There is a nationwide shortage of stupid drunken fun

 and the lack of it is costing us an awful lot as a society.




The Do-Gooders of this world are creating a lot more problems than they are solving by working overtime at eliminating this. They think they are making the world a nice place by removing drunken stupidity but I seem to think that they are simply making the world a more drab and unsafe place to live.



Back when I lived in Alaska most towns had a couple of to-dos every year that involved the entire town going out and getting plastered under the guise of some sort of stupid contest.



My favorites were the Annual Buskin River Raft Race and the Pillar Mountain Open.



I have posted about the time I entered the Pillar Mountain Open as a member of the woman's team. Me and the girls had a fine time chippieing our way to the top. I got a bunch of good natured drubbings for that one over the next several weeks. I only got one nasty drubbing and that was by a woman that really did not belong in that particular town and I shut her up to the amusement of everyone present by simply saying, "You're just jealous because my tits had scotch in them!"



Anyway, I had been in the Buskin River Raft Race a few years before this but it really wasn't too memorable because I hadn't spent the entire winter in Kodiak and had just returned from a vacation where the weather was warmer and I didn't have the right amount of cabin fever pent up inside of me.



A few years later I HAD spent the year in Kodiak and in fact had been there for about two or three years without leaving once. I had a nice, pent up nasty parcel of Alaskan Cabin Fever raging on mm insides and it was definitely time to blow it out. A drunk in an Alaskan bar was useless, even a three day drunk because it wasn't the same as getting out and getting physical and stupid.



I spoke to one of the bar owners about an idea I had and the barkeep was game. I asked the owner if they could score a pallet full of factory sealed empty beer cans to make a raft out of and a few days later the barkeep told me that the Rainier brewing company was sending up a pallet with the next shipment, free as in for nothing.



I think the Vitaman R people knew advertising when they saw it and I suppose they figured that we would spend countless hours carefully and painstakingly building a raft out of the beer cans.



The truth is that I had not planned ahead and ordered the cans on impulse without a whole lot of time. They arrived a few days before the race so four of us carefully discussed how we could build a raft out of them.



The day the beer cans arrived we were at the bar when the truck showed up and I decided to give a show of strength so I simply slid the pallet to the end of the truck and summoned my strength, jammed the inside of the pallet against my gut and hoisted the entire pallet up off of the truck. The empties actually weighed nothing. The pallet was clumsy but still it looked pretty impressive. Someone snapped a picture and gave me a print which I managed to lose somewhere. I wish I still had it because there are not a whole lot of guys that have a picture of themselves lifting what appears to be an entire pallet of beer.



We had two days until race day so we simply scrounged a condemned piece of shrimp netting, cut it into a rough square and dumped all of the beer cans into it and put the 4 corners into the center and laced the seams up with seine twine. The whole process took about half an hour. Instant raft.



Race day we tossed the raft into the back of a pickup and a bunch of us, in defiance of all safety regulations and local laws, hopped into the back of the pickup with no safety belts or helmets and off we went to the race. Surprising everyone in this day and age, no one was injured. To add to this disgusting display, it should be carefully noted that we had been drinking since right after breakfast.



We arrived at the appointed chunk of the river three sheets to the wind. There were the various competitors with a number of different rafts, some of whick looked like they had taken weeks to build. Others looked like they were built the night before.



We took our places and the official race starter was a local police officer, who in contravention to all safety rules and regulations, started the race with his duty pistol. Bang! We were off.



There were about 30 or so rafts and the start was a hodgepodge of people with a myraid of different styles, about half of which didn't float. Doc, Dirty Donnie, Wrongway and I just threw the bag of beercans into the drink and she floated lightly in the river but having no skeleton, the only way to ride her was on our bellies clinging to the webbing.



A couple of the rafts were well constructed and thought out. One was made of construction foam and they glided straight into the lead. Another few well designed rafts followed. They, of course, would be disqualified for trying too hard.



The rest of us were a mass of flotsam and jetsam and we looked like the stuff you would see on the surface of the sea after a banana boat had been torpedoed. Of course, fighting broke out between everyone.



Then fighting broke out between us. Doc and I blew up with each other and started trying to beat each other silly which really drew no attention. We had nothing against each other, we were just venting pent up frustration of a winter's worth of cabin fever. We also fought because the water was so damned cold and we were trying to keep warm. In real life, Doc and I were the best of friends.



We pulled into the first beer stop and knocked back one and were off like a shot and reentered the fray.

Someone on a raft made of inner tubes passed us too closely and my knife came out and after a couple of slashes he was forced to abandon ship. He dragged the debris ashore and ran down and joined our crew.



Somewhere between beer stop 4 and 5 we had to pass under a bridge lined with race watchers. Doc spied a very attractive, well dressed woman on the bridge. She was holding a tall glass. Doc shouted up to her.



"If that has booze in it, gimme a snort!" Doc shouted. He looked up and held his mouth open.



What happened next was discussed among us for months. As we passed under the bridge the woman tipped her glass and poured out about four ounces of what Doc later said was gin and tonic.With pinpoint accuracy every single drop of it went straight into Doc's mouth and down his throat. I was maybe three feet away and will attest that not a single drop missed.



At the finish line we dragged the raft ashore and we all simply stuffed it into a dump truck supplied by a local contractor for the purpose of taking debris to the dump and the second that was done we headed straight to the bonfire to warm up.



Most of us were on the edges of hypothermia and were greeted warmly by most of the townspeople that were there to watch the chaos. One of the city councilmen I knew vaguely saw me shivering when I got to the fire and offered me a snort of blackberry brandy which I gratefully accepted. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the madam of the local whorehouse talking and laughing with the chief of police. There were a couple of guys wrestling on the ground and people were laughing and getting out of the way as the match moved around a bit.



The party lasted for hours and there was much laughter and one could see a lot of fences that had been damaged over the winter were being mended. It was also duly noted that none of the local do-gooders of a certain church were to be seen is such a den of iniquity and that was briefly discussed. While we were glad they were not to be seen, we cringed at what they were plotting to do with this annual event.



One guy there that had coped with winter by drinking himself into a coma all winter asked one of the cops what he had to do to get a few days in jail so he could dry out was told to drop by the station and they'd see what they could do. (He dried out and stayed sober until the following February when the winter demons got to him again.)



In short, just about everyone there was plastered and stupid and a good time was had by all.



I rode back to town illegally and unsafely in the bed of a pickup truck driven by a city councilman I had argued with several weeks beforehand.







Aftermath.



For the next month the entire town was in pretty good spirits. There was the to be expected telling and retelling of the individual deeds and misdeeds and much laughter. People were not snappish anymore, at least without cause and the entire town except for the do-gooders were in fine spirits. For one small town a long winter was over.



Of course, the local preacher of the do-gooder church got on the pulpit and ranted and raved and bellyached about the sinfulness of it all. A couple of years later they end ran things and got both the state police and the national headquarters of the sponsering fraternal organization involved and things came to a screeching halt.



The world then became a little more of a drab place to live.
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Ma gets into a knife fight at the Kit Kat club on wet T-shirt night.

Over the years I have had to deal with medical people and most of them are pretty damned good people.




For some odd reason Neighbor Bob is about as unlucky with them as I am lucky and I know this isn't Bob's fault, but his sense of timing.



The other day I went to the vets with the cat. I was wearing a camwalker as a result of a previous injury and of all the dumb luck I met another woman there wearing an identical, although smaller camwalker. I sat down next to her and someone looked at me and asked me the usual stupid question. "Did you have an accident?" they asked.



I instantly replied that I had not and then went on to explain that I had mutilated myself with an ice pick to impress Jodie Foster. Apprently the woman next to me shared the same sense of humor because she told the nosy dumbass that she had used a chain saw to tear up her foot to impress Tom Hanks.

DIckie's dad stopped by today for a minute.



Of course the nosy guy gave an indignant look and wandered over to the other side of the waiting room.



What happened to Bob a while ago was a travesty.



Bob was working with a 5 gallon can of some kind of waterproofing and knew he was going to use the entire can so he decided to poke a vent hole in the top of the can to let air in and facilitate pouring the stuff into the sprayer he was using.



Bob underestimated the thickness of the steel the can was made of and he steadied the can with one hand and with his pocket knife took a good stab at the can top. The knife glanced off of the can top and went straight into his left wrist.



He instinctively pulled the knife out and began bleeding like a stuck pig and as quickly as he could slipped his wrist up his coat and pressed hard and at least slowed the bleeding down.



When he got to the hospital, the triage people took him straight in and made sure rthe bleeding was stopped. Then the accusations started. Apparently they saw a knife wound on a wrist and added up one and one and got three. The ER nurse just KNEW this was a suicide attempt and instantly called in a security cop to be a witness and started interrogating Bob.



Bob picked up on what was going on quickly and realized the consequences of a bad answer and chose his answers very carefully when he realized that one wrong answer would likely lead to him being carted off to some ward or another for psychological evaluation. He was in a minefield and knew it.



He told me that the security guard looked on at the proceedings with a look of disgust on his face because he knew just what the ER nurse was doing and knew it to be wrong, but he said nothing. I have met the same guard when I went into that hospital to have some tests done and he struck me as a really decent man of character.



When the accusations and questions didn't seem to convict Bob, the nurse turned to cheesy word games until Bob grew disgusted and decided to end it.



"Ok," said Bob. "I'll change my story. I drank half a bottle of Jack, drove downtown looking for a hooker and an eight-ball of blow and got into a knife fight with three ni&&ers that tried to rip me off!"



The nurse, and the guard, a black man, glared at him angrily and Bob turned to the guard.



"Sorry for the slur," Bob said. "How'd I do? Racism, alcohol abuse, prostitution, drug abuse and violence all in one neat little ball. Think she can work with that one? Did I miss anything?"



"The anger in the guard's face abated. "I think you got them all," said the guard.



"Did you hear that?" the nurse asked the guard.



"He did," interrupted Bob and I'll bet you he's not going to purjure himself in court if I decide to take this there.



The guard looked at the two of them and simply said, "I'm not going to get in the middle of this."



He turned to the nurse. "Look, you've questioned this patient long enough and it looks to me like this is just a simple accident. Sometimes and accident is just an accident.You ought to simply go with that."



That changed her tone.



Bob had to have, I believe, three seperate surgeries for that accident and has recovered 100%. He wound up making a pretty good friend out of that guard and their relationship is funny to watch. When Bob took me in for a colonoscopy to make sure I got home OK, we passed the guard and he recognized Bob and grinned. "How ya doing, Archie?" he asked Bob warmly.



Bob grinned and held up his arm. "!00%," he replied.



My spat with the medical community came when I was filling out paperwork and left my mother's cause of death blank as she had passed well into her 80s and I figured it to be irrevelant as anyone in their 80s can die of anything they please. They ask for this information for genetic reasons and if a woman made it well into her 80s she likely has pretty good genes. It's all the doc generally needs to know.



Of course, there is always someone that doesn't get it and after I turned the form in he woman I handed it to shouted out my name in a bossy, arrogant tone of voice and held up the form. "You forgot to list your mother's cause of death," she said in a heartless tone.



I went to the desk and wrote 'knife fight' in the blank and when she read it she demanded an explaination.



So I spun some wild tale of Mom getting all coked up and heading down to the Kit Kat Club and entering the wet T-shirt contest and taking first place. I explained that some little hussy with a bad boob job got jealous and stuck her with a shiv and told her that Ma had managed to carve up the little hussy's face with a busted beer bottle before she bled out.



Of course, the woman got pretty angry, especially because the entire waiting room was laughing like holy hell. She told me that was the biggest lie she had ever heard.



"Prove otherwise," I snapped. "That's my story and I'm stickin' to it! Any woman that makes it to her mid 80s can die of anything she wants without being questioned!"



I immediately got a supporter from the waiting room that was unexpected but not totally surprising. Little old ladies can be loose cannons.



"He has a point," said a sweet little old lady. "I'm 83 and when I finally go I'd hate to think that my children spent time poring over the exact cause and rooting around trying to find some reason. Just let me go with a little dignity."



The woman behind the desk seethed and I returned to sit down across from my supporter. She looked up at me like an imp.



"Sounds like your mother put up a pretty good fight on the way out," she said.



"Hacked up the little hussy's face pretty good with a beer bottle," I said, with a wink.



"God Bless her," said the little old lady with a smirk.



When the doctor saw me he asked me anbout the incident and I told him I had left the space blank because I felt that because my mother had lived so long I considered it irrevelant and the argument wasn't about what the secretary had asked me, but the angry arrogant tone she had asked in. Had she seemed to forget that I was a human being?



The doctor looked at me thoughtfully and told me he'd have a word with her.
my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/

Well, the 43 foot vertical

baged me the Czech Republic last night on 17 meters.

As soon as I had it up I threw down a 202 foot piece of wire for a radial anr ran another to a ground rod and tuned it up and checked in with Jda in the Younf Ladies International SSB Society. SHe's in Texas and gave me a good signal report. I had other things to do so I shut the rig down after I made sure it would tune on all other bands except 160 meters which I knew it would not.

A few hours later I went on 17 meters and bagged a Czech with a pair of 5x7s which was great.

Today after I get my injury checked I will install the radials, all 16 of them, 30 feet long if the rain gods hold off.

One ot the things the therapy people have given me are a bunch of exercises to do and that I suppose is OK for someone that sits around and feels sorry for himself when he is injured but I stay busy and as a result I do most of these exercises in my typical day.

Still, I do the exercises simply because I realize that even though I stay busy I may not be using ALL of the muscles the therapist has me lined up to use. A long time ago I learned that unless there is a damned good reason you go where they send you and do what they tell you.

The neighbors, at least all but one, are pretty good about the things I do. After 20 years or so here they have figured that I am not going to do anything too wild and when I start setting up something like an antenna in the backyard they drop by out of curiosity more than anything else. Sometimes they wind up helping me out.

As I write this I think that this is a neighborhood where diversity would work.

Not the stupid crap the government rams down your throat every time you turn around, but the real kind.

I'm accepted here and I am an oddball of sorts beacuse I am always doing things that are out of the norm, yet instead of risistance I generally get curiosity.

There was the initial entry period yet when I passed muster I was accepted, although it took a couple of years for me because I was always seen with various firearms headed to matches and I was sometimes blowing stuff up.

By the time the Seeing Eye Cat showed up they were amused instead of alarmed. They became my biggest supporters of our mischief.

I was also always doing my own work and it took some getting used to when I would singlehandedly tackle a project. I suppose they were simply worried I was going to do something wierd. Instead they found out I knew what I was doing and wasn't going to

Of course, unloading a truck full of waxed dynamite cases into the garage when I moved in scared the hell out of everyone but when I mentioned that the guy that gave me the boxes worked on a road crew, everything settled down. Of course, I got a visit from various law enforcement right off the bat, but that was a once over and when they saw that the cases of dynamite contained dirty underwear and kitchen utensils they went away.

Still, I figure if some guy from India moved in it would take him the obligatory period of being checked out to see if he was an asshole until he would be accepted. The same would go for just about anyone.

Of course, there is the old bag up the street and Nebby Larry but I suppose no neighborhood is complete without a couple of people like that. Nebby Larry generally gets ignored and the old bag up the street has been beaten down pretty good because I have simply let her make a fool out of herself a bunch of times. She's just plain stupid, anyway.

Anyway, this is today's post because I have to go and spin the wheels of industry.



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

I got my upright for my 43 foot vertical antenna in yesterday.

I had to dig a 2.5 foot deep hole with a posthole digger and I planned this one right because I started it in the late afternoon and decided not to pursue it until the next day as it was late. I then stuck a garden hose in the hole and put the hose on just a slight drip and left it there.

It proved to be a pretty good move because the ground has been damned dry this summer and the water softened the dirt up a great deal and I managed to dig the hole in pretty short order.

The hole was full of waer when I got to it but the surrounding ground wasn't too wet. I attribute not turning a 10 foot radius into a quagmire because I set the hose to such a slow drip. Had I even let it run at a trickle I suppose the hole would have overflowed and I would have found myself standing in a swamp.

Sunday's post drew a comment that it began as mundane stuff which I suppose it did but you have to remember I am not Indianna Jones or Superman but an old sailorman and there are an awful lot of things that happen to me that happen to everyone else. I have mornings when the car won't start or I want something different for breakfast.

The cat is somehwt the same way. Every so often he gets on some kind of a snit which is what cats sometimes do.

There has been an interruption as I heard the trash guys go by and I looked to see if they were on my side of the street or across the street and they were across the street which means I can't take the trash can in yet.

Anyway, the reason that you read of me doing mundane things is simply because mundane things are simply anohter part of life.

Get used to it.




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

I just read where the city of Camden, NJ is getting rid of their

police department because it is costing them too much money in wages and pensions.

They will be replaced by some sort of a non union metro type department. I am not surprised.

The Camden department that is being replaced sounds to me like anohter 20 and out deal whereby the people in the department retire in their early forties which is ridiculous because on the average they will be pulling pensions for longer than they worked.

I guess Camden just realized that they could not keep this up so they simply got rid of them.

I have a feeling that over time we are going to see a lot of things like this happen and I am not surprised.

What DOES surprise me is that we have not seem a whole lot more of it

Why?

Because we can't afford it.


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

One of the things I am not is a clothes horse.

It is an embarrassment at times but that is just the way it is. I do not really dress very well, my general uniform at home being 501 Levis and a T-shirt unless it is cold. Then I put on an old LL Bean wool shirt.



At work it is oil-spotted khakis. I look like a WW2 submarine junior officer underway most of the time.



When my mother died a few years back I was at sea and much to the credit of my employer, they got me off the boat in record time and I made a beeline to my kid sister's house. About two minutes after I arrived we were in my pickup headed off to the clothing stores where she took me and helped me pick out an outfit that made me look pretty damned good, according to everyone that saw me.



My kid sister has a pretty good eye for clothes and can take a homeless wino and make him look like the CEO of a Fortune 500 company in just a few minutes. She's got an eye and for that I am grateful.



She did a good job of keeping me from showing up at my mother's funeral looking like Jethro Bodine.



****************************

This is a Sunday morning and I am cooking myself a pretty good breakfast of eggs, peppers, ham and cheese. The radio is on also and I am listening to a conversation between 2 bored hams on the 160 meter band which I have not been on for quite some time as the usual antenna tuner I have been using will not tune 160 meters very well.



Today I will start in on my plan to raise my 43 foot vertical antenna and see how it works for DX (distant exchange). My plan being to try and make contact with 100 different countries over the next period of time.



The 43 foot vertical supposidly sends the radio waves off at a lower angle so when they hit the ionesphere they will skip differently than they do on the wire antenna I have been using.



Years ago I made a pretty good living by simply doing odd jobs that came up. I generally kept pretty busy and did things varied. One never gets bored when you do not know what you are going to be doing next. Now I am older and my foot is still not 100% andI am looking for someone to do something for me and there is nobody to be found.



You would think that in this economy that there would be a few people out there willing to pick up a few bucks but for the life of me I can not seem to find anybody.



I swear that when I am dead and gone and someone tries to figure out what I did that the tally is going to be that I spent about half my life shod in army boots. I have had a couple of leg/foot injuries over the years and when the cast/camwalker/whatever comes off the doctor generally puts me back into army boots.



Younger docs don't seem to know this trick, but old ones sure do.



I remember back in 5th grade when Dr Kilfoyle put me in them after a nasty break. The break was in my leg but he put me in the boots because I had been in plaster so long that he figured my ankles could use the support until the muscle got stronger.



He was funny. My mother looked at him oddly when she told him that the easiest and cheapest thing to do was to simply take me to a surplus store and buy them there. Then he grinned and told me that he had just ordered a fancy-fancy, fashion-fashion type of woman into them and she turned purple.



Even now I can picture the snooty woman. There she is in the latest dress, perfect makeup, manicured nails, hose, diamond jewelery and she is headed into the salon to get her hair done shod in none other than USGI combat boots.



There she is in her glory. Makeup by Madame Carstoy of Paris, Jewelery by Diamonds of Capetown, Nails done my Monsieur Theodore of Rome and Government Issue footwear by Bob's Army Surplus of Weymouth, Massachusetts.



Of course, she was horrorfied to be put in combat boots.



Still, there are a few women out there that could pull off coming to some social function dressed to the nines but shod in GI boots. These are the women who know WHO they are and know that they are the same person and that they are who they are no matter how they are dressed.



What was so funny is that the doctor knew that this woman was one of those that based her entire self esteem on what she was wearing and I guess he decided to have a little fun. He told her that she could NOT wear one boot on her injured foot and a high heel on her good foot and she'd be better off wearing both of them.



This was back in the day when there were not a whole lot of females in military service and one of the biggest childhood insults was to be told that your mother wears army boots. I wonder if she had any kids?



Anyway, I am now in army boots again by doctor's orders.



What else is new?




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

a canteen cup holds about $50 in change.

There has been a USGI canteen cup on my kitchen table for years and I often toss my loose pocket change in it. A lot of people do this in oone way or another.

I know of one guy that uses a 5 gallon water cooler bottle.

Anyway, generally what happens to the change collection is every so often, say on a Sunday afternoon when the banks are closed and I need a couple of bucks the cup gets raided.  I remember that one night I ordered a pizza and only had about $12 cash so I scarfed another $3 out of the cup to make sure the driver got a tip.

A while ago I stopped raiding the cup because I started a dollar bill stash for use with my radio hobby as there are sometimes special events out there that one encloses a dollar or two with his QSL card for whatever certificate the club is issuing.

Anyway, the cup was about 3/4 of an inch from the top and I decided to head  off to the local coinstar and see what was in it.

When I got done with the Coinstar machine I took home $49.83 which ain''t bad.

As I write this I am looking in the cup and there are 84 cents in it so I guess I'm starting over again.




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

Something else got ruined

A while ago a bunch of guys got together to make a few bucks for their favorite charity and have a little fun doing it. They got a car that had been totaled along with a bunch of other stuff nobody wanted and most likely would not take if they won and took a bunch of pictures of the stuff and put a disclaimer below it that one really ought to inspecct the prizes before they entered. They also carefully noted that a sense of humor was required to enter.

Of course the whole thing was a sham simply to raise money for some charity that could really use the money. There was no real dishonesty in the doings, which happened to be a golf tourament.

The car was destroyed on the passenger's side but looked pretty good on the driver's so naturally they took the pictures of the driver's side for the advertising.

Most of the winners really didn't take their prize, they simply took a certificate of where they placed and called it good because like I said, the prizes were nothing more than a spoof. Like most golfers they play the game just for the game's sake and to win bragging rights.

Of course, the woman that won the car hadn't bothered to look it over beforehand and got all huffy when she saw she had just won a wreck and immediately called her lawyer. I guess the guys runnning the tourney settled as quickly as they could because they knew that it was the smartest thing to do.

Still, the lawyer is not the person that should have been called. The people that should have been called are named Moose and Vito.

The guys running the tourney were pretty smart, though. They had a connnection in the local paper and they reported the entire thing and the woman might have gotten a car out of the deal but by the time the facts had been reported she looked like the $hitass she really was.

She was one of those mean, petty selfish people that ruin things for everyone else.

On the other hand,

Back in the early 80s I had the time of my life in a golf tournament after I ran my mouth in a Kodiak bar.

The tournament was one of those dopey Alaskan things that are generally a lot more fun than their stateside counterparts because they generally wind up being a total circus. We've had raft races and all sorts of off the wall doings over the years. Back in the 70s and 80s, Alaska was a lot of simple home-made fun and people looked forward to doing stupid things.

The raft race we used to have originally had 6 mandatory beer stops and the first few line-crossers were generally disqualified for trying too hard. YOU figure it out. In reality it was nothing more thhan a way for the whole town to go out and blow the cabin fever out of their systems come spring. It was great for mental health.

This tourney was the 'Pillar Mountain Open Classic". We were to gold our way up Pillar Mountain, a one hole course.

The entry fee was fifty scoots that I didn't have and after a couple of libations I said that I would play on the girl's team if someone else would pay the entry fee. The next day I noticed on the sign-up board that the my name, although feminized was on it along with three other fairly prominent women. I was told to meet them in about an hour to arrange details. I showed up. I was now one of the girls.

One of the women had a reputatiion of sometimes being stuffy. When I showed up the first thing I said was, "Hey, Girls! Let's chippie our way to the top!"

The stuffy one of the three blushed a bit and then joined in the laughter as the entire bar had heard me. I guess it was then and there she decided to let her hair down a bit.

The weather for the tourney was cold as hell and windy. We showed up at a bar beforehand for the pre-game meeting and one of the women came up to me and said that if I was going to golf with the girls I had best look like one of the girls and  put an enormous bra on me that fit over my Carhart insulated coveralls.

She reached for a roll of paper towels to stuff the cups with but one of the other girls had an eagle eye and saw that each cup would hold a bottle of Pinch and stepped into the adjoining liquor store and came back with a pair of jugs which fit nicely into the bra. God knows who the original owner of the damed thing was but either she was pretty damned fat or super damned topheavy.

With a pair of scotch jugs for jugs they pulled a huge dress over my head and off we went.

I sure looked ridiculous in the outfit and I had a wild mane of hair and a shaggy beard at the time to add to the absurdity of it all but I had a great time being one of the girls.

I had gotten to go out and play with another different grroup of people that I never would have and over time I found myself being accepted by a group that would not have looked twice at me because I was just another scurvy fisherman.

One ot the first things I noticed is that the jugs got in the way of my golf swing. Fortunately the dress I was wearing was low cut enough so I could reach down into my bra and extract the bottles and hand them to one of the girls while I made my swing.

Naturally, when the bottles came out they all took a taste and it wasn't all that long until all four of us were thwacked.

By the time we reached the top of the mountain we were all toast, but the laughter and the one liners produced by a fisherman and three fairly respectable women in their early 40s were priceless.

I had one hell of a good time with those three women by playing the fool and although I got kidded a lot during the tourney there were a lot of people that wound up respecting me for being good natured and backing my comment about joining the girls team if someone would pay the entry fee.

There were a few other women that had entered and several of them commented to me that they admired the grace I showed during the tourney. In truth the indident opened q few interesting doors for me over time.

We all gad a pretty good time, too.







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

an adventure is now laid to rest

I have laid the Camp Perry Special event project to rest.




For the past two days I have done nothing but look up addresses on QRZ.com, fill out cards, stuff and stamp envelopes. Tomorrow I go to the post office and mail out the last of the QSL cards.



Every QSO except one has has a card being sent and the one that didn't get a card sent was not on any database. I could not the find callsign on QRZ.com OR the FCC database. Maybe I miscopied it, but I did try to make sure I got them right. I took my time writing down callsigns.



While the general way a Special Event QSLs is to send a QSL card to anyone that sends them one I just decided that the best way to wrap this entire thing up was to send a QSL card to every contact we made and just get it over with and behind me as I suspect the cards would be dribbling in piecemeal for the next couple of months.



Thirty-six states, Puerto Rico, Bermuda and several Canadian Provinces. Not that too awful bad.



This special event was my idea and although I was planning on getting a little more help than I wound up with, it was something I had taken upon myself and for the most part I was responsible for it.



I did spend a few bucks more than I planned and bought a couple of things that were not used but I can say that I guess I'll be able to put these items to use so I'm not really out in the long run.



I did tell people they could QSL me directly and because I used my callsign instead of the Special Event one I didn't know the FCC had issued me the cards started coming in mainly to my address. No problem.



It didn't take a rocket scientist to realize that I was going to have a confusing mess with incoming requests for QSL from either the Event or my personal QSOs so I figured the hell with it and sent a QSL to everyone that contacted me.



I like getting things done and now I can put the Special Event behind me.



I'd like to thank the guys that did help me out, one in the field and several from the sidelines. One man went out to Perry a few months ago and greased the skids for me. The offer I had of cash has been refused for my own reasons, but I am quite grateful for the offer. There has been a gift of a roll of stamps, a long term loan of a parachute, and the help of another ham that worked with me for the last two days at Perry and who was invaluable rinning his rig and especially when the rains came and we had to secure gear with short notice.



There were a few others that gave me moral support and advice and a couple of non hams that dropped by at Perry and either enjoyed a cold drink with me or offered me one.



There has been other help not mentioned here. I am grateful for that.



I figure that there are now a number of people that are now at least aware of the National Matches or are aware that you do not have to either be a hotshot shooter or be in the service or some high-toned club to come and shoot at Perry.



If a few of them come next year and shoot I suppose the mission will he accomplished even though I likely have no way of knowing.



I would like to thank Ltc Barb Herrington-Clemens, the commander of the base for permission to set up there and I'd also like to thank the NCOs and enlisted people that helped me out from time to time.



Oh, yeah. There is also a Pfc that I would like to thank. When I arrived at Perry I kidded an NCO and asked him to have his people keep his eye out for my mother to show up so I would have someone to pick up after me. One Pfc asked me what she looked like and I told him she was the identical twin of Barbara Billingsley so he whipped out his phone and google imaged her.



He spent the week looking for her and reported to me periodically but Mom never showed.



Thanks for your efforts, Private.



When the card get mailed tomorrow night, the Special Event is, for all intents and purposes, closed.



While I had a lot of fun running 120 mph for a week, I am glad it is now beind me.



Now it is time to find another adventure.


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

I am getting more and more annoyed by the day.

I just read where some guy was on a plane and some gay dude was hassling a couple of Boy Scouts because they do not accept openly gay members. I guess when the flight attendants tried to shut him up this freedom fighter get in their faces and gave them a hard time, too.
When the plane landed the guy got what he deserved. He got carted off by the police and as he was being carted off I was told he cried like a whiney little bitch which seems to be par for the course these days as there are an awful lot of people that go straight into shock when they get held accountable for their actions.

Let's look at the Boy Scouts. They are named the BOY Scouts for a reason. They are not the late adolescent scouts, nor are they the middle aged scouts or the old man scouts. They are the BOY scouts and when you are dealing with youngsters this age the  subject of having openly gay members is an issue that shouldn't have even come up in the first place.

The reason it did is because somebody wanted to make a statement and started something. Prior to being forced into dealing with the issue the Scouts had no policy of sexuality that I am aware of.  It wan't until some jerk came along and decided to start a big hullabaloo and say something to the effect of, "Hey, look at me! I'm gay!"

Truth is there are an awful lot of people that really don't give a damn if you are gay or not. It is none of their business and like a lot of things in this world when you MAKE sommething their business they generally backlash.

This is wat the Boy Scouts did and I am not surprised in the least.

I have posted here a few times before that I have no axe to gring with the gay community whatsoever. My general attitude is simply one of 'go in peace'. I have dealt with a number of gays I am aware of and I can say with certainty that I have dealt with a number of gays I am not aware of.

To tell you the truth, I consider someone else's sexuallity to be none of my damned business and I would appreciate it if someone did not make their sexuality my business.

A while ago I had to deal with some gay dude in an airport and as soon as he got started I told him to stop right then and there because I really didn't give a damn about his sexuality. I told him I bore no ill will to him if he would quietly go about his business and I could give two hoots about who he chose to sleep with just so long as they were willing and of legal age.

Of course, he wasn't willing to simply shut up and go about his business and just HAD to press the issue to make a statement so I gave the man just what he wanted. "Beat it, C***s**k**, " I snapped. "There. Are you happy?  You can now go away feeling sorry for yourself and feel hated and misunderstood. Had you simply gone about your business I would have readily accepted you and not thought a thing about it. You brought this on yourself. Now go away."

Gays are not the only ones that have done this sort of thing over the years. A few years back there was a run of feminazis that would snap at you for being polite and holding a door for them which is something I simply do for everyone.

In fact, if I recall it was the feminazis that got me started with my attitude.

When I hold a door for someone, and I do this out of basic manners which is something you do not seem to see a whole lot of much these days, the answer is generally a simple 'Thank you." Or even a simple nod. Hell, say nothing for all I care.

Anyway, I started being greeted with this "I can hold my own door!" crap and one day I simply responded with, "If I had known you were going to be a miserable c*** about it, I would have let you hold your own door. I held this door out of common courtesy because my mother, unlike yours, taught me a few manners."

I would have to honestly say that I have supported the rights of just about everybody legally in this country to go about their business unhindered and unharrassed. My general attitude has been one simply of "Do your own thing and go in peace."

I actually saw a little ahead in time and when I saw the Black community fighting for equal rights back in the early 60s I saw that there would likely be others that were going to stand up and I was right.

Back in the 70s when I was in school on my GI bill the subject of gay rights came up in class and it was generally accepted in class that the Stonewall riots of '69 were the beginnings of the serious Gay rights movement although there had been a few smaller murmurings since the mid 50s that I am aware of.

When the subject came up even back then my attitude was one of simply leave them alone and let them be. My attitude hasn't changed much since then and I do not see it changing in the future.

This go in peace attitude I have has pretty much extended to every race, creed, color, religion,sex, sexuality or just about anything you can imagine.

I will also defend someone that is being hassled over something along these lines if they are not being stupid about it. You have a right to be what you are.

On the other hand if you are being a jerk about it and someone hassles you, you're on your own.

If you are a being a jerk to me about it, expect to be treated like one.

It is as simple as that.





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

Lug nuts

As I have gotten older I have looked at things I have taken for granted and marveled at them and the way they are built. Yesterday I wrote a piece on building cars but I think it was lost last night as my computer decided to reboot itself because kogyzs




He who must be obeyed just traipsed across the keyboard.



because the computer decided it was time to update something or another and just diid it on its own.



Anyway, then I broke the system of building cars down even further and looked at one simple lug nut and all that goes into getting it to the assembly line for Joe Autoworker to install. It is mind boggling and God only knows how many people were involved in getting that lug nut to the assembly line.



While, of course, the car makers buy them by the millions, and they are produced in mass quantity we can look at one and the number of people that are involved, either directly or indirectly and it is mind boggling.



I guess you have to start at an iron mine and then go onto the steel mill and then to the guys that move the steel to wherever the nuts are made and then put in trucks and hauled to the factory which takes fuel which has to be wrestled out of the ground to power the vehicles and maybe even the power plants that supply the electricity the nutmaker uses to make the damned thing. It just goes on and on and on until it very well may involve a million or more people on several continents just to make one little dinky lug nut.



While most of the people involved likely have no clue as to the fact that they are indirectly involved in the manufacture of a lug nut they are indirectly involved. It is amazing.



From the mine to the mill to the maker to the factory where Joe Autoworker slaps on the right rear tire of the latest model pickup and spins the nut on is pretty mind boggling when you think of all that is entailed.



What is even more amazing is how inexpensive the nut is for the automaker to buy. Likely they are just a few cents and out of that few cents there are a lot of people that get a piece it.



The fact that the system even works is astonishing.



Anyway, that's my thhought for the day.




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

There are very few ham radio operators with simple names and addresses.

Right now I am working on sending out a couple hundred QSL cards and there are not a whole lot of them that are being sent to, say, Bill Lewis, POB 325, Divide, CO, 12345. That would be too simple.



A quick glance and you can remember the entire thing long enough to write it down on the envelope.



Most hams seem to have names and addresses like this:



Benjamanowski Stephapadawozanowski

112948572B East 374th Street West, apartment 8-D, second floor, Liberty building box 294

Leichstieriania by-the-sea, North Dakota, 12345



Of course, this means when you are addressing envelopes that you have to look at this, grab four or five letters and write them down, return and figure out where you left off and then grab another few letters and write them down and repeat the entire tedious process.



Right now I am at the stage where I only have about 50 more QSL cards to fill out and address so I suppose I can put this project to bed tomorrow morning when I stuff the entire thing into the mailbox and put the flag up.



Needless to say I will sit at home until he comes to see the look on his face as he pulls out a couple of bales of outgoing QSL cards. It ought to be pretty good.



Then again maybe he won't be surprised as he has seen a boatload of incoming QSL cards and knows that I answer each and every one of them.



It'll be interesting to see what happens.






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

Today will be a day of administrative chores

 left over from my radio activities at Camp Perry.




The QSL cards have arrived and I have a bunch of them to fill out, and I'll get them in the mail when they are all ready. I think I am going to hold out for a bit and mail them all at once as it ought to be interesting watching the postman have to pull a couple of hundred letters out of my mailbox and put them in the outgoing box in his truck.



Sometimes when a bunch of QSLs come in he looks at me and grins. Once he asked me what they were all about so the next day I brought out a handful of QSL cards and showed him. Then I explained that they were sent as proof of contact and told him how the system works.



My kitty today is being a pest which is what cats are supposed to be.



Anyone that has had a cat before knows who the boss of the house is and that is the cat. The cat runs the house and that is simply that. It is the way, the truth and the life with cats.



I think that the reason employers will not let you bring cats to work is because when the cat decides it wants something then everything else comes to a screeching halt. You would never get any work done and with my QSLs being filled out and the cat running around the house you can bet that I am going to have problems getting all of the QSLs filled out because the cat will hop up on my lap and demand attention.



Oh, well.



Anyway, it is good to be back home. It is th circumstances that suck. Like most people I do not like being injured.



Oh, just dandy.



I have looked out the back window making a cursory inspection of my antenna and it looks like the phantom 550 cord thief has struck again. Every so often I have to go out and replace the 550 cord holding my antenna up because someone has cut the end off and stolen it. It looks like I am going to have to deal with that later on today.



When I arrived home Friday night my neighbor met me in the driveway and we went in and I offered him a drink. I gave him aa 100ml bottle of Beam which he mixed with Coke. When he had mixed the drink I told him to peel the label off the bottle and throw it on the floor for the cat to play with.



It proved to be a good choice as the cat has been batting the damned thing around off and on for a couple of days now.



I used to rotate pizza boxes with the cat I used to have because he used to like to lay on fresh pizza boxes. While I seldom order a delivery pizza it was Neighbor Bob that would often bring his pizza boxes over the house and toss them in the cat's favorite corner after he picked up the old pizza box.



It's funny what we do for our animal friends.



I once asked a vet why he didn't go the people medecine route and he told me that when you make a dog stop hurting he is grateful. When you make a person stop hurting he will be grateful for about 5 minutes and then start trying to figure out ways to sue you.


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

Sorry for no post yesterday

But I suffered a minor injury and had to get ashoore for treatment.

I am home now and will resume activities shortly.

I am now what as known as a Busted up Popeye..

More later


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

The day is sort of shot.

I am underway and I will be going home soon. I am busy as all hell.

sorry for no post and it is likely there will be none tomorrow, either.

Sorry.


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

A lot of people out there probably think I am an uncaring bastard

 and maybe I am, and maybe I am not.




We do have a duty as human beings to help those that can not help themselves. It is either that or euthanize them and I certainly do not have the stomach for that, at least not for those that truly can't help themselves. I can think of a few people out there that are professional system workers that ought to be removed but these are capable people and not the truly needy.



My biggest beef is that al of this so-called social justice comes from a Federal level rather than a local level. The feds are just too damned big and cumbersome and akward to do any real good and Lord only knows how ineffecient and expensive they are. This does not even begin to cover the red tape and self imposed regulations it places on itself.



Although I really want to see most of the various social programs chopped off of the fedreal budget, I do not want to see them go away entirely. I simply a few of them to be dropped down a couple of pegs to a more local level where they can be monitored a lot closer.



Grass roots is where it is at. The local level is far more efficient than the cumbersome federal government and is a lot more personal, too. For example if welfare as we know it was reduced to say, a municipal level there would be a whole lot fewer people on it than there are now simply because it would be a lot easier to spot the fakers and chiselers as the recipients would be our neighbors.



I have lived in smaller towns where there were an awful lot of people that were busy and successful and were certainly more than willing to hire people to either work for them in their business or simply do things for them around the house. Years ago I made a halfway decent living doing just that. I was a go-to guy for just about anything from unloading a truck to building a house or gear shed.



Hiring was pretty simple as I had no phone. There were a couple of places that took messages for me, two of them were bars and I guess that today I simply would have had my own cell phone like I do now, it was a pretty good deal. I'd stump in once a day and as often as not there would be a message to call someone and that generally meant another job was headed my way unless it was some babe in which case I knew that I had something of another nature to take care of but I digress.



Still, at a local level there were a number of programs that existed at the time and many were state funded which means the Feds pretty much were eliminated. The state had control and could trim, add to or even eliminate the entire program as needed.



Corruption tends to be a little easier to spot at lower levels, too.



I know of one program that decided to justify their existance with the number of people they served and to inflate the numbers they simply tried to get everyone that stepped through the door to sign in. You got it, the delivery people from Fedex and UPS were asked to sign in as was everyone else that darkened the door.



That didn't last too long because someone did the right thing and brought this little escapade to the attention of the local paper who mentioned this and sure enough, the state looked into it and threw out a few penalty markers and gave them a ten-yard penalty. While nobody went to jail, the program came under the microscope and had to clean it's act up. This would never have happened if it was a Federal program. They would have simply been awarded yet MORE Federal dollars and the leaders of the program would have continued to build their little empire and chip away at their little agenda.



Local programs are more visible and more likely to be watched by people that know the people working in them. They also run a whole lot cheaper, too because they do not have the Beast of Federal Bureaucracy to feed.



Another thing we have to do is look at the churches that historically did a lot of social work before they started skating after the Great Society programs of the 60s allowed them to by stepping in and doing things they had once done.



Churches in this country have been tax exempt since Day One and for generations they were quite active in the community doing all sorts of things for the community. While I suppose they still do, they do not seem to take as active an interest in the persoanl lives of their members as they used to. Maybe thay ought to return to their roots and take some of the brunt off of the overtaxed government programs.



I am not in any way saying that people that run into hardships should be thrown to the wolves. What I am saying is that huge, costly, totally impersonal federal programs that are ineffective and do little more than make people dependent on them should be tossed and the job of pitching in should be send down to a local level where it belongs.



People at a local level are more likely to give their neighbors a hand up instead of a handout.




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

Hacking off more Federal Expendeture

There are a lot more things that have to be hacked off of the budget besides social programs and as usual the people that have their budgets shorted are going to whine and make all sorts of threats abut the services they provide.

That's just too damned bad. There are no sacred cows and the services are going to have to stand up to the upcoming $hit sandwich and take their bite, too.

While I am not really an insider on defense contractors, I can take a pretty good guess that they make a pretty hefty profit on some pretty expensive defense equipment. Technology is not cheap, and while we likely need a lot of what they sell, we just might have to get them to find a way to keep the costs down a bit without endangering the operator of the equipment. Time to sharpen the pencil and shave the profit margin a little.

In short, the defense contractors are going to have to join us in the upcoming sacrifices that are going to have to be made to get the damned debt paid down. It is either that or there is a good chance there will not be a whole lot of business headed the way of the defense contractor.

A lot of attitudes are going to have to change, too.

Use it or lose it are going to have to come to an end and a more realistic way of supplying various units is going to have to change.
In the past a unit was given so much money to spend on things and they were expected to use it all. The mentality being that if the unit didn't spend every dime than it was proof that the unit could run on lass than their allotment and therefore it was reduced. Commanders spent every cent to keep the allotment from being reduced.

What is going to have to change is the idea that a unit can spend less without the allotment being reduced. We have to realize that there will be times where a unit needs a little less than they are alloted and occasionally a little more. The people in the upper levels of command are going to have to realize thas as well as the individual unit commanders.

Waste is going to have to be weeded out and eliminated. We simply can not afford it anymore. It is not only the social programs that have to go. Just about every Federal entity is going to have to take some serious hits if we are going to make this debt problem even begin to be solved

The gravy train is over and we've just got to face the truth. We're broke.

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

di it for the children

Do it for the children.




A while ago some gun control advocate gave me the well worn plea of "Do it for the children."



"Screw the children," I snapped. "If you are too lazy or irresponsible to take the time to supervise them and keep them out of throuble than simply do not have them."



Of course I got the quivering lower lip treatment that told me that she was getting ready to turn on the waterworks. She didn't and I suppose that is a good thing because when someone does that I simply hammer them a whole lot harder. The waterworks treatment does not work for me one bit. I have been around too damned long to fall for that crap.



However, I did offer to do something for the children and as to be expected, my offer shocked the hell our of the woman.



I told her I would cheerfully start holding people responsible for their actions and deeds and I would do away with the majority of government programs and subsidies that have given our treasury away to people that have done nothing but fail. I told her I would make damned good and sure that student loans were being repaid. I told her that I would be willing to make welfare a thing of the past and that I would do my best to stop subsidies to businesses that are being paid not to produce. I would do away with 20 and out pensions payable to people that retire in mid-career.



I told her that I would be willing to do away with federal programs that reenforce failure and waste money and that I would do away with just about all of the Great Society programs that came out of the 60s.



She looked at me in shock. "Why would you do that?" She asked.



"Because the children of today are going to have to pay for what we are doing now and will receive no benefit out of it whatsoever. What I will do for the children is try to give them some sort of a clean slate to start off with instead of having to pay for the failed programs of their parents and grandparents. That is doing one hell of a lot more for them than taking away their Second Amendment rights." I replied.






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

Vacations should be busy

One of the things I like about Perry and vacations like that is that I actually get to do something.




Fly an airplane, run a radio station, shoot, swim, scuba dive, just about anything just so long as I stay busy. If it puts me in a position where I have to deal with strange things, better yet!



I just can't see going to some canned resort place and folowing a herd of people around. I do not do well in those situations and the truth is I generally do not like a lot of the people I meet in places like that.



On the other hand, when I am doing something specific, there are other people there with similar interests.



Many moons ago when I went on vacation to St. Croix I spent an awful lot of time on he streets and in non hotel bars and dinky little gin joints meeting the locals and getting local flavor. What was neat is that they would tell me to go to all sorts of places off the beaten path.



One day I helped fix someone's boat and got taken fishing and another time I met a sailboater and went on a daysail. The owner had been a Naval officer and had met some submariners off of a sub that had pulled into port so the whole pushof us went out for a wild day sail in a preety good breeze and had one hell of a time. Later we actually tied up alongside the sub and the sailboat owner and I got a tour and stayed for dinner. This was about 30 years ago and it would not happen now.



Vacations go pretty fast for me because when I am somewhere I generally do not go I am generally running at about 200 miles an hour all day and night punctuated by a few hours of sleep here and there.



In St. Croix I had a room but a couple of times I just slept on the beach if the wind was right and I wouldn't get eaten alive by the sand fleas. It's not about nice accomodations for me. It's about people and adventure.




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

The feds can't even run a damned whorehouse that sells whiskey profitably.

An apology to the Americans coming up behind me.




You're screwed and it is all the fault of the lazy and selfish bastards that have come before you and saddled you with so much debt you will never be able to pay off in your lifetimes.



Don't blame me because I have done all I can to vote for people that would stop this insanity. I know I have tried. Truth is there has been nobody to vote for as both parties are responsible for this mess. For most of my life I have simply had to vote for the candidate that I thought would do the least amount of damage to both the economy and the Bill of Rights.



Much of this debt comes in the form of money that we have simply given away to people that have done nothing whatsoever to deserve it. We have set our governmental employees up with insane 20 years and out pensions that have plucked them out of doing their jobs just at the peak of their careers and allowed them to leave in mid career start pulling in unsustainable pensions that will most likely be paid to them for twice as long as they have worked.



We have supported people on generational welfare programs that started during the Great Depression that were designed as an emergency stopgap measure to help people simply survive until things got better. There are now generations of these people that have never known a day's work and have only known the government check as a source of income.



An awful lot of these so-called poor are living a lot better than the poor slobs busting their ass to support them. I see it all the time when I see the EBT cards being plled out in Philly supermarkets and notice that these people are eating a whole lot better then the guys on my crew are after I spend every cent of our grub allotment on them, yet our taxes go to support these people.



I also see that we are pouring money still into low income housing and watching that get abused by these ingrates that turn these neighborhoods into trashy places to live that have to be torn down and rebuilt every so often. While that wasn't bad enough, we have made it possibe to get the poor to move into good, solid working class neighborhoods through section 8 housing.



Heralded as a way to put people into a better enviornment, it has only served to take good neighborhoods and start them into a downward spiral as a lot of these people have no idea whatsoever on how to live in a neighborhood and take care of themselves. Section 8 is often called the kiss of death to a decent neighborhood, yet we keep spending more and more money on this, simply reinforcing failure.



Our wellfare programs supply no motivation to get off of and instead make being a failure more and more comfortable at the cost of the poor slob that gets up in the morning and goes to work to pay taxes to pay for this little debacle.



Ben Franklin once said that the cure for poverty is to make is so uncomfortable that they will surely find a way to get out of it. I believe he had something there because we have made poverty so comfortable in this country that most people that fit into this mold seem to make no effort whatsoever to get out of it.



Why should they? They get a pretty comfortable life without having to lift a finger. Sounds pretty comfortable to me.



We have given untold amounts of money as 'foreign aid' that just went to pad the pockets of fat cats and shady characters overseas while little of it arrived to the poor people where it was intended to go.



The goods and food we send overseas are generally stolen by the warlords and other local powers and either kept outright from the poor or sold or traded to them, at least the parts that do not wind up in the pockets of corrupt officials.



We've simply taken money we don't have and given it away to people that should simply be told to make their own money. It is as simple as that.



One of the reasons for this is that these giveaways start at the Federal level while the social programs really belong at either the state or local level because of the massive bureaucracy they create that is unchangable. Once something begins on the hill there is generally no stopping it. It just continues on and on. We keep paying money out for things we no longer need.



We continue to do this even though we simply can't afford it and daily the debt to keep supporting these people increases.



It is drowning us in debt. We are so far in hock that our kids will never get things paid off in our lifetime.



Failed programs from LBJ's Great Society program continue on costing us money we don't have when they should have simply been scrapped decades ago and still we reenforce failure. Every nickel we spend on these programs goes to do nothing but reenforce failed policies and programs.



We're broke, people. Worse than broke, we're so far deep in debt we will not be able to climb out of it for generations. We've spent an awful lot of it reenforcing failure. A terrible amount of money has been poured down the bottomless pit of failure.



We can look at twenty and out pensions for one thing. A couple of unions in the private sector have tried that and figured out pretty quickly that it will not work because it is unsustainable. The numbers simply do not add up because the money is simply not there to make it work unless you make the membership dues keep going up and up and up. It does not really take a long time before union dues cost more than the paycheck the individual union member is taking home.



The dues rates have to increase expoentially as the munber of members decreases which in many cases they do as automation decreases the number of union members needed as the jobs are replaced by technology.



Yet an awful lot of governmental worker unions have managed to negotiate for these pensions and the only thing that can be done to keep paying them is to constantly raise taxes or create more debt. As of yet we have chosen to simply take on more debt. As these young retirees either get to cut back a few expenses and loll away the days on the golf course or return to another career.



Many of these governmental employees return to government service and retire again at about 60 and receive TWO govermnent pensions, in some cases they total to more than they made in wages when they were working.



I am already surprised that the entire system hasn't imploded yet.



Of course, we tax the living hell out of the rich with the rationale that they have the money and ought to be grateful to share it but that is not always the case. We forget that an awful lot of the rich got that way because they were good at cutting expenses and when taxes get too high they simply take their money and their businesses elsewhere where the tax base is lower. Many companies have moved out of highly taxed states to more business friendly states, as we know. Many have also moved their operations overseas both to reduce labor costs and taxes.



Adding to this are a number of disgusted billionaires that are simply taking their money overseas and renoncing their American citizenship. This, of course, means they are now paying NO taxes to the U.S. When you think about if from a financial sense it makes a lot of sense. When you have that kind of money you can live elsewhere in as much comfort as you can in the States and a whole lot cheaper.



This weakens the economy even more as the tax base itself leaves. Excessive taxation kills businesses and in turn kills off job opportunities.



Yet we all sit back and vote for people that promise us even more and more social programs and freebies.



Obamacare is one and I would just bet that there a lot of the best and brightest out there that are getting ready to make career decisions and have seen the writing on the wall and are scratching medecine off of their list of career options because they see more and more that government is going to step in and fix prices at their expense.



Healthcare is going to get a whole lot worse. Already the number of doctors that are not accepting medicare patients is on the rise and with plain and simple good reasoning. They can make more money from other sources than medicare. I know that if I were a doctor I would likely do the same thing. Why not? When I can take a patient from another plan and make more money taking care of him I would be a fool not to.



Generally the best in the business go this route and leave only the lesser practices to accept the government money. It's just good financial sense.



There was (and still likely is) an internet rumor going around about the Mustang Ranch, a well known brothel in Nevada. Several years ago the Feds took it over for back taxes. This is the true part. They did take it over. Although rumor has it that the Feds tried to run it, they didn't. My guess is the reason they didn't try and run it is because they couldn't. I wish they had tried. I would have driven straight to the place just to witness the circus that would have resulted in the government trying to run a whorehouse that sells whiskey and women.



I would not have gone there for the sex or liquor, I would have gone there just to laugh myself silly at the way the government would turn such a venture into a three ring circus.



Right now a brothel in Nevada is a fairly simple operation. Sex is a pretty good deal as far as being a renewable resource. The women don't really wear out quickly and can be sold and resold countless times. This has no impact on the enviornment whatsoever and may very well be one of the most enviornmentally friendly businesses in the planet.



Selling whiskey is no hard sell, either. You simply buy it wholesale and sell it for retail by the drink. A quart of ten-dollar wholesale bourbon sold in generous 1.5 ounce drinks nets about 20 drinks, allowing for moderate spillage. At the low price of four bucks a pop, the quart bottle returns a $10 investment with $80 for a $70 gross profit which ain't bad. You can probably make pretty good money running a whorehouse even though expenses are pretty high if you watch what you are doing.



Yet the government would have marched in there and tried to run the operation the results would be hilarious.



Likely OSHA would come charging in and create specifications for the matteresses and other things and make sure the Japanese love swing was properly bolted to the ceiling with the proper reenforced steel beams and was capable of holding the fattest man in the world times six.



Then the Equal opportunity hiring people would have to have their little shot at things making sure that everyone was properly represented by race, color and sex which would mean hiring male prostitutes that would not really get much business and would likely demand that their wages be subsidized.



Federal hiring practices for prostitutes would be then written and mandated and the paperwork required by the Feds to be filled out by customers would be a sight to behold. There would be releases, married men would be made to fill out a spousal consent form, a blood test would be administered followed by a 2 week waiting period and a full criminal background check, all of which would be paid for by the customer.



Customers would be assigned girls by number because the government would insist that every one of the hookers get an equal opportunity to make money.



Of course, the good looking hookers would have none of this and would have hit the road long before this carnival started because they knew they wouldn't make a dime there working for the Feds and hookers are in the business of selling sex to make money. Like fishermen, they go where there is money to be made.



This would require hiring hookers that met stringent government specifications, and God only know what that would entail. Most likely this place would wind up hiring the ugliest women that ever crawled across the face of the earth.



Whiskey sales would likely be rationed in the interest of health and safety and smoking would not be allowed on the property whatsoever, even 100 yards from the door.



Of course, there would be a small clientele. There would be the reporters and a few sick sons of bitches like myself that would show up there just to witness the spectacle and laugh ourselves silly, but that's about it. Anyone that seriously wanted to go to a brothel would simply bypass the joint and go down the road to the next one on the line.



While the whole place would likely turn into yet another miserable Federal failure, the Feds would certainly not admit it and sell it to some competent person that could run it at a profit and pay taxes. After all, that would be an admission of failure and they would likely go straight to Congress and strong-arm a few congressmen and ask for a sudsidy which should be a slam dunk. This would be especially true if the Feds managed to get a list of customers that had visited the place before the government took it over. Lord knows how many of our public officials were likely regulars there before the government took it over. Much of it possibly paid for by us. Blackmailing congress for a subsidy would be a lead pipe cinch.



As yet another otherwise profitable venture winds up sucking on the Federal tit and costing us money.



While I might be wrong in some of my projections, it is a slam dunk bet that the Feds are incapable of running a simple whorehouse, yet these are the people that we permit to take and manage our tax dollars and hand them out to others so freely.



Someone once said that the government spends our money like a drunken sailor and I will tell them from personal experience that they are wrong. During the earlier part of my career I have been a drunken sailor more than once and while I spent money like it was water and piddled away ungodly amounts of cash during wild periods of drunkeness I will have to say that unlike the Feds, I stopped spending when I ran out of money.



One of the only things the Feds have done that was actually working was Social Security. While it was actually no more than a Ponzi scheme to begin with, oddly enough it was actually working out. Projections ran that it wold have run along for several generations until it would have required additional federal help.



That is, of course, until the 60s when Congress saw that huge pile of money and plundered it bare to reenforce the Great Society programs that have been nothing but more reenforcement of failure. They have only ruined the one social plan the government ever created that was actually working, one that was paid for by Americans that went to work and let the government put a portion of their earnings into a fund for their old age when they could no longer work.



It had gone straight downhill from there and there is no telling how much further down the system is going to go down before it implodes.



To the younger generation, when it occurs to you that you are going to spend the rest of your lives I hope to hell this appears somewhere and you find that there was at least one soul out there that did what he could not to leave you with such a mess to clean up.



It's time to simply admit that our social programs on the Federal level are a dismal flop, stop reenforcing failure and simply make everyone start taking care of themselves for a change. If you want to run a social program, at least have the sensibility to run it on a more local level and keep the Feds out of it.



After all, they can't even run a damned whorehouse that sells whiskey.


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

Why the guy at Perry wanted me to send a hamgram

One of the guys I have met that I feel for is the guy that asked me to send a hamgram home and tell his wife that he was running a day late because I heard part of the conversation and knew what was happening to him.


She was one of those people that always wants every single detail, none of which matter. All the wife really needed to know is simply that he was running late because he had entered another match.

While he may be a reader I will not embarrass him by reprating what I heard but it was on the same lines of some poor slob that has his car crap out on him after work.

Him: "Hello, Honey. I'm running late. The car broke down."

Her: "What happened?"

Him: "The coil cracked and I guess moisture caused it to short out."

Her: "How did that happen?"

Him: "I guess it just got old and cracked"

Her: "Oh, come now. Things like that just don't crack because they get old. You must have done something!"

Him: "I didn't do anything. It just cracked."
Her: "I don't understand."

Him "It cracked and let moisture in and shorted."

Her: 'What do you mean it shorted?"

Him: "Water got in and allowed the electrons to jump over to where they were not supposed to be. The little buggers just hopped across the wires and kept the coil from producing a spark to ignite the gasoline and run the engine."

Her: "How many electrons went where they were not supposed to be?"

Him: "Billions."

Her: "Name them."

Him: "What?"

Her: "Name them. I want to know who these people are"

Him: "They're not people, they're llittle bits of electrical energy."

Her: "I don't understand. They don't have names?"

Him: "No they don't have names."

Her: "Why?"

Him: "Because they are little bits of electrical energy."

Her: "I don't understand."

Him, frustrated: "Lessee, there's John, Joe, Bob, Tom, Harry, Bill, Mike, Louie, Lefty Moe, Dave, Harry...Oh, there goes Billy-Joe-Bob, Pete, Tim, Moe, Luis, he's a Hispanic electron, and Filipe, he's a Filipino electron. Comes from a nice family. Then there's Chris, he's OK I guess. Look, I have several billion left to go. Do you really want to know the names of evvery single electron that jumped the wire?

Her: "Well...."

Time to go on the offensive.

Him: I am going to be late because the car will not start. It's broken."
Her: "I..I...I...I don't understand."

Him: "You know what a car is?"

Her, angrily: "Yes, I know what a car is."

Him: "OK, it's like this. The car will not start. It is broken."

Her: Well...well...well...I...I don't understand."

Him: "What part of 'broken' do you not understand?"

Her, angrily: "I know what broken is!"

Him: OK, now put the two words together. Car, broken...car, broken."

Her, going through the roof: "I know what a broken car is! I'm not stupid!"

Him: "Ok, I have a broken car here and I am going to be late coming home from work."

Her: "Oh."

Now mind you, this woman he is married to has a degree from Vassarin biology. The concept of simple is totally alien to her. The concept of a simple situation causeing a problem is beyond comprehension to her. There simply must be more than a simple broken car. It has finally begun to sink in.

Her: "Why didn't you just tell me?"

Him: "I did. Now say "oh".

Her, finally coming to grips. "Oh."


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

I have a little egg on my face.

The other day I posted things that happened at the President's Match at Perry and I will admit that I had gotten my dope from someone a little too early on before everything had settled down.



I asked one of the range people why some of the shooters were not firing and I was briefly told that the Army was boycotting the shootout so I simply ran with that as I figured it to be a good source. I should have waited until things had settled a bit and things cleared up before I posted.



It seems that the AMU members didn't shoot in the shootoff out of respect for the two people that had just fired perfect scores. While I have not dug through the records, this may very well be the first time this has happened. The AMU people didn't shoot out of respect for the two top guns, likely because they knew that the shootout was apt to push these two hard holders down the ladder when things were over.



Incidentally I believe it to be a record year as if my memory serves me (and I might be wrong) but I was at Perry a few years ago and met Staff Sergeant Richard Threatt who had just broken the previous record with a 298 and had set a new record. He was getting ready to retire and that was one hell of a way to put a pretty damned sweet topping on an ending military career.



With the two top guns shooting perfect scores this year, it is nothing short of astonishing. When you consider that the weather conditions were much less than ideal, it is unbelieveable.



Historically as far back as I remember the match has been a simple 30 shot match of 10 shots at 200 yards, 10 at 300 and 10 at 600 yards with 300 possible points. This year two shooters managed to do the near impossible under less than ideal conditions. These two hard holders shot a pair of 300s and this very well may be a National Match record but I am not going to dig through the records to find out as I am out of internet range to begin with and the net here isn't too fast when it is in range.



A few years ago the powers that be decided for some reason to change things and there are a lot of people (myself included) that think that this is another case of someone reinventing the P-38 can opener.



The powers that be have added a little glitch to the match.



After the 30 shot match is fired and things are tallied up, the top 20 shooters are hauled back to the line and fire 10 more shots for score. These are added to their already fired scores and then tallied up. The top 20 shooters are decided this way.



This makes it numerically possible that the person that took top honors in the first part of the match can be dropped down to 20th place in the match. To a lot of us that simply does not make sense.



After the match results were posted I looked at a few things and was surprised to find out that the guy that was in 16th place after the first 30 rounds were fired managed to cllimb up to third.



It just doesn't seem right and a lot of people do not think so, either.



The AMU members this year decided not to shoot the shoot-off and simply allowed themselves to wind up in the bottom of tht shoot-off heap out of respect for these two perfect scorers. I guess they wanted to make sure that they got the top honors they truly deserved.



Still, I really do not think this was the time or place for this but others might disagree. I think the AMU members should have simply shot and done the best that they could and let the chips fall where they may.



Had the two hard holders with perfect scores dropped themselves down a few places it would have made the governing body look a little foolish and given a lot more ammunition to those that want the match reverted back to the original format something to work with. This is especially true when both of them had just set new records.



After all, it looks rather dumb when a pair of hard holders that have just fired perfect scores wind up in, for example, third and eighth place. Eventually the powers that be will realize that they are now looking pretty foolish.



As for another error I might have made, I still root for the Raggedy Assed Marines because they put together a pick-up team to augment a small cadre and give the AMU a pretty good run for their money. Like a lot of Americans, I instinctly root for the underdog. The Marines generally give the AMU, which is very possibly the best marksmanship team in the world something to be reckoned with.



They do not get as much trigger time as the AMU guys do as at the end of the season they revert back to their jobs in the fleet. They are also a lot more approachable as they stay on post for the matches. The AMU is housed off post and when the match is over, they generally leave.



I also watch them from a distance and over the years I have seen some pretty well thought out little public relations coups and it is fun to watch.



That being said, I failed to point out that the AMU does have more responsibilities than meet the eye. They are utilized during the off-season to do a number of clinics and things to 'train the trainers' so to speak and pass their skills on down the line to improve things for the grunts and others in the field. They also do have other responsibilities and they sure do lose a lot of time away from their loved ones.



For many years the AMU was a bastard stepchild and floated through several commands but for the past several years they have found a home under the Recruiting Command which in a way makes sense as they are often in the public's eye.



I will admit that in my previous post on the AMU may have made them sound like a bunch of arrogant little kids, it was in no way so. I simply feel that they should have fired the match and let the chips fall where they may. I think that over time someone in the governing body will see that the shootout is an unnecessary modification of a simple match that has proved to be entirely unnecessary and only serves to cause more problems than it solves.



The shootout is heralded on the CMP website as a an exciting event on their website but the truth is that if we need drama in out lives we just have to turn on the tube and watch one of the many reality shows they have there.



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In other news, the QSL cards from my little venture into amateur radio have started to come in and it is interesting to find out that there were a lot of people that did not understand the National Match program at Camp Perry.



During brief ragchews a commonly asked question was, "Don't you have to be in the service or in a special club or something?"



Another question was "How do I find out about having to shoot there?"



I promptly referred these people to the CMP website to get the straight dope on what it takes to come and shoot.



While not as successful as we had originally hoped, the little station did get the word about CMP and the National Matches out and there were quite a few shooters out there that appeared to be interested in coming next year.



I guess that we managed to do some good for the Matches and that's a pretty good deal.



While the deluge of QSL cards has just started, I am not there right yet to field them and expect to spend a few evenings returning the requests for the Camp Perry Special Event QSL cards and have them being printed up as I write.



About half of the QSL requests I have received have had SASEs enclosed which is a pretty good deal as postage and envelopes are not cheap anymore. One guy sent an SASE and a buck to help defray expenses which was thoughtful and sends him to the front of the line. A QSL card costs about 75 cents to mail these days when you add it all up.



Incidentally, something out of nowhere happened. About 25 years ago I overpaid an electric bill and the Electric people were cleaning up a bunch of old records and posted my name on a list in the local paper. An old friend of mine noticed my name and told me to call them and a check is coming my way for about what I have paid for the QSL cards the other day!



God sure works in strange and mysterious ways.



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One other thing, one of the guys asked me if there was any way I could get in touch with his wife and let her know he was going to be coming home from Camp Perry a day late. I offered him my cell phone, but he had one of his own. Seems he simply wanted the message to get home from a third party so he would not have to go into a long explaination which is something some spouses are apt to do.



I got in touch with another ham and he telephoned the wife and gave her the news.



Of course, a nanosecond after the other ham told us he had called her the hapess poor bastard's cell phone went off as his wife called him demanding to know what was going on and insisting on all of the details and a long, drawn out explaination.



Nice try.



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

a day of running like hell

I have a lot to do today and will have to just post a quickie to keep my place.

I might get a sensible post in later today if things quiet down.


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

Hey, you young studs want a tip from an old man?

You guys can laugh all you want, but yesterday I went about my business in my pink Kalashnikitty T-shirt. I went to WallyWorld and the supermarket and four (count 'em, FOUR) different women between the ages of about 18 and 35 commented on whaat a cute shirt I was wearing.

Tough guys wear pink. Chicks dig it.

While none of these women were of an age I find interesting, I thought I would pass this on to you younger  guys.





Today is going to be hectic because I have to take care of quite a few things as things caught up with me as I spent the last week at Perry. I owe the people there an After Action Report of some sort and I will write that soon.

I have to conjure up a QSL card for those that we QSO'd with and have one in the making as I write. The makker is the same one I had make up the cards I use for PRC-320 QSOs and I snagged a picture of a couple of guys with Garands taken at the JCG match. The proof just arrived and when it gets tuned up it should be good to go.

Already a number of QSL cards have arrived and I have dutifully matched them up with the log and as of now, half of the QSLs received included SASEs and one of them included an SASE and a buck to defray expenses. Thank you. It will help as it looks like the cards will run in the area of about $60 which isn't too bad.

Predictions of 1000 QSOs made by another guy involved were not met and I'll attribute much of that due to the fact that we advertised months before the event and people read the ads and forgot about it when it came up.

I am stiill pretty impressed that I could run the rig for 5 days on solar power and when I put the charger on after the fifth day it didn't take very long for the batteries to chaarge right up.

On the home front, the cat is doing well and is not the same little kitty I first was afraid he would be. He is far more outgoing and isn't scared anymore. Having a 10 year-old cat sitter helped, I am sure and the little guy is now jumping up on me. Orange cats are generally pretty affectionate and smart and I might be able to get this little guy to walk with me on a leash sometime soon. We'll see.






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