(Day 80) When a tradesman shows up take a nap.

"Mr. Tradesman, my name is Piccolo. You are here to install my whatever. Here's where this comes into the house. Here's where that goes and here's where the other goes. There is the bunkroom door and I am going to take a nap simply to get out of your way so you can get some work done. If I can be of any help, let me know. As soon as you're done please come and get me so I can see how it works."

A lot of tradesmen appreciate this.

Many of them report that the biggest PITA they face is someone following them and asking them dopey questions over every single nut, bolt and screw.




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(Day 79) These days I get rid of my drain oil

 at a service station that has a drain oil burning stove. It helps heat the place in winter and he'll take all I have for free.

It wasn't always that way.

A while back I listened to some whiny little hippie chick bitch about the local as station refusing to take her pair of milk jugs full of drain oil for free.

Seems the station owner wanted a whole dollar of offset his costs. Gee! A whole dollar!

It would be one thing if the dollar was as valuable as the one George Washington threw across the Potomac river. This was a recent dollar that the president couldn't even get to go a twentieth of the way across the river because a dollar doesn't go as far as it used to.

I made a mental note that I had about five gallons of the slop to get rid of. Later that day I threw the 5 gallon oil can in the back of my pickup and headed to the reviled service station. The owner was there.

"How much you paying these days to get rid of old drain oil? I asked him.

"Twenty-five cents a gallon," he replied.

"Sounds about right," I said. I held out three bucks.

"I'm a capitalist and I have five gallons to get rid of," I said. "Here's the way I figure it. There's a buck and a quarter for the cost of having the guy come in and pull out my 5 gallons. The tank cost you something so here's a buck toward paying for the tank, leaving you 75 cents to put in your pocket. Sound fair?"

He laughed. "How can I say no?"

Then he turned to me. "You are one of the very, very few that understand how this business works," he said. "Incidentally I did have to replace my tank last year and it was pretty expensive. You may not know it, but you are the first one that has offered to pay."

I have used that station for a few odds and ends through the years and simply because of that little offer to pay for getting rid of drain oil the guy has taken pretty good care of me.  

Sometimes when you cast your bread on the water you get back poached eggs on toast.

As for the hippie chick?

Who cares. If she's afraid to cast her bread on the water she can just stand there with a handful of stale, moldy bread and a gaggle of gallon milk bottles of drain oil for all I care. It was her choice.



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(Day 78) An old post I had hanging.

I just got defriended by a high school classmate on Facebook for telling it like it is. It's not the first time and it probably won't be the last. I think three of them have defriended and  blocked me.

I do believe the final straw was when I pointed out that Hillary Clinton doesn't give a damn about the lives of our service people. They are just little people and as such are pawns to be used for her agenda.

I said it is one thing when the kid down the street gets killed and another thing entirely when YOUR child comes home in a box. I think that comment bit hard because one of his sons either has recently is going to commission in the army soon.

I hope I gave him something to think about.

The truth is that Hillary's cavalier attitude with classified information puts our service people's lives in jeopardy. One of the things that I can not tolerate is a disregard for the lives of our troops.

While Donald Trump is not necessarily the answer, I do give him credit in that he respects the troops. Hillary doesn't. Her conduct with disregarding secure communications is the proof of the pudding.

One thing I have done to a couple of young people is suggest they hold off on entering military service until after the election. I have told them that if Hillary is elected than the country will not be worth serving anymore and that Hillary won't respect them.

I wouldn't enlist with her as CinC. No way in hell.

The other two de-friends are people that go through life looking for things to be offended over. There is a difference between finding problems and scouring the planet for them and creating them in their absence.

They are both ultra liberals, both naive and truly believe that government is their friend. One has retired from a state job and the other is running a small business in a rural area.

I have let both of these people make fools of themselves a few times and they resent it. All I did was let their own arguments run full circle. That's all it generally takes.

Anyway, I am not going to play the game and pretend to be all warm and fuzzy about things. I'll continue to tell it like it is and let the chips fall where they may.






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It has been pointed out to me that the public airwaves belong to the public.

The person that pointed it out to me also suggested that if the various radio and TV stations don't start serving the public with honest journalism and fair and impartial reporting that their frequencies get taken away from them and auctioned off to other interested parties that do start serving the public.

I can't say I have a problem with that.

In fact it is probably a good idea.

I don't care what the op/ed part of a news show advocates. I simply want the hard news itself to be fairly, honestly and impartially reported.

Anything less is a disservice to the public and the station is doing us no good and ought to be de-licensed.





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(Day 76) I have started drawing things out of a hat so to speak.

A few years back when I got a cell phone that allowed me to to this, I gave many of My contacts different ringtones so I would know instantly who was calling.

I just did this with only a couple of people on my contact list. I did this by actually having a somewhat random drawing to avoid headaches later on.

Several years ago I got onto someone's $hit list when they were offended by the ringtone they were issued. I finally got off it when I explained that they got what they got because it was a randon drawing.

Truth is I think people try to read something into every little thing and it sometimes keeps me from doing things.





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(Day 75) I read where Madonna, Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus

 were against Trump because he degrades woman.

What a damned joke that is.

Many of us are trying to teach our children that they can have their cake and eat it. Of course, this is never the case. You can't have it both ways.

All three of these women are two faced because their acts over the years have degraded women a lot more than a locker room comment made years ago ever will.

If of course, the three entertainers are all going to defend themselves it will be with with the same tired excuse, "But that's different!"

Ladies, I'll let you in on a little secret. There are two kinds of men.

Those that at some time in their lives have said something similar or mabye even worse. The othe kind of guy is a liar.




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(Day 74) Another thing I have noticed about men's

 homeless shelters is you can spot a veteran a mile away if ou are there for bedding issue.

They are the guys that take their 2 sheets, 2 blankets, pillow and case and whip up a neat, hospital cornered bunk in just a couple of minutes.







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(Day 73)I read where some guy in a Burger King had a spoiled brat

 behind him that would not behave. 

The man asked the mother to discipline the child several times and got a bunch of crap for his efforts. 

The kid was squalling to his mother that he wanted one of the pies they sell there. He kept squalling.

When the angry man made it to the front of the line he got his pound of flesh. He simply asked how many pies they had and bought them all.

On the way out he stopped to see the masterpiece he had created as the clerk told the mother of the spoiled child they were fresh out of pies because the guy in front of her bought them all.

Ya gotta love it.





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(Day 72) One of the things I have noticed on social media

 is the woman's march the day after Trump got inaugurated.

The women left the place in a pig sty. Here's a picture. What a disgusting mess. 

Here's a picture of the mess the TEA party left behind a few years ago.

One of the things I have heard often from janitors is the way woman leave the so-called ladies room. For what it is worth, I have had a number of women comment on the subject saying that a lot of women are a bunch of pigs.

I think that a lot of it is that the people that leave a mess behind for someone else to clean up are of the same mentality that government is there to take care of them.

It is not just a man/woman thing, but some of it is a conservative/liberal thing. Conservatives take care of themselves, liberals expect someone else to take care of them.

One of the things I rememer about Woodstock back in '69 was the amount of trash the people attending left behind.

I will give credit to the small handful that stayed behind. Incidentally, the mess here was created by my generation.

http://www.woodstockpreservation.org/Gallery/40Anniversary/aftermath_69lg.jpg

Note that there are generally a small handful of people that did stay behind. I read that it took them over two weeks to clean that pig sty up.

FWIW the following summer I spent a couple of weeks at a couple of rock festivals working behind the scenes as part of the medic contingent. Much of what I dealt with was a boatload of bad LSD trips. I saw every sunrise and sunset and slept a coupleof daylight hours per day.

To my credit I cleaned up after myself and my pack contained pretty much all of my trash. Still, the Powder Ridge ski slope and Mosport Raceway were total dumps when the party was over.

One of the things that always seems to happen at my house when I invite people over is that I never have a whole lot to clean up after. It never fails. Generally all I have to do is empty the dish washer the following morning, if that.


%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Incidentally, several years ago I wandered around DC on foot with a day pack full of a couple day's rations. When I left everything I brought with me I brought out and disposed of later on. I smoked at the time and remember emptying a pocketful of cigarette butts into a trash can at a rest stop. 




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An open letter to General Mattis.

Sir,

I am getting a little long in the tooth to be going out on combat patrols. The back aches a bit in the morning. Old age has set in and I now use wire cutters to cut my toenails. You are no spring chicken, either so you likely know the drill.

A couple of years ago I made a mistake that makes me ineligible for military service. I got my birthday back and got old overnight.

Back in the day I got into some non-trouble with a pissed off major. I had done nothing wrong but I got reported anyway. My First Sergeant, a man short on formal schooling but having immense native wisdom decided the way to handle the situation was to punish me and report I had been punished.

He took away my birthday.

That left me in the odd situation where I was going to remain 23 years old forever.

As time passed and everyone else around me aged I realized I would never become eligible for any retirement as nobody is going to pay retirement benefits to a 23 year old man.

I called my old army unit and argued with the quite amused First Sergeant for about 45 minutes until he finally gave in and gave me my birthday back.

Right now I wish I had not done this because I am now too old to serve under you.

For the record, if you can use my services feel free to ask. I will drop what I am doing and dig out my old uniform. Incidentally it still fits.

Actually I may be more useful then you think. As I got older I find I only think about sex 98% of the time. This give me twice as much time to think about the mission as the younger guys have.

Secondly, I am not as impulsive as a younger man. I am far more likely to remember that the most important six inches on the battlefield is between my ears. I am far more apt to stop and think before I act.

I am also a lot less likely to cause disciplinary problems because although I occasionally imbibe, I have years of experience on how to without causing any trouble. Perhaps I could use this to set an example to the younger guys that could use a little adult supervision.

While I am probably too old to go on combat patrol, I still shoot CMP matches regularly. I know my way around a service rifle. I can probably be useful fixing things or even simply keeping the line in front of the whorehouse straight and orderly.

It would be quite an honor to go back into uniform and serve under you.

Your for the asking,
Piccolo.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%





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The racism of low expectations.

One of the things that a lot of people seem to miss is that liberals have a very overlooked, demeaning and underhanded form of racism. It's called lower expectations.

It is an insult to anyone of any race, creed, color or whatever that is on the receiving end of it. On the other hand, many people that actuallly are on the receiving end of it often do not realize it.

A classic example of ths is government set-asides for various things like contracts that are 'set aside' for minority owned companies.

These set asides are often explained as 'leveling the playing field' and in my opinion are quite an insult to the minority community. This also enters the field of hiring. Government often hires based on minority status instead of competence and merit.

It is simply saying that minorities are not as capable as everyone else so they need a little extra help along the way so they can overcome their inherent inabilities.

Colleges do this with admission policies. They have for years. Actually many schools penalize Asians because they often have a higher academic success rate. Asians often have to score higher than blacks and whites.

It is an insult and a serious form of racism. It is telling minorities that less is expected of them.

This also leads to discrediting minorities that are successful in their own right. 

The simple solution is to really level the playing field and hold everyone regardless of race, creed, color, sex, or whatever to the same standard of excellence.

Of course, in this day and age I will be labeled as a racist for saying this but I have been called a lot of things so I'm not too worried about it.

Still, there are two things that will overcome racism. Holding everyone to the same standard is one.

The other isn't going to be as easy to overcome. I won't cover it here except to say that while there is money to be made on racism people like Al Sharpton and David Duke will continue to profit and the practice will continue.



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Inauguration Day.

I am posting this at approximately 0100 today, Inauguration day. Hopefully everything goes through all right. 

Obama will be gone, and Trump will be POTUS barring any treachery and the makings of a civil war.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

One of the things I am watching is that Trump is fighting back at the mainstream media and I love it.

A lot of the big guns like CNN act like they have a God-given right to come and go in the White House and it looks like the new sheriff in town is going to bring them up short.

I am thinking of issuing myself a press pass declaring me to be the Editor-in-Cief of Piccolo's Hash and applying for the credentials to cover the WHite House.

Maybe President Trump will decide that Piccolo's Hash is a bona-fide honest outlet and decide that he is worthy of entry into the White House.

While I doubt that this is going to happen, it would be hilarious to find out that I was offered the slot normally held by CNN.

If I were offered the slot I would make it a point not to wear my bridgework and to be sure to smell like bourbon when I pass the CNN reporter just to add to his disgust and humiliation.

I can see the press secretary really irking the living daylights out of the CNN reporter by sticking it to him with the old liberal line.

"He doesn't have a media conglomerate behind him so we're 'Just going to level the playing field.' "

The look of outrage would be a true sight to behold.

If by some flaky chance, anyone can pass this post on to the White House press secretary, feel free to. I would gladly take a trip to Washington DC to help President Trump embarrass the fake news people.
*********************
I was reading a forum where the media said they were going to tell Trump who was boss.
Someone else pointed out that he could in fact keep the people in touch with what he is doing with the various forms of social media out there.
I have read that Trump's twitter acount is more popular than ABC, CSNBC, FOX and CNN combined. Someone else suggested that Twitter close his account.

Enter HAM RADIO! 

Ham radio gets through where nothing else can.

I suppose it Trump went on the air there would be a demand for shortwave receivers which would mean more jobs and more win.

It would also leave all the media stammering and stuttering.



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read where they found guns and stashed ammunition in the general

Washington DC area.

I am getting pretty sick and tired of the attitude of the left.

Over the past 24 years I have tolerated 16 years of Clinton and Obama. To those on the left shut the hell up and take your medicine.

I am sick and tired of the threats of violence coming from the left. 

If these people want a civil war then they are on the right track because that is how you start a civil war. A lot of you on the left have big mouths and few of you have strong stomachs. You do not have a clue as to what you are asking to get into.

I see where the Secret Service has made a few arrests and I wish they would make more and really slam the people hard as an example to others.







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Today is the last day of the Obama presidency.

Thank God for small miracles.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&






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It is Oh-Dark thirty and I am up.

My sleep pattern is getting sloshed around and it sucks.

I have a lot to do tonight so I may/may not finish this post.

I think  mentioned picking up a tablet, a Kindle. I did that because there are a boatload of free books I can read. Besides it's a pretty goof WiFi tablet and I can also stream movies when I am at home.

If I didn't need a full sized keyboard to write on I'd chuck most of my laptops. 

My wife does not write very much, she answers emails and such. She gets by very nicely with a flip phone and a tablet she has a data program with that is supplied by one of the cell companies for pretty short money.


If they made a bigger blue tooth keyboard I'd likely go that route.

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







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I am busy as hell today and may have some free time later on.

Which sucks but it is what it is.

Day 65 smoke free.

It has not gotten any better since Day One.


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Today has been an interesting day for dealing with women.

As I was eating lunch today at the supermarket cafe a world class beauty of a woman came up to my table. The woman was about forty or a day or two short of it and just gorgeous. I remember where we met. About two months ago she asked me about something in the pharmacy.

She had a sick child. I recall giving her my hillbilly antidote for ditching a nasty cold. Oddly enough she paid attention. I won't post it here but it works and it is sort of brutal.

Anyway she told me she didn't use the antidote on her kid but on herself when she contracted whatever it was from her kid.

She wanted to thank me.

Truly beautiful woman are gracious and she certainly was. In addition to the various parts there is something the truly beautiful have and that is graciousness. 

She didn't have to seek me out to thank me but she did.

Grace like that show through. You can't buy it.

Comedian Ron White once said, "I want her boobs, and her butt and her face...on HER." He was pointing to different imaginary women. "They can do that now," He said.

True enough but they can't install grace. It has to come from within.

********************* 

The other woman I ran into today was a witness to a horror show I threw a couple of days ago.

She approached me and said it was the funniest thing she'd seen in years. She said I reminded her of her oldest son.

The other day I went off on someone. They had it coming.

Since the testy part of smoking cessation has started I decided to focus the bad energy on people that deserve it. The salesman lied to me and I retaliated. He told me all he needed was my name, street address and landline. I gave them to him and he instantly asked for my email address. I had seen that coming and was ready for it. 

I told him I didn't have an email address.

He looked at my phone. "But you have a smart phone," he protested.

"Yeah, but I don't use it for email," I said. "I use it for porn!"

I saw that he was caught off guard so I decided to go in for the knockout. "Check this out," I said. "There's this guy. He's wearing an Indian chief thing like the Village People guy and he has a feather duster sticking out of his butt. He's got this naked woman--she looks about ninety years old but not too bad. Anyway he's got her all chained up and he bends her over and sticks her head into a gas oven...Here! it's a YouTube video! Check it out!"

I started fiddling with my phone like I really was looking for  YouTube video.

He went into a panic, cleared my information off his computer and told me to leave.

The woman that had seen the whole thing I had noticed out of the corner of my eye. Her face had gone from shocked to appalled to confused to very, very amused in under two seconds. She had instantly picked up what I was doing to the salesman and had a terrible time keeping a straight face.










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I basically cook with three knives.

Cooking, like everything else, has a number of snobs that will insist that a bunch of expensive tools are imperative to the manufacturing of a decent meal.

I am not a chef. I am a cook and that is that. I am not very likely to make some kind of a flambe whatever or fancy crepe. Sorry about that.

I am, however, a halfway decent cook.

As I write this I am making a breakfast of codfish and eggs. 

I look at the knife set in its block and realize that two of the original set are in a drawer somewhere and a pair of my utile knives are in their spaces. Next to the block is a KaBar I very occasionally use.

I generally use the other two. Both are dead simple, inexpensive Russell Green River Works knives. The larger of the two is over 30 years old and has the handle wrapped with seine twine. I did this when I got it back in the 80s and used it for gutting halibut. It made me a lot of money.

The other Green River is a basic utility blade. I bought it as a blank and riveted a simple walnut handle on it. The blank was inexpensive, the walnut free as were the rivets.

It is funny how inexpensive things often get the most use.

I have had many, many people over the house for a meal but have never had anyone gripe.

I have had a couple of people try and show me how to use a French knife. I tell them I already know and continue slicing away with the Green River utility. 

I generally explain to people that I am basically a camp cook and not a chef.




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War is not something I see as an academic exercise.

I see where Obama has troops tied up in eastern Europe that are getting ready to rile up the Russians. I think he is trying to leave Trump in a lurch.

His pettiness could very well get someone killed. 

Dear Mrs Smith, Sorry about that. Jimmy was killed in action while engaging in the war I started to give that mean old Donald Trump's presidency a better chance of failing.

If President Obama does intentionally leave Trump in the makings of a war simply to gratify his own ego then Trump should have him jailed. There is no excuse for something like that.

I do not take war lightly and am publicly outspoken about it. Every time I listen to an armchair wannabe general I give him the address of the nearest army recruiting station and am generally treated to stammering and stuttering.

It's one thing to send someone else or someone else's kid off to war and another thing entirely to go yourself or send your kid.

I have said this before and I will probably say this again and again.

When the kid down the street gets killed it is a shame and you bring the family a casserole, tell the parents how great their kid was and shuffle home in time so you don't miss American Idol.

When it is YOUR kid it is a tragedy the family never recovers from.

Of course, it is pretty easy to bring tragedy onto someone else's family...

Any citizen that carelessly advocates war should have their attitude adjusted. I have no problems with wall to wall sensitivity training being administered.

Any elected official that gets us into a war that could be safely avoided deserves to be removed from office and hanged. 

Mr Putin, how about if you hang on a week or so. We're getting some sensible leadership installed in a few days. 







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Every so often I run into a jewel

While there are an awful lot of young people I have no use for, every so often a real jewel shows up in the oddest of places.

There are two people at a branch of my bank that are the reason I go there. Both are young and both are helpful.

While I was headed out of the bank I saw a bundle of coin rolls that they were giving away as some kind of freebie. I have a bunch of quarters at home so I took a single sleeve.

"Take a bunch," said the young teller that has been helpful to me.

"Nah,I only need one." I said. "I like having a roll of quarters in my hand when I punch someone."

The older teller looked mortified, the head cashier at me with a look of concern.

The young teller replied sweetly to me, "If you use a tire iron instead, your knuckles won't get all swollen up."

That pretty much shut the whole place down as everyone in the place looked at the little girl in shock...except for two customers. Both of them looked quite amused.









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Here's a pretrty good letter to send to your congress critter.

Appropriate greeting:


I realize that this is a busy time with much on the agenda for the incoming congress. However, I must ask that the federal commitment to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting be revisited. 

The CPB, founded in the 1960s with the 
Johnson administration, was tasked to "ensure universal access to non-commercial, high quality content and telecommunications services." 

In the age of the internet (itself increasingly subsidized for low income residents) and ubiquitous cable and satellite broadcasting, the CPB appears to be a vestigial bureaucracy of a by-gone era. 

Its budget ($445M) is miniscule to those in DC but meaningful to those outside of it. The primary 
beneficiary, NPR (both directly and through a Byzantine system of grants to local radio stations to launder the donations), is incapable of meeting its federally required mandate to provide "unbiased" and neutral reporting. 

It is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party as demonstrated by the CEO on down. Moreover the listening demographic is not the poor. 


Rather its the highly educated and generally wealthy. I am sickened by personally subsidizing either political party but doing so in the name of 
"public broadcasting" is a lie and a farce at this point. 

The public does deserve unbiased reporting. But NPR is incapable of doing it. 

Please ensure that no money from the CPB, directly or indirectly, goes to NPR and let the 
wealthy listeners of NPR determine if they still want to listen to it without my tax dollars. 

Better yet, take this opportunity to kill off an 
archaic bureaucracy as a demonstration of political sanity.


Thank you for your time and best of luck in the upcoming session.


I lifted this letter from another website I frequent and thought highly enough of it to put it here


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I know an Army Warrant Officer

That has about thirty-two years of service and is still on active duty.

While enlisted men and commissioned officers of colonel and below face mandatory retirement after 30 years of service, this does not apply to Warrant Officer. They do not have a mandatory retirement age. They can continue their careers for as long as they are physically and mentally able to.

He is also a ham operator and when he deploys he brings a portable rig. I have him in my log. He was deployed to Afghanistan when I worked him and. Afghanistan is a rare DX entity so I'm grateful.  

Now one of the things young GIs do to older guys like him is give him an occasional good-natured drubbing for being an unusually old GI. He said that recently one of the young soldiers asked him if he had enlisted during the Spanish-American war.

I pointed out that in the 80s when he began his service that there were still a few Japanese stragglers out there left over from WW2.

He said he never had thought of that.

I bet that he's going to point that out to some new soldier sometime and leave the new guy really wide-eyed.

That's what I would do.



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Well theworld just got a little more dangerous.

Someone wanted a project and decided to work with metal.

He made and installed a bayonet lug on a Ruger Mini-14 rifle.

Now he has the equipment do do a drive-by bayoneting so I suppose you ought to stay off of the streets.

Actually he did a pretty good job. I'm sure it took him some time and it kept him off the streets and out of the pool halls. I'm sure he learned something in the process and actually poses no detriment to society. 

Ever notice that people that do things in their shop for entertainment seldom get into any real trouble.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

In two days I enter my third cigarette free month and it is really no easier than it was on Day One.

I am still using nicotine lozenges and will probably be doing so for a while even though the nicotine addiction is the east part to get over.

If I had to rely on the medical people or the do-gooders for help I would probably smoking three packs a day by now. There really is no decent support group I could find. I kind of made my own.

I found a couple of long time smokers that stopped and they have been a lot more helpful than any of the others have been.

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New technology is pretty cool.

I just got my first serious smart phone and I am already impressed with it. It is pretty amazing. 

I wish I would have gotten one earlier. 

It is one of the few newer pieces of technology that I find useful.

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

My new ISP seems to be working out OK.

I can go on the air and not have 40 meters knock it out.

It is a good thing to be able to use the internet while I am on the aor to look up call signs and things.


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I have taken out three loans in my entire life.

The first was for a gently used pickup back 1990. 

The next loan was my mortgage. I took that out in early 1994.

The third loan was in 2000 for a brand new pickup.

The second and third loans were paid off in 2003 and I have not borrowed a dime since. Every single month my credit card balance is paid off in full.

When you consider that I was considered more or less homeless between the years 1976 and 1989.

When you think about it, that's not bad.

In addition to that, my years on the road and bumming around gave me a lot of insight that few people have. I would not trade them for the world.  











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I can not for the life of me figure out

why everyone thinks they're so important.

I had someone ask me to install some damned thing that would make my phone beep every time they emailed me.

Of course I refused because I told them I kept my phone next to my bed and didn't want to have them wake me up in the middle of the night over some form of bullshit.

It is is so imperative that I have to have my sleep interrupted over it then simply call me.That way if I decide you called me in the middle of the night for something stupid then you have to face my wrath.

What was funny is that this person said that they wanted to be able to get through to me without having to anger me. Seems the last time they called me in the middle of the night was to tell me they got some kind of coupon in the mail they didn't want and that I could have it. 

Of COURSE I blew up on them.

This is a result of what I call the 'emergency policy'.

You keep a line of supply, communications, whatever open for emergency use only and it doesn't take long before everything becomes an emergency.

What was once a line for evacuation, fire calls and the like eventually fields calls from Billy-Joe-Bob wanting to get through to Bubba to let him know that his third cousin twice removed, Betty Lou Thelma Liz's cat just has seven kittens.

The truth is that I suppose I would have installed the app if I thought the person would use it for serious emergency only after hours. However they are very likely to wake me up needlessly with it.

If they want me they can call like everyone else.






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I am astonished. The fastest computer I own now is

my cell phone! 

It is amazing and the more I play with it the more useful it becomes. 

I am really sort of a technological Luddite. I really am.

While I am not impressed with technology for the sake of technology, I am impressed when something useful appears.

I have not been paying attention to smart phones until very recently and after I got mine I got curious. It is amazing me.

I really should at least open my eyes and look around a little more.


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I just got the bill for my Thanksgiving trip to Boston

and was surprised it was what it was. It was a lot cheaper than I thought it would be.

My guess is that a lot of it was that the price of gasoline was low as that is generally a big part of things. At 25 miles per gallon it's 25 gallons to go 625 miles. Do that twice and you have fifty gallons of gasoline and that does not count any running around when you get there.

I am trying to recall how much I was paying for gasoline along the way. I do not recall the exact amount but I certainly remember commenting to myself that I had not seem it so low in quite a while.

Gas here in PA just went up 8 cents a gallon which means another buck-sixty a tank for me to cough up at the pump. The chuckleheads in Harrisburg are just asking for the smuggling business to get started. First cigarettes went up a buck a pack and now gasoline is up another 8 cents.

When you add the 8 cents to the rest of the gasoline tax then you find that PA has the highest gasoline tax in the nation. I can get gasoline for over forty cents a gallon cheaper in Ohio, a hop, step and a jump away.

Depending on how one looks at things it can very well be cheaper to take an occasional drive to Ohio and fill up three or four drums.

Incidentally that's based on the Joe's Gas Station prices. I would imagine if you want to you can probably cut a deal with a wholesaler and save more yet. A guy could probably save about fifty bucks a hundred gallons if he wanted to.

Still, the real source of anger over this is that the money is being collected under the guise of being earmarked for road improvement. What a load of crap! 

The PA turnpike is the highest toll road in the country in the state with the highest gas tax and the worst roads in the nation.

Earmarked for road improvement my eye!

That money is going to go straight into the general fund and be given away in the form of social programs.

The social programs should consist of shovels so as to make those on the gravy train go out and earn a living and make the roads in PA better.

At least we would be getting something for our money







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Wow! I have gotten behind!

Oh yeah. I know what happened. I scheduled something too early and simply didn't get back to things.

My sleep schedule has been really screwed up recently. I have been told it happens when a long-term smoker quits.

I still and will for an awful long time hold a serious grudge at those that lied to me about how easy it was going to be to quit smoking. I truly wish I could get away with slapping them up alongside the head with a pipe wrench.

For what it is worth I jumped on someone's case over that one yesterday and got the usual and expected wide-eyed innocence spiel. "Well...I...I...I...I was trying to help you out." followed by sniffle, sniffle.

If you don't know what is going on, then DON'T HELP.

Re channel your motherly instinct somewhere else. Work as a candy striper in a maternity ward or something but DON'T HELP someone unless you know what is going on.

With few exceptions I have gotten no help from anyone but long-term smokers that have stopped.

Actually the worst ones I have dealt with are those that supposedly quit but never really started. "I quit when I graduated from high school."

You asshole! You never even started! STFU!

MUCH to the credit of my primary care doctor (the one I can't have anymore, thank you Mister President) she didn't lie to me.

Actually she didn't say much of anything which is a whole lot better than most people involved. She simply told me I ought to stop and left it at that. I can live with that. It is the truth.

Veritas.

I am now facing the prospect of a new doctor and I am upset because I had just gotten the old one broken in.

This is going to be interesting because I have to have a serious sit down and make a few things clear to him or her.

First rule: Straight unvarnished truth. No bullshit.





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I was watching a police show the other night

about an officer that has solved a number of murder cases.

I don’t watch a whole lot of police shows but this one was on in the background and I happened to notice something. The cop was talking about his patrolman days and how he had numerous contacts with what he referred to as ‘the invisible people’. It caught my attention for some reason and I saw that the ‘invisible person’ the cop was referring to reminded me of someone. It reminded me of myself years ago.

He appeared to be in his early thirties and fairly clean looking. While I know TV seldom portrays people the way they really are, I do remember that even though I lived for years without running water or electricity I always managed to keep myself fairly clean and presentable. While it did take work, it made life a lot nicer.

I did live in a tipi for fourteen months and had little contact with the law enforcement community except for one visit that got paid me over a pair of young women that had been reported missing. I knew where they were and why they were missing. One of them was being stalked by a local guy.

I told the officer I knew they were both OK and he said he had to physically see them to confirm that they were in fact OK. I took the officer’s card and wrote his work schedule for the next couple of days on the back of it. An hour later I ‘just happened to find’ the women in question and told them what was going on. This just may have had something to do with the fact that they were camped 800 yards away and were semi-regular visitors. Shortly after that the officer and the two met and the officer was able to close out his report and the girls were able to stay off the grid so to speak. It was a win/win.

A years or so later I was living in Alaska, sort of in town but off in the lines and shadows of it. At first I’d jungle up in an old WW2 bunker. Later I lived in campers or camper/trailers. I moved as often as I had to in order to stay out of the limelight.

At that point there were actually two Piccolos. One that was highly visible and seen almost daily downtown in the bars, restaurants, stores. Post office, etc. The other Piccolo was an invisible type of home life as I would go home to wherever I was hanging my hat (or parking my trailer) at the time. 

Much to the credit and observance of the local police department they actually did know where I was parked or hidden away and much to their credit they turned a blind eye. They seemed to respect my invisibility to the rest of the town and didn’t try and chase me all over hell for the most part. If someone complained they would see me downtown and have a quiet word with me and tell me to move. Occasionally they would suggest a place. They were kind to me and a lot of other invisibles and were generally quite helpful.

In return I was helpful to them to a certain extent.

I was not a regular informant or a stoolie that told them everything I knew. I freely told a couple of officers that outright. They actually understood that and respected it. For example, if it involved drugs, whores, gambling or something I regarded as victimless then I knew nothing. In order for me to give anything away there had to be a real victim. What is worth mentioning here is I seldom if ever had anything to do with these vices although I was considered somewhat of a hard drinker. I suppose by stateside standards I was. By local standards I was a lightweight.

If there was a crime that was committed in the interest of justice I would simply tell the officer that the crime had been committed in the interest of justice.

An example of this would be the time someone had the holy daylights beat out of him and was found face down in an alley somewhere. While I was not considered a suspect by any means, one of the officers I was friendly with figured I might know something. He saw me headed back to where my trailer was parked and offered me a ride which I gratefully accepted.

When he asked me about the incident I said (truthfully) that I didn’t know who did it but told him justice had been served. It raised his eyebrows and I explained that the victim had been robbing some of us ‘invisibles’ and that he had gotten his comeuppance. He nodded.

Then he asked me if I could find out and I told him that I most certainly would not because it was a case of fair and honest street justice and justice had been served.

“Yeah,” he said, thoughtfully. “I see your point. You ‘resident non-locals’ are almost forced to keep things like that among yourselves.”

Anyone with a street cop background doesn’t have to have it explained. Invisible people tend to keep things to themselves because of their place in the social structure. They generally have very little money and therefore carry no clout with the powers that be. The only residence that many of us had was simply General Delivery at the local post office…if that.

While I did own a vehicle, a rusty old falling apart pickup, the title listed my address as ‘Stay Free Mini Pad, General Delivery’. The Stay Free Mini Pad was the nickname of my camper/trailer because I paid no rent and the trailer was so damned small.

Most policemen will protest that the homeless and invisible community have the same rights as anyone else and have a right to report crimes against them. They are right. However, there is a perception among the invisible people that they don’t count as their existence in many cases is illegal. It is a perception and a perception like that is not easily overcome.  

The truth of the matter is the invisible people were really vulnerable. We had no real clout, no fixed address and not much of anything, really. We lived in the shadows and although the laws were pretty much unenforceable the lifestyle was, in fact, illegal. We were by definition vagrants. I was tolerated and even somewhat respected because I always seemed to have some sort of employment. I paid my own way and never used the system for anything. Still, it was pretty close to the edge from a legal standpoint. I had no fixed address. I was technically a vagrant.

Incidentally while I was living there two new cops started raising hell with the invisibles. Once after Officer Gordie Bartel was killed in the line of duty by a nutcase there was somewhat of a crackdown that was short-lived. Two things nipped it early on. One thing was the quiet, unseen outpouring of sympathy from the invisibles along with the community. The other is that a couple officers in the department quietly spoke out and quashed it.

I was living in a converted unused surplus dumpster when Officer Gordie got killed. He was one hell of a good cop and had a wonderful rapport with the invisible people.

The other time the invisibles had any real problems was when some newish cop thought it would be a good idea to enforce vagrancy laws strictly. That lasted about two days until the rest of the force had a quiet word with him in the locker room.

Apparently he thought that busting vagrants was a way to get ahead. Some of the city fathers were always after the police to get after the vagrants and the police OK’d them to death but ignored the requests. Most likely because the other city fathers knew that the invisibles did in fact serve a purpose. Many of these invisibles manned the fish canneries in season. They did the jobs the locals didn’t want to.

Actually as far as things went I was pretty close to the top of pile as ‘resident non-locals’ went. I always seemed to have something a constructive to do. It is interesting to note that an officer that eventually became Chief once told me that I was ‘a left-handed asset to the community’.

Now it should be carefully noted that there were times I actually did help out the law enforcement community. If there was an outright victim I would quietly let them know what was going on. If the victim was a member of the invisible community I aggressively let them know what was going on.

 I suppose if the mayor’s house had been burglarized I’d pass on anything I heard but would really make little or no effort to get to the bottom of things. However, if a member of the invisible community became victimized I’d work overtime to get to the bottom of things and make damned sure the police knew. They as often as not got advice on how to handle it to see to it that they could secure a solid conviction.

Incidentally if anyone had done anything wrong to the guy that ran the city dump I would have worked triple overtime to get to the bottom of THAT one. He was by far the most useful person in town.

You have to remember that the invisible community did not want to be brought into the light. Some of these people were alcoholic, addicts or (like myself) just plain dropouts. They would tolerate just about any injustice and either accept it or extract their own revenge, depending on their nature. The one thing they wanted to avoid at all costs was public exposure. It was a world the police could not really crack and really didn’t bother to as these people for the most part caused no real trouble. If there was any trouble with them it was generally because they had been victimized.

Incidentally I was pretty much left alone by those forces that victimized the invisible people for a number of reasons. First, although it was generally conceded I was not a snitch as such, it was common knowledge I had a pretty good rapport with a number of police officers. Most people were aware that I would report any crime against me even if it was informally. I should clarify this. The Department as such didn’t do me any good at all. My rapport was with a number of officers as individuals.

Second, most of the bar owners liked me. I had worked for most of them and they considered me a friend and a business asset.

Third, a number of the drug dealers and gamblers knew I would not rat them out. They also knew that if someone was looking for a poker game I’d send them their way. The same held true for cocaine and weed. If anyone I trusted was looking I’d send them their way discreetly. That being said, I refused to tell anyone where they could find heroin. I didn’t know and made it clear I didn’t want to know. I have always considered heroin to be some bad juju and wanted to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.

While I certainly was not bullet proof I was protected to a certain extent.

I later changed lifestyles a bit and eventually bought and moved into a sailboat. Now living on board a sailboat in the small boat harbor was illegal. The city fathers used to raise hell about it all the time.

You have to remember that the unwritten rule of the small boat harbor was that it was off limits to the police department unless they got the OK from the harbormaster. The harbor officers were all sworn policemen.

When I tied my boat up in Dog Bay the harbormaster sent one of the officers to personally look me up for a little sit down. The officer he sent was surprisingly enough, a small statured woman. She sat me down and carefully went over the laws, rules and regulations and made it a point to carefully explain to me that liveaboards were strictly prohibited.

Now I had known the harbormaster and the female officer for years. We all got along well. There was a liveaboard community in Dog Bay basin and had been one since the beginning of time. I noticed that I was given a berth there but off to one side where I had a pretty good field of view.

I also noticed that she insisted on helping me move my boat. As she was helping me she commented that my boat sure looked like it needed a lot of work and she knew I was the man for the job. She said guys like me worked hard and an occasionally needed nap which she assured me was legal. I got the drift.

She also told me that the harbor police didn’t have enough people to routinely patrol the whole bay and suggested that if I saw anything out of the ordinary that the harbor patrol monitored VHF channel 68 24/7. She also said that there had been a discussion between the harbormaster and the KPD and I had come highly recommended.

In short I was another invisible set of eyes to them. None of the people on that dock were liveaboards. We were simple boat owners that just ‘happened to work on our boats at odd hours’.

For the next year that I stayed on board ‘working on my boat’ I had a very interesting rapport with the harbor patrol. I can recall three times I called them to ‘ask them a question’. Twice I recall the responding officer ‘just happened’ to catch someone either stealing or vandalizing a boat when they came over to answer my question personally. (Remember, there was a real victim involved. This wasn’t just some sort of arbitrary bullshit.)

All this time I was living in the lines and shadows of the system and was to some extent some sort of a non-entity. I was a part of an invisible group.

It was a wonderful win/win situation based simply on the discretion of the law enforcement community. I got a place to stay and they got a free extra set of eyes.

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Happy New Year.

For the first time in years I was up to see the New Year in. I was fixing something. I got it fixed.

Right now I am posting this on a civvie computer, a Dell and after so many years of GoBooks and Toughbooks this Dell seems pretty flimsy and almost has a dainty feel to it. I dare not drink coffee near it.

Yesterday I made a pretty good pot of chili which is a dish that has no cut and dried recipe. My chili actually goes back to its roots. It started as a mish mash created by saddle tramps and was cooked on a fire.

These days there is so much ballyhoo over the true Holy Grail recipe that the dish is more of a joke than anything else. Some people insist on using grass fed Black Angus hamburger as a base and ruin the whole wretched mess. Chili started off with using an old steer for meat as the more tender cows were to be sold off to the wealthier people back east.

Yesterday I cancelled my old phone and ISP and started with a new one. That was a pretty good deal if the ISP works well. Time will tell.

While turning in my old router and crap I had a meeting with a helpful cop. I sort of entertained him by playing the hayseed hillbilly. The cop did me a favor by letting me know where I could find a parking spot. 





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