One of the things people don't realize is that you can only get into

so much trouble.

Back when Tokie was alive the little kitty and I raised some holy hell. We could have been thrown in jail for our antics...or at least I could have.

Still, it wasn't likely that I would get any serious jail time for our doings. Generally I would be looking at a fine of some sort and maybe a few days in the county stir. They were not likely to give a mischief maker and real time unless I crossed a serious line and injured someone or tore up some serious property.

One of the things I learned early is that there generally is a limit of what the system can do to a person. I learned that even as a school kid. Once I learned what the general scenario was I was pretty much free to do what I saw fit as I have a halfway decent nature.

Even on the ride home I look at the odds and the scenario if I am caught. The speed limit on the PA turnpike is 70, they police don't stop a person driving 77 or under and seldom stop anyone until they go past 80.

My pickup doesn't like to run 80 so while I suppose I could get stopped the odds are slim and even if I do and the officer does ticket me for speeding it's a fairly small fine and the loss of a couple of points. I have no points against me now so I suppose I can afford one ticket.

Anyway, even if I do get stopped and ticketed it's not like I'm going to go to jail or be shot at dawn or hanged for it.

To no small or great extent I generally do what I want although I suppose that I do control myself. I can think of one guy I would like to settle a score with but if I am patient he will likely do something stupid and I can simply stand back and be entertained. He has pissed off a few other people, too and one of them mentioned the desire to cut down his pride and joy tree.

While I certainly won't help him do it I will most certainly loan him my chain saw if he decides to. I do have a couple of copper nails if he wants them. That would do the trick a lot more quietly. Maybe I'll suggest that.

Come to think of it, He's also pissed off a number of the local kids and Halloween is just around the corner...

Back on track, There really is a limit as to how much trouble can be dished out by the system. Of course you can be executed but they can't eat you. Of course, execution is reserved for capital crimes.

But we are not talking about hatchet murder here. We're talking of things of a lesser scale.

A punishment is supposed to be severe enough to deter someone from doing or not doing something.

The punishment for robbing a bank isn't a $50 fine or every bank in the country would have been robbed countless times. The robbers would simply peel a fifty off the top and tell the bank teller to give it to the judge and be off scot free.

Still, sometimes the system screws up. I always get a kick out of someone that gets suspended for hooking school. It makes no sense. 

One has to look long and hard at the punishment the system can deal out before one decides on a course of action. More than once I have looked at what doing something would cost me and decided it was worth the price and did it. Actually I don't ever remember getting caught.....

One of the thing I learned in the army is that they can't draft me.

Let'd leave it at that.








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An open apology to my niece and nephew.

I did what I could but I guess I failed.

I attended Reunion 50 and quite frankly I was appalled and felt the bile rising in my throat. I kept getting angrier and angrier with some of the things I heard.

Some had done well and I respect that and in the process of getting wealthy they created jobs for others and put food on tables and actually created wealth. If these people want to sit around at a Florida pool drinking 20 year old scotch surrounded by babes in bikinis and heels that's their business. They damned well earned it.

My beef was with those that went into government and got their unions to beat the voters into over sized paychecks, early retirement AND unsustainable pensions. The teachers seemed to be the biggest culprits of this.

Guess who's going to be paying for that crap when I'm dead and gone? Sucks to be you.

Our generation could have done a lot but we didn't. We could have fixed social security. We could have done a lot. Our parents plundered social security to be able to send us to Vietnam and get chewed up. That was the big hit. Still, we could have found a way to fix it. We didn't.

Instead we kicked the can down the road and there will probably be nothing there for you when it's your turn to retire.

We COULD have worked with the various colleges and figured a way to make college affordable. Instead we fattened up the teachers and staff and offered the student loan program designed to keep a college bound person in debt up to his ears for twenty years after they graduated.


Of course while you guys are slaving away to pay off college debt well into your fifties a bunch of overpaid academics are going to be sitting pretty next to a swimming pool in Florida checking out the dental floss the babes are wearing...on your nickel.

We have created a series of humongous social programs we really couldn't afford to pay for, all of which encourage failure and discourage success.  Instead we borrowed money and more money and more money yet to pay for them. Then we kicked that can down the road and it looks like you and your kids are going to foot the bill. 

Debt is slavery and it looks like you younger people are going to be forced to slave away to pay the debts incurred by you lazy, inconsiderate parents that set themselves up with early retirements, unsustainable pensions and fat paychecks unlike the previous generations.

People used to work for the government and take less money in exchange for a modest pension they could draw when they became too old to work anymore. The pensions were just enough so they could live with a little dignity in their old age.

I know of one private union that offered a 20 years and out pension but they have had to put a lot of stipulations on it when they found out that it wasn't going to work. Still, that's private and it doesn't involve you. The fact is that it proves that early retirements are unsustainable.

Of course this means you, the younger generation, are going to wind up paying our bills.


It gets worse.

We've damaged the Bill of Rights.

I won't bore you with what is happening to the Second Amendment. You can see that daily as the government tries to force more and more gun control down out throats. It's not about guns, it's about government power. Much of it is done under the false flag of safety.

What I do see is the First Amendment being eroded by people trying to outlaw so-called hate speech. Hate speech being defined as anything that one side or the other disagrees with. I see that one being eroded in the name of political correctness. The days where anyone can speak out are slowly being dwindled through the passage of time. 

I've also seen bits and pieces of the other amendments being chipped away at from time to time and of course the results are being passed on to you. It's not the same Bill of rights I enjoyed.

I had hoped to pass the Bill of Rights on to you intact but I guess that isn't going to happen.

The real thing that irks me is that as a nation we're headed in the direction of socialism. Big government isn't the solution. It's the problem. I see trouble on the horizon and I am going to be too damned old to do anything about it.

I see trouble coming and for the past few decades I have prayed that if there was trouble coming that it would come in my time rather than yours. I'm the one with no kids and less to lose.

I hate leaving behind this mess and even though I have tried to keep things right it is not to be. I blame my generation for it because they simply took advantage of and abused a wonderful way of life.

You young people have full plates to deal with in your lifetimes and I do not envy  you, even a little bit.

We're rapidly turning the country into a Third World $hit hole and you're going to have to deal with it. You are being handed a pile of $hit thanks to the laziness, selfishness, inconsideration and cowardice of my generation.

Accept my apologies and please have the kindness to realize I was one of the people that tried to pass the world on to you as intact as I found it as a kid. 

(signed)

Your pissed off and disgusted off Uncle.







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I just upgraded to Windows 10

all by myself.

I heard that Windows 7 was going to reach the end of its life so I looked into upgrading and went on line and asked around. I decided to do it myself with fear and trepidation.

I got it done much to my surprise on both computers.

On the newer one it's just as fast as Windows 7 was but on the older one it lags down a bit. I think I can fix that with a couple of memory sticks. It doesn't have enough RAM so I'll fix that.

Years ago I upgraded the RAM in a couple of Itronix Gobooks successfully and the Youtube videos confirm it's a quick fix.

Not bad!  



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One of the biggest insults I ever gave

was when I was an Ordinary Seaman on a tug at the beginning of my career.

One of my duties was to cook the evening meal.

The captain was a cheapskate that thought that if he returned part of the grub allowance they were going to give him a medal or something. Of course he really didn't have much of a chest to pin it on. He personally did the shopping and returned with basically garbage. 

Now I am a pretty fair cook but skill can only take a person only so far. The crew knew I was doing the best I could with what I had and respected it. They were angry at the skipper.

A few days into the trip I managed to get ashore for a short time and I headed straight to a fruit stand and bought a big bag of limes. Every meal I would cut one up and put a slice on everyone's plate.

The first time I did that the chief engineer smirked and at the lime and ate it. The skipper was out of earshot at the time and the mate laughed outright and ate the proffered fruit, as did my relief.

The assistant engineer looked at it and gave me a curious look which turned into a smirk and he ate the piece of lime.

The skipper came down after the mate relieved him, looked at the lime and tossed it out and quietly ate the meal. It was obvious that the purpose of the lime went over his head.

I continued this for a couple of days and I later found out that what I had been doing at meals had gone through the fleet like a dose of salts. Everyone that heard about it howled. Finally I guess one of the other skippers japed him about it and he stormed down and demanded to know what the lime business was all about.

"The Royal Navy issues limes to prevent scurvy," I replied. "With you being so damned cheap with the grub I figured we all needed it!"

He turned purple and when he started in on me the rest of the crew turned on him.It got rather ugly and the skipper threatened to fire me. I stood my ground and pointed out that almost every single person assigned to him had requested reassignment and if he didn't smarten up I was going to join them. The entire crew backed me up. 

"So what?" he snapped.

"Did it ever occur to you that it's a lot easier to replace one skipper than it is to replace entire crews? It won't be long before the office figures that out. Besides, I am the only one that has stayed with you for two tours. They're going to sure ask a lot of questions when you fire the only person that has lasted longer than a single tour with you!"

His jaw fell and the next time we were in port he handed the chief engineer the credit card and sent him shopping. We ate pretty good after that.

It wasn't long after that I got into another program got off the tug and got promoted but that's another story.



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Schools as we know them are growing obsolete.

I am an old man and wanted to find a few things out about the Panama Canal. I went straight to the laptop and Googled around and inside of a few minutes I found out what I wanted to know.

Bingo! The information was there and I had it in a couple of minutes.

It occurred to me that had I not had the laptop I would have spend days searching through the library and I likely would not have gotten half of the information I got on line.

It's a new world out there and I admit I am late in discovering it.

As I sit here as an old man looking back on twelve long years spent in a thing called school I figure that the only thing I really needed from it was to learn to read and write. Once I grasped that I could have self-taught myself everything I needed to know.

Actually most of what I need to know did come from self teaching but I somewhat digress.

Fact remains that if you take a reasonably intelligent kid, teach him to read, write and learn how to add, subtract, multiply and divide and his necessary education is complete with one exception. You teach the kid how to log on to a computer and turn him or her loose.

A while ago I saw a kid that never finished high school go on line and figure out what dimension of lumber he needed to use for joisting in his home remodel. If I recall he told me that the table said that he could safely use 2x8s and that in the interest of overkill he has opted to use 2x10s which made sense to me. It will make his floor a bit stiffer and that's a good thing.

Still, even though this is a simple example, the young man became his own engineer which probably would have taken him hours to figure out in an old fashioned library.

I can actually see a young person with a computer getting into medicine as an MD with a minimum of classroom time. I will admit that there is a lot of hands on stuff one needs to know to practice medicine but the necessary classroom time could be dropped to an awful lot less than it is now. One could enter the hands on schooling easily with the basic academic stuff already under his belt.

Schools as we know them are getting to be pretty obsolete. A kid really doesn't need a full twelve years of boring classroom bull$hit under his belt to be able to embark on a career. It is a case of not having to have the answers as opposed to knowing where to find them in short order.

Over the years I have taken a couple of on-line courses of varying types. My ham radio license course was a case of simply learning how to pass a reasonably simple test. Actually the course was more of a 'cheat sheet' that simply gave me the answers and grilled me until I could easily pass the tests. After I was licensed it was my responsibility to behave myself on the air and obey the FCC rules and regulations.

On the other hand I took a pretty good computer course that lead me to getting an upgrade on my document. It wasn't a cheat sheet but an actual learning experience that actually taught me what I needed to know to pass a test administered by the Coast Guard.

I entered that test not knowing what the questions were going to be and had the knowledge under my belt to answer the questions about the rules and regulations and to be able to figure out the answers to the hands on part. I did well but had I not studied I'm sure I would have failed. In short I actually learned something.

I admit I do have a real craw in my throat as far as school teachers go. Most of them are useless and even back in my day most of the teachers I had were useless. There is a liberal classmate I had that I agree with when he describes the education we got in high school as a travesty. It really was. We graduated and had the ability to do nothing except go on to college where we would be given more of a dubious education my leftists with an agenda.

I sometimes think the only one that got out of school able to do anything was the guy that (intentionally) got kicked out of school and got shipped off to the local Vo-Tech which was then looked down upon. 

I didn't like the kid much back in the day but he sure fooled me. A few years back I heard he had a body and fender shop near my nephews so I wandered in with a curious attitude. I wanted to see how the kid that got kicked out was doing. I suppose it was a small bit of arrogance on my part.

The arrogance left as soon as I parked in the driveway and when I wandered in I was surprised to find a fairly state of the art small business run by a highly skilled tradesman that knew what he was doing. My attitude changed instantly and now he's a pretty good well respected friend of mine. He damned well knew what he was doing when he got booted out of school. At the Vo-tech he settled down and learned a solid trade and actually opened the business three years after graduation!

While many of his former classmates were still in college he was out in the real world standing up at the plate and duking it out in the business world and battling with the car insurance companies that were (and probably still are) constantly trying to screw him. There's a lot to be said for the education he received at the Vo-Tech.

The educational system needs a lot of change and I do believe the first step is to rid itself of a lot of piss poor educators out there that are only interested in pay raises, pensions and the like and bringing a lot of it down to flat basics. This probably means most of them.

Ya gotta love the military. They take the kids, many of which can barely read or write that have spent twelve years wasting away learning little or nothing and they teach those same semi-literate kids an entry level trade in about three months. Actually they take six months or so and turn the kid into a soldier, sailor, airman or marine in about three months and additionally give him a trade in another three.

It should be carefully noted that their teachers for the most part entered the service with a high school education and in some cases a GED. Yet they manage to teach them more in three months than many of them learned in twelve years. Ain't no teaching degree required in the service to run a classroom. These are experienced NCOs that the service simply tells then that they are now teachers and are assigned to teach their area of expertise. It's incredible how well the system works.

Yet meanwhile back at Suburbia High, the teachers there are telling everyone how special they are because they teach as they threaten to go out on strike even though they graduate students that can barely read and write if they are lucky.

Of course at Fort Sill the NCOs there are taking the piss poor product of out high schools and are teaching these youngsters to become artillery surveyors which includes geometry, spherical trig and the basics of celestial navigation. Other young people are in the Fire Direction Control section learning the incredible pile of math required to score a first round hit on an enemy target.

Others that are not as mathematically talented learn the mechanical skills of running a howitzer and taking the required information given to them in order to score a first round hit. That covers a lot more ground than most people think. It includes air density, the rate of twist of the cannon and even the number of previous rounds fired from the specific cannon because of tube wear. 

The math required to fire accurately would floor most people. Yet the services can teach a youngster that in a pretty short time. I do know that back in my day trainees were required to do most of this in longhand. Please to refresh your memory that I said earlier that the teachers in service schools are for the most part simple HS grads.

Still, all in all a person that can read, write and basically cipher can go a long way without sitting in a classroom if said person is willing to apply themselves in front of a computer or otherwise self study or learn on the job.

The educational system as we know it is carrying an awful lot of junk with it. Most of it ought to be scrapped and replaced.

They ought to take a youngster and teach him the basics in grades one through six or maybe eight and after that give the kid the option of independent study with periodic reviews.

If it becomes clear that the person is incapable if independent study it's back to the Old School classroom and the usual sad, sorry crap of trying to instill an education into him or her.

Of course with that as a motivator it's a fairly safe bet that the number of kids in the classroom is going to be pretty small except for a number of youngsters that will probably are too lazy or unmotivated to be able to self-study.

Also the shops, wood and metal should be open in order to teach those interested in the trades and should be open to those that just want to drop in to learn something specific or just even tinker with something. 

When I keep saying that schools ought to teach people to do things there should also be courses that teach real life skills. Some of this could be on line but another part of it should be hands on.

There is no reason a kid should leave high school without being able to cook a meal, change a tire, balance a checkbook or keep track of a credit card's expenses and be taught to responsibly use credit. These are practical life skills and should be taught.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

The quote above is from Robert A. Heinlein and says an awful lot. Incidentally I just programmed this computer. I installed Windows 10 into it. Pretty neat, huh?

Of course schools don't teach a lot of this these days. I suppose there really isn't a need to teach a kid how to invade Estemenia but the point is that they should be capable individuals instead of the ignoramuses they have produced for so long. Even in my day they did a poor job of teaching a whole lot.

Even Driver's Ed is weak. They don't even teach a student how to change a tire and driving a manual transmission is out of the question. It was like that in my day and likely hasn't changed in the past fifty years.  

As for so-called 'guidance counselors'? Another joke. About once or twice a year they used to call me in and give me a short lecture about how I should try a little harder to get better grades so I could get into college.

THAT was a waste of time. She was simply trying to steer me to college. No ands, ifs or buts. Straight to college.

What they SHOULD be doing is taking a look at the person's talents and interests and helping them plot or at least consider a sensible course. I will admit here that the parents get in the way with their 'My kid's going to COLLEGE' attitude. Still, that is what guidance counselors should be doing.

Incidentally even back then I never mentioned my dad was teaching me celestial navigation at the kitchen table to my guidance counselor. I was afraid even then that she'd say something to dad and that would put the kibosh on things. Teachers HATE competition.

One thing nobody in education should be doing is getting involved in a student's sexuality. Any educator that even hints at suggesting that a kid transgenders should be take in out and branded with a big 'P' on their forehead for pervert. Let nature run its course and let the kid figure it out on their own. When I found myself checking out the rack of a precocious classmate I knew which direction I was headed. Nature ran its own course. It'll generally run its own course for everyone else, too if you let it.

Granted, many career choices need various degrees. Many do not. Schools should recognize that instead of steering kids straight to college. 

Still, I feel the entire educational system needs a serious overhaul and the teacher's unions should be told to either be told to start producing competent people or simply be locked out permanently.

We used to have the best educational system in the world. We have sent people to the moon and back and there's no reason we can't be number one again.

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Watching the mom down the street makes me smile.

She and her husband are raising a couple of boys and the mother is really unusual and a joy to watch. The husband is no slouch, either. Still, there are a lot of guys like her. It is the wife that is the rare one.

A few years back I watched her show her kids how it is done when she rode a skateboard down the hill and took it right into her driveway with the grace and skill of a ballerina.

Over the Fourth the boys had managed to scare up some pretty good fireworks. Instead of the usual woman's freak out and panic, she simply handed one of the boys a long reach butane lighter and gave them a little coaching.

"Jump back when the fuse starts sizzling!" she told them.

She also goes along with them hiking fishing, canoeing and camping. They are an outdoor family.

I like her. She's a good woman and a good mother. The planet needs a lot more like her.

Her sons are being raised well and will have an awful lot of fond memories as they grow older.



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Hollywood's idea of Indians

An awful lot of the reputation Native Americans have is pretty much a product of Hollywood.

There was once an ad showing an Indian finding a pile of litter in the woods and shedding a tear. Of course, the actor portraying the Indian was actually an Italian which is yet another example of Hollywood type foolishness.

Actually a trip through any Indian reservation will expose numerous piles of litter and junk laying around. The reality of the plains tribes being nomadic was simply because they had polluted their camp sites and it was time to move to pollute somewhere else.

Of course, the camp site could be reused after a while because animal life, the winds, snows and rains would cleanse it by consuming all of the organic stuff left behind. Human waste, animal carcasses and the like breaks down fairly quickly and it became habitable again. I suppose this could have gone along indefinitely.

Still, the Hollywood Indian became somewhat of a symbol of stealth and cunning. He was supposedly able to go through the woods silently and lived in total harmony with nature.

Truth is he was pretty much like everyone else. He occasionally tripped and fell over a vine or stubbed his toe in the darkness. There was nothing magical about Native Americans back in the day.

I always liked the way Mad Magazine's artist Don Martin portrayed them. He didn't insult them as a people, he poked fun at the way Hollywood portrayed them.

In one of his cartoons a white settler was being chased and every running sound he made was written into the cartoon picture. The settler was like a bull in a china shop as he crashed through the boonies.

Of course, the Indian chasing him didn't make a single sound.

In another cartoon there was a lone Indian on a cliff top looking down at a passing wagon train. In the next panel there were a half dozen. The third panel had hundreds and the fourth panel had Indians falling off the cliff face with someone shouting "Hey! Quit pushing back there!"

Hollywood has created an awful lot on misnomers about Indians and they persist to this day.

Sorry, our Native Americans are pretty much just like everybody else.

I suppose the Indians are not alone. Hollywood has always portrayed the US Calvary as always coming to the rescue just in the nick of time.

In fact I teased a couple of Marines by telling them if they were in danger of being overrun that they should call the nearest US Cavalry unit no matter how far away they are because never in the motion picture industry has the United States Calvary been too late!

Of course, the Marines booed and threw ice and popcorn at me but I knew they would before I opened my mouth to begin with.




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I picked up a hitch hiker the other day

which was interesting. He was an older guy almost my age that hadn't hitch hiked in a over 30 years and told me he won't try that again when he gets back to Denver.

I picked him up in New Jersey getting gas and hauled him to close to the PA/OH border and dropped him off at a truck stop.

He was outside a diner I stopped at on the way home from NYC, a drive that I truly loathe. This meant I got a chance to check him out for signs of drug/alcohol influence and to make sure he didn't smell bad. He seemed OK so I told him to hop in.

He didn't have much, he was somewhat homeless and had a job of sorts at t homeless shelter that fed and sheltered him and gave him a couple of bucks to buy basic incidentals with.

What interested me about this guy is why he was traveling. He was scratching a couple of items off of his bucket list. I can see that and I'd probably do the same thing if I wanted to see those two places.

He wanted to see the Statue of Liberty and Yankee Stadium before he died. When I met him he had. He had just spent a couple of weeks in NYC sleeping on the streets and/or wherever.

He managed to see the Statue of Liberty and had found a building where he could look into Yankee Stadium and that was good enough for him. He was headed back to Denver.

I was annoyed. I hate the ride home from NYC and was in 'mission mode' The only thing I was interested in was getting home. 

On the other hand, he was enjoying the ride and in the process it made me feel rather dumb. I wasn't interested in smelling the flowers like I generally am when I travel.

He brought me out of a slump and after a while I started to relax a bit and enjoy the ride a little more.

He also reminded me I have a halfway decent place to live and a good vehicle.

Sometimes you have to meet someone like that to get your perspective back and I'm glad I helped him out.



On the other hand maybe the guy was a hatchet murderer that gave me a break. Who knows?

I took a chance and it cost me nothing. In fact I met an interesting person as a result.





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One of the things that I have done as a ham radio operator

is pass on about a dozen messages for people after Puerto Rico got clouted by that hurricane.

It is not as easy as it sounds. 

There are a number of scammers out there that will try and take advantage of a disaster so sometimes you have to establish credibility with the message recipient and let them know you'r eon the up and up.

A sample of this might be Wally and the Beav got to the message center outside of San Juan and had them send this message: "We're OK and headed home on the next available transportation. Wally and the Beaver. Call 123-456-7890 and ask for Ward or June."

So I field the message and make the call. A woman answers.

"Hello. I am looking for either Ward or June Cleaver. I have a message for them from Wally and the Beav."

She replies that she is June Cleaver. 

"Message is, Quote. We're OK and headed home on next available transportation. Wally and the Beav. Now please let me explain I know you have questions and this will save time."

"Who are you?" asks June. 

"I am Piccolo Q Piccolo, amateur radio call sign KB#XXX. I am a ham radio operator in Pittsburgh. I got this message from another Ham in the San Juan area running a message center there and I am simply relaying it to you. I do not have direct contact with Wally and the Beav and am simply passing this message to you as directed by the San Juan station. If you want I will explain how the system works and you can look up my call sign on the internet if you want to prove that I am who I say I am. Incidentally the person that sent this message is KB1XYZ. He's a volunteer from New Mexico."

"I don't understand that," says June.

"Ok, as you know, Puerto Rico got hit hard. There is no electricity, no cell towers and no communication whatsoever. The government has allowed a group of ham radio operators and their portable gear  to be flown in to set up a series of message centers to relay information back to the States. Apparently Wally and the Beav found one of these and asked him to sent the message to you. I probably can't send a return message and frankly I won't even try unless it is a bona fide medical life or death emergency. The message centers are clogged and the volunteers are working 20-plus hours a day. I'm sorry but this is all I have for you. Incidentally there is no charge for this whatsoever. It's what ham radio guys do."

Most people at this stage are very grateful and relieved. They found out their loved ones are okay and they are pleased.

The woman I call June Cleaver was but she did ask me what I had heard about transportation off the island and I told her that rumor control has it that the aircraft bringing in relief supplies were taking people back to the States on some sort of priority basis, injured and disabled first. I also opined that they would have the airport up and running shortly. 

I also told her that if her kids landed broke she could send money via Moneygram and there was one in nearly every Walmart. She was grateful for the insight and the advice.

Of course there is always a worrywort parent or spouse that wants more information than you can supply and they immediately bombard you with about a jillion questions and get upset when you can't supply answers. Still, I can recall one women griping about eating 'cold army food' after Katrina. When I heard about that I said it was a good thing she didn't say that to me or I'd have gone off on her. Apparently she expected Uncle Sam to set up a Golden Corral for her to pork out on for free.

I tend to write off the worry worts as simply overly concerned parents. It's stressful having a loved one in a disaster area and I tend to give them a little slack.






















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The beer milkshake.

comes from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row.

One of the characters in the book, Doc, likes beer and someone told him he'd probably order himself a beer milkshake.

Of course in the book Doc drove out of town into a quiet place and ordered one. The directions he gave the fountain attendant sounded terrible.

Still, the idea stuck in my mind and I decided to experiment with making one and actually got it right the first try.

Take about a pint of Ben and Jerry's Butter Brickle and dump it into a shake can, add maybe a half pint of milk, 2/3s of a beer and fire up the mixer until it's a shade lumpy like a good shake should be.

It's actually pretty good even though it sounds terrible.


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Seagoing menus.

I always ask one of the guys that cooks most of the time what he's making.

Let's see now. Tonight's menus is 'stuff'. The other day it was 'chicken of some sort'. Before that it was 'some kind of stew beef thing'. A while ago it was "I'm making something out of the leftover burger patties after I grind them up".

Occasionally he makes something 'regular' like meat loaf and it's pretty good. 

In fact, everything he makes is good. I don't recall him making a bad meal in the several years we have worked together.

I'm a fair cook, but this guy is epic.






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Right after 9-11 there was a minor hue and cry in the maritime industry

for boats to be issued small arms.

It didn't last very long and even though I was in the middle of my competitive shooting career I spoke out against it to the guys.

For one thing there are a few of us out here with felony records which would either mean they lose their jobs are not permitted access to the arms locker.

Still, the big thing I said is that if you are issuing ANYTHING there has to be a standard of training. The usual "I been shootin' since I was a kid!" doesn't mean a whole lot. There is no standard to "I been shootin' since I was a kid" training charts. You have to have training before you get turned loose with certain tools, including firearms. No room for "Yeah, but..." here. You have to have training.

Of course, little came of it and as is to be expected, shipowners were somewhat loathe to arm their crews for liability reasons if nothing else. I can't say as I blame them. 











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I just read a poll where about 98% of straight men would not date a

transgender and I am not surprised at this whatsoever.

Of course the trans gendered women are upset about this because the straight males are not rushing to them with open arms but have they ever bothered to think?

For the most part dating is the first step towards marriage and marriage generally means children. Surprise! Trans genders can not have children, at least at this time.

One of the other reasons is that trans genders have a reputation of having a whole boatload of mental and emotional problems. Most men tend to avoid excessive drama in relationships.

Still, I think one of the biggest reasons straight man don't want to date trans genders is because during sex it is going to cross their mind that their lover used to be a guy a while back and most straight man find that a little difficult to take.

Back in the day I was friendly with a transgender in Alaska but certainly had no interest in any romance with her. Her life was one big emotional ball and while she was fun to sit next to in the bar from time to time there were numerous times she was to be avoided. 

She wasn't the only transgender I knew in Alaska, there were a couple more and none of them were what I would call potential mates for any number of reasons.








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I spent a couple of these hot days in Brooklyn, NY

and saw more young women wearing Daisy Dukes that I could shake a stick at. Daisy Dukes and a halter top seemed to be the uniform I saw the most of when I was driving through the neighborhoods.

Interesting.

I didn't bother looking for an orange 1969 Dodge Charger with a rebel flag on the roof, though. 

While you may see a lot of women in Daisy Duke shorts, I seriously doubt that you'll find the General Lee tooling around in Brooklyn.

Hell, there's a shortage of pickups here to begin with. Not too many Good Old Boys running around here.

Come to think about it, I'd like to give some of the locals a little taste of 'shine! That would fire them up!






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One of the things that surprises me is that more people don't simply just vanish

during things such as divorce proceedings or lawsuits.

Someone was talking about a celebrity's divorce that was going to result in a multi million dollar settlement and the consensus among the four of us was that we were mildly surprised to see that the celebrity simply paid the settlement.

Jeff Bezos recently divorced and his settlement looked to be about $38 BILLION according to what I just dug up on Google. 

It stuck us that it would be a whole lot cheaper to simply make someone suing a wealthy person simply vanish. When you think about it the process is fairly simple. There are many ways that have been used over the years by the mob and they seem to work rather well. After all, nobody has ever found Jimmy Hoffa.

I am not going to get into the style, technique, or method of making someone disappear here. I am simply surprised that we don't hear of more people attempting it. 

Then again, maybe more people do and get away with it. Who knows?





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Although at the time I smoked non filters when I was fishing I smoked filter tips

because they were easier to hold with a clothes pin.

It's funny when we look at the little things people do in their workplaces. 

When I was fishing the guys that smoked clipped a clothes pin to their rain gear to use as a cigarette holder because their hands wet always too wet to hold a smoke.

When someone would go inside for whatever reason he would grab the pins off of our rain gear, clip cigarettes into them and light them. Then he'd hand them out to the crew. We'd use the clothes pins as cigarette holders, grab a quick smoke and go back at it.

When we were finished we'd clip the clothes pins back into out rain gear.

It's kind of funny. I just remembered that.





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I have never figured out why people spend so much on bathrooms.

It's ridiculous.

All kinds of little foo foo decorations and useless decorations on a room designed to use a toilet and a bathtub or shower. 

A lot of the decorations and other odds and ends make it harder to keep clean.

If I had my way a bathroom would be a fiberglass module the framers put into place and build the walls around. 

It would consist of a toilet, a sink, a tub and/or shower and a floor drain. There would also be a pressure washer attached to the wall to keep the place clean. Dead simple and easy to keep tidy.

Just pressure wash the entire thing and let the water run down the floor drain. Simple.




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But we gotta do something!

I hear that an awful lot over time.

Every time there is a disaster of some sort, either natural or man made I hear people come up with a useless solution and when I point out that it won't work the defense is more often than not the usual "But we have do something!"

It is always a knee jerk reaction that a new law must be passed following any tragedy.

First thing we should do is calm down and thing before we enact legislation and ask if the legislation really would do any good at all.

Generally if there is a shooting, bombing, arson or something along these lines people want guns, explosives, accelerants or whatever either banned or regulated.

Let's think about that for a second. Timothy MacVeigh bombed the Oklahoma City federal building some years back and I heard a lot of people instantly say they ought to outlaw the possession of explosives.

Oh? What are road builders, building demolition teams and other construction types going to use? Besides, MacVeigh didn't go out to Honest Joe's Dynamite store and purchase ready made explosives, he made his own out of fertilizer and diesel fuel.

You want to outlaw those two ingredients? Plan on having to walk home, starve and freeze in the dark. The very food you eat requires those two ingredients to be able to grow and deliver a lot of the food we eat on a regular basis.

The truth is that we should really admit that there's a whole lot we can't do if someone decides to so something along those lines. 

I suppose that we can pay attention to what we hear and see but a lot of perpetrators of these crimes tand to keep to themselves.

Then again, there's the other way of dealing with it.

You look at the statistics and realize that the odds of being a victim of sorts isn't very high and just live with the risks.

Your odds of dying in an auto wreck are an awful lot higher than being the victim of a bombing or mass shooting. Even though we have had school shootings the most dangerous thing schoolkids face is going to and coming home from school.



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In this post I shall tell you about my adventures in the French Foreign. Legion

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Political office is a Catch-22

We want the best people to enter government yet politicians all seem to get abused. One would have to be out of their mind to run for office.

Yet we continue to elect these crazies time and again because who else will run?



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In theory I would support a red flag law.

In reality I don't because they open the gate to anyone to be able to SWAT someone and get their rights taken away from them.

There are already too many cases of restraining orders being handed out like water and people losing rights on the say-so of an enraged domestic partner.

In fact, may women's centers advise woman to get a restraining order in virtually all cases of divorce or separation.

Needless to say, a lot of people, mainly men, have lost their rights and property just because of the say-so of an insufferable woman.

The difference between a good law and a bad law is how it is used or abused and red flag laws have a LOT of potential for abuse.

This doesn't even take the decisions of an activist judge into account.

Incidentally there is no room whatsoever for political activism to take place in any courtroom in this country. I don't care which side you are on. Judges are there to enforce existing laws. They are not there to make law up as they go along.





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Someone tried to tell me the First Amendement doesn't permit hate speech.

It actually does. Why should it not?

Then again, one has to define hate speech and it really ought to not be defined because depending on who defines it we could ALL wind up in trouble. 

Actually the First Amendment doesn't mean there are no consequences to people speaking out. It simple means the government can't impede it in any way. This doesn't man people can't respond to what has been said.

An example of the latter is the woman that posted pictures of herself disrespecting the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Her employer fired her for that. Fair enough. Actions have consequences.

Still, the government can't punish her for it nor should they be allowed to.



One of the things people forget about free speech is that it allows anyone to speak up on anything. One thing people also tend to forget is that it lets an awful lot of true haters out themselves.











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I just saw a GREAT advertisement!

I wish I was thinking faster or I would have captured the picture.


Anyway, it was on an exit ramp of some highway and there were three sections of fairly nasty looking Jersey barrier. 

The middle section was snow white clean. It was immaculate!

The section on the left said, "Want something THIS clean?" with an arrow pointing at the clean section. It was written with a pressure washer in the filth on the barrier.

The section on the right gave his contact information.

What a great advertisement! And NOTHING was defaced or vandalized. Good for him!

Update! Found the picture.

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Inspected by

#7.

I have not seen one of those tags in a new shirt pocket for quite some time now.

Do they still do that?





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I think my retirement job is the gig that will finally make me rich.

I am considering setting up 'last chance for clean underwear' kiosks in front of every hospital emergency room in the area.

It ought to be a slam dunk success unless mothers don't tell their kids that anymore which I doubt.

I ought to be able to make a killing because when people see their loved ones hurt the impulse is to take them STRAIGHT to the hospital. They don't stop and check the person's skivvies before they head on out to the emergency room.

Picture Little Johnny. His pissed off father just told him to go out, get some exercise and go play in the rail yards. Shortly afterwards he drags himself home with his arms because  his legs were crushed by a locomotive that was backing up.

Johnny's mom sees him and after she finishes giving her husband holy hell for making him play outside she stuff the little whelp into the family car and carts him off to the hospital where she knows the kid is going to be examined.

One glance at the kiosk and mom realized she forgot to make sure Johnny is wearing clean shorts. She isn't taking any chances because she knows that the doctor will work harder to try and save him because clean skids are the badge of coming from a good family.

So Johnny's mom whips out the trusty credit card and buys the kid a clean pair of drawers for 75 bucks.

Sounds like a pretty good way to make a few bucks if you ask me. 

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I just saw on the neighborhood website

where some dippity-do gooder posted a picture of a couple of kids doing something dangerous. They were riding on the outside of a car. The poster thought the parents should know about what was going on.

Looking back at my checkered career I did a few dopey things and had anyone posted it on social media of any sort and gotten it back to my parents two things would have happened.

First I would have gotten into six different types of trouble with my parents.

Second, I would have tracked down the person that posted it and they would probably be looking at some kind of juvenile retaliatory attack. Kids back in the day didn't let this kind of thing slide. You had to do something to get them angry but when you did.....

It's one thing to post something like people beating someone up of doing something truly criminal and another to post about youthful stupidity. 


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If you hear that you are the one I wold like to have with me on a desert island

do not take it as a compliment.

I am simply taking you because I want something to eat.



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I am angry at my generation

We're retiring now left and right and I suppose I will probably join them to some extent sooner or later but I really am pretty aggravated at the way we have left the nation for the younger people we will leave behind.

Truth is the best thing we can do for them when we stop working is simply die.

I realized this at reunion 50 and it really deadened me toward an awful lot of my classmates. Truth is when i realized that we had blown it I was fortunate that I simply didn't get slime crawling drunk.

Some of the people there that had run businesses seemed to understand. Many didn't and seemed to think that it is OK to suck off the government tit.

I saw someone there that was practically bragging about her 'magic cards'. Apparently she is running up her credit cards and paying the minimum and plans to die thousands and thousands in debt. She apparently had no idea that this meant the rest of us were going to wind up paying her bills.

A couple had retired from non government unions which is fine because it's a private deal. Actually I am going to pull a small union pension when I retire.

Truth is we are leaving our younger generations a mountain of debt.

Our generation could have fixed social security but we didn't. We could have lowered the National Debt but we didn't. Instead we simply kicked the can down the street another couple of blocks and our grandchildren are going to get stuck with it and probably get bound into governmental slavery. Debt is slavery.

I do not think I am going to make it to Reunion 55 or 60. I'm too damned angry and heartsick with what we left behind.

I saw two of my teachers show up and I looked at them and quietly wandered off. I remember one as an idiot and the other as a nothing. It's sad. Neither of them contributed to my education.

I met one of my teachers about 25 years ago and he was one of the few good ones I had. He actually understood why I felt that much of my useful education came from my father at the kitchen table and understood the way I felt.

There were a handful of halfway decent alumni there but too many of them had no idea of what they were leaving their grandkids with. It reminded me of Alfred E. Newman saying, "What? Me worry?"

I left with a bad taste in my mouth.

Thank God my niece and nephew know I did what I could for them.








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I just heard a new medical term.

"Wallet Biopsy."

It is the first thing the medical community performs on a person when they present themselves for treatment.




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I am having an interesting time looking for an easy way for my

relatives to bury me at sea when I am gone.

I am trying to figure out how to find someone that will take my remains out to deep water and put me over the side.

My research is in the early stages and I wonder where it is going to take me.

I AM eligible for the Navy burial at sea program and might have to fall back on this but they have a casket requirement and I want to go Old School in a sailcloth shroud.

It's actually legal for anyone to perform the burial but I have to find a boat skipper willing to do this. Most won't because they do not understand that it is legal and others are afraid it is not on the up and up and that it's a mob disposal they are getting into.

I'm OK, it's just that you make your plans when you are OK and not when you are sitting in an old folks home out of your skull.



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Since reunion 50 I have been kinda busy digging.

working on another blog about things of my past.

I took a different route and when many of my classmates were starting careers and worrying about kids and mortgages I was busy adventuring.

I didn't even BEGIN to slow up until I was about forty and when I did it didn't take me long to get squared away. The thirty year note for my home was paid off in under a decade. Admittedly I owe a lot of this to my wife who agreed with paying off debt as a priority.

My seafaring career took off in early '90 and I was a licensed Merchant Marine Officer by early '91.

As an old man I really am quite contented that I ate dessert first so to speak.

I am going to add to the other blog from time to time. Much of it consists of earlier posts from the Hash, this blog.

Some of the leftovers are new posts also. I have never posted about my trip to Las Vegas here but it's posted on the leftovers blog, the ling of which is below.


https://hashleftovers.blogspot.com/




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Busy and you might be interested what I am doing.

I am digging through the Dec 2010 part of these postings to put them in order to pass on to family and others.



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