrine and it keeps the basic joe from beiing robbed in court if he used deadly force to protect his home.

I have no problem with that at all.

Prior to that you had to help a burglar load your flat screen into his truck or risk being sued. Now you can simple make him leave, either on foot or by being carried out. There is no reason whatsoever that a person should be living in fear in his own home. I wish they would expand this like they have done in Florida.

The Black Congressional Caucus will probably babble in and on how life is sacred and ought to be respected and in one sense they are right, but the respect for life has to start with the individual.

If a person has so little respect life that he will endanger the lives of others as well as his own by trying to commit a violent crime than why should anybody else have any respect for his useless little life?

As time passes and no charges are being drummed up on George Zimmerman it is looking more and more like George Zimmerman did not kill Treyvon Martin.

It is starting to look like Treyvon Martin killed himself by attacking an armed citizen.

If this finally does prove to be the case I would like to thank George Zimmerman for making the world a nicer place to live by eliminating one more aspiring member of the criminal lifestyle.

The Blcak Congressional Caucus is advised that there is a piece of mistletoe attached to my shirt tail that they can feel free to use.





my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

I'm up and at it and started reading the memoirs of a guy that was shot down

over France in WW2.

I'm sure it was a handwritten and thanscribed piece and it is good reading.

It is not some poilshed and highly edited piece, but the simple words of a guy that probably finished high school and traded in a pair of feed store jeans for the uniform of an airman.

In short, it is refreshing reading and I am grateful the author's son passed it on for me to enjoy. I'm about halfway through it.

The WW2 people are people I'm pretty comfortable with. I grew up with them. They were my parents, and neighbors. Just about every one of my friends dads were involved in the war somehow, most of them were in uniform.

A couple were in essential industry and as long as they stayed there they were ineligible for the draft. My uncle was taken into the OSS as a civilian and ordered NOT to join the army as he was assigned to be a teacher. He taught OSS agents to communicate in Morse code, as he had been a very active ham operator.

WW2 changed this country in ways you would not believe. Prior to the war you were either pretty well off and got an education or you worked for a living. A relative of mine told me that even though he had done well in high school, college was not even a dream.

The GI bill changed that and put an awful lot of people in the classroom that could not otherwise afford it.

It also started to lay out the groundwork for ending Jim Crow and shortly after the war, Harry Truman integrated the services.

No event I can think of has changed the country more than WW2 did.

-----------------------------
In other news, yesterday I was headed out to get some grub and Neighbor Bob's wife asked me to pick her up some limes to make pie with. I also realized there is an old bottle of gin sitting around in a cabinet so I decided to grab a couple for myself.

As I was checking out, I grinned and told the cashier I was joining the British Navy and bringing these along to prevent scurvy. She's a peppery old gal. SHe snickered and answered that what I was most likely doing is getting ready to get thwacked on gin.
---------------------------
Neighbor Bob and I were yakking last night about doing a breakfast club thing. We narrowed it down to either a huge 28 ounce steak and 4 eggs or Piccolo's Amazing biscuits and gravy. The steak and eggs meal is called an invasion breakfast because it is generally served by the Navy to troops headed ashore on an invasion.

Either of the 2 aforementioned meals are a good way to start the day as you won't even be able to eat so much as an M&M until late in the afternoon.




my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

Yesterday I bought a pretty good hot pepper which I will use today to make an omelet.

All in all not a bad deal.

I called my nephew when he got where he was going. He had a 10-11 hour drive planned and got where he was going a little ahead of schedule. I fixed him up before he left with an old trick I know.

It is Piccolo's gut-bomb biscuits and gravy and I stuffed him with it until it started coming out his ears.

He reported that for the entire ride home he didn't even have room for a M&M. He only bought a single bottle of water.

It's a trick I was glad to teach him because driving can be hard on the diet as there is little but junk served on our highways and byways if you are not willing to find a sit-down restaurant.

The nephew also has the disease that seems to run in our part of the family and that means he deals with stupid the same way I do.

We were pulling into a place and the guy in front of me stopped. I could not go through him, at least without twisting up a couple of tons of steel and scruffing up an awful lot of paint. Idid, however, briefly consider trying.

We were in a fire lane of sorts and a goody two-shooes looking guy leaving the store looked at the pair of us with that 'Hey, I better tell these guys they are illegally parking' look on his face. I saw it and glared at him and he decided to keep his mouth shut.

I looked at my nephew. He said that he grinned and I told him that I was going to have let him handle him is he hadn't vectored off.

He pretended I was the guy.

"It's OK, Sir. I'm a professional criminal," he said.

"What?What?What? Whaddya mean? Whaddya mean?" I played along in a confused voice. "What do you mean you're a criminal?"

"I break every single law I can find," he continued. "Sometimes twice. And when I run out of laws to break, I pick up litter so I can re-litter."

I looked at him with pride. "Good answer. Even though I wasn't there when you were small I guess what little training I gave you as a kid stuck," I said.

"No," he answered. "Got it from my mother."

It is good to know that there are a few in the younger generation that know how to brush off stupidity.



my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

It is another morning and I have to face the keyboard again

and U do not know where to start except to say that I am glad to be alive as it is going to be a pretty day.

I might go hilltopping today if the 20 meter band looks like it will open up as I have 3 more QSL cards to get before I have all 50 states collected. Although I have WORKED all 50 states, a couple of people have not sent me QSL card confirming this.

I have noticed that at least 2 of he three PROMISED me on the air that one would be forthcoming but I guess we know how that is. They make a big deal of it in front of their friends to prove how cool and generous they are but reality is just another thing entirely. I'll just rework the three.

I just clicked on the big set and I just checked in on the YLISSB net and will monitor it as I post. I am listening for any of my needed 3 states but I am standing by in case anyone needs PA.

Last night I checked into the Century Club 40 meter net and became Mister Popularity. Eight QSOs in a brief time. I had to write things down fast.

Generally I fill out the QSL cards as I QSO and even the envelopes and have them ready so when I shut down the rig I can go straight to bed but things got busy toward the end and I guess a few guys needed PA.

I managed to keep up with the cards but after the rig got shut down I had to address the envelopes and stamp them. This morning I put ten pieces of mail in the outgoing box.

I generally put my outgoing mail in the neighbor across the street's box as I can see it better than my own which is on the up the street end of my lot. Their box is directly across the street. I can see it better.

When their flag goes down it means the mail has arrived.

They do not mind this at all. In fact he told me he gets a boot out of looking to see where I have communicated with because once in a while when he puts his own mail out he looks to see where the cards are addressed.

Guys are generally interested in stuff like that.

My bills and other boring stuff go into my own mail box.

It has gotten 2 degrees warmer since I started writing this and that is a goood thing. I may take the Mazda out today.

In the background it looks like 20 meters is scratchy. While I did manage to check in OK, I can not hear a lot of other check ins. Maybe today isn't the day or maybe the band will clear up later on.

What is funny is that there are 2 net controls. One of them is a guy with a computer keeping track of things and the other is a woman that has no computer and uses a pencil and paper and her memory. When the two of them swap notes there is seldom a discreppancy but if there is, generally she proves to be right. The woman is amazing.

One of the things I like about the YL net is that the whole thing is full of little pleasantries that are exchanged. Women tend to bring a few nicities into things and as I have gotten older I appreciate them a little more.

Anyway, here's to today and I guess I just pulled another post out of my ass by just looking around and going about my business.

Good morning!






my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

I just spent a couple days living with ny nephew

who seems to be one of the damned few younger guys that seems to get it.

We spent a few days just doing dopey guy stuff which is always a good thing as dopey guy stuff is just plain fun. We went to the rifle range and I taught him to shoot a Garand and he did damned good with the old war horse, keeping all of his shots in the black.

For those of you that do not know what a Garand is, it is a WW2 era battle rifle that is chambered in the world renowned and very powerful 30/06 cartridge. Unlike the smaller 'mouse guns' used today the Garand is a real animal.

He took to the rifle and did well with is.

We also fooled around witht he radios and hilltopped the mall and the water tower and it was fun watching a tech guy like him see how well Old School stuff actually worked when we QSO'd North Dakota, Texas and New Mexico. We almost bagged Belgium but could not bust through the pile-up.

When it was his turn to cook, he cooked and did a damned fine job of burning beef which is somewhat rare in a younger guy as they tend to use too much care with good beef.

The crowning glory of the visit, though, was when I would wake up and head into the bathroom and notice he had apparently been up in the middle of the night to pee.

He had ghosted in, peed against the side of the bowl to not splash and had left the toilet unflushed.

I noticed that he was stirring so after I took care of business I flushed. As I did, I was thinking, "This guy gets it."

He didn't do this because he was a pig. He just had enough sense to know that old men do not sleep like young men and he had the basic barracks-type manners and the consideration not to wake me up in the middle of the night by flushing a power flush toilet at 3 AM.

In this day and age where college kids don't even have room mates any more it is a joy to find a younger guy that knows how to like with other people.

It doesn't get any better than this.
---------------------
The next portion of this program is brought to you by The Old Grouch Military Surplus. http://www.oldgrouch.com/ For some reason I can't get it to hot link so you have to cut and paste.

I just bought an ALICE pack from the guy. He told me they were in pretty good shape. It was a lie of sorts, the pack arrived in MINT condition.

The surplus business is a hard way to make a buck because people do not understand it. An item that is 'surplus, unused, new' is not the same as 'retail, new'. The surplus item is apt to have a few small storage dings on it. If you do not know that in advance you will often be disappointed.

Tim does a pretty good job describing things and he's great to work with.

ANyway, doing business with Tim has always been a good experience.

I just thought I'd mention this.





my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

It is morning and I am here with my nephew

who has to leave in a couple of hours to go home and go back to work tomorrow.

Time is too fast. We have had a good time and I have reenforced my conclusion that the sense of humor and sarcasm that seems to run in my family is hereditary.

What capped it is when he told me he told some nebshit once that he was a criminal. "I break every law I can find," he told someone. "I ever pick up litter so I can re-litter."

Yesterday we hilltoped and I almost bagged Brussels, Belgium but could not bust through the pile-up being only 30 watts.

He's got a 10 hour drive so it's the Amazing Piccolo's buscuits and gravy for him this morning. Something that will stick to him like glue.

I'll make this batch so thick you can serve it with a spatula.

I hope he can drop by again.

It is good for an old man to spend quality time with a young man.

What is also very good about it is that he's pretty competent and isn't an annoying little shit like a lot of younger people are today. That says a LOT in this day and age.

He's doing OK and that is a good thing.

I might add to this post later today. We'll see.



my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/