My Mule

10 Hours Before Implosion

2011-08-27T16:03:00.004-10:00

Demo guru studying the Implosion soon to take place, very soon. In fact it is done.

Color Infra Red Photo Taken 1986

2011-08-27T15:24:00.003-10:00

Photo taken on North Meridian street across the street from what was Shortridge High school.Deep red filter and color infra red film, before I thought digital was in the near future...Kinda lost interest in special effects, just to easy.

Dang those phoenix'ses...

2010-02-01T16:58:00.005-10:00

I have not blogged in a while so I am posting this just as a test.Flaws be it grammar, spellin', facts and if you recognize a tendency towards racing thoughts...You know its good ol' me. I am back, me being Josh often mistaken for Sir Richard Burton. (Not the actor but the many language knowing, adventure guy".) Peace and beer be wid ya JW

Sleeping behind the wheel and other tall tales

2009-11-24T17:27:00.005-10:00

I have been absent from blogger for awhile now.I spent about a year editing the blog, loosing interest because of a serial nuisance who felt compelled to comment negatively and with gusto about any post or comment.I copied and pasted long posts to bore the poor fool...I then realized I could have been copying and pasting my own posts, and so it goes. The lunatic is on the grass. I move on, shaking off the dust,throwing dog treats to the rabid few, and always with comment moderator to keep me company. Peace Trails JW

I got nuthin' Its all Roscoe...

2009-05-08T17:58:00.001-10:00

Location: Arkansas

Stood still on a highway. I saw a woman by the side of the road with a face that I knew like my own, reflected in my window. Well she walked up to my quarter light and she bent down real slow. A fearful pressure paralyzed me in my shadow. She said, "Son, what are you doing here... My fear for you has turned me in my grave." I said "Mama I come to the valley of the rich... Myself to sell." She said, "Son, this is the road to Hell. " - Chris Rea

The road with a chimpanzee and a 300-pound carnival ride operator, conversation of an intellectual nature expired 400 miles earlier. Tater shakes the TV Guide and points to Larry King who will interview Janet Reno. Freak Show's response is enthusiastically oppositional. The Man Show will host a Wet T-shirt contest. When we bivouac for the night and align the satellite dish, I'll cast the deciding vote. Prey we spy Janet Reno in a wet T-shirt contest.

Strange and amazing places like Bald Knob, Beaver, Dogpatch and Toad Suck are called home in Arkansas and thrill my traveling companions. The two-story out house at the Booger Hollow Trading Post, along Scenic 7 Byway, in Dover creates quite a splash. (Rivaled by Bell Plaine, Minnesota; Gays, Illinois; and Phelps, NY all home to the world's one and only.) At Fouke/ Texarkana, you hear the tail of the Boggy Creek Monster. My pilgrimage follows Robert Johnson, master of the blues. Written in song and legend, we make for the junction of 49 & 61 near Helena. "It is the Crossroads to Eternity." accounts Willie Coffee, Johnson's life long friend.

Night fell and time to eat. To make up for the TV show commotion, Freak Show wanted to treat us to dinner. He knew of a great truck stop. We topped a hill in the full moon light to come upon the Moldy Dumpster Slop & Fuel. On a good day it could be described as a roach house - a shack with a half operational neon sign buzzing and popping away in the parking lot. Freak Show rubbed his hands together and assured us that it would be great. As we entered the fly covered screen door, Freak was welcomed with hardy handshakes and pats on the back. "Come on in, we're monkey friendly!." Show commented on how the area had changed. They replied, "When they closed down the slaughterhouse, the neighborhood turned to crap."

After a nice visit and a Chili Bucket with Mushrooms, it was time to hit the road. Show offered to take over my driving duties.

It might have been 20 minutes later. Who knows? An odor wretched from the belly of Hell enveloped the camper in a green/yellow mist. My vision blurred as the caravan shook violently. I yelled to our pilot, "Be careful! You're going off the road!" He responded, "Which side!" Within the cyclone, I felt like I would purge my gut. We stopped and as I extricated myself from under the dashboard, I looked at Freak Show. His eyes blazed ruby red. His beard moved, entwined by reptiles. In a voice unheard before he growled, "Your soul to become the best rider of all."

I'll pass. I'll shoot for mediocrity and take my chances. Besides that, the chili was lousy. Quit screwing around!" The demon looked past me to the chimp. "How about you?" Tater convulsed.A horrific screech burst forth, the wind swirled. . . silence.

posted by Roscoe @ 8:26 PM 14 comments
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Its time to go.

At 8:10 PM EST US, January 15, 2006 I determined that my blog name, Roscoe, was used to comment maliciously on other blog sites. In recent weeks I’ve seen many bloggers attacked unfairly or maligned for apparent sport; a chance one takes when you present yourself to the public. I extend my apologies to anyone harmed.

My intent with Roscoe Stuff was, for fun, to re-post stories of a character’s adventures, originally written for a website which in part promoted motorcycle safety to kids. Anonymous posters then inferred that this blog was part of the My Mule blog. It is not. Josh is a long time friend who encouraged me to start writing again.

For now, to all who were encouraging, Thank you.

posted by Roscoe @ 10:17 PM 12 comments
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Location: Observation

The wheels of justice roll slowly and the alignment is off. Freak Show's plea-bargaining abilities did not rise to my expectations. The jailhouse shrink report carried more weight than I anticipated. One condition to my release was to participate in a court-ordered observation period of 72 hours. Afterwards, I would spend a minimum of two weeks in group therapy at the city's finest Nut-bin. I would find my inner feelings looking at inkblots and answering questions like "Aren't you afraid to touch doorknobs?" I'd seen it before. In my family, interventions happen at Christmas when everybody gathers to tell you how you’re screwing up . . . Good times.

It is uncomfortable learning your "doctor" is straight out of school. Doc tripped over his feet fumbling with a clipboard. He described the battery of tests I would take in the next three days and quipped, "I hope you stick around. We hate to tell the court that you were not cooperative." I replied that I was not Harvey Mushman and this was not "The Great Escape ". The young fellow scribbled notes and asked, "Who is Harvey Mushman?" Sensing this was test number one I told Doc that racing motorcycles was more than a gimmick to Steve McQueen. He was a serious motorcycle racer who often registered as Mushman because he did not want to draw attention to himself. With a bewildered look and a shoulder shrug, my newly graduated, smart as a whip, wet behind the ears Doctor asked, "Who is Steve McQueen?" . . . I was in trouble.

Things were not going well. The staff would congregate at my door and whisper. Internal resentment festered - that monkey put me here. One nurse understood my frustration and extended an understanding hand. Her advice . . ."Don't fight the medication." Then I remembered a quote by William Jefferson Clinton . . . "If you find yourself in a big hole, stop digging." I had to agree with the hippie. I kept my stories quiet, took their tests, and told them what they wanted to hear. I had fun the next couple of days finger painting but I kind of missed Tater, Leelee and our adventures. Visiting day arrived. Freak and Tater showed, bringing gifts. Doc saw the bonafied monkey and released me to Gen-Pop, a whole new world and a whole bunch of new friends. With a bare-assed hospital gown and a restored sense of freedom, I was ready for Gen-Pop.

The journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step. . . In my case, twelve steps and a pair of pants. Twelve step programmers are natural moochers. Most anonymous support groups take the alcoholic steps, remove the word alcohol, and insert the habit necessary. Alcoholics, Sexaholics, Gamblers, Food Addicts, and Cocaine users jump in. There is a support group for you. In Gen-Pop, the first thing you do is sign up for the Substance Abusers Softball League. It is supposed to introduce you to the rest of the gang and their problems. No bats or ball, just a bunch of crazies standing in the yard screaming "Hey Batter, Swing!" Al Unser said Robert Downey was last year's MVP. Not THE Al Unser, this Al was a 6 ft. Jamaican and his racecar was, in fact, an old office chair. Man, could he hot lap the bases.

Time flies when you are on behavioral modifiers. During my stay I wondered how to make twelve steps work. "1.We admitted we were powerless over alcohol-that our lives had become unmanageable." Okay, I admit I am powerless over monkeys -that our lives had become unmanageable. "10.Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.". I have three motorcycles and a monkey. I was wrong about the monkey. The rest of the steps rely on God for help. While God might have made both man and monkey, history shows you don't mix monkeys with religion. It didn't work for Darwin.

The Salton Sea

2009-03-25T12:34:00.002-10:00

The Salton Sea is a saline lake, occupying the lowest elevations of the Salton Sink, part of the larger Colorado Desert in Southern California, USA, north of the Imperial Valley. The salinity of the lake is about 44,000 mg/L, greater than ocean water but less than the Great Salt Lake; the salinity is increasing by about 1% annually.[1] The lake covers a surface area of approximately 376 square miles (974 km²), the largest in California. While it varies in dimensions and area with changes in agricultural runoff and rain, it averages 15 by 35 miles (24 by 56 km), with a maximum depth of 51 feet (15.5 m), giving a total volume of about 7.5 million acre-feet (9.3 km³). Sea inflow averages 1.36 million acre-feet per year (53.2 m³/s).

The Salton Sea falls within both Riverside County and Imperial County. Like Death Valley, it is located below sea level, with the current surface of the Salton Sea at about 220 ft (65 m) below sea level. The deepest area of the sea is 5 feet (1.5m) higher than the lowest point of Death Valley. The sea is fed by the New, Whitewater, and Alamo rivers, as well as a number of minor agricultural drainage systems and creeks.

Dakar in South America and The Breakfast of Champions!

2009-01-11T16:39:00.004-10:00

Visit the Blue Ribbon Breakfast of Champions ISDE AUCTION!

2009 Dakar Click for official site.

Follow the race: The following was borrowed from the Official Dakar Website

The Dakar spirit is found at the crossroads of several passions. Beyond being an impossible to avoid and unique event in the motor racing world, it is also a unique human experience. The rally’s history, the performance of some and the struggles of others, remind each of us that the Dakar is above all else a sentimental and emotional affair. The competitors are most attached to this dimension. This is what explains, for example, the survival of the idea of mutual aid within the caravan.

A world class sporting competition

More than a simple motor race, the Dakar requires off-road navigation capabilities and rock-solid consistency. In rally-raid, endurance is primordial; the least mistake can be costly. This mix of physical rigour and technical performance has been an attraction for champions from diverse horizons for nearly 30 years, all of whom desire to measure themselves and learn about this original event. Former WRC world champion, Ari Vatananen found the winning formula; Stéphane Peterhansel, who tried his hand at all sorts of exceptional challenges early in his career, became the uncontested expert of the event; world enduro champion, Cyril Despres has stepped onto the top step of the podium; world ski champion, Luc Alphand was a fast learner of the desert; American NASCAR stand out, Robby Gordon, the king of ice racing in another life, Yvan Muller, Carlos Sainz and now Carole Montillet or Guerlain Chicherit have also turned towards the ultimate goal: win the Dakar.

A human experience apart

Like the mountains or the oceans, wide-open spaces inspire “adventurers”. Entering the Dakar is in some ways like climbing your own Everest, complete your sailing or rowing around the world trip. The finish podium represents an extraordinary challenge; sometimes it’s a life’s challenge.

Beyond the standings, all the competitors are motivated by this tenacious desire, this nearly insane dream. Whether they are motorcycle riders or drivers in cars or trucks, they share this ambition, a feeling that nears. The tradition of mutual-aid, the buzz word that is a pillar of the “Dakar spirit”, born from this shared passion. No matter their origins, they all speak the same language.

An international nomad event

Born in Africa where its legend was created, the Dakar is by nature attracted towards the unknown. The discovery of territories, one of the event’s reasons to be, now pushes the Dakar to head in new directions. The Sahara fascinated the competitors for nearly 30 years and in the future will, once again, become a regular meeting point. For now, it is the conquest of other continents that the Dakar seeks with the desire to surprise intact. The Dakar has always been an international nomad event. It is based on the need for exchange and on its competitors’ capacity of openness. They all have the desire to explore the deserts of the world.

Problem Solved all that is Missing is the Mission.

2009-01-10T16:56:00.002-10:00

As a wee lad I knew they had us by the short hairs. However we the people allowed them to control the market and the environment. We do need to become independent from this madness, we created the madness, all we have to do is create alternatives. We had the Manhattan project, we beat the man to the moon, what we need is to pool our minds together and solve this political problem with a solution not an agenda.

The 1973 oil crisis started on October 15, 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries or the OAPEC (consisting of the Arab members of OPEC plus Egypt and Syria) proclaimed an oil embargo "in response to the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military during the Yom Kippur war."[1] OAPEC declared it would no longer ship oil to the United States and other countries if they supported Israel in the conflict. Independently, OPEC members agreed to use their leverage over the world price-setting mechanism for oil in order to stabilize their real incomes by raising world oil prices. This action followed several years of steep income declines after the end of Bretton Woods, as well as the recent failure of negotiations with the "Seven Sisters" earlier in the month.

For the most part, industrialized economies relied on crude oil and OPEC was their predominant supplier. Because of the dramatic inflation experienced during this period, a popular economic theory has been that these price increases were to blame, as being suppressive of economic activity. However, the causality stated by this theory is often questioned.[2] The targeted countries responded with a wide variety of new, and mostly permanent, initiatives to contain their further dependency. The 1973 "oil price shock", along with the 1973–1974 stock market crash, have been regarded as the first event since the Great Depression to have a persistent economic effect.[3]

Nick Bostrom

2009-01-07T19:29:00.000-10:00

The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant

Nick Bostrom
Homepage: www.nickbostrom.com
Journal of Medical Ethics, 2005, Vol. 31, No. 5, pp 273-277

Once upon a time, the planet was tyrannized by a giant dragon. The dragon stood taller than the largest cathedral, and it was covered with thick black scales. Its red eyes glowed with hate, and from its terrible jaws flowed an incessant stream of evil-smelling yellowish-green slime. It demanded from humankind a blood-curdling tribute: to satisfy its enormous appetite, ten thousand men and women had to be delivered every evening at the onset of dark to the foot of the mountain where the dragon-tyrant lived. Sometimes the dragon would devour these unfortunate souls upon arrival; sometimes again it would lock them up in the mountain where they would wither away for months or years before eventually being consumed.

The misery inflicted by the dragon-tyrant was incalculable. In addition to the ten thousand who were gruesomely slaughtered each day, there were the mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, children, and friends that were left behind to grieve the loss of their departed loved ones.

Some people tried to fight the dragon, but whether they were brave or foolish was difficult to say. Priests and magicians called down curses, to no avail. Warriors, armed with roaring courage and the best weapons the smiths could produce, attacked it, but were incinerated by its fire before coming close enough to strike. Chemists concocted toxic brews and tricked the dragon into swallowing them, but the only apparent effect was to further stimulate its appetite. The dragon’s claws, jaws, and fire were so effective, its scaly armor so impregnable, and its whole nature so robust, as to make it invincible to any human assault.

Seeing that defeating the tyrant was impossible, humans had no choice but to obey its commands and pay the grisly tribute. The fatalities selected were always elders. Although senior people were as vigorous and healthy as the young, and sometimes wiser, the thinking was that they had at least already enjoyed a few decades of life. The wealthy might gain a brief reprieve by bribing the press gangs that came to fetch them; but, by constitutional law, nobody, not even the king himself, could put off their turn indefinitely.

Spiritual men sought to comfort those who were afraid of being eaten by the dragon (which included almost everyone, although many denied it in public) by promising another life after death, a life that would be free from the dragon-scourge. Other orators argued that the dragon has its place in the natural order and a moral right to be fed. They said that it was part of the very meaning of being human to end up in the dragon’s stomach. Others still maintained that the dragon was good for the human species because it kept the population size down. To what extent these arguments convinced the worried souls is not known. Most people tried to cope by not thinking about the grim end that awaited them.

For many centuries this desperate state of affairs continued. Nobody kept count any longer of the cumulative death toll, nor of the number of tears shed by the bereft. Expectations had gradually adjusted and the dragon-tyrant had become a fact of life. In view of the evident futility of resistance, attempts to kill the dragon had ceased. Instead, efforts now focused on placating it. While the dragon would occasionally raid the cities, it was found that the punctual delivery to the mountain of its quota of life reduced the frequency of these incursions.

Knowing that their turn to become dragon-fodder was always impending, people began having children earlier and more often. It was not uncommon for a girl to be pregnant by her sixteenth birthday. Couples often spawned a dozen children. The human population was thus kept from shrinking, and the dragon was kept from going hungry.

Over the course of these centuries, the dragon, being well fed, slowly but steadily grew bigger. It had become almost as large as the mountain on which it lived. And its appetite had increased proportionately. Ten thousand human bodies were no longer enough to fill its belly. It now demanded eighty thousand, to be delivered to the foot of the mountain every evening at the onset of dark.

What occupied the king’s mind more than the deaths and the dragon itself was the logistics of collecting and transporting so many people to the mountain every day. This was not an easy task.

To facilitate the process, the king had a railway track constructed: two straight lines of glistening steel leading up to the dragon’s abode. Every twenty minutes, a train would arrive at the mountain terminal crammed with people, and would return empty. On moonlit nights, the passengers traveling on this train, if there had been windows for them to stick their heads out of, would have been able to see in front of them the double silhouette of the dragon and the mountain, and two glowing red eyes, like the beams from a pair of giant lighthouses, pointing the way to annihilation.

Servants were employed by the king in large numbers to administer the tribute. There were registrars who kept track of whose turn it was to be sent. There were people-collectors who would be dispatched in special carts to fetch the designated people. Often traveling at breakneck speed, they would rush their cargo either to a railway station or directly to the mountain. There were clerks who administered the pensions paid to the decimated families who were no longer able to support themselves. There were comforters who would travel with the doomed on their way to the dragon, trying to ease their anguish with spirits and drugs.

There was, moreover, a cadre of dragonologists who studied how these logistic processes could be made more efficient. Some dragonologists also conducted studies of the dragon’s physiology and behavior, and collected samples – its shed scales, the slime that drooled from its jaws, its lost teeth, and its excrements, which were specked with fragments of human bone. All these items were painstakingly annotated and archived. The more the beast was understood, the more the general perception of its invincibility was confirmed. Its black scales, in particular, were harder than any material known to man, and there seemed no way to make as much as a scratch in its armor.

To finance all these activities, the king levied heavy taxes on his people. Dragon-related expenditures, already accounting for one seventh of the economy, were growing even faster than the dragon itself.

Humanity is a curious species. Every once in a while, somebody gets a good idea. Others copy the idea, adding to it their own improvements. Over time, many wondrous tools and systems are developed. Some of these devices – calculators, thermometers, microscopes, and the glass vials that the chemists use to boil and distil liquids – serve to make it easier to generate and try out new ideas, including ideas that expedite the process of idea-generation.

Thus the great wheel of invention, which had turned at an almost imperceptibly slow pace in the older ages, gradually began to accelerate.

Sages predicted that a day would come when technology would enable humans to fly and do many other astonishing things. One of the sages, who was held in high esteem by some of the other sages but whose eccentric manners had made him a social outcast and recluse, went so far as to predict that technology would eventually make it possible to build a contraption that could kill the dragon-tyrant.

The king’s scholars, however, dismissed these ideas. They said that humans were far too heavy to fly and in any case lacked feathers. And as for the impossible notion that the dragon-tyrant could be killed, history books recounted hundreds of attempts to do just that, not one of which had been successful. “We all know that this man had some irresponsible ideas,” a scholar of letters later wrote in his obituary of the reclusive sage who had by then been sent off to be devoured by the beast whose demise he had foretold, “but his writings were quite entertaining and perhaps we should be grateful to the dragon for making possible the interesting genre of dragon-bashing literature which reveals so much about the culture of angst!”

Meanwhile, the wheel of invention kept turning. Mere decades later, humans did fly and accomplished many other astonishing things.

A few iconoclastic dragonologists began arguing for a new attack on the dragon-tyrant. Killing the dragon would not be easy, they said, but if some material could be invented that was harder than the dragon’s armor, and if this material could be fashioned into some kind of projectile, then maybe the feat would be possible. At first, the iconoclasts’ ideas were rejected by their dragonologist peers on grounds that no known material was harder than dragon scales. But after working on the problem for many years, one of the iconoclasts succeeded in demonstrating that a dragon scale could be pierced by an object made of a certain composite material. Many dragonologists who had previously been skeptical now joined the iconoclasts. Engineers calculated that a huge projectile could be made of this material and launched with sufficient force to penetrate the dragon’s armor. However, the manufacture of the needed quantity of the composite material would be expensive.

A group of several eminent engineers and dragonologists sent a petition to the king asking for funding to build the anti-dragon projectile. At time when the petition was sent, the king was preoccupied with leading his army into war against a tiger. The tiger had killed a farmer and subsequently disappeared into the jungle. There was widespread fear in the countryside that the tiger might come out and strike again. The king had the jungle surrounded and ordered his troops to begin slashing their way through it. At the conclusion of the campaign, the king could announce that all 163 tigers in the jungle, including presumably the murderous one, had been hunted down and killed. During the tumult of the war, however, the petition had been lost or forgotten.

The petitioners therefore sent another appeal. This time they received a reply from one of the king’s secretaries saying that the king would consider their request after he was done reviewing the annual dragon-administration budget. This year’s budget was the largest to date and included funding for a new railway track to the mountain. A second track was deemed necessary, as the original track could no longer support the increasing traffic. (The tribute demanded by the dragon-tyrant had increased to one hundred thousand human beings, to be delivered to the foot of the mountain every evening at the onset of dark.) When the budget was finally approved, however, reports were coming from a remote part of the country that a village was suffering from a rattlesnake infestation. The king had to leave urgently to mobilize his army and ride off to defeat this new threat. The anti-dragonists’ appeal was filed away in a dusty cabinet in the castle basement.

The anti-dragonists met again to decide what was to be done. The debate was animated and continued long into the night. It was almost daybreak when they finally resolved to take the matter to the people. Over the following weeks, they traveled around the country, gave public lectures, and explained their proposal to anyone who would listen. At first, people were skeptical. They had been taught in school that the dragon-tyrant was invincible and that the sacrifices it demanded had to be accepted as a fact of life. Yet when they learnt about the new composite material and about the designs for the projectile, many became intrigued. In increasing numbers, citizens flocked to the anti-dragonist lectures. Activists started organizing public rallies in support of the proposal.

When the king read about these meetings in the newspaper, he summoned his advisors and asked them what they thought about it. They informed him about the petitions that had been sent but told him that the anti-dragonists were troublemakers whose teachings were causing public unrest. It was much better for the social order, they said, that the people accepted the inevitability of the dragon-tyrant tribute. The dragon-administration provided many jobs that would be lost if the dragon was slaughtered. There was no known social good coming from the conquest of the dragon. In any case, the king’s coffers were currently nearly empty after the two military campaigns and the funding set aside for the second railway line. The king, who was at the time enjoying great popularity for having vanquished the rattlesnake infestation, listened to his advisors’ arguments but worried that he might lose some of his popular support if was seen to ignore the anti-dragonist petition. He therefore decided to hold an open hearing. Leading dragonologists, ministers of the state, and interested members of the public were invited to attend.

The meeting took place on the darkest day of the year, just before the Christmas holidays, in the largest hall of the royal castle. The hall was packed to the last seat and people were crowding in the aisles. The mood was charged with an earnest intensity normally reserved for pivotal wartime sessions.

After the king had welcomed everyone, he gave the floor to the leading scientist behind the anti-dragonist proposal, a woman with a serious, almost stern expression on her face. She proceeded to explain in clear language how the proposed device would work and how the requisite amount of the composite material could be manufactured. Given the requested amount of funding, it should be possible to complete the work in fifteen to twenty years. With an even greater amount of funding, it might be possible to do it in as little as twelve years. However, there could be no absolute guarantee that it would work. The crowd followed her presentation intently.

Next to speak was the king’s chief advisor for morality, a man with a booming voice that easily filled the auditorium:

“Let us grant that this woman is correct about the science and that the project is technologically possible, although I don’t think that has actually been proven. Now she desires that we get rid of the dragon. Presumably, she thinks she’s got the right not to be chewed up by the dragon. How willful and presumptuous. The finitude of human life is a blessing for every individual, whether he knows it or not. Getting rid of the dragon, which might seem like such a convenient thing to do, would undermine our human dignity. The preoccupation with killing the dragon will deflect us from realizing more fully the aspirations to which our lives naturally point, from living well rather than merely staying alive. It is debasing, yes debasing, for a person to want to continue his or her mediocre life for as long as possible without worrying about some of the higher questions about what life is to be used for. But I tell you, the nature of the dragon is to eat humans, and our own species-specified nature is truly and nobly fulfilled only by getting eaten by it...”

The audience listened respectfully to this highly decorated speaker. The phrases were so eloquent that it was hard to resist the feeling that some deep thoughts must lurk behind them, although nobody could quite grasp what they were. Surely, words coming from such a distinguished appointee of the king must have profound substance.

The speaker next in line was a spiritual sage who was widely respected for his kindness and gentleness as well as for his devotion. As he strode to the podium, a small boy yelled out from the audience: “The dragon is bad!”

The boy’s parents turned bright red and began hushing and scolding the child. But the sage said, “Let the boy speak. He is probably wiser than an old fool like me.”

At first, the boy was too scared and confused to move. But when he saw the genuinely friendly smile on the sage’s face and the outreached hand, he obediently took it and followed the sage up to the podium. “Now, there’s a brave little man,” said the sage. “Are you afraid of the dragon?“

“I want my granny back,” said the boy.

“Did the dragon take your granny away?”

“Yes,” the boy said, tears welling up in his large frightened eyes. “Granny promised that she would teach me how to bake gingerbread cookies for Christmas. She said that we would make a little house out of gingerbread and little gingerbread men that would live in it. Then those people in white clothes came and took Granny away to the dragon... The dragon is bad and it eats people… I want my Granny back!”

At this point the child was crying so hard that the sage had to return him to his parents.

There were several other speakers that evening, but the child’s simple testimony had punctured the rhetorical balloon that the king’s ministers had tried to inflate. The people were backing the anti-dragonists, and by the end of the evening even the king had come to recognize the reason and the humanity of their cause. In his closing statement, he simply said: “Let’s do it!”

As the news spread, celebrations erupted in the streets. Those who had been campaigning for the anti-dragonists toasted each other and drank to the future of humanity.

The next morning, a billion people woke up and realized that their turn to be sent to the dragon would come before the projectile would be completed. A tipping point was reached. Whereas before, active support for the anti-dragonist cause had been limited to a small group of visionaries, it now became the number one priority and concern on everybody’s mind. The abstract notion of “the general will” took on an almost tangible intensity and concreteness. Mass rallies raised money for the projectile project and urged the king to increase the level of state support. The king responded to these appeals. In his New Year address, he announced that he would pass an extra appropriations bill to support the project at a high level of funding; additionally, he would sell off his summer castle and some of his land and make a large personal donation. “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of freeing the world from the ancient scourge of the dragon-tyrant.”

Thus started a great technological race against time. The concept of an anti-dragon projectile was simple, but to make it a reality required solutions to a thousand smaller technical problems, each of which required dozens of time-consuming steps and missteps. Test-missiles were fired but fell dead to the ground or flew off in the wrong direction. In one tragic accident, a wayward missile landed on a hospital and killed several hundred patients and staff. But there was now a real seriousness of purpose, and the tests continued even as the corpses were being dug out from the debris.

Despite almost unlimited funding and round-the-clock work by the technicians, the king’s deadline could not be met. The decade concluded and the dragon was still alive and well. But the effort was getting closer. A prototype missile had been successfully test fired. Production of the core, made of the expensive composite material, was on schedule for its completion to coincide with the finishing of the fully tested and debugged missile shell into which it was to be loaded. The launch date was set to the following year’s New Year’s Eve, exactly twelve years after the project’s official inauguration. The best-selling Christmas gift that year was a calendar that counted down the days to time zero, the proceeds going to the projectile project.

The king had undergone a personal transformation from his earlier frivolous and thoughtless self. He now spent as much time as he could in the laboratories and the manufacturing plants, encouraging the workers and praising their toil. Sometimes he would bring a sleeping bag and spend the night on a noisy machine floor. He even studied and tried to understand the technical aspects of their work. Yet he confined himself to giving moral support and refrained from meddling in technical and managerial matters.

Seven days before New Year, the woman who had made the case for the project almost twelve years earlier, and was now its chief executive, came to the royal castle and requested an urgent audience with the king. When the king got her note, he excused himself to the foreign dignitaries whom he was reluctantly entertaining at the annual Christmas dinner and hurried off to the private room where the scientist was waiting. As always of late, she looked pale and worn from her long working hours. This evening, however, the king also thought he could detect a ray of relief and satisfaction in her eyes.

She told him that the missile had been deployed, the core had been loaded, everything had been triple-checked, they were ready to launch, and would the king give his final go-ahead. The king sank down in an armchair and closed his eyes. He was thinking hard. By launching the projectile tonight, one week early, seven hundred thousand people would be saved. Yet if something went wrong, if it missed its target and hit the mountain instead, it would be a disaster. A new core would have to be constructed from scratch and the project would be set back by some four years. He sat there, silently, for almost an hour. Just as the scientist had become convinced that he had fallen asleep, he opened his eyes and said in a firm voice: “No. I want you to go right back to the lab. I want you to check and then re-check everything again.” The scientist could not help a sigh escaping her; but she nodded and left.

The last day of the year was cold and overcast, but there was no wind, which meant good launch conditions. The sun was setting. Technicians were scuttling around making the final adjustments and giving everything one last check. The king and his closest advisors were observing from a platform close to the launch pad. Further away, behind a fence, large numbers of the public had assembled to witness the great event. A large clock was showing the countdown: fifty minutes to go.

An advisor tapped the king on the shoulder and drew his attention to the fence. There was some tumult. Somebody had apparently jumped the fence and was running towards the platform where the king sat. Security quickly caught up with him. He was handcuffed and taken away. The king turned his attention back to the launch pad, and to the mountain in the background. In front of it, he could see the dark slumped profile of the dragon. It was eating.

Some twenty minutes later, the king was surprised to see the handcuffed man reappearing a short distance from the platform. His nose was bleeding and he was accompanied by two security guards. The man appeared to be in frenzied state. When he spotted the king, he began shouting at the top of his lungs: “The last train! The last train! Stop the last train!”

“Who is this young man?” said the king. “His face seems familiar, but I cannot quite place him. What does he want? Let him come up.”

The young man was a junior clerk in the ministry of transportation, and the reason for his frenzy was that he had discovered that his father was on the last train to the mountain. The king had ordered the train traffic to continue, fearing that any disruption might cause the dragon to stir and leave the open field in front of the mountain where it now spent most of its time. The young man begged the king to issue a recall-order for the last train, which was due to arrive at the mountain terminal five minutes before time zero.

“I cannot do it,” said the king, “I cannot take the risk.”

“But the trains frequently run five minutes late. The dragon won’t notice! Please!”

The young man was kneeling before the king, imploring him to save his father’s life and the lives of the other thousand passengers onboard that last train.

The king looked down at the pleading, bloodied face of the young man. But he bit his lip, and shook his head. The young man continued to wail even as the guards carried him off the platform: “Please! Stop the last train! Please!”

The king stood silent and motionless, until, after while, the wailing suddenly ceased. The king looked up and glanced over at the countdown clock: five minutes remaining.

Four minutes. Three minutes. Two minutes.

The last technician left the launch pad.

30 seconds. 20 seconds. Ten, nine, eight…

As a ball of fire enveloped the launch pad and the missile shot out, the spectators instinctively rose to the tips of their toes, and all eyes fixated at the front end of the white flame from the rocket’s afterburners heading towards the distant mountain. The masses, the king, the low and the high, the young and the old, it was as if at this moment they shared a single awareness, a single conscious experience: that white flame, shooting into the dark, embodying the human spirit, its fear and its hope… striking at the heart of evil. The silhouette on the horizon tumbled, and fell. Thousand voices of pure joy rose from the assembled masses, joined seconds later by a deafening drawn-out thud from the collapsing monster as if the Earth itself was drawing a sigh of relief. After centuries of oppression, humanity at last was free from the cruel tyranny of the dragon.

The joy cry resolved into a jubilating chant: “Long live the king! Long live us all!” The king’s advisors, like everybody that night, were as happy as children; they embraced each other and congratulated the king: “We did it! We did it!”

But the king answered in a broken voice: “Yes, we did it, we killed the dragon today. But damn, why did we start so late? This could have been done five, maybe ten years ago! Millions of people wouldn’t have had to die.”

The king stepped off the platform and walked up to the young man in handcuffs, who was sitting on the ground. There he fell down on his knees. “Forgive me! Oh my God, please forgive me!”

The rain started falling, in large, heavy drops, turning the ground into mud, drenching the king’s purple robes, and dissolving the blood on the young man’s face. “I am so very sorry about your father,” said the king.

“It’s not your fault,” replied the young man. “Do you remember twelve years ago in the castle? That crying little boy who wanted you to bring back his grandmother – that was me. I didn’t realize then that you couldn’t possibly do what I asked for. Today I wanted you to save my father. Yet it was impossible to do that now, without jeopardizing the launch. But you have saved my life, and my mother and my sister. How can we ever thank you enough for that?”

“Listen to them,” said the king, gesturing towards the crowds. “They are cheering me for what happened tonight. But the hero is you. You cried out. You rallied us against evil.” The king signaled a guard to come and unlock the handcuffs. “Now, go to your mother and sister. You and your family shall always be welcome at the court, and anything you wish for – if it be within my power – shall be granted.”

The young man left, and the royal entourage, huddling in the downpour, accumulated around their monarch who was still kneeling in the mud. Amongst the fancy couture, which was being increasingly ruined by the rain, a bunch of powdered faces expressed a superposition of joy, relief, and discombobulation. So much had changed in the last hour: the right to an open future had been regained, a primordial fear had been abolished, and many a long-held assumption had been overturned. Unsure now about what was required of them in this unfamiliar situation, they stood there tentatively, as if probing whether the ground would still hold, exchanging glances, and waiting for some kind of indication.

Finally, the king rose, wiping his hands on the sides of his pants.

“Your majesty, what do we do now?” ventured the most senior courtier.

“My dear friends,” said the king, “we have come a long way… yet our journey has only just begun. Our species is young on this planet. Today we are like children again. The future lies open before us. We shall go into this future and try to do better than we have done in the past. We have time now – time to get things right, time to grow up, time to learn from our mistakes, time for the slow process of building a better world, and time to get settled in it. Tonight, let all the bells in the kingdom ring until midnight, in remembrance of our dead forbears, and then after midnight let us celebrate till the sun comes up. And in the coming days… I believe we have some reorganization to do!”

* * *

MORAL

Stories about aging have traditionally focused on the need for graceful accommodation. The recommended solution to diminishing vigor and impending death was resignation coupled with an effort to achieve closure in practical affairs and personal relationships. Given that nothing could be done to prevent or retard aging, this focus made sense. Rather than fretting about the inevitable, one could aim for peace of mind.

Today we face a different situation. While we still lack effective and acceptable means for slowing the aging process[1], we can identify research directions that might lead to the development of such means in the foreseeable future. “Deathist” stories and ideologies, which counsel passive acceptance, are no longer harmless sources of consolation. They are fatal barriers to urgently needed action.

Many distinguished technologists and scientists tell us that it will become possible to retard, and eventually to halt and reverse, human senescence.[2] At present, there is little agreement about the time-scale or the specific means, nor is there a consensus that the goal is even achievable in principle. In relation to the fable (where aging is, of course, represented by the dragon), we are therefore at a stage somewhere between that at which the lone sage predicted the dragon’s eventual demise and that at which the iconoclast dragonologists convinced their peers by demonstrating a composite material that was harder than dragon scales.

The ethical argument that the fable presents is simple: There are obvious and compelling moral reasons for the people in the fable to get rid of the dragon. Our situation with regard to human senescence is closely analogous and ethically isomorphic to the situation of the people in the fable with regard to the dragon. Therefore, we have compelling moral reasons to get rid of human senescence.

The argument is not in favor or life-span extension per se. Adding extra years of sickness and debility at the end of life would be pointless. The argument is in favor of extending, as far as possible, the human health-span. By slowing or halting the aging process, the healthy human life span would be extended. Individuals would be able to remain healthy, vigorous, and productive at ages at which they would otherwise be dead.

In addition to this general moral, there are a number of more specific lessons:

(1) A recurrent tragedy became a fact of life, a statistic. In the fable, people’s expectations adapted to the existence of the dragon, to the extent that many became unable to perceive its badness. Aging, too, has become a mere “fact of life” – despite being the principal cause of an unfathomable amount of human suffering and death.

(2) A static view of technology. People reasoned that it would never become possible to kill the dragon because all attempts had failed in the past. They failed to take into account accelerated technological progress. Is a similar mistake leading us to underestimate the chances of a cure for aging?

(3) Administration became its own purpose. One seventh of the economy went to dragon-administration (which is also the fraction of its GDP that the U.S. spends on healthcare). Damage-limitation became such an exclusive focus that it made people neglect the underlying cause. Instead of a massive publicly-funded research program to halt aging, we spend almost our entire health budget on health-care and on researching individual diseases.

(4) The social good became detached from the good for people. The king’s advisors worried about the possible social problems that could be caused by the anti-dragonists. They said that no known social good would come from the demise of the dragon. Ultimately, however, social orders exist for the benefit of people, and it is generally good for people if their lives are saved.

(5) The lack of a sense of proportion. A tiger killed a farmer. A rhumba of rattlesnakes plagued a village. The king got rid of the tiger and the rattlesnakes, and thereby did his people a service. Yet he was at fault, because he got his priorities wrong.

(6) Fine phrases and hollow rhetoric. The king’s morality advisor spoke eloquently about human dignity and our species-specified nature, in phrases lifted, mostly verbatim, from the advisor’s contemporary equivalents.[3] Yet the rhetoric was a smoke screen that hid rather than revealed moral reality. The boy’s inarticulate but honest testimony, by contrast, points to the central fact of the case: the dragon is bad; it destroys people. This is also the basic truth about human senescence.

(7) Failure to appreciate the urgency. Until very late in the story, nobody fully realized what was at stake. Only as the king was staring into the bloodied face of the young pleading man does the extent of the tragedy sink in. Searching for a cure for aging is not just a nice thing that we should perhaps one day get around to. It is an urgent, screaming moral imperative. The sooner we start a focused research program, the sooner we will get results. It matters if we get the cure in 25 years rather than in 24 years: a population greater than that of Canada would die as a result. In this matter, time equals life, at a rate of approximately 70 lives per minute. With the meter ticking at such a furious rate, we should stop faffing about.

(8) “And in the coming days… I believe we have some reorganization to do!” The king and his people will face some major challenges when they recover from their celebration. Their society has been so conditioned and deformed by the presence of the dragon that a frightening void now exists. They will have to work creatively, on both an individual and a societal level, to develop conditions that will keep lives flourishingly dynamic and meaningful beyond the accustomed three-score-years-and-ten. Luckily, the human spirit is good at adapting. Another issue that they may eventually confront is overpopulation. Maybe people will have to learn to have children later and less frequently. Maybe they can find ways to sustain a larger population by using more efficient technology. Maybe they will one day develop spaceships and begin to colonize the cosmos. We can leave, for now, the long-lived fable people to grapple with these new challenges, while we try to make some progress in our own adventure.[4]

How You can help

1. Spread the word. If you have a website or a blog, please consider linking to this page. Share your thoughts with friends and colleagues. Write letters to editors to comment on newspaper coverage of prolongevity. Challenge snide and shortsighted remarks about aging when appropriate. Make some noise.

2. Organize. If you are active in some organization (e.g. a political party, a religious community, a professional society), consider if there is any way that you could build support within that organization for extended healthy lifespan and the research needed to achieve it.

3. Give. Consider donating to the Methuselah Mouse Prize. This is a prize for extending the remaining lifespan of middle-aged mice. Science prizes have a strong track record of stimulating achievement. A clear success in mouse would pave the way for a larger program to translate the methods for human use.

4. Take responsibility. If you are a major philanthropist, you have the opportunity to make a big difference. Likewise, if you are e.g. a journalist, an opinion leader, a government official, a scientific authority, or on the board of a major research foundation, you have special opportunities to exert influence, and, consequently, a special responsibility to show some initiative.

5. Think creatively. Use your own your own brain to think about what would be the best way for you to contribute.

[1] Calorie restriction (a diet low in calories but high in nutrients) extends maximal lifespan and delays the onset of age-related illnesses in all species that have been tested. Preliminary results from an ongoing study on rhesus and squirrel monkeys show similar effects. It seems quite likely that calorie restriction would work for our species too. Few humans, however, would be willing to put themselves through a lifelong hunger-diet. Some researchers are searching for calorie-restriction mimetics – compounds that elicit the desirable effects of lowered caloric intake without us having to go hungry. (See e.g. Lane, M. et al. (1999) “Nutritional modulation of aging in nonhuman primates,” J. Nutr. Health & Aging, 3(2): 69-76.)

[2] A recent straw poll at the 10th Congress of the International Association of Biomedical Gerontology revealed that the majority of the participants thought it either probable or “not improbable” that comprehensive functional rejuvenation of middle-aged mice would be possible within 10-20 years (de Grey, A. (2004), “Report of open discussion on the future of life extension research,” (Annals NY Acad. Sci., 1019, in press)). See also e.g. de Grey, A., B. Ames, et al. (2002) “Time to talk SENS: critiquing the immutability of human aging,” Increasing Healthy Life Span: Conventional Measures and Slowing the Innate Aging Process: Ninth Congress of the International Association of Biomedical Gerontology, ed. D. Harman (Annals NY Acad. Sci. 959: 452-462); and Freitas Jr., R. A., Nanomedicine, Vol. 1 (Landes Bioscience: Georgetown, TX, 1999).

[3] See, e.g. Kass, L. (2003) “Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Perfection,” The New Atlantis, 1.
[4] I’m grateful to many people for comments on earlier drafts, including especially Heather Bradshaw, Roger Crisp, Aubrey de Grey, Katrien Devolder, Joel Garreau, John Harris, Andrea Landfried, Toby Ord, Susan Rogers, Julian Savulescu, Ian Watson, and Kip Werking. I am also very grateful to Adi Berman, Pierino Forno, Didier Coeurnelle, and others who have translated the fable into other languages, and everybody who has helped spread the word or who have given encouragement. Thank you!

Samuel Johnson and Big Olde Words

2009-01-04T17:20:00.005-10:00

Fardel: A bundle; a little pack.

Let us to the king: there is that in this fardel will make him scratch his beard.
From Shakespeare's Winters Tale

When visiting family and friends and family for a party I bring a fardel, just enough to skate.
JW

Back in the day they really used colons and semi-colons I have noticed. But today we are so afraid of proper grammar that we are required after a certain age to undergo colostomy's to prevent the condition of over punctuating. So I propose, what may seem to some a radical theory but hard to contest. Over punctuating will lead to what some would phrase as "eventual death." Perhaps this is a breakthrough in the language arts, not to mention hard core science, maybe I am onto something...I feel it prudent to wear all my moto gear for the next few days because I suspect all sorts of grants (my money is on the MacArthur) will be falling out of the sky when this word of the day is published.
Trust me I will share, you all helped me reach this level of excellence. JW

Rarefied Words for the Well-Rounded Reader

2008-12-30T17:21:00.007-10:00

Part of my goal to bringing down the house on google is with the support of a strong group of people, dead and not dead and some almost dead and others,the jury is still out on their status of animation. I call up Dr. Samuel Johnson's dictionary first published in 1755...These are rare words, little used or the meaning has changed but I suspect will throw google ads into fits and then the house of cards will fall and the world can say, good ole Josh he fought the good fight and he saved humanity...See my previous post if you are confused, this should make everything crystal clear and soon you will be on board with me, we will clink mugs and make toasts to the wee people retaking their province.

Post Script: Suggestions are always welcome, please!

To hebetate...To dull;to blunt;to stupify.

Example; The eye,especially if hebetated, might cause the same perception.

Example duo: Beef may confer a robustness on the limbs of my son, but will hebetate and clog his intellectuals.

The good Dr. Johnson is going to help us all communicate on a entirely new level.

This should help thanks fool:Muktuk monkeys, slug erogenous zones, fashionable caryatids, deveined gerbils, infrangible loganberries, periphrastic dribble, trebuchets for tots, anemic vampires, wayward nuns, trapezist worms, Freudian slippers, vegetable wars...
More from the fool:Deliquescent dingos, Grimy grimalkin grimoires, spurious logia, compressed perimetry, saponaceous delicacies, trahison des clercs of Blogworld, exsanguination for fun and profit, brumal insanity, Hollywood apotheoses...

seductive billy-goats, nauseating presidents, artificial virginity,sneezing in bikinis

2008-12-25T12:03:00.010-10:00

Well the time has come I am almost through with my new blog. I am satisfied that I have done my work with My Mule , a site that helped bring Amazon to its knees. Now I have a site that is active but floating that will assist in the same with my ongoing fight with Google and all the other corporate behemoths. Not that I am giving up on My Mule but in the interim I will be posting guest posts or just key words to see what the Google ad bar above this post will adapt to with each post. Self-Composting toilets ought to show up again with this post, as it was a popular item when I first mentioned it in a previous post.
So if you have any keywords that might be fun to see what the Google ad bar interprets. Let me know, if you wish to remain anonymous I will just copy and paste since I have comment moderator you will be safe from the powers that be, yet you can remain part of a part of a grand experiment. This will be entertaining at least for me, and provide me with some time do some finishing touch’s on my new wonder blog…Soon to be announced.
Spindleshanked
Classified ads Free
Remote control Toilets
Household Fembots
Pigsney
Merrythought
Nescience
Small cups of coffee with monkeys hanging on your lapels.
Virgin Nipples
Just the beginning of a grand experiment.! Keep the cards and letters coming. JW

Flannery O'Connor and the Dummy

2008-12-14T16:03:00.002-10:00

Book Review Flannery O'Connor

This review was first published Jan. 19 2005 and met with good reviews, it aint easy reviewing but I continue pushing that boulder up the hill, the hill grows steeper and the boulder larger but I just keep growing stronger...kinda...or maybe just more deluded. JW July 25 2005

A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor
Edition: Paperback
Price: $9.60
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

107 used from $1.15

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
I seen the dummy!, January 19, 2005

I recommend reading Linda Linguvic's review, she is dead right. Reading Ms. O'Connor stories is time well invested, and I agree one at a time is about all you can to digest, its like Harper Lee meets Edger Allan Poe. I always find myself in surreal situations that remind me of a Flannery O'Conner story...STOP READING AT THIS POINT AND GO TO LINDAS REVIEW...You see I am in a witness protection program and the only way I can communicate with my family is through Amazon...sad but false.Which reminds me of when I was a kid visiting my grand parents and favorite uncle in North Carolina (we stayed with them every summer until they told my folks to stop). My mom, grandparents,uncle and brother went a visitin' some obscure relatives in a town that seemed to make my grandfather grumpy, reckon that would have been any town USA. However this particular town was near another particular town that held something of interest, the spaghetti man, or as my grandfather called him the dummy. They called him the spaghetti man because he was Italian, he had worked for a circus and happened to die in the nearby town I mentioned, back in the early 20th century is my guess. The manager of the circus only gave the local funeral director a deposit for the burial with the promise of returning with final payment, which never came. So the Spaghetti man/mummy/dummy remained in his freezer for years. The son inherited the business as well as the dummy as I will refer to him from this sentence on until the end of my review. Well back in the 60's my brother, uncle and to a lesser degree myself badgered my grandfather enough that he agreed to leave the family gathering to go find the dummy. He found the town just fine it being on the map and all, but had to ask directions to find the dummy "where's the dummy"? after several blind alleys we found the funeral home and in the garage the owner took us for a small fee to the garage, he opened the freezer and there in the flesh was a shrunken up freezer burnt dummy! One of those moments you never forget, a certain smell might take you back or a foreign accent, but you dont forget those memory's by god! cause that's what life's made of, memories and things like that, eating too. Years later in the year 2000 I visited my folks in NC and in honor of the dummy I went to Target and purchased a white T shirt a couple of sizes to big and a black marker. I laid the T-shirt on my kitchen table and scrawled "I seen the dummy" across the front and into the armpit. The next day I showered,shaved and put on my new shirt, drove to the airport early , requested exit row (I'm above average in height you know) and flew to Charlotte. I then boarded a commuter plane to New Bern and the flight attendant asked me what my shirt said and I told her "I seen the dummy" ...Even though I was in the front row and she had to sit in the jump seat in front of me she was sort of cool and impersonal the rest of the flight, people you figure them out? If you like reading, buy Flannery O'Conner its not a walk in the park but you aint no dummy now are you?

Last Exit to Brooklyn Book Review Revisited

2008-12-12T17:49:00.004-10:00

I used to write book reviews for a not for profit company.
OK, how long did Amazon.com not make money? They were not making money for awhile but when I helped them create their house of cards they where still safe and sound in the start up .com business. I did not profit so I soon lost interest however somewhere in the archives of Amazon is this review...I suppose the intent was to be as raw as Hubert himself might have been...I did not and will not read or edit this review, it is pure and simple. Kinda like me with out the pure part.
Kind Regards JW 12/12/08

Mr. Selby does not understand the concept of built in obsolescence. It reminds me of the time when I lived in Lizton Indiana and my brother Charles Chadwick and our buddy big John and Roscoe and Joe, all gathered to watch Charles pogo stick over the creek behind our house.We had taken some scaffolding left over from our new home construction and laid it across the creek, it was about twelve inches wide and reinforced with 2 x 4's on each edge. 5/8" plywood and 2x 4 's...Charles as I recall had the most confused look on his face when he made it about two hops across the bridge and then fell about five feet into a gravel creek bed, a great look, I think he said "Wha happen"? He laid in the gravel, pogo stick still in position and at that moment I think he realized that not everything works out as planned.He lost interest in this stunt real fast, unlike you will in Huberts great Novel.
About this time we were reaching an age when my folks felt we were old enough to be left alone for short periods of time while they went to Air-Way and such, these opportunities we seized carpe diem style! Empty the two car garage and stage indoor short track races on our dirt bikes, sure we would leave tire tracks on the concrete, sure the nobby tire marks on the walls were tell tale signs of mischief but my folks where young and inexperienced and did not suspect that we would race motorcycles in a two car garage. We would put the garage back together and other than the lingering two stroke haze, and the above mentioned clues, none was the wiser. Best I can remember I always won these races because I was the superior rider. How we managed not to hit the water heater and tear it from the wall proves there is a divine being watching over us. Which also reminds me of how my da showed me the hot water release valve on the water heater for what reason I dont know, but I retained this knowledge. Unfortunately for Elmo and Myrtle our beagles I had just enough knowledge to cause them great pain. You see Elmo was a walk up dog who adopted us as was myrtle, the two quickly became lovers and engaged in Hubert Selby style liaisons as often as myrtle was in heat.They often became stuck and we all know the best way to separate two beast who are stuck is to throw cold or is it hot water on them? At the time I thought it was hot so one evening while my folks were at Air-Way our two beagles became stuck and were in obvious pain, one faced north the other south and like a compass in a tempest they changed directions in a passionate union. I went to the water heater and filled up a glass with water directly from the unit just like me da showed me and threw it on the two lovers, and contrary to my expectations the two just yelped like scalded wild animals. Eventually they separated on their own.They were fine no burns and such but shortly there after Mrytle took up with the neighbors German Shepherd and Elmo hit the road, never to be seen again. Kinda like a Hubert Selby character. I miss my dogs and I miss dominating the two door garage indoor short track circuit.

trimmer
Vitious

Easy Pizza Omelet No Kidding

2008-11-30T06:06:00.003-10:00

First of all to make an over size pizza really is not that tricky you just tilt the oven. Then you eat what you can and then refrigerate the rest. Be sure to eat enough so you do not have to tilt your fridge to accommodate the leftover za.
In the morning crack some eggs in a bowl, scrape of the toppings of your pizza and you know what you have the makings of a great omelet.You cook it and stuff, or is that a scrambled egg pizza? So you maybe you fold over the eggs onto the pizza scrapings, at any rate its pretty darn good.

Big Brother is here and he is P--- err Angry!

2008-11-28T17:58:00.003-10:00

Even in passing most people I knew, thought ARM's were not a good idea. So why?
I watched Pirates of the Caribbean "At the Worlds End" the other night, and thought well this is better than an ARM...I did not think it was a great film, I did like Keith Richards Cameo etc. I always loved pirate adventure films but I just did not realize since I was a wee lad that pirates come in all shapes and forms. The legendary Kracken, is the lesser of the evils when it comes to financial advisers.
I suppose the entire mythology in films are just grooming us for the reality of the avarice and greed of the average investment banker.
I suppose good ole show biz is just preparing us for the real storm.
The big three? "Never have so few done so much to so many." Kinda like Winston Churchill but without the noble backing.This line won't work with all the spin masters available.
However I rise tomorrow I will work and will remain a reasonable cognizant being. I pledge I will not create another Wal-Mart. I do not care to be part of the Brave New World. So whadaya do?

Roscoe the Prologue

2008-11-25T13:43:00.004-10:00

I found this while reseaching the Roscoe archives. I was one of those unmentionalbes and proud of it, ah those were the days, nothing on the tube just our bikes and the imagination to create our own moto history.

The blogs titled “dog house - A Roscoe History” parts one and two are long. You will find them below or tucked away in the June 2005 archive. Tedious , I know. Get comfortable, I’ll tell you why.

In my formative years, my circle of friends and I grew up on the slightly rolling, glacial plains of Indiana, USA – farmland. The neighborhood kids lived two miles away. Because all of our parents tired of driving us to each other’s houses, they allowed us to buy mini-bikes and small off-road motorcycles. The bikes enabled us to visit and when we crossed the fuzzy line of acceptable behavior, mothers sent us home.

The enlightenment of cable or satellite television had not reached us in the outback. We tuned in six fuzzy channels; three network, one religion, an independent and the Public Broadcasting. We entertained ourselves inventing practical jokes, building moto-cross tracks, throwing dirt clods and sharpening our senses of humor watching cartoons and BBC imports of “Benny Hill”’ and “Monty Python”. Fine literature encompassed fishing, hunting and off-road motorcycle magazines. We made do creating our own fun. Jump ahead a few years and the ol’ bunch, now states apart, continue to laugh and joke around on bulletin boards and blog sties.

One friend and I shared a secret from the others . . . His Ma turned us on to J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings”. Had the gang known that we read books, let alone books about Elves and Wizards, they would have kicked our Asses.

Later, Tolkien wrote “The Silmarillion”. A precursor to “The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings”, it provided historical backgrounds for characters in the first / next book and trilogy. “The Silmarillion” confused me so that I read the book on how to read “The Silmarillion”. Similarly, George Lucas introduced the “Star Wars” trilogy, episodes 4, 5 and 6, before prefacing them with 1, 2 and 3.

But, what has “dog house” to do with Tolkien and Lucas? “dog house” has nothing to do with Tolkien and Lucas except for a few feeble comparisons.

Unlike Tolkien and Lucas, “dog house” is not as action packed. Peter Jackson will not bang on the camper door begging for the movie rights. Like Tolkien and Lucas, “dog house” precedes the rest of the story. It’s a history to the adventure of why “traveling in this great country, especially with a good woman and a chimpanzee, is the American dream”. It’s a tedious read but it helps explain stuff that comes later.

Take 10 or 15 minutes to read it and join in if you like. If you don’t like, remember you’re reading a drivel filled blog site for entertainment.

This is Lada Niva

2008-11-20T18:59:00.003-10:00

1980 Lada Niva THE car! Priced to sell! - $1000 (UCF)
Reply to: sale-927165771@craigslist.org [?]
Date: 2008-11-20, 2:02PM EST

Craigs list does have some bargains, not PC is part of the deal on some occasions.
This is Lada Niva. This is The Car. It has four wheels, engine, body and boot. It doesn't have electric windows or climate control or side airbags or automatic gearbox or any other pussy-whipped shit they put into cars nowodays. You know what you get instead when you buy it? A fucking 21 piece toolkit. Do you have a toolkit for your shitty car? Fuck no, because you're a faggot who doesn't even know how his car works. And even if you do, you couldn't fix shit since ninety percent of it is electronics.
Lada Niva is a real fucking car, car which you can repair yourself, for real drivers who know their shit. It's being made by Russians so you know this is so robust it will work after a goddamn nuclear war, and it's been road-tested on fucking syberia, while your worthless japshit has been tested in a country which doesn't know what fucking snow is. You know what temperatures there are in winter in Russia? So low that people have to drink a liter of vodka daily or they freeze to fucking death.
Oh sure, it's not as pretty as your overpriced piece of shit, and it's a good fucking thing. You probably wash your eurotrash every goddamn week. I could punch a side window and fix it with cardboard and duct tape and you'd barely notice any fucking difference. And the more mud I get on it, the sexier it fucking looks.

And if you'll try to overtake me, I'll just push you into the ditch, bitch. Then I'll fix my car for a price of two chickens while you spend half a year worth of salary to replace a fucking door.

This car is so bad ass it was imported by pirates (I'm actually dead serious about that, got it at a government seized property auction).

$1000 firm.

Bail Out?

2008-11-19T17:09:00.003-10:00

I understand that "we the people" chose gas guzzling vehicles over the fuel efficient vehicle. Our government if we choose to call them intelligent/honest and aware of the future...Major cooperation's generally have a plan within a century in advance...In defense (sarcasm) of our dominant parties is that both ignored and profited from the gas guzzlers.Our leaders knew ( if I did, they had to have some sort of clue) that OPEC had us by the chin hairs.
Bail out for the auto industry is all part of Oil and Industry that the tax payer is paying for, despite their apparent ignorance of the feelings of the US voting public. What I suspect is that they did not realize that the new generation (under 30) is not charmed by state of affairs. I am over 30 and mystified why our country allowed OPEC to control our government and environmental policy...Now don't get me wrong I do not trust the not for profit environmental groups, Club Sierra for example. We the people need to read,and make our own decisions. Why? Because our beloved environmental not for profits have become something akin to Club Sierra.
Bail out for the auto industry? Let them claim Chapter 11 with the government paying the people in the US they owe for parts and services. After this bail out, the big 3 will be forced to work and not fly to Washington on private jets begging for money.
This message was approved by my campaign for the private business bailout party.

Roscoe the Early Days

2008-11-16T16:34:00.002-10:00

Roscoe was born a few years ago, he is older now and wiser some would say. His story was cleverly divulged when we first tricked him to post on a message board from a long time ago.

What may appear as nonsense to the casual reader is the first actual research done on one of the most important writers of the 21st century.
dog house - A Roscoe History Part One

Long ago, on a distant bulletin board

Most read story in TeamMooch!:
Comments are owned by the poster. We aren’t responsible for their content.

Posted by: wyatt on Apr 16, 2001 - 08:13 PM
[TeamMooch!] I have an old refrigerator I hope to convert into a dog house. Does anyone have some old motorcycle parts I can use for the conversion?

by roscoe on Apr 17, 2001 - 04:48 PM
You don’t really want to convert an old refrigerator into a dog house . First, if that dog bites into the feon coil he’s gonna get a real bad headache. If your dog gets a real bad headache, it’s gonna be grumpy. B, a refrigerator can be top-heavy. One good gust of wind can squish Old Faithful flat (flat dog = crying kids). Third, purchase a washing machine converted into a dog house. You will enjoy a lower center of gravity and without freon , it is environmentally friendly. I have an old Maytag modified with some Hodaka Super Rat components that works just fine. It’s a classic. And my Rott, 3-Foot just loves it. He is a lot smarter than old 2-Foot.

by Anonymous on Apr 17, 2001 - 07:21 PM
1. How much for the Maytag and do you offer financing? My old dog four foot has one foot in the grave after he ate the freon coil, you were a little late on the advice but thanks anyway.

by roscoe on Apr 19, 2001 - 04:00 PM
That Super Rat Maytag is not for sale. It is just a demonstrator. Now, I do have an avocado KawaMana I could put four foot into in just 41 or 42 easy payments . Sorry to hear the old pup is under the weather. He may come around in a few days. Maybe he can use a little Pepto & 7up, that always makes a rumblegut feel better.

by Anonymous on Apr 19, 2001 - 07:19 PM
My neighbor has a nice motorhome that I might trade you for the house. Do you barter?

by wyatt (wyatt@teammooch.com) on Apr 25, 2001 - 04:57 PM
I’d like to make mention of the fact that I bought one of Roscoes Washing MAchine dog houses and my dog aint one damn bit cleaner than when I first put him in the contraption. The Rinse cycle is broken and spin dry just made my dog throw up. So what gives? I want my neighbors motor home I traded you for it back!

by roscoe on Apr 26, 2001 - 03:41 PM
I’m sorry, there will be no refund on the motorhome. I traded it to my neighbor Freak Show Roy for a chimpanzee named Diablo. Freak Show was going on the road and needed a tour bus. He said that monkey was a prime ape so I figured he was pretty smart and I could teach him to strip out washing machines. Since I don’t speak Spanish I named him Tater (Tater Chimp, get it?). Well, things just got worse after that. It took an hour-and-a-half to wrestle Tater into his coveralls . He wouldn’t keep his tools organized and all he wanted to do was pick bugs off the dogs.

The other day at lunch, Tater went nuts . He jumped up on the table, stripped himself naked, and started playing with his fish stick and hush puppies. He screamed and threw food everywhere. Old Two Foot sat there howling and confused. He’s got a cataract in one eye , a sty on the other and his good ear was full of coleslaw . I thought that I would never get things to calm down.

So , if you have problems with your new dog palace, you can bring it back. But, your taken the monkey !

by wyatt (wyatt@teammooch.com) on Apr 26, 2001 - 05:01 PM
I’ll take the Chimp and put him to work detailing cars. Monkey Shines Detailing will be the name of my company.Does he eat people food?

by roscoe on Apr 28, 2001 - 08:03 PM
Freak Show told me Feed that ape what you eat. One thing is certain, he doesn’t like seafood. Otherwise, he eats almost anything. Be careful. If you set him to work detail on cars, he is liable to start eaten turtle wax like chip dip. I don’t know if he likes the wax or if he likes the turtle, but he can sure power that stuff down. Burritos and bananas!!! Do not feed him burritos and bananas! WHEW!!!

If you want this monkey for your car business, let’s figure out a deal. Maybe we can trade some detailing on my new dog house palace line. A good buff and wax on household appliances can make them look like new .

by Anonymous on Apr 28, 2001 - 11:56 PM
No deal! Your Monkey is mine, and if you want to start trouble then you ask the little fool monkey who he wants to live with? ME IS the correct answer you monkey hogging fool!

by Anonymous on May 01, 2001 - 11:02 PM
Roscoe, looks like weve got a real crack pot on the Forum. Monkey Hogging fool?

by roscoe on May 02, 2001 - 05:26 PM
OK Mister , it’s a done deal. Spit and a handshake that monkey is yours . No more questions, arguments, promises, warranties or refunds… He is your monkey. May he bring to you all the joy and happiness that he gave me. In some ways I hate to see him go but, in most ways I say good luck and don’t let him into the tequilas. He can be a mean drunk.

by Anonymous on May 02, 2001 - 07:02 PM
Not so fast there slicky! Keep away him away from the Tequila? I never trust a monkey that cant hold its liqour, find some other sucker! Now I recognise you for being one of those slick, fast talkin sophistimiticated con-men, I aint biten, fish is dumber waters slicky.Deals off!

by roscoe on May 02, 2001 - 07:49 PM
It’s the darnest thing, just as I thought I was stuck with that monkey I fell into a gold mine. After dinner Tater got mad because I would not let him watch Adam 12 on the telvision set. Well, he got up and ripped the air-conditioner right out of the window! As he threw a fit around the garage, the insides fell out of that air-conditioner. With a little more work and some plexi-glass , it’s going to make a great hamster or Guinea pig habitat. It needs a little more research and development because right now that motor driven exercise wheel really tuckers the little guys out. I’ll grab the sprockets and chain from an old YZ and change the gearing. Thanks to that chimpanzee, I have a new product line . I’m gonna make millions!!

by baker (google.com) on May 02, 2001 - 08:51 PM
Tread lightly my friend, I hold the Patent to the habitat cooler. My brain thought it up not your monkey.

by charlie on May 04, 2001 - 09:59 AM
Well I’m glad to see our web site is doing good service to those who need some safe place to hide. Roscoe, do you have any thing for my cat? 22 pound simese and meaner than hell. She killed 11 men in 9 minutes, she is hungry and must be fed daily, I just don’t have it in me any more, old age and being banned from Osco dosen’t help. Osco and Roscoe, they rhyme, they both treat cyapedigo, but one wears a diaper and one sells a diaper. A canoe tips and the pricks on the out side of a porcupine. Gotta go lick my wounds, thank dog I’m not injured where I can’t lick. Waiting to cage a kitty in Cadiz. The moral to this story is if you can’t remember the joke just blurt out the punch line, chances are we’ve all heard the joke before.
Help my cat.
Charlie

by wyatt (wyatt@teammooch.com) on May 04, 2001 - 10:18 AM
I have an old dryer, could that be converted to a exercise wheel for a gerbil who has a bad case of giganticism? I live near a nuculer plant.

by roscoe on May 04, 2001 - 08:21 PM
Charlie, HUH ? What did Wyatt’s radioactive gerbil say to Charlie when he was hungry? Here kitty kitty! Now, that is a punch line. Has George W. Bush been writing your material? I have a monkey who’s a tree climbing, p@@p flinging brain trust compared to that babble . What do you do for a 22 lb. cat? Well, I’m not really a cat type person so I’ll just say buy nice big tupper-ware with a good seal. Otherwise, come on down to the monkey house . . .err, uh… design department. We’ll hang an old Yokohama knobby tire for a swing and put Tater to work on your new cat house.

Wyatt, you could be on to something here. If there were some way to plug this glow in the dark Super rat in to that dryer, it might be the purest form of potential energy. A rodent dynamo! Hook that beast up to a turbine and power California!

by Anonymous on May 05, 2001 - 01:47 AM
Power California? We only need just enough to shift the fault line just a tinsey bit, then my Nevada properties will finally be a smart investment.

by charlie on May 05, 2001 - 10:24 AM
Does California have a delete button? I know my cat does, you tickel that one spot and she is gone. Roscoe’s monkey found out the hard way when we visited the design department. ( Boy was that a suprise, design slum is a better description ) Washing machines stacked up with wrecked cycles every where in the mud. Dogs and monkeys peeking out of every appliance, I must say Roscoe sure tests his product before offering them up for sale. Feral hogs protected the compound and Roscoe just sat there on his porch with a shot gun across his lap. Yea, I bought one of his machines but I don’t think I will go back to pick it up, I’ll just kiss the $290 good bye and thank dog I excaped with my life. He can have the cat too!

by wyatt (wyatt@teammooch.com) on May 05, 2001 - 11:57 AM
You know what they say:
Pigs get fat,
Hogs get slaughtered.

by roscoe on May 07, 2001 - 08:23 PM
That Charlie fellow called the other day and said he wanted to see the showroom. He said he wanted a dog house for his cat. I figure a sale is a sale so, I gave him directions. He sure asked a lot of questions on the telephone and when he finally got here he sure seemed nervous… Real jumpy. Kept turning around and checking his back pocket like he forgot his wallet. My guess was that he’s a cat person and the dogs must have made him skittish. He finally decided on a harvest gold Kenmorazuki . He helped cart it out to the end of the drive , paid for it, and said that he would be back to pick it up later. I haven’t seen him since. I thought, maybe he didn’t like the place but then he wrote that letter to this bulletin board thing.

I can only tell you that his eloquent word picture could only begin to capture its true majasty . To see the place at sunset, an amber cascade twinkles off motorcycle chrome and reflects from those home appliances like a fiery waterfall. It will leave you choked up on natures splinder. My true love Griselda called it “God’s Little Acre” until she run off .

by Anonymous on May 07, 2001 - 10:57 PM
Bravo!

by wyatt (wyatt@teammooch.com) on May 08, 2001 - 02:44 PM
If there is one thing I knows and thats womens and Roscoe Griselda aint comin home to “Gods little Acre”. Take her things and feed em to your hogs. Maybe you should get yourself a Sheep and a pair of velcro Chaps.Sheep houses could be the next big thing. Call some old dry cleaners maybe industrial king size warshers can house a sheep suitably.

by roscoe on May 13, 2001 - 07:54 PM
That Wyatt fellow just showed an ugly side. Sheep? NO!!! I’ve been thinking. If I’m going to win Griselda back , I’m going to have to win her emotions by writing stuff and sending stuff to her. Here goes…

Ode to Griselda

She Won’t Come Back. No Matter How I Beg Her.
She Hates Me So Bad
She Burned Down The Trailer.
Those New Tires For The House Won’t Fit Nothing Else.

They Were Round, Just The Thing.
Fitting Like Her Wedding Ring.
They Were Shiney And Nice But,
Now They’re As Flat As My Hart.

She left me for some jerk. A swapmeet Picasso.
Who tattooed on her thigh, a picture
Our boozing Lhasa-Apso.
She took it with her but I’m glad,
that dog’s a mean drunk anyway.

Now I Feel Lower Than My Junk Yard Wiener Dog.
Because My Sweehart’s Run Away, With A Biker Gal Called Hog.
I’m So Sad And I’m So Blue
I Don’t Know What To Do.
I Feel Lower Than a Junk Yard Wiener Dog.

by Anonymous on May 13, 2001 - 10:46 PM
Son, its hard to compete with swap meet Picasso types. Save your writings for a real woman who will love and respect you for the Warsher/ dawg haus acceptspurt that you is. Maybe the next used warsher trade show you can find your self a woman worthy of a man with your unique talents…Sorry about the sheep joke. I know a woman who might be just right for you, she is the famous Jesco Whites (The Dancing Outlaw) sister and although she is missing,maybe, just maybe you are the one who will find this charming woman. Best of luck and more inormation on her can be found on Jescoe (Jesse or Elvis) Whites “The Dancing Outlaw” website. Good luck and keep writing your poems and convertin your warshers. Wyatt

by Anonymous on Jun 06, 2001 - 04:13 AM
I just stripped my dish washer of its little slotted racks and discovered that it was ideal for staging miniture clamation plays that had story lines based around tropical rain storms and hot humid winds. My first production will be based upon the life of “Hurricane Gussy”! Could you lend me some clay,a dishwasher,a generator,a garden hose, a spigot,a handfull of sulfur and some very small coconuts?

by roscoe on Jun 07, 2001 - 02:58 AM
Staging play productions are you? Say Mister, are you that Mathew Broderic fellow who’s married to Sara Jessica Parker? They’ve been talking about you on another part of this web site. Boy, she’s a sweetie. She sure seems busy with that hit TV show. You must have a lot of time on your hands. I don’t know about clay animation or the tools you’ll need to get started. I do have an old front load whirlpool that I will let you have cheap. I don’t have generators though I do have an old Ossa that I found crashed into a chicken coop once. . . I have no clue how it got there. I figure maybe we can hook the magnito to one of those cigarette lighter, plug-in and verters and see if we get enough juice to turn it over. As far as that other stuff, you’ll have to round it up yourself. I’m not much for those Broadway productions. I find they’re run by a bunch of hippies. I’ll tell you one thing, if I find out you are a hippie, I’ll put the dogs after you. Oh yeh Mister, its cash upfront no lending!

by roscoe on Jun 27, 2001 - 03:15 PM
The bozos running my small-cap mutual fund decided to stick with those Dot Com ventures even though they were bleeding like they had been through the slaughterhouse. They somehow didn’t understand that if the president of the United States was an oil man, they should consider investing in petroleum. It doesn’t matter the president wants to suck all the oil out from under Alaska and oil companies are gonna get fat. More power to them, I say. If the next generation X expects us to conserve and leave all the oil to them, they should wake up and smell the transmission fluid. They should get off their lazy backsides and invent a new energy source. If we conserve energy, they will just sit back and figure that there is plenty to spare. If they panic now, they will see it is necessary to be smarter and they will study harder in school.

To make along story short, the old retirement egg tanked . To try and catch up on the money situation, I’ve been out in the yard slashing prices on everything that I could see including all of the stuff that the landfill would not take. EVERYTHING MUST GO! I HACKED PRICES TO THE BARE WALLS! Even Two-Foot as a price tag. (keep in mind that he doesn’t get around quick because he only has feet on the keddy-corners. That’s why the neighborhood kids sometimes call him Wiggles or Roll-o. )

by Anonymous on Jun 29, 2001 - 12:32 AM
Dotcom kinda rhymes with Dotgone dont it?

by wyatt (wyatt@teammooch.com) on Jul 10, 2001 - 11:09 PM
New energy source ideas:1. Old Politicians
2.Young Politicians
3.Dead Politicians
4.Jerry Springers Guests
5.Lawyers
6.Myopic enviromentilists
7.Stock brokers
8.Financial Advisors
9.Old Growth Redwoods
10.Manatees
11.Old Cigarette packs from behind the couch
12.Firestone Tyres
13.Outdated Maps of Russia
14. Any and all instruction manuals
15. Your neighbors limbs which hang over your yard which by the way is your property!
16. Small stuff you dont need.
17. Small stuff your neighbor does not need.
18.Worthless refrigerators that have been converted into
dog houses that rats wouldn’t even go into let alone mans best friend.
19. All loosing lottery tickets
20. Convert friction energy from scratch of lottery tickets into heat for the freezing Eskimos.

by charlie on Jul 11, 2001 - 09:22 AM
21 Joshies brain22 Mark fell down
23 Abe’s girl friend
24 self tanning lotion
25 empty beer vessels

by wyatt (wyatt@teammooch.com) on Jul 11, 2001 - 07:09 PM
26,27,28 & 29. Charlies outsie belly button.

by roscoe on Jul 31, 2001 - 09:08 PM
My uncle always said “On starless nights , tires won’t smoke when you burn them”. I guess photosynthesis must have something to do with them smoking in the daylight. We’ve got plenty of them lying around now that all the SUVs have new ones. Now There is an energy source!

by roscoe on Jul 31, 2001 - 09:10 PM
My uncle always said “On starless nights , tires won’t smoke when you burn them”. I guess photosynthesis must have something to do with them smoking in the daylight. We’ve got plenty of them lying around now that all the SUVs have new ones. Now There is an energy source!

by roscoe on Jul 31, 2001 - 09:16 PM
Well the big inventory reduction sale is over and anything left has been pushed into the ravine. A bit of good luck though… I had an old Nordge prototype that I suspected was worth something. I kept a tarp over it special, to keep water out and the bird stuff off of it. Rather than letting it go to somebody real cheap, I decided to sell it on the Internet . Well , the bidding went nuts. I ended up selling to some computer fellow from Seattle, Washington (the state). You wouldn’t believe by looking at it , but that washing machine was worth a bundle ! That’s it folks , it’s early retirement for me .

I’ve been sitting here for a few days wondering; what do I do with that G O B of money? I’ve always liked racing. It didn’t matter, anything that had wheels would do. Big wheels, bicycles, motorcycles were all fun. Now, I get a bunch of cash and I want to go fast! My first incline… NASCAR!! Load your checkbook and buddies in a truck and go racing. Second, I figure do that gumball rally, just like the great actor Gary Busey. Then I figure, settle down and take it easy. I tell myself “Don’t spend that money to fast “. There’s a lot of this world I haven’t seen yet and it’s time I did. So I bought back that motorhome from Freak Show and turned to the horizon. I’m hitting the road. Tater, Lorileelee and I are off to find waves of amber grain, mountains majestic, and seas shining. Here we come, Michigan !

by wyatt (wyatt@teammooch.com) on Aug 01, 2001 - 12:04 AM
Worlds largest cherry pie was made in Michigan near that big lake in a
town who’s name I cant recall, but dont miss it its the real deal!

Guest Post from William Douglas Little

2008-11-15T17:00:00.002-10:00

With permission I post this from WDL Kind Regards JW

A Rare Political Posting -

Several years ago, I received an e-mail that quoted a Scottish Professor from 1787. In this e-mail, he spoke of the, (in his opinion), wrong choice made by our founding fathers in choosing democracy as our form of government. Since that time I have quoted Mr. Tyler's words many times, but had long since deleted the e-mail. Yesterday, a good friend of mine forwarded the e-mail to me and unknowingly gave me the opportunity to share my solution to the decline of democracy here in the U.S.

You may agree with my thoughts, or perhaps you don't. Either way is just fine by me as we each are entitled to our own opinions. Either way, I hope that your reading this helps to encourage thought toward our political system, which most of us agree needs some form of change.

First, the e-mail as I received it. I do not know the origin of this e-mail, by the way, but I believe that I first read it around 2001 or 2002. The second part - regarding Professor Olson's findings - will seem a decidedly Republican slant. I've not verified the information on that part, but you're welcome to do so if you wish. My main interest was Tyler's statement, however I did find the second section to be interesting.

How Long Do We Have?

About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

'A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.'

'A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.'

'From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.'

'The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years'

'During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. from bondage to spiritual faith;

2. from spiritual faith to great courage;

3. from courage to liberty;

4. from liberty to abundance;

5. from abundance to complacency;

6. from complacency to apathy;

7. from apathy to dependence;

8. from dependence back into bondage'

Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul , Minnesota , points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:

Number of States won by: Democrats: 19 Republicans: 29

Square miles of land won by: Democrats: 580,000 Republicans: 2,427,000

Population of counties won by: Democrats: 127 million Republicans: 143 million

Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Democrats: 13.2 Republicans: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: 'In aggregate, the map of the territory Republican won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country. Democrat territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare...' Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the 'complacency and apathy' phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the 'governmental dependency' phase.

So ... many people will read this and perhaps think that it represents a non-issue. Perhaps some will say that democracy and a capitalistic society are no longer the best way for America. Perhaps you'll believe that "moving on" to a hybrid democratic/socialistic or even a full-blown socialistic society would be better for America. If that's your thought, then that's your right. So be it. You can probably stop reading here and we'll retain our friendships. Personally though, I couldn't disagree more.

Those who are concerned about reforming our democracy and rebuilding our government may read this and consider the bridge to be impassable. If we are to believe that Mr. Olsen is correct in his estimation that 40% of Americans have now reached the point of "governmental dependence" and historically democracies are proved destined to fail after 200-years, then what can be done? How do we reverse the trend?

Well, it just so happens that I do have a plan. Over the years we've heard many politicians on the stump screaming for "Welfare Reform", but to date, nobody has done anything of substance to tackle this elephant. Sure, bills may have been presented and votes may have been cast, (within our government - not often by you and I), but ultimately the programs of public assistance have only grown and multiplied to the point that we now have fourth and even fifth generation welfare recipients. Is this what was intended with the introduction of the first "welfare program"? (From what I can find, the first full-blown Federal program was introduced as a temporary measure to provide assistance to families out of work following the Great Depression). The answer is no.

The long-term recipients - those "working the system", if you will - have simply learned that it is easier to get by through government dependence than by actually working. They don't think in terms of contributing to society, but are following - in many cases - a learned behavior taught them by their parents or peers. Why not? It's there ... might as well take it. Of course, this drain on our tax dollars is a snowball effect, lending only to larger government to support more programs and a constant increase in the number of recipients. Currently, more than 40% of Americans do not pay taxes and that number is growing. That means that nearly half of the country is attempting to support, (in one way or another - if they don't receive assistance, they certainly use the roads and other things paid for by tax dollars), not only their share but also the share of the other half. What happens when it's 30% paying taxes? 20%? 10 and so on?

A baby-step reform of the public assistance program is not going to help. Though the problem of forcing through a drastic change remains a challenge, here is a plan that I feel may work, if implemented.

Welfare Reform -

CLASS ONE: Temporary Displaced Worker Assistance - A worker who loses his/her job still needs to feed their family until finding new employment. We can agree that this is a basic need, (though not a "right"). Therefore, a displaced worker program could be provided in which the worker can receive assistance in the form of hourly wages for each day that they "work" to contribute to society. Non-skilled laborers would be employed through government agencies working on infrastructure, maintaining or building national parks/forests, or in conjunction with private non-profit organizations such as Habitat for Humanity or public shelters. The requirement would be to appear on time and provide four-hours of work and then have the other four-hours to search for a new job. Likewise, skilled- workers would be temporarily "employed" caring for and providing assistance to severely disabled citizens, (as mentioned in Class Three), working within schools, (if so qualified), or with a myriad of other organizations or agencies in need of temporary assistance. In addition, private sector companies needing temporary help, (either skilled or non-skilled), could hire the services of assistance program citizens through existing private sector agencies, who would be paid the base minimum wage rate by the hiring company and collect a standard 15% commission from the government. (This further saves tax dollars invested by allowing private sector payment for the bulk of the wages). This is a temporary assistance program, but rather than mandate a distinct cut off time, (whereby a worker who truly could not find employment in a downturned market would be cast out), workers will be "encouraged" to find other employment due to the nature of the program. The worker would be paid the base minimum wage for 8-hours on each day that they showed up at the assigned time and worked a full four-hours, followed by a logged four-hours of job searching. (This would need to be tracked and verified, but with the huge savings in public assistance payout, a small percentage could be used to fund any additional training and staffing for the current "welfare offices"). In addition, the work performed will be low level and the want to move up to better employment would be strong. The benefit? All recipients would be working to earn their assistance money and performing jobs that would either benefit the greater good of the populous, or providing low-cost employment within the private sector and drastically minimizing the size of the government contribution to the program as it now exists. Plus - and perhaps of most importance - it promotes a habit of work rather than collecting freebie giveaways. If you're going to have to tow the line anyway, you might as well find a job that you like.

CLASS TWO: Partially Disabled - we can all agree that none of us want to be disabled in any way. In a society based on equality and fellowship, we want to help those who are. Likewise, most all of the disabled individuals I have had the pleasure of knowing are good people who don't want hand-outs or empathy for their disability. They strive to overcome whatever disadvantages they might have and many are quite successful. However, there are those who are unable to find employment and require help from others to get by. For those who are partially disabled, the Class Two program would provide for them a form of worker assistance in which they can contribute to government needs, (providing data entry from their home, for example), or private sector companies in need of part-time or temporary services that fall within their capability range. Again, the private sector could be supplied through agencies for commission, greatly reducing the burden on tax dollar contribution. Depending upon the situation, this class may be considered temporary or permanent assistance.

CLASS THREE: Severely Disabled - There are those among us who simply cannot be expected to contribute and many of those also require special care. These individuals would fall into the third class of assistance, through which they would be provided with income and/or care assistance that would be either temporary or permanent depending upon their individual situation. Obviously there are situations in which insurance is providing for all or some of the needed care. This program would work in conjunction with insurance in cases where additional assistance is required but not covered. In no way would this reduce the burden on insurance companies with an obligation to provide to these citizens. In the event that government care or physical assistance is required, (either skilled care or non-skilled labor in maintenance or upkeep of the citizen's home), Class One workers could be used to supply the needed aid, thereby further reducing the tax dollar burden for assistance.

Obviously this is only the "basics" of the plan and there are a number of issues not covered here. However, it's a start to a solution. The problem, as I mentioned before, would lie within getting such a drastic reform put in place. I do believe, though, if this problem and solution were widely enough publicized together, the critics would either have to present very good reasons as to why assistance should be given without being earned, or they will only be seen as contributing to a "freebie" society and the further decline of the greatest Nation on Earth.

No offense, that's just the way I see it.

All the best,

WDL

Spam from the New York Times

2008-11-14T18:33:00.002-10:00

I have never eaten spam in my life, I have however at one point in my life remebered all the lyrics to Monty Pythons Spam song. A great article on Spam from the New York Times.

“There are all kinds of people who have an emotional connection to Spam,” said Gil Gutknecht Jr., the former Minnesota congressman, who was in the gift shop at the Spam Museum buying a Spam tie, sweatshirt and earrings. Mr. Gutknecht recalled that he once served as a judge in a Spam recipe contest.
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“The best thing was Spam brownies,” he said, with more or less a straight face.

No independent data provider compiles sales figures that include all the outlets where Spam is sold, including foreign stores, so it is not clear exactly how much sales are up. Hormel’s chief executive, Jeffrey M. Ettinger, said in September that they were growing by double digits.

The company would not discuss more recent sales of the product or permit a tour of the Spam factory, citing rules that Hormel said prevented it from speaking ahead of a forthcoming earnings report.

However, Hormel executives appear to be banking on the theory that Spam fits nicely into recession budgets. Workers on the Spam line in Austin — more than 40 of them work two shifts —see no signs that their work schedule will let up.

“We are scheduled to work every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas,” said Darwin Sellers, 56, a Spam “formulator” who adds salt, sugar and nitrates to batches of Spam. “Mr. Ettinger is negotiating with the man upstairs to get us to work eight days a week.”

Mr. Sellers said he had not seen much of his family in recent months, but the grueling schedule had been good for his checkbook. He bought a new television and planned to replace a 20-year-old refrigerator.

Unlike his colleagues though, he has no plans to stock up on Spam. “It’s not something I’ve ever developed a taste for,” he said.

A rising segment of the public, it seems, does have a taste for Spam, which is available in several varieties, including Spam Low Sodium, Spam with Cheese and Spam Hot & Spicy.

James Bate, a 48-year-old sausage maker, was buying it at Wal-Mart in Cleveland recently. Not only was it cheap, but he said it brought back fond memories of his grandfather’s making him Spam sandwiches.

“You can mix it with tomatoes and onions and make a good meal out of it,” he said. “A little bit of this stuff goes a long way.”

Vote and I will Tell you Why!

2008-10-30T17:12:00.004-10:00

Of course this has nothing to do with politics but does contain some pretty damn good science.
Three weeks ago I was eating a banana and drinking coffee in my home office. The fact that my home office is on the upper level I did not feel like walking down the stairs to throw away a soft quick to rot banana peel, so I thought "hell just flush it down the crapper" which I did and well you know this was just bad science.
First of all we all know Thomas Crapper invented the flush toilet, Mr Crapper would probably be rolling in is grave if he discovered that someone from an advanced society would dare try to flush a banana peel down a toilet.
In my own defense I have to say, if you lay a banana on say, a bed stand, within three weeks it has withered into nothing but dead fruit flies and a waning bad odor.
However the waters of the crapper are like those of the sea, always willing to teach you a new lesson.
Lesson learned, now Poseidon of the Crapper will you grant me a pardon, I knew bananas where supposed to be bad luck on a boat, but I was not trying to sail anything in my half bath. Forgive me and I will promise never to try to flush a banana peel down the crapper again.Unless forced at gunpoint of course and...well all bets are off at this point, I have to go through the motions stall wait for the moment and disarm the bandits. Thanks in advance Poseidon, your buddy JW

Free Food With Purchase of Car

2008-10-18T06:31:00.002-10:00

The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should

be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the

assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt.

People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.

-- Cicero , 55 BC
For lovers of good writing, these are the 10 winners of this year's Bulwer-Lytton contest -- AKA, Dark and Stormy Night Contest -- run by the English Dept. of San Jose State University, wherein one writes only the first line of a bad novel:

10) "As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break wind in the echo chamber, he would never hear the end of it."

9) "Just beyond the Narrows , the river widens."

8) "With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a tanned, unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick brown hair, deep azure-blue eyes fringed with long black lashes, perfect teeth that vied for competition, and a small straight nose, Marilee had a beauty that defied description."

7) "Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he crept along the East wall: 'Andre creep...Andre creep... Andre creep.'"

6) "Stanislaus Smedley, a man always on the cutting edge of narcissism, was about to give his body and soul to a back alley sex-change surgeon to become the woman he loved."

5) "Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her from eeking out a living at a local pet store."

4) " Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but then penguins often do."

3) "Like an over-ripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese, the corpulent remains of Santa Claus lay dead on the hotel floor."

2) "Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn't know the meaning of the word 'fear'; a man who could laugh in the face of danger and spit in the eye of death -- in short, a moron with suicidal tendencies."

AND THE WINNER IS.....

1) "The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gasping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception, screaming madly, 'You lied!'"

Roscoe in Central Florida Tax Free

2008-10-15T17:30:00.005-10:00

Soon to become a serial monthly installment in Trail Rider Magazine. Travels with Roscoe which is in the movie mill, the Coen brothers have the edge so far...Read and be a part of history! Yes George Clooney is still trying to buy the script direct and star. However I think the gent forgot where he came from. The Coen brothers gave him a huge career boost. Never forget where you came from, unless you are the progeny of Charles Manson of course. Kind Regards JW

Location: Central Florida

Earnhardt pulled a stuffed monkey from his driving uniform and slammed it down. "I'm here, and I've got that damned monkey off my back!" he proclaimed." That was part of Dale Earnhardt's victory speech after winning the 1998 Daytona 500. When Indiana native Andy Hillenburg substituted for Ricky Rudd at the 2002 Daytona test session, Yates said. "It's not like a place where you need great driver feedback, (even though) Andy can do that and do a great job for us. I'm not saying he's just a monkey or a steering wheel holder, by any means." Tim Flock, the son of a daredevil, sometimes drove with a monkey as his co-pilot.... Flock raced eight times with his pet monkey, "Jocko Flocko," in the co-pilot seat. But the monkey broke free during a 1953 race at Raleigh, North Carolina, and grabbed Tim by the neck, holding on for dear life. Flock had to make an extra pit stop to de-monkey his car, which ended up costing him the race. (NASCAR.com) NASCAR roots reach deep in monkey tradition. With tradition in mind, I was certain that a trip to Daytona was necessary.

A few logistical problems had to be figured in order to make the whole thing work. Leelee dropped us at Joe Foss Field in Sioux Falls. She would drive the camper south through Indiana to pick up Freak Show Roy and proceed to the holy land of stock car racing. Freak Show knew a couple of guys who had a hot car and needed a driver. My first obstacle would be flying with Tater. With the unfortunate global situation we find ourselves in, I counted on security being tight. I checked my bags and proceeded through the metal detector. Upon exit, I was thrown against the wall and surrounded by three heavily armed military types. "What the hell you carryin' in that bag!" I turned and realized what started the commotion. My soft sider screamed and tumbled off the conveyor as wide-eyed security workers viewed the x-ray monitor revealing an ape-ish skeleton. It was then I figured we were in trouble. I unzipped the bag and Tater exited holding my KTM jacket as a security blanket. "You a bike rider?... We are too!" ... After a few minutes of negotiation it was decided that we could fly to Florida but I would have to keep the monkey under control and buy him a ticket.

Six hours later, they said to look for a Cuban guy holding a sign for us. I figured that we would be riding in style but an un-muffled Town-car, needing shocks, bounced us to our destination. I remember my dad telling me that if you opened the suicide doors on a 64 at speed, you'd get sucked out and run over by a concrete truck. Ricardo chattered with Tater while I enjoyed the sun and orange groves of eastern Florida, the smell of oil leaky valve covers filled the air. Aided by three semesters of high-school Spanish, I surmised he spoke of President Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs and that he was shot in a car just like this one. We arrived, in short order, at the garage complex of Frankie "Firebug" Roberts, a long time friend of Freak Show. Show would spend his winters in Florida and higher Frankie to repair carnie rides. I wanted to see the racecar. I envisioned myself speeding down the front stretch as Tater waived to the delight of the crowd. We rounded a deteriorated Tilt-A-Whirl and I stopped dead in my tracks. Before us sat a 97 T-bird covered with wood grained contact paper that you might buy to cover a kitchen cabinet. Some group called Gator Alley Pulp Mill & Stump Grinding sponsored it. Apparently the guys cashed in their alligator circus business.

When Freak Show gets here, we're gonna talk. I still think Tater and I would make a great team, one meant for the history books. I caught a story on TV where several drivers were asked a Barbara Walters type question. "If you were in animal what kind of animal would you be?" Answers varied from the speedy Cheetah, Leopard and Gazelle to Tony Stewart's reply of "a tiger of course". With the wisdom of an old timer Jimmie Johnson proclaimed, "I'd be a monkey!". Be proud, be fast, Be Monkey.

Money, Banking and the Federal Reserve

2008-10-08T17:57:00.002-10:00

Communication is the foundation of civilization, so maybe we need to communicate and not be led down a path.

An oldie but a goodie on the Federal Reserve, take your time this is 42 minutes long...

On Any Sunday the Movie

2008-10-07T18:00:00.003-10:00

Does it get any better than this? Roscoes book is the new On Any Sunday for those that like to read, for those who do not. Well George Clooney has purchased the first rights and may play Roscoe himself! What a differance a day makes.

The wheels of justice roll slowly and the alignment is off. Freak Show's plea-bargaining abilities did not rise to my expectations. The jailhouse shrink report carried more weight than I anticipated. One condition to my release was to participate in a court-ordered observation period of 72 hours. Afterwards, I would spend a minimum of two weeks in group therapy at the city's finest Nut-bin. I would find my inner feelings looking at inkblots and answering questions like "Aren't you afraid to touch doorknobs?" I'd seen it before. In my family, interventions happen at Christmas when everybody gathers to tell you how you’re screwing up . . . Good times.

It is uncomfortable learning your "doctor" is straight out of school. Doc tripped over his feet fumbling with a clipboard. He described the battery of tests I would take in the next three days and quipped, "I hope you stick around. We hate to tell the court that you were not cooperative." I replied that I was not Harvey Mushman and this was not "The Great Escape ". The young fellow scribbled notes and asked, "Who is Harvey Mushman?" Sensing this was test number one I told Doc that racing motorcycles was more than a gimmick to Steve McQueen. He was a serious motorcycle racer who often registered as Mushman because he did not want to draw attention to himself. With a bewildered look and a shoulder shrug, my newly graduated, smart as a whip, wet behind the ears Doctor asked, "Who is Steve McQueen?" . . . I was in trouble.

Things were not going well. The staff would congregate at my door and whisper. Internal resentment festered - that monkey put me here. One nurse understood my frustration and extended an understanding hand. Her advice . . ."Don't fight the medication." Then I remembered a quote by William Jefferson Clinton . . . "If you find yourself in a big hole, stop digging." I had to agree with the hippie. I kept my stories quiet, took their tests, and told them what they wanted to hear. I had fun the next couple of days finger painting but I kind of missed Tater, Leelee and our adventures. Visiting day arrived. Freak and Tater showed, bringing gifts. Doc saw the bonafied monkey and released me to Gen-Pop, a whole new world and a whole bunch of new friends. With a bare-assed hospital gown and a restored sense of freedom, I was ready for Gen-Pop.

The journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step. . . In my case, twelve steps and a pair of pants. Twelve step programmers are natural moochers. Most anonymous support groups take the alcoholic steps, remove the word alcohol, and insert the habit necessary. Alcoholics, Sexaholics, Gamblers, Food Addicts, and Cocaine users jump in. There is a support group for you. In Gen-Pop, the first thing you do is sign up for the Substance Abusers Softball League. It is supposed to introduce you to the rest of the gang and their problems. No bats or ball, just a bunch of crazies standing in the yard screaming "Hey Batter, Swing!" Al Unser said Robert Downey was last year's MVP. Not THE Al Unser, this Al was a 6 ft. Jamaican and his racecar was, in fact, an old office chair. Man, could he hot lap the bases.

Time flies when you are on behavioral modifiers. During my stay I wondered how to make twelve steps work. "1.We admitted we were powerless over alcohol-that our lives had become unmanageable." Okay, I admit I am powerless over monkeys -that our lives had become unmanageable. "10.Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.". I have three motorcycles and a monkey. I was wrong about the monkey. The rest of the steps rely on God for help. While God might have made both man and monkey, history shows you don't mix monkeys with religion. It didn't work for Darwin.

More Intelligent Life

2008-09-28T16:56:00.003-10:00

I got nothing but some WINE TIPS I stole from a site that will not sue me for the free plug. Also cause I got nothing.

More Intelligent Life

Tom Harrow is often asked by clients in the City what he recommends after a hard day at work. "Which wine is best to numb the pain and transport you most effectively from your woes?" ...

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE

Many great personal revelations, those Damascene moments of clarity, have resulted from hitting the bottle. The problem is remembering these profound solutions once you have awoken on someone's sofa in a strange part of town. Of course most damaging incidents--physically, financially and emotionally--have also occurred while under the influence, but here one's lack of recollection is more of a reprieve. (The problem then becomes the more reliable memories of your drinking partners, those friends who consider it a duty to recall each excruciating detail of your wayward behaviour. The obvious answer here is: drink alone.)

Alone or in company, maudlin or ecstatic, drinking good wine should be a fundamentally intellectual experience--particularly with a red Burgundy or the Nebbiolos of Piemonte. The effect should be to inspire you to engage with the issues of the day, with added vigour and originality.

As a wine consultant, I am often asked by clients in the City what I like to drink after a hard day at work. I imagine they are looking for pointers as to a suitable Puligny Montrachet or 4th Growth St Julien to uncork after unsuccessfully securitising bad debts from 6am until midnight. But my own schedule is different, though no less gruelling: trade tastings from 10am, hosted by various merchants or public-relations companies; then a long lunch (three-course minimum) with a Bordeaux broker, say, whereby splitting a full bottle of Sauternes for dessert is not an uncommon, followed by a cognac, naturally. The afternoon (and any fleeting moment of sobriety) usually segues into evening events of press dinners, wine- and food-pairing masterclasses, restaurant or product launches, etc. Is it any wonder that my tipple of choice, while collapsed on the sofa feeling like human foie gras, is more likely to be orange squash or milk? (I avoid water, mind you, as it dilutes life and steals the intensity necessary for a memorably sensuous experience. My reliance on moisturising cream is therefore conversely intense.)

Earlier this year, largely to counter accusations of softness, both physical and moral, I took up boxing--by which I mean being boxed at. The All-Stars Boxing Gym (all but one, now) is a proper spit and sawdust joint in a suitably gritty locale of West London. (I figure it is better to get beaten up in the ring than to face the same punishment outside, without gloves or my wallet afterwards.) This is a refreshingly different method of dehydration than the one to which I am professionally inured. After a two-hour pummelling every Monday evening, there is much more temptation than usual to punish a bottle of burly Pommard back at home.

This experience has made me re-consider my clients' enquiries: "Which wine is best to numb the pain and transport you most effectively from your woes?" What, for example, might the chief executive of the world's fourth-largest investment bank pull up from his cellar, dizzy, reeling and nauseous, knowing that the jobs of 24,000 employees, a proud 158-year commercial history, over $600 billion and the reputation of an entire profession were about to go up in smoke?

A modest but thirst-quenching Provencal white, gulped down a la Gérard Depardieu in "Jean de Florette" as he hacks desperately further and further in to the unforgiving earth to locate the wellspring to regenerate his land and save his crops; literally digging a hole for himself. Or, perhaps feeling the sword of Damocles hovering above, and realising that €7,000 is a drop in the ocean by comparison, he might uncork a treasured bottle of 1945 Mouton Rothschild; a wine as uniquely affecting and memorable as his own actions. Its length and breadth in the mouth persist in a manner as similarly resounding (but without the bitterness) as the resultant impact across the world of high finance.

I can't claim to be a regular golf buddy of Dick Fuld, the man at the helm of Lehman Brothers' sinking ship. I probably wouldn't recognise him on the street (or as he glides by in his limo). By all accounts a bit of bruiser, a tough, scary super-middleweight of Wall Street, cashiered from the military for punching a superior officer, Fuld would have laughed me out of the ring I'm sure. But if we discussed that post-work drink, considering the options in his wine fridge, I would have recommended that he hit the bottle during the working day rather than after (and preferably a magnum, or two). Then at least he would have had a delectable excuse for Lehman's spectacular meltdown. But now against the ropes and panting heavily, Fuld can merely echo Oscar Levant's quip: "I envy people who drink--at least they know what to blame everything on."

Picture credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com/flickr

(Tom Harrow is an independent wine merchant specialising in wine-tasting events, cellar consultancy and vineyard tours through his company A Moveable Feast, Ltd. He is the author of a regular column for Urban Junkies and his own wine blog.)

Little Feat Apolitcal Blues With Mick Taylor

2008-09-21T15:19:00.007-10:00

Little Feat at Rainbow Theatre London 1977 with Mick Taylor guesting.

The Lyrics and my sentiments.

Well my telephone was ringing
And they told me it was Chairman Mao
Well my telephone was ringing
And they told me it was Chairman Mao
You can tell him anything
'Cause I just don't wanna talk to him now

I've got the apolitical blues
And that's the meanest blues of all
Apolitical blues
And that's the meanest blues of all
I don't care if it's John WayneI just don't wanna talk to him now

Or you can try this song.

Steve Forbes Kinda Makes Sense

2008-09-18T18:18:00.006-10:00

Just briefly can you give us an overview of your proposal as outlined in your recent book “The Flat Tax Revolution?” A link to the link of the audio interview 39:15 minutes.

Steve Forbes: Yes. What we would do is take the federal income tax code and all of its intendant rules and regulations, as you know the whole thing comes to 9,000,000 words compared to 5,000 words say, in our constitution and the 773,000 words in the Bible which took centuries to put together and just start over again.

Steve Forbes: They tried to simplify it 20 years ago and since then we’ve added thousands of amendments and 3,000,000 new words.

Steve Forbes: So, what we’d do is replace it with a single-rate tax system, flat tax system, that would have high thresholds. For example, a family of four: mom, dad, say, two kids, would owe no federal income tax on their first $46,000 of income and then anything above that level would be taxed at only a simple rate of 17 percent, 17 cents on the dollar.

Steve Forbes: It’d be no tax on savings and no death taxes.

And on the business side, the profits tax would be cut from 35 to 17 percent and there’d be no more depreciation schedules.

Steve Forbes: So, if you make a capital investment, whether it’s buying a PC or a factory or a piece of machinery or a truck or anything else, you’d be able to treat it as an expense for tax purposes. That way you wouldn’t have to try to figure out are you eligible for a credit or accelerated depreciation, what’s the useful life of the asset and all that stuff.

Last year, for example, we spent six and a half billion hours filling out tax forms. So, we’d have billions of hours of brainpower applied to more productive purposes, including leisure and it would also remove a huge source of civic corruption in our society.

Steve Forbes: I mean everything we do now revolves around the tax code. Want to go on vacation? Hey, tie it into a business conference, get a tax deduction. It’s corrosive.

Steve Forbes: And just to insure that people don’t feel that they might be euchred or suckered in some way, you have a choice. In other words, when we have the new system, you can file under the new system or, if you wish, you can stay with the old system. In other words, let people see for themselves which one is better.

John Kennedy, for example, a Democrat back in the 1960s, proposed a 23 percent cut in the federal income tax and in those days, Republicans were against tax cuts and the criticism was this would cost the government a lot of money at a time of budget deficits. Instead, when the budget tax cuts were finally enacted, the economy got stronger and tax receipts went up.

Steve Forbes: Same thing happened in the 1980s. Top rate, for example, was cut from 70 percent down to 28 percent, rates were cut across the board by 25 percent and federal revenues doubled.

Yeah and to give our listeners an idea, one of the charts that you had showed that, I think it was a family of four, as you mentioned, those with incomes under $40,000 would not pay taxes, and in fact some of them would be getting money back from the government, and at $90,000 the effective tax rate would be about 8.1%.

What about dividends and capital gains? Are they considered income for the flat tax?

Steve Forbes: They are considered an investment, a savings, and so they would be exempt.

And those people who are in retirement and need income, when they are investing in dividend-paying securities, they are not paying taxes on those dividends.

Steve Forbes: And they are the ones who are hurt most by this kind of double or triple taxation. And another good thing of course is, your retirement benefits, i.e. social security, would not be taxed.

What I found fascinating is that as we become more of a global economy, there really is a competition for jobs, there is a competition for industry, and a lot of the countries that are turning to flat tax and to taxation systems that appeal to the worker and taxation systems that appeal to companies and corporations are countries in the former USSR, and it seems that they are getting quite a bit of industry from Western Europe which has not had a lot of competition in a long time.

Steve Forbes: Well, I think it was Walter Riston, great banker, now deceased, who once said “Capital”, and he meant by that both money and people, “goes where it is welcome and stays where it is well treated.”

When I ran for president 10 years ago in the state of New Hampshire, H&R Block sent a mailing warning of the impending end of civilization if we got something like a flat tax.

That is one of the things that is frustrating for a lot of us, is that we see ideas like the flat tax and it is so often presented that it is going to hurt the people with the least when in fact those are the people who absolutely have the most to gain.

Steve Forbes: Exactly.

Indianapolis and The Moto GP

2008-09-15T14:34:00.002-10:00

I live in the Indianapolis Indiana area. Which is home of the Indianapolis 500 ,The Brickyard 400 and once again after a 9 year hiatus the Indy Mile also I suppose I should mention as a side note to stay abreast of the local press the Moto GP.
The Motor speedway is privately owned and as a rule does not share statistics, people only guess at the attendance, which is generally, for a good year at the 500 a crowd of between 300,000 to 500,000 spectators. Them’s a lot of people…
The Indy 500 and the Brickyard 400 generate more revenue for the city (each) for the city than a Super Bowl. So now the privately owned unsubsidized business at the Speedway revealed some statistics for the Sunday GP attendance, 94,000+ they had an exact figure but Its so buried in the news now what with the Colts coverage and such that I think 94,000+ will work. I was there I am familiar with the Speedway, the place looked empty, so when you have nearly 95,000 spectators at an event held in the rain with winds gusting up to 60mph. This speaks volumes on the popularity of this sport. I watched both practice and the race (I admit I do not follow the GP on the International scale) rest assured there were millions of people around the globe watching this world class event unfold. Bernie Ecclestone boss of F-1 tried to get Tony George the owner of the track to solicit money from the government to fund his race, Mr. George essentially told him this is the US and we do not ask for government subsidies for our sporting events. Now after the numbers are shown, how does Ecclestone save face and beg his way back into the track.
The Indy Mile on all accounts had a record breaking crowd the night before the GP. Many of the GP racers were there for the event, it was a great race which Chris Carr won. I wish I could have been there but I had complications and did not make it on time.
Why do I find this relevant when I am a dirt trail kinda guy? Well I am not a stick and ball sport fan, and I did grow up with a father who raced Flat Track. I even did a lap on a mile track myself before the officials pulled me and my 60cc bike off the course and made me race in the kids class. The Indy Mile won some Flat Track fans Saturday to be sure, not to mention for Nicky Hayden and his roots to glory.
So once again how does a trail kinda guy find himself singing the praises of GP and Flat Track? Well I suppose it does relate to the image of motorcyclist’s. A week prior to the race I was speaking with an acquaintance who is an attorney and he gave me the inside scoop, the Indy Police force was really beefing up security because of the possible gang violence due to happen at these moto events. I tried to explain to him that this was not a gang sport but he would have nothing of it, he assured me that the police had the inside scoop on some bad stuff ready to go down. So the point is the GP had less riff raff than a small wholesome town, the Indy Mile? Well, it turned into an international event and the evil bikers had to make room for the crowd. I guess it goes back to Bruce Brown’s words “Desert Racers are nice people.”

Stunts a Site to Behold

2008-09-11T18:20:00.004-10:00

I just walked home from the Village. Broad Ripple avenue was blocked off for a free style moto event. Modified dirt bikes, a steep narrow ramp and then a wide ramp for landing, 75' apart. The fourman crew were jumping above all the village buildings. The announcer who I believe without question said they were 34' high. Out of the four riders on 250 two strokes one of them did four (separate) 360 degree back flips over the pavement with people crowded on the side walk. I was so compacted into the crowd that I could not clap when the enthusiastic announcer tried to rev up the crowd. So after the cool presentation, we left, took a local short cut through a bar out the backdoor to the peace and quite of Connors Pub, a Rugby bar.
Connors Pub is the mainstay of Broad Ripple and it is a rare day when you walk in to this pub for peace, after 10PM. The show was very cool, when you consider I rode my bike down BR avenue today at 3:00PM and all I saw in the form of preparation was parking meters covered with bags.
We wandered over and arrived at 8:07 to watch the warm up and then the main show. They were going to have the GP bikes at around 10:00 but we chose to seek shelter in Connors,$2 dollar bottled Bass and seats, not to mention a toilet. It is a sport that requires an immense amount of talent practice and something just not quite clinking in the skull. Evel Kneivel who was one of the most successful promoters of himself and this form of stunt would be proud.
Please do not try this at home or even at your neighbors, it hurts bad, real bad. Why do I know this? Because from past experience when I was a wee lad we built ramps we jumped and sometimes we made the jump and sometimes we hurt real bad. Peace Trails JW
Definition and history
A great Video

Exeloo Auto Toilet

2008-09-06T15:54:00.003-10:00

I want this for my birthday. I actually spent a few minutes in one in Northern Italy back in the 20th century, one of my best toilet experiences I ever did have.This company is a little dated in its technology compared to what I experienced but its still pretty cool. Seattle just recently auctioned off five of theirs that they spent 5 million dollars.They used ebay and some lucky fella bought all five for just under $13,000 or just over $12,000 I cannot recall the exact figure but a real bargain.I could go on and on about this but I have to hit ebay, I really want one of these things. Kind Regards and there are only a few shopping days left in September for my birthday so if you are at a loss, a free standing self cleaning toilet is on register at Exeloo.com. Thank you in advance JW

Somewhere in the Pacific

2008-09-06T12:50:00.003-10:00

Since I am celebrating my birthday. September. The entire month of September(tradition) I would like to be somewhere on the Pacific kinda like the picture, but the women I would prefer to look a little more feminine. So my goal is to hit the ocean before the end of my birthday. How? I do not know but I do know I need big blue to bring me some solace that I am another year older and yet still growing better looking everyday...I looked at the photo again and those are not women, those are my buddies Dr. Pepper and D Baker, both of them hung over one near death but he survived.The sea she is rough but she is calling, send money. JW

My Birthday

2008-09-06T05:46:00.003-10:00

I want one of these, so my birthday is this entire month.

A Plan is Essential

2008-09-05T16:31:00.004-10:00

Come the week of Sept,12,13 and 14th is a huge moto event just outside my doorstep. Now this discipline of racing is not my cup of tea, however I am interested in watching the events unfold. I have a couple of free pass's from a friend who works for the Speedway.
My father bless his heart passed on his grace and speed to me while on a race course. He loved (loved as in he is still alive and I hope he comes out to watch the return of the Indy Mile with me) Flat Track and so did I and even entered some events but then eventually found enduro, or just trails. I seem to end up less hurt if I am not put on a course head to head with other racers, the ole competitive spirit comes out and when you lack grace and talent the ole competitive spirit can create danger to one who is mot blessed with these gifts.
In Indy this is a big event and I suddenly have friends from all over remembering their good ole friend Josh. I have reservations set up for a friend but have not heard back from them or been invited (not even a phone number) to join so I have people from all over knocking on my door, phone, email etc...I am kinda of a fly by the seat of my pants kinda guy so when a friend who has been in direct contact with me calls via phone, I feel kinda guilty for not having a place for his family to stay until I hear back from my phantom friend.I wrote my friend,read below letter.You know its kinda hard to plan your weekend with all this going on, I do not want to leave a friend hanging, I do not truly want to leave my house unlocked. I think the saying goes either shit or get off the pot.

The Letter,
Hey, I have not heard from you and need to set up a plan. I cannot leave my house open (unlocked) so I am taking Friday afternoon off, if you are coming to town. I have some friends from out west who are coming and of course locally so let me know when to be around.
There has been a rash of break-ins in the village the last year or two. Last fall I returned from the pub after two beers and a salad ( always the health nut) and as I was opening my storm door I was greeted by a gent (short hair, polo shirt, short khaki pants) who exclaimed "oh shit!" I was puzzled and a little slow ( salad does not soak up the beer) and I stood pondering...How do I know this person, did they just get divorced and needed a place to stay (a common occurrence) but this bastard interrupted my train of thought. The brute threw open the door, hit me in the head, I slipped on the wet wood of the deck and he ran out the back steps of my deck. I regained my footing and ran out my front gate and the gave chase but the guy was fast, real fast. Some guy walking his dog screamed and I asked him where the guy went and he said that way (South) I ran and the guy was gone. A true athlete this fella.
I walked back talked to dog walking guy and he agreed that the guy was really booking or however you spell the French phrase Bucu! To make a short story longer a firetruck came and I thought,( how did they know I was just attacked savagely?) I approached the truck and it seems they were just lost and needed directions so I gave them directions and then told them while I chuckled that I thought they had come to rescue me, they said no but they would call the police thanked me and lord knows if I sent them into oblivion or they found their way. At any rate the police were on the spot within minutes, I told them what happened, dog walker came back (sans the dog) and offered his testimony. I took an officer into my house and he asked me if anything was missing, I could not find anything missing which is often the case when you loose something. But the public servant was nice offered me some advice and gave me his name and office number if I discovered something missing.
Come the morning I was showering thinking about the nights events and then I thought...That bastard took my keys! ( habit dictates, walk into the village and leave the keys on my table with the door unlocked, it worked for 17 years) so with this thought I crawled out of the shower walked dripping water on my waxed hardwood floors and confirmed that the bastard had indeed stolen my keys. So from this day on I am forced to lock my doors and even keep my downstairs windows closed for fear some sort of opportunist may choose me as easy pick-ins'.
In other words let me know what your plan is, I will probably be staying out at a friends motor home come race day eve, I dunno. Please let me know your plan so I can either clean my guest room or let it lay fallow and I can run amok without worry of leaving a friend behind. Kind Regards JW

Vintage Roscoe and the Future

2008-09-01T17:24:00.007-10:00

Bruce Brown Film maker, Endless Summer the "THE SURFER FILM" also On Any Sunday "THE MOTORCYCLE FILM" shaking hands with Malcolm Smith one of the Stars from the movie,I think Steve McQueen was in the movie, maybe financed it, but his son did show up and at this event sponsored by the Orange County Dualies which generated a create deal of money for their favored charity, the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation.
As Steve Narrated the Movie I will paraphrase but it goes something like this, motorcyclists are good people.
To Steve, Malcolm, Bruce and to Roscoe's recovery. Thank you all for the inspiration.

With the Indy Mile coming back to town I felt it was appropriate to post an ole Roscoe story leading up to the Race.I grew up with a flat track racing father along with moto and trail. Its all good fun, and I am truly looking forward to the renewed interest in the Indy Mile and the next day I zip out to the Moto GP on my 640 adventure. We band of brothers…well we just have to stick together.
Location: Indianapolis

A life on the road gets complicated at times. I tell this so others may learn from my mistakes. The short version goes a cavalry of emergency equipment arrives, cop draws gun, and Roscoe goes to jail.

A more detailed version begins as we found ourselves accommodated by a family friend in the lavish parking area of a famous racetrack. Leelee and I enjoy our morning, the calm after the storm in a typical crisp day. Tater sulks in the camper shower / toilet concluding a 48 minute fit. He’s angry because we told him we would not attend the Dallas-Fort Worth Primate Expo and Monkeyrama. Our serenity brakes as we hear sirens and see familiar blue and red flashing lights approach. Looking to make a good impression, I sprang from my chair and grabbed my jacket. An officer exited his prowler and asked ” Mister, are you wearing a KTM jacket?” I smiled and puffed my chest expecting to hear “You a bike rider? Me too! “. . . “YOU’RE UNDER ARREST! We’ve received a screaming 911 call and GPSed a signal to this location. Have you been abusing the lady?” As the cop car door closed, Tater waved the cell phone and Leelee promised to call a lawyer and vowed to remain ever true, as long as it takes.

The People at the police station seemed to be a little easier to get along with than the arresting officer. I asked the lady taking fingerprints who the hard nose was. She replied “He’s Patrolman B. V. Davidson. The inmates call him Sheriff Skivvies”. The guy hates bikers. When his wife ran off, she took his bike and hooked up with a lady junkyard dealer. (Ouch! That sounds familiar, kinda.) They played the 911 tape and it sounded pretty bad. ” If you don’t quiet down, you’re gonna get smacked “. Then you hear unexplainable screams.

They took me to the cell. It was a large, bench lined, room filled with guys in coveralls. The real jumpy small guy sat down next to me and began talking. Everybody has a story in prison. He said “One day you’re swiping golf carts, just funnin’. The next day you’re somebody’s man-girlfriend “. I told him about Tater throwing the fit over his monkey jamboree and poop fling. I suggested to the guy that using “finger quotes” when he said ‘man-girlfriend’ might get him in trouble. You hit rock bottom when the littlest guy in prison tells you that you are screwed. At this point the biggest guy in the cell walked over and I thought here we go. . . . But all he said was ” monkeys are funny. ” I started telling stories about monkeys and motorcycles. I told stories of our adventures meeting famous people like Boyd Sivle, Ted Nugent, Vince & Linda McMahon. The inmates gathered, some sitting cross-legged encircling the floor. I told stories of Amish go-go barns, boat wrecks, Weiner Mobiles, and Mount Rushmore. The guards amassed and listen attentively. I told legends of Edsel collections, explosive diarrhea, talking badgers, and the Cushman Scooter boys. I even started an open debate; Steven Hawking v Christopher Reeves in a fight. . . does anybody win? One guy began writing notes on his clipboard. It all sounded like a terrific summer flashback TV show but before I knew it, it was time to go to court.

At the arraignment the judge looked over her glasses and asked if I was a violent man or a drinker. Behind me, Freak Show Roy, dressed in shorts, sandals and a tank top, objected from the gallery and proclaimed himself my legal counsel. He and the judge argued at the sidebar for a least 10 minutes and he returned. ” Roscoe, there are no witnesses. Leelee couldn’t wait for you to get out of jail and left for Barstow to follow her show business dream. . If you tell the judge about Tater, she’ll put you in the nut house. The jailhouse psychiatrist says you’re delusional. Tell them you need rehab and you’ll do two weeks max. You’re out of here”…

“Judge, the Tequila and Tang has a grip on me. I need help.”

Rehab later. . .

A Look at My Mules Past

2008-08-31T19:02:00.003-10:00

David Gray Music Review

Review First Published March 15 2005 (2 days before St.Patricks)

I was forced to write this one on the run and it shows but you know how demanding Amazon can be. They dont give a damn about the art of a review, they just want words and thats what I gave them and demanded my check!How does the saying go? You can give an infinite number of Sea monkeys an infinite number of word processors and eventually one of them will write a review of White Ladder. The spine is the white ladder by the way. 9/6/05 JW

White Ladder ~ David Gray
Price: $10.99
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

48 used from $5.00

20 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
Wales in Eire, March 15, 2005

Buy the CD its first class and pays homage to Van Morrison so enough said and please stop reading if you dont trust my previous assessment. I visited Ireland in 1999 with my divorced buddies club and one not divorced nor married guy with his girlfriend. We rented two compact cars (six of us) and took off for hostels unknown. We ended up staying at a hostel near Mt. Erigal and climbed the mountain simply because it was there, plus it was not really technical so took little preparation other than finding a parking spot where we would not cause an accident. We left our one buddy back at base camp, he was to hung over to climb so he ended up renting a broken down horse and rode it around a lake infested with some sort of fly that bit first and asked questions later, the questions and answers were found in the pints of Bass or Guinness at the pub across from the hostel where we were staying. We made it up the mountain in a record time for us and took some photos, lounged around soaking up the view and then ambled back down to drive back to the hostel and sit on the back porch listing to the caretakers jam box, after several errands to the pub we had just enough pints to make ourselves artistically receptive. We noticed how cool the music was on the jam box and asked the caretaker who it was (the cassette was just a copy and bore no name) he said I think its David Gray he's from Wales, I wrote it down with the intent of finding a copy later. We had split up as a group and agreed to meet in a town whose name I cannot recall just south of Galway.On the way to our meeting our fly bitten buddy, lets call him Patrick grew bored since he was not allowed to drive, finished what beer was in the car and decided to climb out the rear window and into the sunroof. He did this a few times and the novelty wore off so he stripped naked and attempted it again, only this time he got his head stuck between the seat and the shifter, they were driving down the road with a nude man sticking out of the sunroof upside down. As fate would have it they drove through Galway and the Arts festival was going on and David Gray was playing that night, so they found us in the unknown town and we all went back to Galway and managed to find one room, no matter, we had beer. The concert was perfect and we all slept like the innocent children that we were. I woke up early and decided to find some food and a record store to buy a CD of his, my buddy lets call him Tom came along. We ate at a small restaurant across the street from a record store ate and then walked over and by gosh ole Mr. Gray and band were the in the "Flesh" to sigh CD's the line was to long with teeny boppers for a man of my dignity to stand so I just found a couple of CD's and was ready to leave and by this time the line had subsided , I had Dave and the band sign my CD's , nice guys great trip buy the CD we need more bands like this in the world, help feed them.

Alternative Fuel

2008-08-31T18:22:00.002-10:00

I'm no Ed Beagly but I do think we should look at some alternative fuels in this time of crisis. Doing my part I just purchased this alternative fuel car from my local Caddy dealer. I discovered after it was to late that I was the alternative fuel! Not only that but the thing was not air-conditioned as promised and the power steering, again that was left to me... I was the power! Geez, snake oil never really goes out of fashion, it just changes clothes. Had I only knowed. Buyer beware. JW

History once again repeats itself once again and...

2008-08-30T17:20:00.000-10:00

Early music review from 1/05

People found this review helpful , maybe the musical side of the brain is more open to my style of review. I made some fat cash off of this one and print it without permission from Amazon since they purchased "full rights" but you know I have developed callous's on my nose from thumbing my nose at "the man". JW

Sackcloth 'n' Ashes ~ 16 Horsepower
Price: $12.98
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours

14 used from $5.58

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
Bandoneon?, January 16, 2005

I think I'd have to look up the spelling which I wont since this is a music review and not a written' review. Anyway a Band0neon is like an accordian but different in ways I dont understand, they feature this instument on a number of cuts with very haunting results.The lyrics are haunting as well, its a Flannery O'Connor mood crossed with all the greats of bluegrass ghosts, it creates a unique sound you would be a fool not to enjoy. It reminds me of the times as a child we visited old man Ritz's house deep in the woods behind our house, Mr. Ritz worked for Nasa and seldom visited his family farm getaway, so we ran amok on his property,never at ease mind you, but amok we ran. He was a scary figure who we never met and never expected to meet until one day I landed a job picking up rocks in a freshly plowed field, we would ride on a trailer behind a tractor and every so often the tractor would stop and we would hop off and pick up the rocks and throw them on the trailer. I suggested to Uncle Leon (the farmer who farmed Mr Ritz's property for him) that we just paint all the rocks red and have the migrant workers pick them up thinking they were tomatoes, he didnt think to much of this suggestion so we continued with our work. The next day we were picken' up rocks when a man walks up to Leon and told him we should paint the rocks red and tell the migrant workers they was tomatoes...This album reminds me of my first and only meeting with old man Ritz.Buy the album.

The History of My Mule

2008-08-30T16:23:00.003-10:00

First posted in 05 and I am proud to state that I have not edited or corrected any and all of the errors in my writing, kinda like Kerouac...Other than the talent and the diet pills, this is just good ole stream of Conscience writing.
Truly this is not the history of My Mule but it is a taste of its origins.
I promise you, I did not imagine any part of this account, these are just the facts, reported by a man who is fond of the truth and so here it is and so it shall be, from this day until I loose interest in the truth.

So without any further ado this is a true account of my past, as recounted three years ago...

A long time ago I started riding dirt bikes, a long,
long time, yet like most exciting events I am left
with vivid memories, better and more accurate than
what I had for breakfast this morning.I am reminded of
me mum telling the story of how she had lost a gas cap
to something? her car? a lawn mower? Something in the
internal combustion family. Her being a college
educated woman she stuck a potato in the gas hole and
fixed the problem. We all laughed at this story and to
tell you the truth I knew that if I ever lost a gas
cap the first thing I would do would be to riffle
through the potato cabinet for such a elegant
solution. As luck would have it I was riding my Yamaha
60cc Mini enduro and one day I noticed my gas cap was
missing, I swear I did not pull this stunt on myself
its just one of those be careful what you wish for
things. Well my brother Charles Chadwick was keen on
the idea of the potato solution and me not being very
mechanically inclined enlisted his help. We found a
fine potato but had to whittle it into a taper to fit
the hole proper, I found it would not stay put when we
raced so we took some duct tape and taped it over the
gas hole and this worked until the potato shrank or I
ran out of gas and had to un-tape my potato. Again
fate came a knockin' and we found a gas cap that fit
the bike but it was a little over sized so it looked
like I had a pot pie pan on my gas tank, no problems
it worked better than the potato. I need to call my
mum and find out what sort of gas hole a potato works
on, I'm just not ready to take this one out of my bag
of tricks.
This was back in the late sixties early seventies
when motocross was in its infancy and Evil Knievel was
the image of motorcycling. I moved to a town called
Lizton in Indiana and lived on 9 acres of land, my
folks,brother and eventually my sister (first girl of
European decent born on the Beagly dump Road) joined
me which was pretty cool since I was only seven and
had no real education or trade I could support myself
with so my folks house and money came in handy. At the
time of the move me Da bought me a Sears mini bike,
basically a lawn mower engine bolted into a rigid
frame, later I grew into the 60cc mini enduro and that
was when things really began to gel. My brother
Charles Chadwick and myself quickly befriended all the
other kids nearby that had dirt bikes and spent most
of our free time laying out in our back field a state
of the art moto cross course, we had access to two
Ford tractors both with grader boxes and disks and
other homemade trail groomers and soon had a motocross
course and a respectable oval flat track. We had about
three other neighbors who had natural terrain courses
set up, some trail, some European style motocross.
This was pre "Pong " technology so we made our own
fun. Sometime during all this my dad traded a guy he
found in a newspaper ad his 25 caliber pistol for a
1955 Packard, they guys wife protested claiming her
husband was just going to shoot himself and not to
trade him, but the car was pretty sweet so spit and a
handshake and the deal was done. My dad proclaimed it
was my car and gave me the keys, I was around 11 and
was pretty proud to be have given the responsibility
of owning a car. Seems my ownership also meant he
could drive the thing? Anyway one day my brother and
our friends and fellow moto freaks the Leak boys
decided it would be fun to drive the old Packard
around our track, when my turn finally arrived I hit a
wide sweeper at such momentum that the battery came
loose and tumbled across the engine block, the car
stopped dead in its tracks mid slide. Being more
mechanically minded than myself I let my brother and
Big John tow my car off the track to work on, they
could not get it running so naturally they removed the
hood and pulled it behind the tractor as a sled. For
some reason my dad seemed a little perturbed, he
apparently was not as impressed by our resourcefulness
as we were, as winter set in he grumbled even more as
the bare engine sat open to the winter elements and we
whooped and hollered riding around on the Packard hood
behind the tractor, the snow was the best for land
sledding. He got over it eventually and I forgive him
his pouting.
I remember when my Da had a guy that did dirt work
for him bring his bulldozer out one weekend to help
build some jumps on our Moto-Cross course. I also
remember thinking a few years ago he probably lied
about the guy doing it for a six pack, I don’t think
you can run a bulldozer for two days for a six pack, I
think he made this story up just to appease me Ma.
Two days of bulldozer work cost more than he probably
wanted to admit so he did what was necessary, he just
outright lied. As the old saying goes you should only
lie to two people your boss and your wife,
unfortunately I’m my own boss and I’m not married so I
suffer an emptiness that could only be fulfilled by
having someone I could honestly lie to. This
bulldozer guy built some nice jumps and a mighty fine
mud/water hole for us to jump over. We caught a carp
and put it in the mud/water hole. We think the thing
died.I remember my sis Cait was awful fond of that
pond, and still to this day maintains that we jumped
over her on our bikes while she was playing in the
pond.(She likes to call it a pond and I don’t blame
her I’d hate to tell people that I used to play in a
mud hole with a dead carp) We found an old bathtub and
built a wooden ramp out of about 4 -2’ x 6"s nailed
side by side and propped up against the empty tub, we
used it to jump the mud hole, good fun was had by all,
even my sister (who was never in any danger).
I reckon I was a pretty talented rider since I
could beat around 75 to 80% of our neighbors racing so
I got serious and went to my first sanctioned race in
Red Springs North Carolina, there were three people in
my class and I finished 2nd. Not to bad if you think
about it right, my brother I cant remember how he did
but he did win the jumping contest, I think he won
around $25.00 , however he doesn’t brag about this
much since after the race we watched some kid on a
bicycle out jump his best effort. Back home in Indy I
was on a roll so being my da was heavy into flat
tracking we entered ourselves in a classic flat track
race, my brother again I dont know what he was riding
nor how he finished but I pinned my mini enduro full
throttle and ran the mile course with out so much as
braking, the officials waved me in and told my dad
that I needed to sign up for the mini bike class,
which we reluctantly did, they set up our course on
the front stretch a tiny little oval as I recall I
finished 3rd out of 9 riders! I think I won a first
place trophy somewhere but cant be sure where or when
since your not my boss or wife.
Skip forward a few years and I’m on a 1978 Husky
WR250 oh so very very sweet! I had come to the
conclusion after catapulting myself into the ground
numerous times that moto-cross and even hare scramble
forced me to exit the envelope and beat the living
hell out of myself. So when I had a chance at enduro I
thought cool I can ride my own race, I’m not out to
win I just love to ride trails. Upland Indiana
November 1981, having no idea what time keeping was
and really no interest, sporting my original tires,
chain, rings etc. I may have put a new plug in the
bike and cleaned the air cleaner,bark buster I dont
need no stinking bark buster! What’s a bark buster? I
should have been better prepared, would have been
better prepared but I lost my sponsor me da finally
came to his sense’s. I set off on what would be one of
the coldest, longest most miserable days of my life.
Mud, wet leather gloves steaming as I rotated hands,
the lucky one got to steam on the engine until I
regained feeling which was pain, trees that were to
stubborn to move, bark busters I think I see the
wisdom now, I lost my shifter towards the end of the
ride, putting along in 2nd gear wondering when this
thing would end…eventually it did and well I finished,
did not hour out no less! It beat me up, I know now
what the hood of that Packard covered with
hillbillies drug around behind a tractor all day must
have felt like. I was hooked, I knew enduros and
trail riding was where I belonged.
Twenty eight years after my last trophy in moto cross I
trophied again 5th place in an enduro by god and that
my friend is pretty damn good!

Toilets Birthday and Roscoe is Feeling Better

2008-08-13T16:43:00.007-10:00

Where do I begin? I visited Roscoe this evening and he is off the tubes and although tired and in for a long trek to recovery, remains his witty good natured self.He had a real tacky blinking trinket which had the Pope, (one of them) sitting beside his bed in the ICU, he was happy with it because he likes that kinda stuff. Well it turns out his niece bought it for him when she was visiting Italy, she bought it at a truck stop. His buddy Dale laughed and told me he did not think much of it at first until he found out it was from an Italian truck stop and he declared,"that just goes to prove, truck drivers are the same all around the world." Roscoe who is not Catholic said, "hey if it works I'm not throwing it out."
This was the first time I have seen Roscoe without all the tubes and drugs for someone given only a 20% of living a week ago Wednesday, he is on the mend, I cannot express what an honor it is to know someone with the courage and strength that he has, if life were the Olympics he would have bankrupted the world with all the gold medals he is due.

Onto Chuck (aka Toilets) its his birthday today August 13th. I called him a few days ago and told him I did not get him anything and that in exchange when my birthday came around he did not have to get me anything. He said OK, but then a day later he told me he had a gift for me, I told him that the best gift I could give him was my guilt for not sending him a gift. He seem satisfied with this but then I sweetened the pie, I told him the book Narrow Dog to Indian River, which I bought for my father for fathers day. I had to read it real fast before I gave it to him, when my mother is finished I promised I would send it to Chuck. This seemed to make him happy. I also promised him a shirt that I printed with a broad sharpie back in 2000 that has " I seen the dummy" written in my scrawl across the front into the armpit. The "I seen the dummy" is a whole different story, which I posted a year or more ago on this site.
The white T Shirt I bought to create this one of a kind shirt, is to big for me. I have washed it in hot water, gained weight, lost weight, it just does not fit. I feel so unpolished wearing a shirt that hangs on me, so for my brothers birthday he will receive a hand made shirt custom inscribed by me "I seen the dummy" that does not fit me and a book that most of my family have already read.
Its the thought that counts and for one that does not have counting skills this is a huge gesture. Happy Birthday Chuck and get busy fixing yourself Roscoe.

Great Exaggerations

2008-08-11T17:32:00.004-10:00

I collaborated with the Bard and we cobbled this together, nice guy that fella.

To Thine Own Self Be True

Yet here, Laertes! Aboard, aboard for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay'd for.
There ... my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg’d comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel but, being in,
Bear't that th' opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgement.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower, nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell; my blessing season this in thee!

-- William Shakespeare

Sundays Advice

2008-08-10T03:53:00.002-10:00

Todays advice is never to mix Bourbon with alcohol.

Visit my Link to Roscoe

2008-08-09T16:06:00.003-10:00

Well my good friend Roscoe who I remember first meeting in third grade when I moved to a new school, we were strangers to this school but my brother toilets made friends quickly and we ended up hanging out with Roscoe's family. I remember vividly meeting this family along with Roscoe, we have been good friends for 40 years. Roscoe and his twin brother on my first visit to their home taught me how to make a triple decker peanut butter and jelly sandwich.The sandwich was awful but the friendship endured.
Today I visited Roscoe in the hospital and he opened his eyes once, he has a number of health issues and at this moment has tubes up his nose and down his throat, he was given a 20% chance of surviving on Wednesday. He is doing better, "Critical Stability" is how the nurse described his condition.
Roscoe is what every person should strive to be, he has not whined or complained since I have met him, but every card dealt seems to offer him a bad hand.
I have a framed review of his book review in Racer X (Thanks Sleekpelt for recognizing his brilliance) which I have been carrying around for months and now that I take my head out of me arse I realize I should have dropped it off earlier.I copied and pasted a excerpt from Travels with Roscoe from his blog site.
He has been in and out of the hospital the last few weeks and it really is heartbreaking to see such a good man suffer so much. So visit his site, do not whine about your life (I include myself) and keep him in your favorites.A rare man with more than enough character to share with a city approaching the size of NY.
I may have already lost the reader by now its just me venting, I am tormented by hearing of his health decline and to see him today I feel ashamed of my own selfishness, I know I would not survive what he has, but he is Roscoe and he may bounce back and amaze us once again.
So I suppose the gist of this post is stop whining, read some Roscoe and wish him the best, because he is not in the least bit comfortable.

Excerpt from Travels with Roscoe:

Stood still on a highway. I saw a woman by the side of the road with a face that I knew like my own, reflected in my window. Well she walked up to my quarter light and she bent down real slow. A fearful pressure paralyzed me in my shadow. She said, "Son, what are you doing here... My fear for you has turned me in my grave." I said "Mama I come to the valley of the rich... Myself to sell." She said, "Son, this is the road to Hell. " - Chris Rea

The road with a chimpanzee and a 300-pound carnival ride operator, conversation of an intellectual nature expired 400 miles earlier. Tater shakes the TV Guide and points to Larry King who will interview Janet Reno. Freak Show's response is enthusiastically oppositional. The Man Show will host a Wet T-shirt contest. When we bivouac for the night and align the satellite dish, I'll cast the deciding vote. Prey we spy Janet Reno in a wet T-shirt contest.

Strange and amazing places like Bald Knob, Beaver, Dogpatch and Toad Suck are called home in Arkansas and thrill my traveling companions. The two-story out house at the Booger Hollow Trading Post, along Scenic 7 Byway, in Dover creates quite a splash. (Rivaled by Bell Plaine, Minnesota; Gays, Illinois; and Phelps, NY all home to the world's one and only.) At Fouke/ Texarkana, you hear the tail of the Boggy Creek Monster. My pilgrimage follows Robert Johnson, master of the blues. Written in song and legend, we make for the junction of 49 & 61 near Helena. "It is the Crossroads to Eternity." accounts Willie Coffee, Johnson's life long friend.

Night fell and time to eat. To make up for the TV show commotion, Freak Show wanted to treat us to dinner. He knew of a great truck stop. We topped a hill in the full moon light to come upon the Moldy Dumpster Slop & Fuel. On a good day it could be described as a roach house - a shack with a half operational neon sign buzzing and popping away in the parking lot. Freak Show rubbed his hands together and assured us that it would be great. As we entered the fly covered screen door, Freak was welcomed with hardy handshakes and pats on the back. "Come on in, we're monkey friendly!." Show commented on how the area had changed. They replied, "When they closed down the slaughterhouse, the neighborhood turned to crap."

After a nice visit and a Chili Bucket with Mushrooms, it was time to hit the road. Show offered to take over my driving duties.

It might have been 20 minutes later. Who knows? An odor wretched from the belly of Hell enveloped the camper in a green/yellow mist. My vision blurred as the caravan shook violently. I yelled to our pilot, "Be careful! You're going off the road!" He responded, "Which side!" Within the cyclone, I felt like I would purge my gut. We stopped and as I extricated myself from under the dashboard, I looked at Freak Show. His eyes blazed ruby red. His beard moved, entwined by reptiles. In a voice unheard before he growled, "Your soul to become the best rider of all."

I'll pass. I'll shoot for mediocrity and take my chances. Besides that, the chili was lousy. Quit screwing around!" The demon looked past me to the chimp. "How about you?" Tater convulsed.A horrific screech burst forth, the wind swirled. . . silence.

2008-08-09T07:55:00.002-10:00

Help support this years ISDE Team USA and buy your self some cool collectibles at the same time. The ISDE is like the Olympics for off road riding.

Shop here on Ebay for this stuff

Trolls and a Fine Article About Their Habits

2008-08-08T17:30:00.013-10:00

Copy and paste this link for the troll story.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?partner=rssnyt

Trolls I suppose have been the victims of bullies so they naturally become bullies in their own world. The problem is who really likes a bully?
I suspect the trolls suffer from the same inferiority complex that real world bullies suffer from.
Bullies are cowards, and truth be told do not get laid that much, unless of course they are "holding their own" in the love department.
The article rings true, the troll is just lashing out and not really accepting accountability. Trolls have earned their name, just ignore them and soon they will pay attention to their "special purpose" and forget why they targeted you in the first place.
Never respond to a troll, never email a troll, if we all follow this method it will send them into a self abusing frenzy that can only end with them being caught by their parents earning the hairy palms and near sighted road they have chosen.
A public service post which you do not dare respond to because the trolls may be hunched over their keyboard and ready to...whatever they are ready to do, they are trolls and who in history has ever respected or romanticized the true definition of a troll. Cartoons do not count, bullies and trolls both posses the undeniable stench of a coward.
JW

Another Amazon Review by JWW

2008-08-04T18:03:00.004-10:00

Much to William Douglas Littles chagrin I have posted a review of his book on Amazon.As my long time reader knows I am a well respected and highly paid Amazon book reviewer. I only review books that I think are real good...I changed accounts about a year ago so my doppelganger has most of my reviews to my credit? Something like that, but at least I know I do not have a split personality, I just forget passwords and canceled credit cards that were suspect of fraud, so I must change Amazon accounts, by accident but I suppose if my legacy as a pro-reviewer I need to fly under the radar. So here goes with Williams latest...OH! If you want to read the best book ever written just visit the link at the side of my page, read Travels with Roscoe...

I read this book and it reminds me of my youth my experiences and then I think the author may not think this as much of a review but more of a tangent.You know what is life but a tangent? So with out celebration, with out goading, with out praise other than the author of Mexican Bowl Fishing etc. I have to admit, the title alone is worth framing, so this is what his book has inspired.

Tales of Life, we all have them and if well told a joy to read. Mr. Littles Book is a joy to read...Now my tangent...

A story of my own true life, and at sometimes probably false, memory fails but my heart really does attempt to be faithful. A great read Mexican Bowl Fishing is my review, so if you are bored read the rest of my screed.Then buy the book, it truly is the real deal.

Abandon all hope ye who enters these paragraphs. I have a tale from the sea so terrible that upon first reading you would beg to have your most personal uncharted parts dry shaven daily with the splintered skull cap of Blackbeard himself for all eternity, rather than reading the tale again!
The story, based on fact but rendered inaccurate ,hobbled by my memory, I think it happened a long time ago. I may remember it as a tale of my courage and grace under fire, that is how my memory best serves me.
Memory I have found is not a servant called upon to dutifully reply to my every need but a jester that makes me look silly and the fool without effort, without fail and without thanks.
Around 1975 myself ( a man of uncommon courage) Roscoe , Roscoes twin brother Joe, my brother known as Chuckles and Roscoes big brother known as big John. Ventured fourth on the devils waters of Eagle Creek Reservoir on a small 14 ft. pontoon boat, an experience that would change us all, even my memory. We borrowed the boat from my dad and it was not in the best of shape, powered by a10 horse unreliable aka “Johnson” motor. In today’s dollars I would guess he paid around $2.00 large for the entire vessel.
We somehow launched the boat and went to Crappie cove as I will call it because we were going to catch some Crappie. I was sitting at the head of the boat, the front part not fenced in, sitting in a aluminum chair cushioned with nylon straps next to “Joe” he sat proud and ready to pitch in and help with the lines if need be, an able seaman if ever one lived. We were jointly in charge of watching for stumps and such and I also had the highly esteemed job of anchor boy. Not a small responsibility when you consider that an anchor can keep a boat from falling off the edge of the earth and such. Never mind that it was a small mushroom shaped anchor which even in my young mind I considered to be of little prestige but I was still in charge of something, my peeps trusted me!
Again I sat at the head of the boat, huge tackle box at my side saddled with duties and responsibilities, I was proud and maybe a little cocky. My brother “Chuckles” was at the helm, or holding onto the outboards tired and trembling arm. “Roscoe” was in his chair and “Big John” was sitting beside him in his chair I have to think it was not made of aluminum and nylon because even at 16/17 the boy was not suited for a mere mortals chairs, hence the name “Big John”.
We anchored off a likely spot for crappies, bass, krakens god knows what else but there was structure and anyone worth their salt knows that where lie structure there lies fish. I tried every lure in my arsenal and nothing, not a soul on the boat got a byte so I was given the order , pull anchor and lets “move on up away”. I did so with much theatrics , a determined look in my eye, a certainty of purpose , feigned muscle strain and finally laid the anchor beside my chair calm on the exterior but barely able to contain my excitement about the coming order to drop anchor.
Brother Chuckles had the old Johnson wound out and we had to be doing nearly 7 knots when all the world became confusing. The boat began to dive nose first into the water, my legs were wet all the way to me bum, I looked behind me and first saw the Johnson’s propeller spinning in dead air, I could count the spin of the blades , my brother looked very confused trying to shut down the power, “Roscoe” was holding tight to his pith helmet with both hands and his brother “Big” was holding on to Roscoe with one hand and the side rail with the other.
Funny thing about big brothers they can treat you like hell your whole life and all at once in time of need they are protecting you from plunging into the depths of the devils waters…God this is a long story! GAW!
Here is what happened . Ole Anchor boy set the anchor to close to the edge of the boat and it fell off while we were speeding down the cove, the wimpy mushroom anchor gained a tight purchase on something and almost made us end over end the 14’ pontoon boat. My tackle box was swamped with water, I lost a hula popper out of my tackle box, the boys would not help me fetch it as it drifted into the stumplands, and to this day I curse their names. I lost some other priceless items but will refuse to hold a grudge, I think the boys where just frightened , an emotion I am unfamiliar with. However I did recognize the look in my friends eyes.
We figured out what happened, I was chastised for no good reason and then we went back to the ramp and loaded the boat, most of the crew a little shaken, as I remember I was calming them with cheerful words and distractions. Since Chuckles and Big John were around 16/17 we went to Shakeys Pizza afterwards. The elders ordered a couple of their famous pizza pies, with black olives and a couple of pitchers of beers, the youngin’s (13/14) snuck sips of the beer when the help was not looking. We may have even sang along to the “If you knew Suzy” follow the bouncing ball prompter on big projection screen. All of us changed one way or another, all of us trying to forget or make light of our brush with death, all the while I tried to distract my friends and sibling so as not leave their psyche’s damaged for life, I needed them to grow up normal and responsible, hell one of them might need to bail me out of jail sometime, keep em sane was my thinking, no need to molly coddle the poor bastards just keep them sane.
Consider this tale of the sea and tell me it does not rival, if I may be so bold the “Flying Dutchman” ? Dare ye counter? I thought not.
It is said even to this day that if you venture onto Crappies cove late in the afternoon, you can hear a ghostly popping sound, said to be my lost hula popper searching for a safe purchase in my beloved tackle box. Copyright Josh Williams 2009

Pack it in Pack it Out

2008-08-03T14:39:00.004-10:00

If you study the photos above these are what certain parks require backpackers to carry with them so they can pack out their solid waste. I have been on a number of camping trips, some of them backpacking. One thing I am sure of that without proper rifling I am ashamed to admit that I would be hard pressed to hit the target bullseye. I fear there would be some collateral damage or without a proper GPS guidance system nothing but collateral damage. What ever happened to carrying a small campers shovel and burying the shit?
On to another similar subject I was speaking with a retired gentleman whose name will not be used, but trust me a reliable source.We were swapping stories about floods and drainage problems a month or so ago after the Midwest received extra heavy rainfall, and the rain possibly part of the flooding issue.
Well this gent managed a fast food burger restaurant in the 70's one which we as children would frequent. He told me how the place had a horrible drainage problem and that when the storm sewers where full not only would the toilets not flush but the drains would back up, flooding the back portion of the eatery. The back portion being behind the registers and where all the food is prepared, he told me how embarrasing it was to be talking to a customer while trying to indiscretly kick a chunk of solid human waste back out of view.
A funny story but kinda gross I suppose and really touchs home because I used to frequent this restuarant back in the day, rain or shine. Thats it, no politics or religion just good old fashion shit talking, come to think of it? I stand corrected.

Diet and Exercise

2008-08-03T04:02:00.002-10:00

Exercise through independent study requires a good deal of goofing off, laying around combine this with a frenzied search for your remote is sufficient exercise for a day. To much of this can lead to muscle pain, headaches insomnia and also chronic halitosis.

Diet all you have to remember is the four food groups. CNAB

C-affeine
N-icotine
A-lchol
B-acon

Stick with this plan and I can guarantee you results! Stray from this plan and all bets are off. Kind Regards JW

A Sunday public service post.

Once again Wikipedia is wrong

2008-08-02T15:23:00.003-10:00

Well as the fool did tell me this is how it was and he was so right and wikipedia was so wrong.
Official 8/2/08 definition of a corporate republic defined by wikipedia. I am not one to place tin foil on my head to stop the voices, but this is what we are living in and to tell you the truth unless we we wake up, well we can ignore this "hypothesis" and so it goes...On the other hand, being a good machine has its rewards, which I have not discovered but what the hell if I marry right I may become one of the few.
I will try to ad a humorous photo to this post to not make it so gloomy, I am an optimist but I also live in present and to tell you the truth we have been a corporate republic for years and years and...Well maybe I will go to the market an buy some foil with cash and make myself a nice safe reality cap.

A corporate republic is a theoretical form of government occasionally hypothesized in works of science fiction, though some historical nations such as medieval Florence might be said to have been governed as corporate republics. While retaining some semblance of republican government, a corporate republic would be run primarily like a business, involving a board of directors and executives. Utilities, including hospitals, schools, the army, and the police force, would be privatized. The social welfare function carried out by the state is instead carried out by corporations in the form of benefits to employees. Although corporate republics do not exist officially in the modern world, they are often used in works of fiction or political commentary as a warning of the perceived dangers of unbridled capitalism. In such works, they usually arise when a single, vastly powerful corporation deposes a weak government, over time or in a coup d'état.

Tips on Spy Photography

2008-07-27T15:57:00.003-10:00

FULL DISCLOSURE:I have to admit that this post was written after visiting a party that was serving beer that weighed in at 9% alcohol. Being used to beer I thought I had a tolerance, which I do feel in my heart of hearts is true, but when you double the alcohol and the beer tastes good, well all bets are off.
I used to be a home brewer until I realized that most of my work was squandered in a few hours at a party, so this may lend some credence to my beer brewing resume. My friends loved my home brew, but you know its kinda like cooking, the clean up is the worst part.Brewing is fun but after the party is over and you are cleaning you become to loose interest, brewing requires at least twice the diligence in sanitizing that good cooking requires.(You cook on dirty pans your guests just suffer food poisoning, you brew in unclean surroundings and the beer tastes bad, beer just tastes bad there is not bacteria that can live in alcohol) So I gave away all of my equipment and just buy the stuff, there are some great beers out there and it is worth the price to not spend hours cleaning and sanitizing every piece of brewing equipment. (real pain)
So the photo is taken in another country with a Nikon Cool Pix 4 mega Pixel camera. I had a friend point out that there was an attractive woman behind me, I did not turn around, why? Why? Because I had an epiphany I realized this cameras lens would spin 360 degrees , so I just held the camera flipped the screen pointing backwards (aka behind me) and snapped this photo. Had it not been for the time delay with the lower end digitals I would not have been able to post this photo because you would have been able to identify her face,( lack of model release, international lawsuits, we all know the story) as it stands I snapped the photo my flash blinded my friend and I captured the decisive moment a second to late. Had she spoken American I would most probably been married to the woman given her obvious need for a good ole fashion American to save her from hardships of a country that does not use American as its first language. As I hunt and peck I realize this would have affected this post, I may not have married this woman. Had she spoken American and I swept her off her feet, this post would have never surfaced. Its funny how life happens.

Gazing out My Window

2008-07-25T04:05:00.006-10:00

The Indianapolis skyline as seen from my office window. You know I think I will play hooky and just go walk the streets, hike around eat a good lunch read afterwards, have a beer and then start my weekend.

Probably some yard work.

Sierra Club, Now Religion

2008-07-23T16:53:00.004-10:00

You know, gentle visitors to My Mule I have had such a great response to my post on the questionable practices of The Sierra Club, I have been given the confidence to post questions about religion. Mother Teresa?
I am here to gather readers and google ads,( remind me to link these ads) so I am forced to post such popular topics. Topics everyone feels comfortable and confident to voice their opinion on. I suppose I am appealing to the majority, but how else am I going to make a living other than catering to the voice of the people. Politics and Religion, why Dale Carnegie left this out of How to Win Friends and Influence People is beyond me.
I suppose this is like a double dog dare game but I suspect my huge fan base has the wisdom not to broach these subjects. So if you are at a loss for a response or comment just write a short story in the comment box, I do it all the time in real life. Politics and Religion? Change the damn subject, so this is the game, change the subject.
Kind Regards JW

About BlueRibbon Coalition Plug

2008-07-20T16:41:00.004-10:00

Guest post (below his photo) from my brother and The BlueRibbon Coalition.
I have to make it understood that I enjoy riding trails, trails that have long been on these mountains before all readers concerned were born.I have seen small riding parks and will not visit them, they are as a rule (there are exceptions) abominations for a trail riders message.
My experience in off-road adventures out west,Colorado,Nevada,Idaho and some other places I forgot, oh Kenya, is that rarely if ever do you see a hiker, rarely if ever do you see another group of riders.The vast majority of Trail Riders are good people, I would wager a much higher average than the average voter.These people are out in the middle of nowhere, on ideally trail that is no more than 2' wide, just single track trail.
A wholesome sport with inherit dangers, yet per capita I would wager that more people are harmed, by stick and ball sports, even a larger carbon footprint created, by this form of entertainment. I am not asking you to quit but between the amount of traffic created by such events, the amount of money spent of advertising spent creating sales for items that people do not need, drunk drivers not only from the games where beer is sold but also to all those who leave pubs,parties many a bit over served.? How many Trail Rides sell beer? They only people that are in danger are the riders themselves, the wildlife? I have lived in the woods, animals adapt to my actions,my bike, my spontaneous irrational laughter. I had to cap my chimney to keep raccoons out. I have hawks (name the bird I have it, unless the hawk is around) I have armadillos, turtles small things I cannot identify...Animals adapt they are not traumatized by a motorcycle, and if they are well maybe they have some sort of nervous condition or phobia, because unless you are on top of the food chain you have a lot to be worried about in the wilds, much more than a bike announcing its approach with what is a quite, safely audible muffler. I could go on but to what end? I have lost all my readers already...I'm wearing a funnel I found on the side of the road for a rain hat, I put a cork in the top hole...If you read the former sentence then you really have time on your hands. JW (written underdeadline/duress but not read by the author)

Charlie's Corner: On Any Sunday Redux
Editorial by Charlie Williams,
BRC Trail Ambassador
Article Photo
A while back I was lucky enough to get to attend the On Any Sunday reunion in Long Beach, California. My official purpose was to gain support for BlueRibbon Coalition's Breakfast of Champions.

That was my official purpose, having fun was just a by-product!

For those readers who are not familiar with On Any Sunday, I'll give you a brief history:

A long, long time ago, a man named Bruce Brown made a movie about surfing, The Endless Summer. Bruce and his cameras followed a couple of surfers around the world while they were seeking the perfect wave. It was good; my Dad took us to see it in 1966 when the movie was released. We were at my grandparents' beach cottage on the coast of North Carolina.

The movie was a life-changing experience for me; I wanted to be a surfer. So the next day, Dad took us to the surf board shop to rent a board. In our group was me at 8 years old, my brother at 4, my mom, at an unspecified age, my uncle, and the really short guy from next door.

I remember it clearly; the smart-aleck clerk asked my dad what sized board we wanted. My dad, not knowing any better said he would like a board big enough for all of us. Well, I guess with the really short neighbor along with us, the clerk figured we were some sort of circus troupe and dug out an 18 foot board—big enough for all of us.

We tied the behemoth on top of the station wagon and headed home. I remember the giant board beating the living daylight out of me in the breakers. Remember, I was 8 years old and maybe 4 feet tall, and I ended up bruised and scuffed on every portion of my body. I also remember crying and throwing a fit when it came time to return the board.

"NO, I can do it! I can do it!"

No, I could not do it, although this movie has inspired me to try to surf all my life. Every chance I get I go to the ocean and swim around on my board, but I'm no closer to surfing now than I was when I was a kid. It's a very hard sport, especially when you live in the mountains of Idaho.

Then, in 1972, Bruce Brown released a new movie, On Any Sunday. It was a motorcycle movie. It explored the world of motorcycling and I realized there was a whole world of motorcycle guys like me out there. Up to that point I just thought it was me and my neighbors.

Growing up in Indiana, surfing was impossible, but motorcycle riding was something we did every day after school. Until my Dad took us to see On Any Sunday, I thought we were the only kids in the world who spent all their time building tracks and riding bikes. But the greatest realization I came away with was that we were not alone. There was a whole bunch of us out there, and my world grew a lot that night.

Dad took us to the movie house, he knew more what to expect than we kids did. He could, and would read; we could, but would not read. So we didn't really know what to expect from this "motorcycle" movie.

Well, you know we were all impressed because we sat through the film three times!

A funny thing is that between showings, the theater showed a short film about Hellmann's mayonnaise. My family have used Hellmann's mayonnaise ever since. The thing is Hellmann's didn't really sponsor nor did it have any thing to do with the movie On Any Sunday. It was just a chance encounter that sold a lot of mayo for them.

Another funny story is that in Mexico, they love their mayonnaise. Years ago the Hellmann's mayonnaise ship was delivering a shipload of mayo to Vera Cruz Mexico from the factory in New York. Well, the ship got into a terrible storm and unfortunately sank off the coast of Mexico. Although all the sailors escaped, the Mexican population was very sad about the loss of their favorite condiment, mayo, so in honor they named the day Sinko de Mayo, a tradition that lives on today.

Over the years, I've watched the movie On Any Sunday a hundred times on TV, but not since I saw it for the first time have I seen it on the big screen. So when I heard the Orange County Dualies were arranging a reunion with proceeds going to help the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation with a showing of the movie on the biggest screen west of the Mississippi river, I was in.

For the chance to finally meet the people who made this film—a film that has affected my life, along with every one who has ever watched it—I just had to go.

It turned out to be a great event too. It was cold and rainy when I left home and sunny and warm in southern California. I knew people there from all over the country, so it was a reunion for me and my friends too.

So I got thinking, and that's how you get involvedâ You know how the BlueRibbon Coalition has their Breakfast of Champions at the Indianapolis Dealer Show? Well, what if I could invite all these On Any Sunday stars to the breakfast? How cool would that be? We could have an On Any Sunday theme and I really think this would be a good draw.

So I started approaching these guys and I introduced myself as being a representative of BlueRibbon. Here is the good news, every one of them were very familiar with the BlueRibbon Coalition and were eager to help with the breakfast. I was impressed with how well the good name of BlueRibbon was received. You should be proud of our organization.

So next year, the Breakfast of Champions is going to have an International Six Day Enduro theme, but in the year after that, 2010, we hope to have an On Any Sunday theme, how cool will that be?

We are always looking for ideas to make us better, if you have any, please drop me a note, and I'll promise, no more stupid mayonnaise jokes.

—Questions or comments regarding this article should be directed to the BlueRibbon Coalition: Phone: , Fax: . Email: .

BlueRibbon Magazine, July 2008

Is the SIerra Club, Club Sierra?

2008-07-18T20:10:00.003-10:00

http://www.sierrademocracy.org/election2004/arts/l2004mar12.html

Yes I know this is old news, but I do know many of the original environmental clubs are corrupted by money/power. Apparently this is humane nature, talk to anyone who lives under the thumb of a neighborhood association.
My question is, who do we trust with our public lands? I know a non profit that the environmental groups have claimed were supported by oil companies. The accused organization posted their their financial statements in print in their monthly magazine, from my brief study (all that was required) they did not have any huge donations.) Just grass route funds and support.
So my question is...Is Club Sierra indeed Club Sierra? Your thoughts are welcome, I have comment moderation on but will post you answer, question, theory, joke and just nonsense is welcome, in fact please send me nonsense! Just as soon as I see it poised in my mailbox for action it will be published.

Stop the Creeping Moral Corruption Within the Sierra Club

An open letter from Dick Lamm, Frank Morris and David Pimentel
March 12, 2004

There is a deep and spreading corruption in the Sierra Club, which must be addressed. For the club's sake, not ours. It has the potential to do the club great harm unless corrected and thereby set back the environmental movement in America just when it is most needed. The very reputation and effectiveness of the Sierra Club is at stake. Let us state our case:

I. We have just discovered there have been anonymous donations to the Sierra Club Foundation of staggering amounts of money. The IRS forms show $47,898,118.40 in anonymous donations were given to the Sierra Club Foundation in the year 2000, and $53,593,640.00 in 2001. The Board of the Sierra Club, to the intense discomfort of some of the directors, has been told to tell no one and to ask no questions. Most of the directors of the Sierra Club have no knowledge of who is giving this money or for what purposes, even though this money now represents a large part of the budget of the Sierra Club. What obligations went with these donations, what restrictions on policy, if any, what promises direct or implied are not only unknown to the membership but also unknown to the Board. The Board is approving confusing budgets which contain millions of dollars that the fiduciaries of the Club do not know the source of, nor the legitimacy of. This is an irresponsible and reckless policy, which risks the good reputation of the Sierra Club.

II. This may explain why a clique of Sierra Club leaders is trying to ruin our reputations. There may be reasons to vote against us, but instead of campaigning on the issues, the power clique who runs the Board has chosen to stain and defame our characters. They charge that we are racists, and/or backed by racists who we have never heard of and have no connection with, and reject. If that isn't enough, they then charge that we are part of a right-wing plot to take over the Sierra Club, again citing organizations and people who we have no connection with and reject. We are progressive liberals, with excellent civil-rights credentials. One of us was the Executive Director of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. Despite the fact that their false claims don't pass the snicker test; they repeat them over and over.

III. The clique using these McCarthy type insinuations and lies, have broken the rules of the club and the California Corporate Code to defeat us at all costs. When we filed suit to attempt to even the playing field, they filed a so called anti-SLAPP suit, which threatened to bury us with attorney's fees if we lost. The last thing this clique wants is a fair election.

IV. The rules were again broken, when the names of some our endorsers where leaked from confidential ballot statements, and phone calls made by staff of the club asking them to withdraw their endorsements. This was successful with both Tim Wirth and Stuart Udall who then withdrew their endorsements. This abuse of process didn't seem to cause a single qualm.

V. We cannot understand how people of honor and integrity could say and do some of the things that have been done in this election. One of the hottest seats in Hell is always reserved for people who defame falsely other people's characters, knowing such claims are false. It goes without saying that this was extremely painful to us, but it also made no sense to us, until we discovered that the club might well have something of Enron proportions to cover up and which they don't want to see exposed. A small group of people now control a large amount of money, without adequate controls or accounting. That is dangerous for the club and for the environmental movement.

Vote for us, or against us, but please clean up the creeping corruption of the club we all love.

I Aint Sayin' Stop Begettin'

2008-07-14T16:13:00.006-10:00

If people would stop breeding like rabbits, we could all have a place on the beach, drive 18' long convertible gas guzzler's and well; all would balance with the natural decay of fall wood, which produces the same amount of carbon monoxide rotting as burning it other than burning it releases it much faster. So I suppose the lesson that everyone should recognize is we are on a small piece of real estate and if we continue to reproduce at the rate we are we will all be third world countries. More people more methane, more cows more methane less trees, less trees, less fresh air, less farmland less food, more people more fuel...Yes Thomas Malthus nailed it on the head and if you care to read the wicked wikipedia short version of his over 150 year old valid observation, continue.

The Principle of Population

Between 1798 and 1826 Malthus published six editions of his famous treatise, An Essay on the Principle of Population, updating each edition to incorporate new material, to address criticism, and to convey changes in his own perspectives on the subject. He wrote the original text in reaction to the optimism of his father and his father's associates, (notably Rousseau) regarding the future improvement of society. Malthus also constructed his case as a specific response to writings of William Godwin (1756-1836) and of the Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794).

Malthus regarded ideals of future improvement in the lot of humanity with scepticism, considering that throughout history a segment of every human population seemed relegated to poverty. He explained this phenomenon by pointing out that population growth generally preceded expansion of the population's resources, in particular the primary resource of food:

"...in all societies, even those that are most vicious, the tendency to a virtuous attachment is so strong that there is a constant effort towards an increase of population. This constant effort as constantly tends to subject the lower classes of the society to distress and to prevent any great permanent amelioration of their condition."[2]

"The way in which, these effects are produced seems to be this. We will suppose the means of subsistence in any country just equal to the easy support of its inhabitants. The constant effort towards population... increases the number of people before the means of subsistence are increased. The food therefore which before supported seven millions must now be divided among seven millions and a half or eight millions. The poor consequently must live much worse, and many of them be reduced to severe distress. The number of labourers also being above the proportion of the work in the market, the price of labour must tend toward a decrease, while the price of provisions would at the same time tend to rise. The labourer therefore must work harder to earn the same as he did before. During this season of distress, the discouragements to marriage, and the difficulty of rearing a family are so great that population is at a stand. In the mean time the cheapness of labour, the plenty of labourers, and the necessity of an increased industry amongst them, encourage cultivators to employ more labour upon their land, to turn up fresh soil, and to manure and improve more completely what is already in tillage, till ultimately the means of subsistence become in the same proportion to the population as at the period from which we set out. The situation of the labourer being then again tolerably comfortable, the restraints to population are in some degree loosened, and the same retrograde and progressive movements with respect to happiness are repeated."

Malthus also saw that societies through history had experienced at one time or another epidemics, famines, or wars: events that masked the fundamental problem of populations overstretching their resource limitations:

"The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of destruction, and often finish the dreadful work themselves. But should they fail in this war of extermination, sickly seasons, epidemics, pestilence, and plague advance in terrific array, and sweep off their thousands and tens of thousands. Should success be still incomplete, gigantic inevitable famine stalks in the rear, and with one mighty blow levels the population with the food of the world."

To give a mathematical perspective to his observations, Malthus proposed the idea that population, if unchecked, increases at a geometric rate (i.e. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, etc.), whereas the food-supply grows at an arithmetic rate (i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc.).

In the first edition of the Essay, Malthus suggested that only natural causes (such as accidents and old age), misery (war, pestilence, plague, and above all famine) [Book I, Ch. 2], and vice (which for Malthus included infanticide, murder, contraception and homosexuality) [Book I, Ch. 5.] could check excessive population-growth. In the second and subsequent editions, Malthus raised the possibility of moral restraint (marrying late or not at all, coupled with sexual abstinence prior to, and outside of, marriage) as a check on the growth of population. (Others[who?] criticised him, however, for implying that restraint applied only to the working and poor classes.) He also proposed the gradual abolition of poor laws that gave no incentive to birth control, supporting instead private charity.

Malthus took offence at criticism that he lacked a caring attitude towards the situation of the poor. He wrote in an addition to the 1817 edition:

"I have written a chapter expressly on the practical direction of our charity; and in detached passages elsewhere have paid a just tribute to the exalted virtue of benevolence. To those who have read these parts of my work, and have attended to the general tone and spirit of the whole, I willingly appeal, if they are but tolerably candid, against these charges ... which intimate that I would root out the virtues of charity and benevolence without regard to the exaltation which they bestow on the moral dignity of our nature.... (p. 607)[3]

Some[who?] have argued that Malthus did not fully recognize the human capacity to increase food supply. On this subject Malthus wrote: "The main peculiarity which distinguishes man from other animals, is the means of his support, is the power which he possesses of very greatly increasing these means."[citation needed]

[edit] Malthus's expectations of growth in population

See also: Malthusian equilibrium

Since 1800, global food production has generally kept pace with population growth, but increasing numbers of humans call for new ways "to increase yields while preserving natural habitats and biodiversity".[4]

Elwell states that Malthus made no specific prediction regarding the future; and that what some interpret as prediction merely constituted Malthus's illustration of the power of geometric (or exponential) population growth compared to the arithmetic growth of food-production.[5] Rather than predicting the future, the Essay offers an evolutionary social theory. Eight major points regarding evolution appear in the 1798 Essay:[6]

1. subsistence severely limits population-level
2. when the means of subsistence increases, population increases
3. population-pressures stimulate increases in productivity
4. increases in productivity stimulate further population-growth
5. since this productivity can not keep up with the potential of population growth for long, population requires strong checks to keep it in line with carrying-capacity
6. individual cost/benefit decisions regarding sex, work, and children determine the expansion or contraction of population and production
7. checks will come into operation as population exceeds subsistence-level
8. the nature of these checks will have significant effect on the rest of the sociocultural system — Malthus points specifically to misery, vice, and poverty

Malthusian theory has had great influence on evolutionary theory, both in biology (as acknowledged by Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace) and in the social sciences (compare Herbert Spencer). Malthus's population theory has also profoundly affected the modern-day ecological-evolutionary social theory of Gerhard Lenski and Marvin Harris. He can thus rank as a key contributing element of the canon of socioeconomic theory.

Rest Assured I am wearing my high water pants

2008-07-09T10:30:00.002-10:00

We have been enjoying an especially wet spring and early summer. But rest assured we here in the Midwest are survivors. More later JW

Exposed to the Xtreme

2008-07-06T16:59:00.002-10:00

This post contains material that is inappropriate for anyone to view. So language nudity and with a dash of poor taste is what you can expect if you watch these videos. I would suggest you save your innocent mind to be corrupted with time, please do not allow me to accelerate the loss of your innocence. All nudity was created by computer animated graphics if this helps ease your mind. Peace JW

Nevada Trail Ride with Trail Rider magazine.

Theives Theives Tramps and Theives

2008-07-06T15:00:00.003-10:00

This ain’t good business! I have a small yard I hired a friend last summer to help me keep it groomed kill the three varieties of poison ivy I apparently have and also to work on a shared slope with a neighbor. My friend told me that if I paid him in advance, he could give me a better deal and take care of everything. Well its been nearly a year and a half and not much has been done, in fact my friend has disappeared. Unless I walk into the village and see him at his pub and hang out, now he is avoiding me as is his wife and the owner of the pub etc. Kinda odd, I thought $550.00 was a decent deal considering the friend was going to use leftover materials to take care of my yard issues. Well as in business where I trusted employees who stole with abandon, I have discovered that my friendship is worth $550.00 and then it climbs to the multiples of this when I factor in employees.
The pub he hangs out at is Chumley’s in Broad Ripple Indiana. I have a good relationship with the bartenders, waitress’s when I visit, I am well-behaved, bring guests, tip well etc. However the landscape bandit is a lifelong friend with the owner and well you know, so it goes. He steals from me, I stop my occasional visit.
I also facilitated a Trail Rider Party at their establishment, this shall be banished from my list of places to go for fun, liars and cheats apparently are the preferred clients. Bad juju as far as I am concerned…and now for something completely different.
There are other pubs in the village, many pubs, pubs that of course harbor scoundrels but at least the scoundrels have not taken me for money.(yet) A good church going scoundrel that raises children and grandchildren at my expenses. I could not sleep but apparently he can; so it goes. My yard is once again my responsibility, which really is not that big of a deal, the guy I hired was just lacking in character, ambition, and drive not to mention a conscience.
To end on a good note, I have many great friends who I would trust with my life, however if I owned this bar I would question my lifelong friend’s loyalty.
A man of honor, a man of his word, now that’s good business. Otherwise, this type of character or lack of will continue to wonder why he keeps running into problems, has to avoid phone calls etc. Not a good way to live, a bridge burner as a rule burn’s themselves into corners.
Yes a negative post but one that may console many readers when they discover they are not alone when dealing with the liars and thieves. Kind Regards and keep your guard up JW

Better Than you'd Expect

2008-07-01T17:49:00.006-10:00

I received an email from a friend of mine Robin Hartfiel which contained this plug for his buddies new book. I am going to order the book and suggest you do as well, just because I have learned from past experience that Robin is a good reference for no bull reading. In other words, if he plugs the book, it must have merit. So read below the Beach Boys/Ray Charles YouTube link to the letter from the author, humble, funny etc.
Why I have included the Ray Charles/Beach Boys YouTube link well, you know the Beach Boys are not on the top of my play list, but this song has always struck a cord and so has Ray Charles.It also reminds...never mind my tangents are nearly infinite so I will show you mercy and turn it over to the content. Ok Antoine de Saint Exupery, titled (Wind, Sand and Stars)is the book it reminds me of...I am done JW

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87P-1t_8aWU
Another version from the sound track of The Departed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_iXNI2A418

Dear Friends, Family and Other's whose e-mail address I had for one reason or another,

Please forgive me as I shamelessly call on all of you for your help and support in promoting my debut book, "MEXICAN BOWL FISHING: And Other Tales of Life" officially releasing this coming Tuesday, July 1st! Based loosely on my monthly magazine column, the book outlines many of the awkward misfortunes that seem to plague my life and the things I've learned through each of those shortcomings. (Mainly how to laugh in the face of embarrassment ... it's better than crying).

MEXICAN BOWL FISHING contains revised-for-book versions of four of my most popular columns including "Bury the Cat Slowly", "A Lesson in Cheap (Jessica)", "Used Parts Salesman" and my debut column, "Practice What We Preach", as well as over 22 brand new, humorous tales. Each chapter is its own, individual short story so this makes the book perfect bathroom reading material for those who engage in such activities!

The book will be available through thousands, (well, actually tens-of-thousands, I guess), of outlets nationwide, but I'd certainly prefer that you send anyone you know to the official book website to pick up their copy at www.MexicanBowlFishing.com. This site is my own and will launch this Tuesday and your friends, neighbors, acquaintances (or anyone you can hold at gunpoint) will be able to select the plain book or a "personalized, autographed copy"! (Sounds impressive, doesn't it?)

We will also be launching a Mexican Bowl Fishing photo contest with the chance to win great prizes, including up to $250 in cash for the grand prize entry! That contest will run through October 21, 2008 with the winners selected on October 31, 2008. Wow, this just keeps getting better, doesn't it?

For those of you on this list who are in the media, (you know who you are), please let me know if I can send you a press release and/or pre-written print article and for those in radio ... let's talk interview scheduling! There's nothing wrong with using your popularity to push a friend's book - I was that immoral when I was in radio!

A very special thanks to all of you in advance for any help you can give in spreading the word. When I first thought about sending this e-mail to pretty much everyone that I know, I sort of saw a moral dilemma in that it might not be right to mooch help from friends and family. Then I decided that, if you can't mooch off of your friends and family, who the heck can you mooch from?

The absolute best to all of you and thanks again for helping to spread the word. I've wanted to write a book since around 10-years of age and now that it's a reality, I hope to "force" the masses to buy it, read it and love it! (God save the world).

All the best,

Bill

MEXICAN BOWL FISHING: And Other Tales of Life
By William Douglas Little
ISBN:

I Think Dougie Lampkin Has Worked on His Skills

2008-06-28T17:46:00.011-10:00

I think I added a live link of a fun video whic rates PG on My Mules rating system, in fact it rates even less than PG, maybe just a G, or...Never mind, the subject of this link is based on an obscure motorcycle related discipline known as Trials Riding.
Trials requires great balance and a bike that weighs in at around 160lbs. It is amazing to watch what these people can do on a Trials bike, not to mention the Mountain Biker's who do some very impossible tricks without the motor.
I have been practicing riding a friends Trials bike and to tell you the truth just trying to learn the new discipline is not easy,if I can last twenty minutes riding around obstacles and practicing balance I am happy and my poor body is like rubber or jelly.Odd but true, this is a difficult type of riding but will I hope help me in my trail rides, its proven to help many world champions so maybe this was what was binding me to the surly bonds of mediocrity in trail riding and soon I will blossom and become a world class champion in my own...eyes
At this point what more can I ask? Peace Trials JW
Doug Lampkin

Corner Gas the New Mayberry

2008-06-22T15:51:00.005-10:00

I normally do not post anything as low brow as reviews of television shows, this being a site devoted to people who read and write real good.However in this case I feel compelled to admit that yes I do own a television I even have a DVR which makes my viewing much more enjoyable for when I am worn out from working on my Magnum opus and just need something to do before I visit one of my favorite villes, commonly known as Sleepville.
So now as I explain away why I watch TV, I view it as something I scorn but do secretly use as an over the counter narcotic to help ease the transition from awake to not awake. Corner Gas is the show I step out on a limb for you my gentle reader.The Show is from Canada and filmed in Saskatchewan, visit the link for more info. I was forced to watch it by my father who has Tivo and I found it mildly amusing, I watched another episode and was still not one over, finally my younger sister (9 years superior to her) admitted she and her husband were fans, so I relented set my DVR to record Corner Gas. Now I have recruited at least three more people who are fans. I was talking to my buddy Roscoe this evening and he admitted he really liked it, I compared it to a modern Mayberry filmed in Canada and he agreed. I respect Roscoes opinion hence the title of the post. The photo has nothing to do with Corner Gas other than it was taken in Canada. The show is on WGN America and is currently filming its 6th season.I leave it to you to decide, should I put down Finnigan's Wake and watch the boob tube? Yes, when your eyes grow weary, escape to Dog River.

Errol Flynn Fighting Spanish Man in Diaper

2008-06-18T16:40:00.002-10:00

Well after studying my stats I recognize my audience and for this one post I shall cater to them. How long I choose to do the song and dance for the audience will be short lived, but for now I feel compelled to give my audience their day. I had another picture I saw of the 1935 classic movie Captain Blood, I could have titled it Captain Blood in Knee High Leather Boots. So now I will look at my internet searches and do an independent study on how many people really are looking for this kind of stuff. With my math ability's and spirit of exaggeration I am certain the results will be deeply disturbing. Thank you for your patience and support in my quest for the truth about what goes on in peoples tickers. JW

I only Ask Questions

2008-06-16T17:47:00.010-10:00

I read somewhere recently that we are trying to elect a new president of the United States.
When I read this article, (don't ask me where,I already forgot) I questioned the entire system of government.I suppose I will start a new paragraph to address this subject, because it seems like the right thing to do.
I used good judgment I feel better in this paragraph, kinda comfy in this new paragraph I must admit.So with this thought I think I will start a new paragraph to reinforce the positive vibes I am feeling from this new paragraph.
So its true I do feel better. I guess the questions I have are as follows until I fall asleep or loose train of thought (racing thoughts are a real pain).

1: Does anyone recognize that democracy is soon to be replaced by corporations?

2: Does anyone feel as if the homogenization of the world is a gift from the corporations?

3: Does anyone feel that big brother is the product of conglomerates?

4: Does anyone feel there is a solution to this?

5: Soma is in the works, watch the pharmaceutical ads on the tube. Soon we will all be prescribed "Soma" and then it will all be good?

6: What can we do to protect the people for the people?

7: Finally why has my sense of smell gone south?

Thank you for your patience and soon I will have an appropriate photo to accompany this post. Kind Regards JW

Guest Post from Jolene Ketzenberger

2008-06-13T19:10:00.003-10:00

Jolene Ketzenberger of the Indianapolis star had this to say about beef. I liked the article which helps reinforce my lifestyle of a semi-retired, part time only when I sleep,full time vegan. No I am not a vegan but I am pretty handy when it comes to copy and paste. Next task, find a suitable photo for this post. Kind Regards JW

Below these collection of words is the article.

What could be better for a special occasion than steak? Whether for a backyard barbecue or a restaurant celebration, the classic cut of beef remains one of America's favorite entrees.

At Joseph Decuis restaurant in the small northeastern Indiana town of Roanoke, owners Pete and Alice Eshelman feature American-style Kobe beef, the highly regarded Japanese breed called Wagyu. In fact, they have their own herd.
Advertisement

"One of our chefs got some through a distributor, and we tasted it, and it tasted incredible," said Pete Eshelman.

Although already running an award-winning restaurant, an inn and a specialty food and gift shop, the couple began researching Wagyu beef. After visiting other ranchers and consulting with Japanese experts, in 2004 the Eshelmans launched the cattle operation on land six miles from the restaurant. The couple's Heritage Farm also supplies the restaurant with eggs and fresh produce.

"We started off with 20 pregnant heifers, which was my 50th birthday present," said Alice Eshelman.

Considerable mystique surrounds Kobe beef, which has been widely available in the United States only since the 1990s. True Kobe comes only from the Hyogo prefecture in Japan; however, the Wagyu breed is being successfully raised in the United States and Australia, using Japanese methods and breeding stock.

What has come to be called American Wagyu is typically a cross between Japanese Wagyu and black or red Angus.

American Wagyu steaks often cost more than $50 a pound; a 6-ounce fillet from Joseph Decuis is more than $40. At the much ballyhooed Kobe Club in New York City, an 8-ounce American Wagyu fillet is $85. A Kobe sampler for two costs $395.

Why such high prices? There is a limited supply, for one thing. Plus, more time and effort goes into raising the specialty beef, though perhaps not as much as popularly thought. While they are fed a special diet and do require a longer raising time before slaughter, stories of their special treatment are much exaggerated, said Alice Eshelman.

"They really are not fed beer," she said.

The Eshelmans' Wagyu cattle are started in the pasture, then are fed a special diet of hay, corn and distillers' grain (the mash left over from making beer). The docile cattle, which are fattened longer than typical U.S. cattle, weigh less than typical cattle but develop fat in and around their muscles.

Joseph Decuis executive chef Aaron Butts said that intramuscular marbling is like "internal basting."

The extra-tender beef has a buttery mouth feel, he said. "It's got a great beef flavor accented by that melt-in-your-mouth quality."

Never Give a Sucker an Even Break

2008-06-07T23:28:00.003-10:00

I was able to fix my head with old sail cloth and ice. No Dr. visit required, despite my wife, my children, my grandchildren, my parents, my siblings, my aunts, uncles, and all my other next of kin; even my own peers told me to go to the Dr.
Well once again I proved them all wrong. The swelling subsided with the aid of ice and proper application. Call me crazy but if it takes me three attempts to bust a bottle on my own head, I always apply ice to the lump. I have been attempting to and always have succeeded to break bottles over my head, the problem with calling in the medics is they do not know which lump to apply the ice to. Despite common knowledge and common sense, so far I have come through my extreme hobby unhurt, other than memory loss, family interventions and some other things I cannot recall.
So let me tell you this is one fine post, best ever, best that I can recall. Now I need to stop because I am running out of

Good Ole Copy and Paste

2008-06-02T15:51:00.003-10:00

I was just on Erin O'Briens site and she had a post of her recent search results for her site.I have not been very active in the blog world for awhile, what with spring, work and lets not forget sloth. However taking advantage of this short burst of energy and inspiration before I turn in and ready myself for a day of daring adventure, I took a great deal of time to copy and paste my latest searches now I need to find a photo that fits this post just right.
Kind Regards JW

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Muletrader.com

2008-05-24T17:34:00.004-10:00

I have good friends in Alabama who I spoke with this evening.I followed their advice and checked out this site and it is mighty fine but apparently it is not just local, so I will have to call them back and find out the gold mine of things that need to be had. I like the ad for free dogs at a low price...They stole my shtick! One ad read, three women looking for handy man who can repair door knobs and do what needs to be done without being told...I think this was in exchange for lodging.I like the local flavor so I need to do more research but for now I leave it to your own devices.
Muletrader.com I like the name JW

From the Archives Cause I Got Nuthin'

2008-05-15T17:34:00.003-10:00

Photo Taken At Troy Lee Designs Retail Store

I'm no Ed Beagly but I do think we should look at some alternative fuels in this time of crisis. Doing my part I just purchased this alternative fuel car from my local Caddy dealer. I discovered after it was to late that I was the alternative fuel! Not only that but the thing was not air-conditioned as promised and the power steering, again that was left to me... I was the power! Geez, snake oil never really goes out of fashion, it just changes clothes. Had I only knowed. Buyer beware. JW

It is Against the Law

2008-05-03T18:30:00.003-10:00

I was going to continue the to be continued story but Trail Rider Magazine is running the entire story in an upcoming issue. I am bound by law and threats from men with heavily dippy doo'ed hair that if I continued with the story I would be forced to eat at Cracker Barrel until my heart exploded.
Trailrider.com is the web site and if you feel compelled to read the rest of the story, well just sign up, pay your dues and you can join in the fun. I do feel kinda bad for you the reader,for missing out on a tale of truth,terror and the American way. JW

Electric Horseman

2008-04-19T15:23:00.004-10:00

A good ole fashion serial tale. What helps make it seem dull is not only the oral verbosity I tried to capture on the page, but also the facts are not embellished. My Poetic license has expired, so trust me I am not fishin' for time in the "Gray Bar". True, sometimes the truth can ring dull if the man in charge of the belfry is tone deaf and cannot make the bell ring true. JW 4/20/08

With the gas price at a permanent high I finally realized the only reasonable thing to do was hunt for a motorcycle, honestly I realized I needed something I could identify which meant dirt friendly, that would save me big time on gas, its all about my “carbon footprint”. I was looking for something I could commute to work on and also do some dual sporting or even ride into Copper Canyon if the opportunity showed itself. I searched the papers, Craigs list and ebay for a month or two and finally I discovered that a friend of mine had a 2001 KTM 640 Adventure he was ready to release from his corral. I called him and he told me about the bike, I asked him “what color is it” and he changed the subject. The bike it turned out had just less than 4,000 miles on it, with new tires, chain and sprocket not to mention new oil and a tank full of gas. These facts sold me, so without hesitation, right or wrong, I bought his bike. I figured Fred was someone I knew which meant in the event the thing proved a lemon I could both slander and libel his good name whichever came first and then I could repeat until his reputation was destroyed which would help ease my lemon buying mind. I was satisfied with this plan. To be continued ...

Riding My Motorbike Within a Hairs Breath of Nude's

2008-04-14T15:38:00.002-10:00

Sunday April 13th 2008
District 14,15, 16, & 17

Well I just returned from an the annual Sand Goblin Enduro hosted by the Grand Kankakee Trail Riders in Roselawn Indiana which is an area known for its nudists colonies…This has nothing to do with the story, the summer race is when we are arrowed through the colony and it really makes you question why some of these people just don’t put their cloths back on, but this again is another story.
It has been a very wet spring, the ground is saturated the temperature reached a high of 40 and most people expected the worst…Wrong, the corn fields we crossed to trail sections were a nightmare. If you could just keep up your momentum and if you have any luck you will glide across the deep mud. The trails however were absolutely perfect! I had new tires, new packing for my pipe, clean cloths food in my belly etc. It was just a mild drizzle when we left on minute two.
I had a great ride, relatively speaking, I did not fall barely bobbled and only killed it in a transition corn field. I pulled the plug which was white and part of it burnt off, then I put in a fresh plug with all my fingers and toes crossed and nothing; my bike was toast…I was within 100 yards of the road and a gentleman named Andy came riding up on a four wheeler and offered me a tow, I said “please.” He tied on and the rope snapped, so he went to find a new tow rope, I waited for awhile began to feel a chill so I pushed the bike until I felt like I was going to break a sweat and then waited etc. Finally Andy showed up with a tow strap and we made it to the road and headed back to base camp and then the rope broke again. Then after a retie we made it back…Great day despite blowing up my machine. I met up with two friends Jamie, corn field tragedy, and that grabber fella another victim.
Soon Frank Haines along with Jan Werner showed up for a gas stop. I pointed at my head to show I was OK and they gassed up and headed out, Jan had only crashed four times so far and Frank only went over his bars once on the enduro cross section…We all shook hands and went our respective ways. Who won? I don’t know it wasn’t me. So that’s my race report if I find out any further results and if I remember I will post them but for me this is all I need to know.

The Sea She's Rough

2008-04-06T16:04:00.004-10:00

I sail on the waters of Eagle Ocean which is in the Indianapolis area. These waters are bound by many restrictions, no jet skies, no motors over 10 horse power and here lies the danger NO SWIMMING!
So if one is law abiding and falls off his boat, he I assume by the law is obligated to drown. I have fallen off on a number of occasions and have brazenly embraced my scoff law nature and splashed about and then eventually dog paddled back to my vessel. However I fear many a law-abiding sailor may be forced to visit Davey Jones Locker some 20 ft. below! Do not think for a minute we in land locked Indiana do not sail in the shadow of imminent peril every time we misstep on our boats. From the Chart room of the Western Flyer
Josh Williams
Indianapolis Indiana

Brewgrass Festival A Celebration of Gods

2008-03-31T16:46:00.008-10:00

Asheville North Carolina-stop-September 07-stop-Home Brew-stop-Blue Grass-stop- joined ear to pallet-stop-why are these people just sitting-stop-one man with a beer-stop-One Price Each Beer Free Then-stop-when did I start hanging around fools-stop-FREE BEER-stop-YOU PAID THE GATE-stop-for Christs sake!
The photo was staged nothing so ridiculous as this would be permitted in my world. However I noticed while digitizing this moment the symbolism; only one person had a beer,yet all of them were being force feed blue grass.I do like bluegrass, and I also like beer, which brings me to my point. Where can a man go these day to be force fed beer? Yes strip clubs but...Look free beer a bargain is a bargain is good business.

I was tagged and so is you.

2008-03-29T17:07:00.003-10:00

Zen Wizard

This is some sort of weird tag that I am obliged to follow despite the fact that I was not notified that I was involved in this group tagging aka grouping. My six word bio can be read after the rules...

"1) Write your own six-word memoir about yourself.

2) Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like.

3) Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible, so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere.

4) Tag five more blogs with links.

5) And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!"

My Dark Secret
I wear costumes covered with mud.

Grave Danger

2008-03-25T14:18:00.003-10:00

I posted about this grave awhile back and discovered the photo again while sorting through my files. I am curious about this road hazard. I live within an hour’s drive from this site and had not heard of it until a friend took me by it on the way back from a job site. I took photos and still wonder why these remains remain in the middle of a rural road in mid-southern Indiana. It is a great conversation starter, if you are down there but as I have said before, no gift shops or commerce taking place, just a grave in the middle of the road waiting for the right driver to run smack dab into the retaining wall. I can't help but think grandma would be to happy after given a number of years to ponder her plot,that she was poised and ready to create another traffic statistic. Perhaps its time a great, great grandchild stood up to the plate and gave the go ahead to move the plot. Odd JW

Self Discovery aint a Cake Walk

2008-03-20T16:45:00.003-10:00

Self tagulation is I have discovered to much like self flagellation. I have thought really hard, about things I do not know and it is really taxing on my mind, body and conscience. There are things I did not know that I do not care to reveal there are things I discovered that made me very tired, depressed and lethargic. Tired, depressed and lethargic is something I do not strive for so I am ending my quest within myself. I think I will focus on things I think when I am on a caffeine high, or after a couple of pulls from the bottle. I guess what my point is I am going to think positive and stop wasting my time trying to figure out things I do not know about myself. I will discover this stuff as I bounce through this self discovery faze, all the while trapped behind a wall of skin my parents named Josh…Kind Regards JW

Self Tagulation

2008-03-18T14:29:00.005-10:00

Well it has been a few days since I posted. I have been busy working, not for myself but to help generate tax revenue for Uncle Sam. I am going to do a little something different and tag myself (maybe not so different) and reveal several things I did not know about myself. Feel free to tag yourself, here or elsewhere just keep in mind it is more fun if you are brutally honest about yourself. So I will start with number one and then end when the phone rings.

1: I did not know until just a few short minutes ago that I was going to tag myself.

2: I have know idea what I don't know about myself but like the challenge.

3: I do not know what photo I will use to illustrate this post.

4: Why will the phone not ring? I did not know I would be thinking this...

5: I did know I would run out of ideas about things I do not know about myself but I just do not know when the phone will save me?

6: I am probably impossibly handsome.

7: I did not know that I was going to call my home phone on my cell phone...

Gotta go the phone is ringing.

my provocant wife free movies

2008-03-13T18:44:00.003-10:00

I find these searches fun, but then again this is my site,these poor mule dung souls have discovered. This is not my fault.

I have been working more than usual so I do not have much to say,which might explain why, when all is done I stare at the search page and chuckle. Of course I understand that my fascination also has a link to my vanity...Someone, even if they are looking for "my provocant wife free movies" has discovered that I exist.
I included a photo to liven up the post, I found a great online company that only charges me $75.00 per view of this stock photo. Pretty cheap when you consider the time they spend sending out valuable offers like the one I latched onto. JW

hed Keywords
Mar 14, 2008 00:45:20 my provocant wife free movies (GoogleSearch)
Mar 13, 2008 23:36:19 hashes indiana (GoogleSearch)
Mar 13, 2008 20:42:03 mule bodybuilder (GoogleSearch)
Mar 13, 2008 17:03:28 josh williams dr who (GoogleSearch)
Mar 13, 2008 16:40:39 backdoor adventures (GoogleSearch)
Mar 13, 2008 15:38:11 henry thomas fishin blues lyrics (GoogleSearch)
Mar 13, 2008 15:23:49 chuck sun (GoogleSearch)
Mar 13, 2008 15:11:02 roscoe's tacos (GoogleSearch)
Mar 13, 2008 12:37:29 michael monteleone lord buckley (GoogleSearch)
Mar 13, 2008 08:09:54 war prayer+clemens (GoogleSearch)
Mar 13, 2008 02:12:26 barium milkshake (GoogleSearch)
Mar 13, 2008 02:12:23 barium milkshake (GoogleSearch)
Mar 13, 2008 02:03:23 "stephen wacker" indianapolis (GoogleSearch)
Mar 13, 2008 01:38:23 el chupa cabre (GoogleSearch)
Mar 13, 2008 01:16:22 custom van+plexiglass dog house (GoogleSearch)
Mar 13, 2008 01:06:40 madmans magnifying trick (GoogleSearch)
Mar 12, 2008 22:09:13 joshua pitt sailing results (GoogleSearch)
Mar 12, 2008 21:18:35 "real laplaine" los angeles ca (GoogleSearch)
Mar 12, 2008 19:47:35 clipper marine blogspot (GoogleSearch)
Mar 12, 2008 19:34:25 atv, snowmobiles, dirt bikes, carpal tunnel (GoogleSearch)
Mar 12, 2008 18:33:46 hippy cow (GoogleSearch)
Mar 12, 2008 17:31:50 triptych alterpieces (GoogleSearch)
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Mar 12, 2008 02:55:47 tilburg dutch brown ale poster (GoogleSearch)
Mar 12, 2008 00:11:57 vic krause (GoogleSearch)
Mar 11, 2008 22:15:21 bark busters criticism (GoogleSearch)
Mar 11, 2008 22:05:13 @.mule google (GoogleSearch)
Mar 11, 2008 21:37:13 ktm adventure (GoogleSearch)
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Mar 11, 2008 16:02:21 josh williams band and girlfriend (GoogleSearch)
Mar 11, 2008 14:21:03 narrow dog (GoogleSearch)

Google Search offers My Mule?

2008-03-10T17:51:00.003-10:00

Recent Google search:What were these poor souls looking for?

Mar 11, :58:23 barium milkshake (GoogleSearch)
Mar 11, :37:46 how many teaspoons of castor oil to shit (GoogleSearch)
Mar 11, :02:52 burn fiberglass dangers (GoogleSearch)
Mar 10, :58:09 blender submersible (GoogleSearch)
Mar 10, :25:28 poo lord of my ring (GoogleSearch)
Mar 10, :59:44 uncle josh's pontoon boats (YahooSearch)
Mar 10, :24:07 roscoe's tacos (GoogleSearch)
Mar 10, :15:31 endurocross wiki (GoogleSearch)
Mar 10, :39:43 "sears mini bike" (GoogleSearch)
Mar 10, :21:35 ktm lc4 2001 (GoogleSearch)
Mar 9, :27:46 mule riding youtube (GoogleSearch)
Mar 9, :39:38 scientology (GoogleSearch)
Mar 9, :02:37 photo ktm super duck (GoogleSearch)
Mar 9, :30:15 motorcyclist magazine november 2007 (GoogleSearch)
Mar 9, :21:13 fork blogger moto-cross (GoogleSearch)
Mar 9, :15:10 supermoto ktm (GoogleSearch)
Mar 9, :30:18 "xr650 supermotard (GoogleSearch)
Mar 8, :48:25 "jimmy webb" + blogspot + "richard... (GoogleSearch)
Mar 8, :20:32 chupacabra (GoogleSearch)
Mar 8, :33:54 face shields weedeater (YahooSearch)
Mar 8, :16:53 march break waterloo (GoogleSearch)
Mar 8, :34:09 "world tour" triumph motorcycle scrambler (GoogleSearch)
Mar 8, :32:54 great moto adventures (GoogleSearch)
Mar 7, :47:02 "ron turcotte" brother (GoogleSearch)
Mar 7, :43:18 paint with mule stick (GoogleSearch)
Mar 7, :19:10 porno yungs (GoogleSearch)
Mar 7, :28:59 enuches (GoogleSearch)
Mar 7, :13:46 "terry sexton" usfs (GoogleSearch)
Mar 7, :30: little suzy's zoo duck material (GoogleSearch)
Mar 7, :06:11 photos of hopewell rocks high tide versus low tide (GoogleSearch)
Mar 7, :26:49 what did the infinite space theory say (GoogleSearch)
Mar 7, :15:19 how much does a mule cost today (GoogleSearch)
Mar 6, :20:36 character builds picture (GoogleSearch)
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Mar 6, :05:34 roxi williams (GoogleSearch)
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Mar 6, :22:42 barium milkshake (GoogleSearch)
Mar 6, :39:06 "josh williams" lowell, in (GoogleSearch)
Mar 5, :58:18 willing suspension of disbelief in shakespeares julius... (GoogleSearch)
Mar 5, :47:32 "band of brothers" "brave the winter" (GoogleSearch)
Mar 5, :39:35 bark buster criticism (GoogleSearch)

To Photo Shop and The Rules

2008-03-09T18:29:00.009-10:00

Lord Dead Saguaro

Whooping Cough

I was looking through a photo site and discovered a photograph which I thought was striking. Then I wondered how did such a long exposure (surf is blurred) be snapped at such an angel that the photo of a the lighthouse is crystal clear. Then I thought it was taken from a larger, taller, better lighthouse, with the new improved Fresnel lens with the standard double your lifetime guarantee every time 24/7. Finally I realized, photo shop!
For a period of time there will always be people who demand the decisive moment photography and those that love the photo shopped artistry. I for one am all for this step in self-expression. I do realize that photography had its illusionists, then along came airbrush then came Kong (photo shop). I welcome Kong or the other versions of Kong; I would love not for the sake of repression or “artistic statement” Just because I am done with trying to figure out if its real or contrived. I propose some sort of symbol at the lower right hand corner of the picture, invisible to the naked eye, for a small fee say $50.00 you can purchase (straight from My Mule) the right shade of eye glass's to see if its real or if it has a middle man.
This was kinda heavy and I didn’t mean to lay this weight on anyone’s shoulders its just that I need help with this one question. Thank you in advance JW

Avett Brothers Ride with me Across NC

2008-03-07T15:05:00.004-10:00

You may have heard me talk about my drive back from the Coast of NC to Indianapolis. I only had a three CD's two of them the Dropkick Murphys to keep me awake and the Avett Brothers which I listened to over and over again on my 880 mile drive.Great ride, great stereo, great link to my roots in Ohio to North Carolina to Indianapolis all mentioned in their CD Emotionalism which I had first heard about from sleekpelt. Thanks Mr Pelt and most of all thanks to the Avett Brothers, keep making noise.Thank you also Dropkick Murphys, you all may have caused me serious hearing loss, but the good kind I suppose.
JW

My Fall From Grace

2008-03-03T19:09:00.003-10:00

About halfway through the video you will see a man in red with the #127 on his number plate, he will take a great fall into the pool of sharks. What goes on in Vegas, stays in Vegas... not true.
I went to Vegas in November to fall/ride my brothers bike in the relatively new sport of enduro-cross. I for the sake of pleasing the crowd staged this fall. Your welcome enduro-cross I am the guy who fell backwards into the hot pool of lava, I shook it off and finished my practice lap.Yes this is for true other than the part about the sharks and the lava. JW

I Broke Everything

2008-03-02T18:26:00.002-10:00

I changed my template because I thought it might correct all the other blunders I had made working on my old template. So I have lost all my link list...This will be on the horizon. I have an unfortunate inability to follow or at least read instructions...

Eire and the Lost Journal

2008-03-02T16:46:00.002-10:00

I visited Ireland in 1999 with a few of my buddies that had all just recently been through divorce, one fella who as far as I know had never been married, brought his girlfriend. What a grand trip we rented two compact cars and for 10 day’s roamed around. I kept a short journal for two days and gave up all attempts. I just found the journal while looking for a title to a car I finally sold that has sat derelict for two years.
7/3 Arrived Shannon visit (illegible) for some blood pudding at O’Coonols Sq…To Doolen to stay at the Rainbow Hostel-Minor sleepwalk episode- Kelly & Cheri from Colorado-Kelley was a writer and loved T.S. Elliot, I assured her I would read the hell out of him. Kelly and Cheri took Mike, some weird hostel guy and myself to O’Donaless (sp) in Fanore , for some very, very bad music. A band so bad that a Holiday Inn would reject their audition tape. Kelly and Cheri were very gracious and returned us to the Rainbow. I promptly went to bed and then woke up in the morning in different room; a stranger was in the other bed. I was more than a little confused walked around the room to look out the window and decided I was upstairs at the same hostel, or I hoped it was…I walked out of the bedroom straight into a bathroom, found my money belt in front of the toilet grabbed my the belt and then took a long ponderous pee. Found the stairs to the first floor while in nothing but my undies, when I met a surly gent who said “this is a private residence” I replied “ I must have been sleep walking” he replied “right”. Kelly and Cheri both complemented my handwriting and were very sincere.
7/4 Galway stayed at Great Western Hostel, walked to Kings Head EST 1649 and watched a Hurling match then to Busker Browns , great crab. To Italian place for outside beers by the Liffy (river) To Leaison Place met heavy smokin’fun girl Britts “Americans are to healthy and boring”. To Quay (key) for Meatloaf impersonator. Home to bed.
Really most of this only makes since to me, but it does remind me much of what I had forgotten, I should have continued with the journal. But I did take photos, slides alas and I have not digitized them…Take notes and pictures it helps.

Real Men Pee Outside

2008-03-02T14:58:00.003-10:00

I do admit I was fascinated by the sign and since I have not heard back from zen on maybe making a deal for some real folding cash.I thought I would post another photo of the same which shows more detail than the previous photograph, this sign is for sale to the highest bidder, yes this includes the new Dubai Louvre.
The Some Place Else place did not have many customers and during the winter they shut off the water so as to save money and the pipes from freezing we were forced to use the planets toilet, out front on the board walk. Which brings me to the point, I like peeing outside and I would wager if poled, most men would admit the same. Now if you were raised in the city which does not afford such a luxury, I am not bragging or suggesting you are a know nothing city slicker, because deep down I know you would love to free your self from the surly bonds of neighbors and just let 'er rip! Also ladies, say what you will about men and most likely you will be right, but when it comes to the freedom to pee at the drop of a nickel, we have you beat hands down!

Tales From the Atlantic

2008-02-27T16:43:00.004-10:00

I think I mentioned this in my last post. I was recently in North Carolina visiting my folks. Mr. and Mrs. Josh Williams parents.
The photo of the man is my father (da) the lady (ma) I took this photo outside our favorite pub, I cannot remember the name because I was some place else. My folks picked me up at the airport and we made a beeline for this pub.
Not everything is clear but I do know we spent over 56 hours in this pub, ordering drinks, paying for drinks and at times asking one another where we were. I do remember me da repeating I am naked, I am not wearing cloths, over and over and over. I also remember myself repeating I am not sure if I am wearing cloths? Over and over and over…Eventually I looked over at me da and I said, “your fully dressed” and he replied “as are you” so we laughed and laid our heads on the bar for a nap, satisfied that we had both retained our dignity.

Thoughts From the Road

2008-02-26T14:14:00.002-10:00

I recently visited the coast of North Carolina to drive my mom’s car home to Indy. My folks (mom and dad) sold their house and are moving back to Indy, so I flew out hung around for a couple of days and then drove mums car home so she and her husband (my dad) could ride home together. I made the drive in 12hrs 50 minutes a total of 880 miles, average speed 69 miles per hour.
While I was on the road I listened to a few new CD’s I brought these particular CD’s because I had purchased them and had not taken the time to plug them into my own music machine, forced diversity. I will learn to like new things whether I like it or not. I also thought about things, I really did not come to any real conclusions or have any revelations, the entire trip!
I was speaking with a colleague today and through a curious tangential conversation we both discovered we could not figure out how Dennis Rodman grew from a shorty pants 5'10" in High School to a 6'6" NBA star. Was it Human Growth Hormone? I could have probably figured this out already if I had known to think about it on my 880 mile drive home.
I do not even watch sports but this I feel is an important question and I think we need to open a round table discussion. After all civilization is based on good communication and so is problem solving. Lets put our heads together and solve this little brainteaser. Thank you in advance for participating. Or if you do not feel like participating thank you for reading this entire post. JW

Livin' Large With the Folks

2008-02-23T12:50:00.001-10:00

Guest Post dedicated to people who suffer from multiple personality disorder.

S. Wray Gregoire
posted on Friday, August 17, 2007
Bio | Sheila Wray Gregoire Archives | Printer-Friendly Version

Living in Your Parents’ Basement
When I was sixteen, I knew for certain that when I hit eighteen I was moving out. This wasn’t because I didn’t like my mother. It was simply a matter of pride. I was going to make it on my own.

Today, I’m constantly floored by the number of young adults I meet who are still living with their parents while they “find themselves”. Recently I was chatting to a high school graduate about what she was going to do in September. She hadn’t given it a lot of thought, really. She might go back to high school, she said, because she really liked some of the sports teams. If not, she supposed she would get a job. For now she was just enjoying the summer while she sorted it all out. Her parents didn’t mind. They enjoyed having her at home.

At least she was only eighteen. Unfortunately, many who are a decade older haven’t made much progress in locating their true selves while they live in their parents’ basement. And they don’t seem to be bothered very much by this.

Our culture, I believe, has encouraged this extended adolescence because we have changed what it means to feel good about oneself. Today, many people are quite content with their lives even if they do not have any accomplishments to speak of. They’re good people, after all; what does it matter if they aren’t settled yet?

Perhaps this starts in the nursery, where we tell children that they are special no matter what. And it continues in school, where instead of stressing achievement, because that might make some children feel badly, we stress being nice to each other. We have “student of the week” awards for children who have been friendly, rather than “math pro of the week” for a kid who aced a test.

We also rob kids of the feeling that they can handle things themselves. When it comes to school, most kids can’t get through it without their parents helping with homework, something that was virtually unheard of twenty years ago. Now it’s expected by the schools, the parents, and even the kids. Attend a grade eight graduation and you’ll hear parents muttering in the stands that it should be them getting the diplomas after all the work they went through!

When children graduate and move on to university, again they’re still relying on their parents. My generation expected to pay for higher education ourselves. Kids today can’t even dream of paying their own way. Twenty years ago university cost $7,000 a year, including tuition and all living costs. Today, $7,000 just covers tuition, at the same time as the wages that students earn have stagnated. While you might expect a kid to be able to pay $7,000, no kid can pay $20,000, not without serious loans. So our kids can’t become independent in the way other generations have before them.

Maybe it’s not so surprising, then, that the number of young adults who still live with their parents has increased. Twenty-five years ago a quarter of all men in their twenties lived at home. Today it’s a third. Of course, many twenty-somethings live with their parents after schooling because it takes a while to find the right job. If they have a plan to get out, that’s not really a problem. But if kids are living with their parents because they don’t want to make any plans at all, I have three words of advice: Kick. Them. Out. Don’t switch margarine brands in the hope that they’ll leave (as one commercial suggests), or subtly leave real estate pages strewn over the kitchen table. Cut off the purse strings and let them go.

Many of us want to give our kids a great life, but floating them when they should be caring for themselves only impedes maturity. Somehow we need to find that balance between doing what is necessary for our children and encouraging independence at the same time. We may waver on this during the teen years, and even during higher education, but once a child is an adult, it has to be their show now. At one time, kids relished this. There’s no reason why they can’t again.

A Short History of the Font

2008-02-20T18:36:00.003-10:00

I lived next door to a man several years ago; he was an insurance salesman. Mr. Insurance would as a habit trap me when I parked my car and tell me all about himself and the neighbors. He told me that he was writing a book on the history of a particular font, a very obscure and unappreciated font. He told me that if I saw lights on in the Carriage house behind his house built in 1852 he was probably hard at work on his font passion. Eventually he was arrested and put under house arrest for fraud, embezzlement and a curious collection of illegal acts. His family was shamed and I did not have to listen to him ramble on about his favorite font. Below I have included a brief history of fonts. Great Reading! I will be out of town for a few days so if I do not respond I am simply incommunicado, as we say in Indiana. JW

Font History
This section is a brief history that explains the evolutionary development of letterforms and how technology affected changes in typefaces.

Technology and Context
Random House Webster's College Dictionary (1990) defines technology as the application of knowledge for practical ends. The American Heritage Dictionary (1992) tells us technology derives from the Greek word tekhnologia that means the systematic treatment of an art or craft. Many of us think of the tools as the technology. What people know and what people do with what they know is technology. This background frames the word technology in our context: printing is the art, the craft, and printers are the artisans; the printing process is the systematic treatment; the printed result is the practical end; and what we know and learn about printing technology is the knowledge.

Human development has experienced five broad technology stages: 1) hand and handtool, 2) mechanical, 3) machine, 4) electric, and 5) electronic. Two constants throughout the changes in technology are: 1) the tool, the material, and the method always effect the result in a unique way; and 2) we use the cumulative technology from all previous stages daily.

Hand and Handtool Stage
History traces communication and technology to the earliest known beginnings of civilization. The earliest known visual communication, images from the Paleolithic period, confirms the fundamental human need to communicate, and that visual communication is elemental. Technology at this time was basic, that is, the hand as the tool, and hand-manipulated, found and fashioned, non-mechanical tools.

Early images seem more literal than sign like, and seem to have no system to their use. History identifies a three-part development in communication images from: 1) forms for objects, called pictograms, through 2) forms for ideas, called ideograms, to 3) forms for sounds, called phonograms. These signs and symbols and their uses developed from non-standard forms and no perceptible system, through non-standard forms and systems, to standard forms and systems.

Mechanical Stage
The mechanical stage is a period of compound tools and simple machines powered by natural means. They were animal powered, human powered, or nature powered, that is, by gravity, water, wind. Communication, socialization, and technology developed interconnectedly as Western culture began to form.

Language is the unified and systematic means of communication by standardized sounds and signs that function through convention. The letters of the alphabet are the signs of our language system, each something in itself, a unique sign, and not a symbol of some other idea or object. For our Western culture, this means sequential rows of groups of standard signs, the alphabet, written and read from left to right. (See figures 4 through 8.)

The visual form of Western written and printed language derives from two models. The first model is the Roman monumental capitals, or majuscules, which date from about AD 100. Artisans formed these letters in a three-part process: written first with a brush on stone, second chiseled into the stone, and then colored. The second model, the Carolinian minuscule, derives from the majuscule, and dates from about AD 800. Scribes wrote these letters directly on parchment with a square-tipped pen and ink. Scribes refined these two form models in the Renaissance period from about 1350 to 1500 as the humanistic minuscule, or roman style, and the humanistic cursive, or italic style. (See figure 9.)

Gutenberg invented the first reliable means of casting individual, moveable, and reusable pieces of type for printing. Type casting was 'invented' hand technology, and printing was 'adapted' mechanical technology. Printers, and the results of this paired technology, printed books, meant to rival pen-written manuscripts.

Printed roman type took the humanistic minuscule as a model first (1469), and later also the humanistic cursive (1501). The style development of typefaces occurs over three cultural periods: 1) Renaissance, 2) Baroque, 3) Neo-classic. I use these broad style period names rather than typeface classifications to state that it is important to consider influences on the whole cultural period to understand a part of that period. Throughout this time, type casting remained hand technology, printing remained mechanical technology, and the materials of casting and printing directly affected the type forms.

The development of what we know as conventional text typefaces occurred primarily in Italy, France, and England from 1469 to 1818. William Caslon IV introduced the first sans serif printing type in the early 1800s. Giambattista Bodoni died in 1813, and in 1818 his widow published his last work, Manuale Tipografico. This ended the development of traditional text typeface designs. Later type forms are exaggerations, revivals, or variations of these earlier models. (See figure 10.)

Machine Stage
The machine stage marks a significant change in human development. The term 'Industrial Revolution' applies to the social and economic changes that mark the transition from a stable agricultural and commercial society to a modern industrial society. Historically, it is the period in history from about 1750 to about 1850. Technology became an agent of change in the social and economic structure as inventions and new technology created the factory system of large-scale machine production and greater economic specialization. New periods of development came with electricity and the gasoline engine, but by 1850 the revolution, fulfilled in England, had become the dominant factor in British life. The effects of the Industrial Revolution were worldwide. Industrialization transformed France (after 1830), Germany (after 1850), and the United States (after the Civil War).

Complex machines, direct-powered and self-powered by steam and then fuel, increased production speed overall but had little effect on type forms. Printing became machine technology, but type casting remained hand technology.

The cumulative scientific, economic, and political changes of the preceding eras, caused people to believe that continued growth and improvement were the natural state. They believed in reason, science, and unrestrained competition as the means to continuous economic expansion, and to improve the physical and social environment. Primarily, the systematic application of scientific and practical knowledge to the manufacturing process achieved the growth in productivity. Perhaps the most important changes occurred in the organization of work. The typical enterprise expanded and took on new characteristics. Production took place within the firm or the public enterprise instead of the family or manor. Tasks became increasingly routine and specialized. Industrial production became heavily dependent upon the intensive use of capital, that is expense for a physical plant and equipment produced for the express purpose of increasing efficiency. A reliance on tools and machinery allowed individual workers to produce more goods than before, and the advantages of experience with a particular task, tool, or piece of equipment reinforced the trend toward specialization.

Electric Stage
Electricity became useful to industry in the 1880s, and electric powered machines, servo-controlled and servo-powered, soon replaced steam powered machines. Here again are examples of paired technology. That all aspects of printing became electric powered had little effect on type forms.

Phototype was a transition between metal type and digital type. It was post-mechanical and pre-electronic. Many text photo typefaces were copies of machine cast composition typefaces that were themselves copies of the original hand cast designs.

Electronic Stage
'Bad news concerns few, but good news can upset a whole culture.' This statement, by Marshall McLuhan from War and Peace in the Global Village (1968), describes today's experience.

From Gutenberg in the fifteenth century to Köenig in the nineteenth century, the arrival and mechanization of printing established a concatenate of technology, information, and culture. The pre-World War II departure from Newtonian determinism in the sciences and classical communication theory began the evolution of information theory as a new science with macroscopic effects on post-war cultures. Not since the application of steam power and the telegraph in the 1830s have developed societies experienced the increase in information as that due to the infusion of the personal computer. Information interdependence through digital technology has altered human activity beyond traditional description. The global cat's cradle of interactive communication resets Weltanschauung in the image of McLuhan's 'global village.'

We are in the contemporary cycle of technology, affecting information, affecting cultures. As technology becomes established in business, education, entertainment, and professions, many disciplines become disconnected from traditional materials, methods, and tools. The graphic arts jobs that do not exist in the pre-digital printing industry are clear examples. Everyone becomes verbal and visual message makers and message managers, connected by the same universal meta-tool. Computer impact in graphic design rapidly expanded from a production tool to the principal vehicle of expression. Graphic designers intermediate information to understanding, message to meaning, but often today their affectation of technology and its style supersede meaningful content and clear communication, resulting in a specious message. Despite the inertia of economics' acceleration principle, technology itself, even technology as an agent of change, is less important than its effects on the universal themes of human communication that foster cross-cultural interaction.

Time Line

* Renaissance in Italy

Sweynheym/Pannartz 1465 fonts
Da Spira Brothers 1469 font
Nicolas Jenson 1470 font
Aldus Manutius (Fr. Griffo) 1495, 1501 fonts

* Renaissance in France

Geoffery Tory 1525 font
Simon De Colines 1536 font
Jacques Kerver 1546 font
Estienne Family
Claude Garamond
Robert Granjon
Jean Jannon 1642 font

* Belgian/Dutch Renaissance

Plantin/Moretus Family
Elzevir Family
William Caslon 1726, 1732/34 fonts

* Baroque Period (France and England)

Phillippe Grandjean 1702
Fournier Family 1737, 1742
Baskerville in England 1757

* Neo-Classic Period (France and Italy)

Didot Family in France 1775
Bodoni in Italy 1778, 1813

* Industrial Revolution

Senefelder, lithography, 1798
Stanhope, first iron press, 1800
Köenig, powered press, 1814
Hoe, rotary press, 1847
Benton, punch machine, 1885
Merganthaler, Linotype, 1885
Lanston, Monotype, 1887