Health Care Reform

To me, it's pretty simple.

America is under catastrophic debt; we owe China so much money that I literally get a wave of nausea through my body when I think about it.

George Bush had a "stimulus plan" go into effect just before leaving office.

Obama had yet another "stimulus plan" go into effect just after taking office.

Both were done with borrowed money, primarily from China. Neither helped one little bit, and in fact hurt the economy.

What kind of idiots do we have running the country?

If I'm on the verge of bankruptcy in my personal finances, I CANNOT borrow enough money to spend my way out of debt.

Now Obama is pushing hard for a socialist, government run, single payer (working tax payers!) health care system like Canada, the UK and other European countries.

The internet is full of web pages of horror stories of people who die before they can even see a doctor in other countries.

It's all about putting the power of 2.5 TRILLION dollars a year into the hands of Washington bureaucrats. Once they have that power, they'll never let go of it.

President Obama and the pushers of socailized medicine in the US couldn't care less about the health of individual Americans, they care only in their thirst for more power.

Their lamentation is that there are 50 million uninsured Americans and that this isn't fair.

Yet they admit that the health care plan they are pushing will still leave 30 million uninsured. How is this better?

Every country that has socialized medicine is crippled with the debt of trying to prop up such a system.

In Canada and the UK, one of the fastest growing segments of their economies is private health insurance and private medical clinics where people already being taxed into oblivion pay even more to provide for themselves the benefit of health care on demand.

If you want to know what kind of health care you will have under the (non) "universal" health care plan put forth by Obama, and to be run by Washington bureaucrats, simply go online and start investigating the level of health care enjoyed by veterans at veteran's hospitals in America.

It will be a glimpse of your future health care under Obama's plan.

Raising taxes has been proven time and again to depress the economy, not help it, yet that is the proposed way of paying for all these new programs, health care and others.

Obama is on a course to absolutely drive the US economy into the dirt.

I pray that the boondoggle of government run health care fails to even get off the ground.

I'm getting nauseous, so I'll stop here.

And how is your day going?!

Picture Post, Sunday July 19, 2009

Sunday again folks, and I actually have a few photos this time.

I photographed a wedding Saturday evening, and I posted one photo on my photography blog for today if y'all want to go see it.

Sometimes color can be the subject. This is a new medical complex in Melbourne, Florida with highway US1 on one side, and Crane Creek on the other. This was the first time I had been to Manatee Park on Crane Creek since the building was completed. The lovely light of the late evening sun and the dramatic colors of the building and it's reflection, not to mention the incredible greenery from all the rain we've been getting, and I end up with a photo I like. Don't care much about the subject matter, but sometimes color itself is enough to please the eye.


We had gone to the beach twice last week to watch the Space Shuttle lift off, only to have it "scrubbed" each of those two days. But, while at the beach in the gorgeous late afternoon sunlight, might as well take some beach photos, right? This worn foot path to the beach just looked so inviting to me. Plus you can see a glimpse of the beautiful blue-green Atlantic out there teasing you to come on out.


Photographing primarily to get the amazing sky, the proper exposure for the sky left the sea oats too dark to really see. So, I popped up the on-board flash and ended up really liking this shot. It's obviously a flash photo, but all that green detail is very pleasing, at least to my eye.


When the clouds are placed such that the beams of light come out in such a dramatic fashion, I've learned just to point and shoot. By the time I can get to a more esthetically pleasing place (with no power/telephone lines in the photo) the chance is invariably gone. In the past I've tried to photoshop out lines like this, but it is mind-numbingly tedious, even too much so for a patient person like me.

Shuttle Endeavour Finally Lifts Off (no photos though)

Lovely Wife and I went to the beach a couple of times to watch the latest attempt to launch the Space Shuttle, but it kept being cancelled.

Just a few minutes ago, at 6:03pm EDT, Endeavour finally was able to lift off successfully.

I'm working late, and went on top of one of the buildings and watched it.

Sadly, I cannot bring in a camera of any type where I work, so I just had to eyeball it. My camera is in my car, but I couldn't get off early enough to go to a better location and try to take photos.

I'm about 30-40 miles south of Kennedy Space Center, and it took the rumble (sound) of the boosters over 4 minutes to reach me as I watched. But that gives you an indication of the noise when I can hear it 30 - 40 miles away.

If Congress will fund it to the end, the US Space Shuttle program that is, there are only 7 shuttle missions left planned.

I would be totally surprised if they get to launch all 7 of them.

Picture Post, Sunday, July 12, 2009

Still haven't been out as much as I hoped with my new camera, but I have a smattering of photos here that I liked enough to show y'all today.

Here's the obligatory beach photo for you land-locked folks. Pretty generic beach photo, but I liked two things that I saw that day: how calm the Atlantic was, this is pretty unusual for us, and also how you could see the blueish-green of the water that gave it a Caribbean feel, even though it was a bit overcast.



This one is not a great photo, but as I drove through a neighborhood in Floridana Beach, Florida that Lovely Wife and I would love to live in, I got behind this couple out for a slow ride in their golf cart. More than a few folks down here own one and use it like this, for slow afternoon or morning rides to enjoy the weather. I loved the lab sitting there on the cart with them.

This neighborhood is so quiet, that we roll down our windows when we creep through here and all we can hear are bugs and the light hiss of our car tires. It smells great too, a combination of the ocean and the flowers in folk's yards. The photo looks bad because I took it through my windshield as I drove up behind them. I just held up the camera without looking through it and fired off about 6 shots, and in this one, the cart was centered in the frame. I had to crank up the contrast to counteract the glare of the windshield. The dog looked just like Big Sis's lab Baxter riding there.


For many years, this house in the right part of the photo was a run-down old house just across A1A from the beach. The property was worth way more than the house, but it appears someone finally plunked down the money and bought the place AND refurbished it completely. In fact, they did the same with the home right next to it, out the the picture to the right, and opened the two homes as a bed and breakfast. So whoever stays there is about a 45 second walk from the beach in the first photo above. They did a beautiful job on the homes too. The bed and breakfast is named "Port D'Hiver" however you would pronounce that.

In the distance to the left is actually one big building that had stood empty since the two hurricanes, Frances and Jeanne that nailed us in 2004. This was a popular restaurant/bar, but it looks almost finished and ready to become whatever it will be. Nice colors though.

Rain

We've been getting lots and lots of rain for the past couple of months.

We had been in drought conditions up until May, but boy howdy, we've way more than made up for our lack of rain.

It has rained almost every day for two months, at least a little bit, with lots of fast-moving thunderstorms all across Central Florida.

It's hard to believe how much lightning we get here.

Having lived in Texas, Louisiana, and Georgia, I've seen some impressive storms, but the lightning here is completely bizarre.

When the weather is on, and they are giving you the moving radar image across this part of Florida, they put a lightning strike counter up in the corner of the TV screen and it rolls up in number as fast as the price of you filling up your car with high octane gasoline.

On Monday evening, a man on vacation with his family was struck by lightning and killed on the beach shown in the photo of my previous post. The lifeguard had told everyone to clear the beach just in case, but this family didn't and the father was killed.

But, on a happier note, everything that was brown, sickly green, and crunchy three months ago is green, lush, and blooming.

Even the grass in the area is almost unreal in it's green intensity.

The Beach Yesterday (Sunday) Evening

It's a sad reality that although I live 20 minutes from the beach (on a heavy traffic day) I can sometimes go months without seeing the ocean.

Life tends to intervene, even to someone like me who LOVES the beach.

Yesterday was the first time in several months that I had been to the beach.

It's usually pretty wavy here, but yesterday the Atlantic was more like the Gulf of Mexico.

Smooth and beautiful.

I sat and just listened for a long while, lulled into peace by the gentle lapping of the water.

I love the salty smell too.

As always, I promised myself that I wouldn't go that long ever again without going out there.

It's too beautiful an experience to take for granted. Who knows where I'll be in a year?

Sunday July 5, 2009

I wouldn't really call this a picture post like in the past, because I only have one photo.

I put a guitar next to my recliner so that I am reminded to pick it up and play some every day.

I long ago realized I'll never be Eddie Van Halen, but I do like to play, and practice is the only way to get better.

At a certain time of each morning the light comes through one of our skylights to "my" area.

The new camera body I bought, a Nikon D90, has a CMOS technology image sensor, and they just flat-out handle low light situations with much better ability than the CCD image sensors in 99 percent of digital cameras, including my older Nikon D70s.

This photo was taken at the equivalent of having used a film rated at ISO 1600. Any film made that has that rating would be very grainy.

To get this kind of smooth image quality in a digital camera set at ISO 1600 is miraculous to me.

I'm definitely going to be loving this camera.

Once I digest the humongous user manual for this thing, I'll get out and take some photos and start posting again like I've been wanting to.

God bless you all, and have a great Sunday.

What IS That Sound?

It sounds like, like, like, a choir of ANGELS!








But no, it's just the doorbell ringing.







Who could it be?









Why it's the United Parcel Service man bringing me a box!











Whatever could it be?



Oh my, it looks exactly like a brand-spankin'-new Nikon D90 camera body!




I guess that sound REALLY WAS a choir of Angels singing.

Angels always sing when John gets a new camera.

Angels are cool like that.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!

Save Me From Myself

You like the music you like.

I like the music I like.

I might hate what you like, and quite likely, you'd hate what I like. But it's all good. Musical taste is such an individual thing. That's why I despise music critics, don't sit there and pontificate on why I shouldn't like what I darn well know that I enjoy hearing.

I've talked about music on this blog from time to time, but not a whole lot, simply because I know that, chances are, you couldn't care less about the music I might rave about.

But every once in a while, something comes along and shocks my socks off, and I feel compelled to write here about it.

I've loved music dearly, all my life.

Some of my earliest memories were from around the time I was 4, and my mother would play Brahm's lullabys on their stereo, and the melodies would make me cry. Strange but true, I remember this clearly.

Music has always had the power to move me deeply.

As a boy, I identified that what especially pleased my ear was to hear guitar. I could listen to my parent's 45rpm record of Mason Williams' guitar performance called "Classical Gas" over and over.

With an older sister who loved the Beatles, if I heard her in her room playing records, and I heard the Beatles' opening vocal harmony at the beginning of the song "Paperback Writer" I would dash out of my room to stand outside her door to hear the niftly little George Harrison guitar riff that he did just after that opening vocal harmony.

Over the years, I've developed a full-blown love of rock 'n roll guitar. It's like a love for pepperoni pizza. You just like it, and that's all there is to it. No real intellectual reason for liking a certain thing so much, it's just there, an integral part of you.

And just as most people remember where they where when they first heard of dramatic world events like the Space Shuttle blowing up in 1986, I can remember where I was when I first heard certain rock songs because the guitar playing made such an impression on me, that it imprinted the whole sensory memory in my brain.

Randy Rhodes' signature guitar lick to the Ozzy Osbourne classic song "Crazy Train" always takes me to a certain stretch of Louisiana highway 165 just north of Monroe, Louisiana, and I'm riding in the blue 1975 Ford F-100 Custom pickup truck that was passed down to me from my father. I was going to Bastrop to visit my paternal grandparents and was listening to a AM radio show that played harder rock songs. (Way before talk radio dominated the AM radio band) They played this "new" song from Ozzy Osbourne, and the guitar work of Randy Rhodes in it just knocked me out. It still does, even after all these years.

The other day, Lovely Wife asked me to write down the names of some music CDs that I wanted, and she was going to look for them as a Father's Day gift to me.

As I looked up the names of the CDs of several bands that I like, that had CDs out that I knew I didn't have, I came across a reference to a musician named Brian Welch's CD.

Brian Welch, who has the nickname of "Head" was one of the founding members on the massively popular rock band named Korn.

I remembered hearing how, two or three years ago, he had quit this multi-platinum selling band because he had had a religious conversion to Christianity.

It's not the kind of thing you hear about every day, so the story intrigued me back then, but I hadn't known that he had, over the past few years, written a book about his becoming a Christian and leaving the drugs and alcohol of his old life behind.

He also had put together a band and put out a new CD in the fall of 2008.

I went to his MySpace page to listen to audio clips to see if maybe this was a CD I might like to add to my Father's Day list.

Wow.

Heavy guitars, great melodies.

To those who dislike hard rock or heavy metal, the thought of catchy melodies in this music might sound funny, but much of the music in heavy metal and hard rock has great melodies.

After listening to the title song from the CD, "Save Me From Myself" by Head (Brian Welch), on MySpace, I added it to my list.

Now, after listening to the CD now from end to end, I love every song on it.

If you like heavy rock, especially fans of his ex-band Korn, you'll love this CD.

The lyrics to the CD basically cover the past few years of his life, from the despair and depression of a multi-millionaire who has everything but is a miserable drug addict, to getting clean and becoming a Christian and trying to be a good father to his daughter.

He doesn't preach in the lyrics, he basically just tells his story, so even non-Christians could easily like this CD because he's not telling you what to do, only telling you what he chose to do.

I still don't know about the details of this man's life, I just know that the most profound kind of turnaround that a person could possibly make has been made by Mr. Welch.

As a Christian, the lyrics move me deeply, much like the beautiful Brahm's melodies of my childhood moved me, only I now understand why this particular music affects me. They lyrics are sometimes raw, not pretty, but then the truth is often disturbing and more like a punch in the gut than a feather landing on your shoulder.

Even someone who has been a Christian a long time can understand hitting bottom and looking for some anchor their life, and hearing Head sing about (and he does his own singing as well as guitar) his bottoming out and being given a new lease on life is monumentally moving to me. The lyrics of his despair and then his redemption bring to the forefront of my mind my own conversion and it's dramatic changes.

As a Christian who loves hard rock and heavy metal, I walk a tightrope; a thin line where there are few musical CDs for me to buy and totally devour. Either the music is awesome and the lyrics too dark and depressing, with a total lack of hope, or the other end of the spectrum, what the Christian music industry puts out that seems as hollow as an Easter chocolate bunny, full of the "right" lyrics but completely devoid of any real feeling or heart, contrived.

So now and then I find a band, like my favorite, Disciple, who are incredible musicians who are also committed Christians, and who put out hard and heavy rock with a heart-felt lyrics that are both honest and human, and that honor their faith in God.

Finding a new source of music that I like is always a pleasing thing.

To find one that is as well-played, and well-produced as Head's CD "Save Me From Myself" is a huge treat that is altogether too rare in my life. This is a great production, made by top notch musicians.

My prayers go out to Mr. Brian "Head" Welch on his new life, and I wish him great success. Both in his personal and professional life.

If Head's successful in his new musical endeavours, then I get the benefit of more great heavy music in the years to come.

P.S.
I really racked up on CDs this Father's Day, and all of them are excellent:
Disciple - Southern Hospitality
Stryper - Reborn (Yes, the old 80s Metal band Stryper. They put out a new CD a year or two ago and it's really good. I finally got around to obtaining it.)
Red - Innocence and Instinct
Head - Save Me From Myself
All That Remains - Overcome

'Magic Fingers Vibrating Bed' inventor dies at 92

MIAMI – The inventor of the "Magic Fingers Vibrating Bed," which brought weary travelers 15 minutes of "tingling relaxation and ease" for a quarter in hotel rooms across America during its heyday as a pop culture icon in the 1960s and '70s, has died. He was 92. John Joseph Houghtaling died Wednesday at his home in Fort Pierce...

Seeing this headline reminded me of something Big Brother once did to me.

I was in my late teens (so this would have been around 1979 or 1980), still living with my parents in Monroe, La., and Big Brother had been living in Lafayette, La., about a four hour drive into south Louisiana from Monroe.

He had moved back to Monroe, but still had some items in Lafayette that he needed to get, and bring to Monroe.

So he conned me into going with him on this boring trip, there was no easy, direct way to Lafayette, it was mostly two lane country Louisiana roads. For those who have never driven in rural Louisiana, the phrase "two lane country Louisiana roads" means mind-numbing boring scenery and horribly bad road conditions.

For some reason, much of that trip there and back is a blank to me, I'm usually great at remembering nauseating amounts of detail about the most innocuous things that have happened in my life, but for this trip, two things stood out, and still stand out in my mind.

One was the god-awful smell from a Godchaux sugar refinery (pronounced GOD-shaw) we passed, and to this day I cannot fathom how something so tasty as sugar can be produced from such a foul-smelling place. I grew up around paper mills, and this sugar refinery smell made the paper mills of north Louisiana smell like Chanel No. 5 in comparison. At least to my admittedly untrained nose.

Anyway, I don't remember one detail of the apartment we took his final possessions from, but I just remember looking like the Clampetts on their way to Beverly Hills, only we were in a 1970 Buick Electra 225, also known as "A Deuce and a quarter." But we had that puppy packed to the gills, with just enough room for Big Brother and I to fit our large frames in there too, for the drive back.

By the time we had loaded the car and were ready to go, it was late at night, so we got a cheap hotel room in Lafayette to sleep a few hours before getting up and hitting the road back to Monroe the next morning.

We walk into the hotel room, it had two double beds, and Big Brother called the bed by the door. (It was the closest one to the air conditioner, which we immediately set to full-blast.)

We were so tired, that we just pulled off our shoes and flopped on the two beds.

I noticed that next to the head of my bed, there was some contraption with a slot in it for feeding quarters.

I sat up and read the front of this metal box and learned for the first time about Magic Fingers Vibrating Beds.

I do remember thinking it was a pretty goofy idea, and lay back down and was getting drowsy within seconds.

Then I heard the tell-tale clunking sound of coins being fed into a machine's coin slot, and looked over to see Big Brother cramming quarters in the machine as fast as he could, and when he saw me notice him, just let out an evil laugh.

I rolled over to stop him, but before I could, the bed started vibrating.

Big Brother laughed himself to sleep while I laid there for an hour and 15 minutes until the bed stopped vibrating.

I guess he had gotten five quarters in the vibrator on my bed before I could react.

Of course his bed didn't have a Magic Fingers, so I was powerless to return the favor.

I remember laying there so sleepy, but this stupid bed vibrated too much to allow me to go to sleep until it stopped.

Of course this was one of the things we recalled and laughed about for years.

Rest in peace, Mr. Houghtaling, your invention cost me some sleep when I sorely needed it, but then again, was a great memory to laugh about in the years that came after.

Letting Your Guard Down

Oh my gosh, I just saw this photo for the first time on a news site.

I keep looking at it and just laughing.

Note to self, if I ever get famous, remember to take care about what my face is telling the world.

Mrs. Obama's facial expression just speaks VOLUMES here.

I needed a good laugh.

(Photo credit: REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer)

Green Day Are Idiots

At the company I work for, if I were to cuss all the time, peppering each sentence with expletives, I would get warned, then fired.

End of story.

There are certain standards that places of business have, that, like it or not, they stick by.

It's easy for me not to cuss at work, because I don't cuss anyway. Not to say that I haven't, but it's not part of my vocabulary any more. My choice.

But this week, Green Day, a band I must say I don't like in the first place, are bad-mouthing Walmart for refusing to sell their cuss-word laden newest CD, 21st Century Breakdown.

Turns out that Walmart is the country's largest music seller, and Green Day refused to offer an edited version of their latest CD, something that's been done by other artists for decades now.

I think it is fine, even good that Green Day refuses to offer an edited version. Nobody can make them, but what galls me is that they turn around and state that Walmart should be made to carry "their art."

Uh, uh, there Bill Joe and Mike, you little pencil-necked, pip-squeaks, can't have that both ways.

If you can't be bothered to offer a cuss-word free version of your CD, then certainly Walmart doesn't have to bother to sell your original version if it falls below their standards.

When you guys play concerts, can you shoot off huge columns of fire in small venues? Nope.

Can you perform sex acts in your concerts in any American venue and not expect to be arrested? Nope.

Likewise, Walmart has, for decades, had a standard of musical content that they sell. Simply cussing on your CD is over the mark, as far as Walmart is concerned.

You knew that when you made the recording, and now you're whining about it.

Boo, hoo, hoo. Go home and cry in your piles of money.

You know, and I know, that your real fans will buy it at Best Buy or on Amazon, so your complaining about Walmart sounds pretty darn pathetic.

I don't get upset when I hear folks cuss, but gee whiz, to expect a company to sell my product when it goes against their long-standing practice?

Please, this is America.

If Walmart won't sell it, you know others will.

"Wal-Mart's become the biggest retail outlet in the country, but they won't carry our record because they wanted us to censor it," frontman Billie Joe Armstrong griped to the press. "They want artists to censor their records in order to be carried in there. We just said no. We've never done it before. You feel like you're in 1953 or something."

Billie Joe continued: "If you think about bands that are struggling or smaller than Green Day...to think that to get your record out in places like that, but they won't carry it because of the content and you have to censor yourself. I mean, what does that say to a young kid who's trying to speak his mind making a record for the first time? It's like a game that you have to play. You have to refuse to play it." Added bassist Mike Dirnt, more succinctly but just as effectively: "As the biggest record store in the America, [Wal-Mart] should probably have an obligation to sell people the correct art."

Walmart HAS NO obligation to sell anything they don't want to.

Confessions of an Ebay Junkie

WARNING: Another Boring Ramble on an Unimportant Subject.

(Everybody's good at something, right? I have elevated boring rambles on unimportant things to an art form.)

I'll get to the Ebay part of the story in a minute. First some background.

I play some seriously mediocre guitar, and truly cannot justify paying top dollar for name brand guitars and parts. Now, I could buy top dollar, name brand guitars if I wanted, but with me it's kind of like what folks used to say when you got a new haircut, "That's a $20 haircut on a $2 head!" Buying a $3000 Gibson Les Paul at my level of playing ability is pretty much the same idea. Heck, even Fender guitars made in their Mexico factory can cost up to $900 (Like this sweet Robert Cray Strat I'd be proud to own), and their American made guitars start at about that much, so I find it hard to justify spending that kind of money on basically no talent.

I have found that I much prefer playing guitar on fat, chunky guitar necks, while most folks like the slim ones on most guitars.

Buying a specific Fender guitar neck to put on one of my cheap Fender-like imitation guitars is too expensive for me too. A real Fender neck with the fatter, hand-filling feel can cost $300 - $500 just for the neck!

There is a brand of guitars, SX, that are manufactured in China, but are of unbelievable quality for the price. Like a friend of mine says when he buys another inexpensive tool from Harbor Freight that was made in China, "John, Chinese prisoners work cheap!" (I know, that's mean, but it is funny.)

The fact is, that the largest guitar maker in the world is in Korea. Many famous guitar brands that you might have heard of are actually made in the Samick factory in Korea, and they put Epiphone, and whoever else's label on them and ship them out.

These Pacific Rim factories have been making guitars for decades now, and they truly make guitars equal to, and sometimes superior to American made ones.

Back to the Chinese made SX guitars.

The only importer of SX guitars and basses that I know of is Rondo Music in Connecticut. They are made of good quality woods, usually three pieces of alder or ash (same wood types as Fender uses on their US made guitars) and the hardware and electronics are of decent, but inexpensive manufacture.

These guitars are perfect for folks like me who like to eventually upgrade the electronics and otherwise modify their guitars to make them exactly like they want them to sound and look.

And that's one thing that's really fun for me, is to take a decent, basic guitar, and over time, upgrade the hardware, and electronics to where you have a first class guitar, exactly like you want it. Just buy the basic guitar in the color you like, then you can replace everthing from the neck to all the hardware and pickups.

Buying a cheap guitar that has decent quality wood as a base, you can slowly turn your guitar into an exact, custom tone monster just like you want it to be.

This is where Ebay comes in.

If I own a $110 guitar, then someone who has taken apart a similar guitar and sells the parts on Ebay, will necessarily only be able to get prices for the parts totaling maybe just a little more than the guitar as a whole.

That, believe it or not, is a HUGE way people operate on Ebay.

Take a $1200 American-made Fender Telecaster, take it completely apart, and then sell the individual parts for a little less than you would normally have to pay for the parts, and the Ebay guru might end up getting $1500 for all the parts to a $1200 guitar. Do that many, many times and you are making some nice money on the side.

Same holds for a $110 guitar. Take it apart, and instead of getting $500 for the guitar neck by itself as you would for an American Stratocaster neck, you only get, say, $40. A little less than half the price of the guitar originally.

But the beauty of it for people like me is that I can get the fat, chunky guitar necks that I prefer to play on for a totally reasonable price, and these might be dirt cheap compared to a "real" Fender guitar and parts, they are of good quality despite the cheapness.

I have a guitar neck like I wanted that I received from an Ebay seller two weeks ago, that I will soon put on my $50 Guitar. The neck that is on the guitar now is nice, but it's really slim, and the used one I bought is nice and chunky, so I'll swap them out and my $50 guitar will be much more to my liking. I'll flat-out play it more because I don't like the slim neck that came on it.

So I'll end up with a guitar customized for my own preferences for not much moo-lah.

At this moment, I have bids on one other guitar neck, and another guitar part on Ebay too.

Buying one inexpensive piece at a time, I end up with quaility instruments customized by me, for me.

So a couple of times per day, I cruise through Ebay, searching for particular items, and often am the only bidder, and get good stuff for a great price. If you know what you want, what the market says these items are worth, and watch for your items to show up, you can get great deals.

Who knows, maybe one day I'll actually plunk down the money for a real Gibson Les Paul Standard like I dream of, just because I want it. I'll probably get it on Ebay too.

One weirdness that I have seen over an over on Ebay that always makes me question people's sanity, is when people will bid and buy a used item on Ebay for more than they could have bought that item brand new.

The SX guitars that I talk about here, cost anywhere from $100 to $175, but I have seen people pay $175 for a used guitar on Ebay, when they could have contacted Rondo Music and bought that exact guitar, brand new, for $100.

I see this over and over. It's not as if they are rare items, or items no longer made; just a click over to another page and they could be buying the exact guitar, brand new, for $50 or so less than the used one they are buying on Ebay.

I just don't get that. I guess some people just don't think to look to see what the price of a new item is before bidding on an Ebay item. Pretty dumb though.

Anyway, I'm often looking for deals on Ebay for things I want from people who have proved themselves to be reputable sellers. It's a lot of fun, and when a guitar is finally modified to be exactly what I would have wished for in a custom-made guitar, it's even more rewarding.

And, as mid-life crises go, buying cheap guitar parts is way easier on the wallet than buying a Corvette.

What do you find yourself looking for on Ebay? Anything?

Here's a photo of all my SX guitars:

Waterboarding, Torture?

America's most imminent threat for the past 20 years or so has been terrorist attacks.

The New York World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and the attacks of 9/11 come to mind as the most notable attacks on the US.

But there were attacks on the Beiruit US Embassy in 1983, and other US embassies in Africa for example, killing many US citizens working overseas.

Terrorists set up mortars and missle launchers next to schools and family dwellings, shoot their weapons, and wait for the US or whoever they attack to rain bombs on the area, knowing that they have basically targeted US weapons on innocent women and children by doing so. Then they get on the news and talk about how the US is killing innocents, when they themselves drew the target on these areas just for publicity's sake.

Terrorists have been caught dressed as women and clerics trying to hide or infiltrate their target areas.

Terrorists wear no uniform of an entity, they intentionally hide and do their killing, hoping to have local innocents killed in retaliation so they can whine on TV about how evil the US is.

These are the people we are fighting. Cowards who use innocents as their shield and as propaganda pieces. These innocents are killed by the terrorists intentionally having them targeted.

That's who America's main enemy is in the world today.

Now there is a so-called "scandal" happening in America based on heavily redacted documents released by the criminally wimpy Obama administration, saying that America, via the Bush administration, approved the waterboarding of terrorist's caught by the US.

The same Huffington Post-type folks who hated Bush for merely breathing, are now trying to create a non existent torture scandal over the US waterboarding known terrorists to glean information about possible imminent terrorist attacks on the US.

Since when did waterboarding become torture?

The US armed forces have used waterboarding as part of training for OUR military for decades!

Many, many thousands of US service men and women, officers and snake-eaters have been waterboarded as part of their training.

No torture law suits against the US by our service men or women over this supposed "torture" they received as part of their normal training.

Now, all of a sudden, the US approves this same waterboarding procedure that is a normal part of US military training to be done on a hand-full of known terrorists that we had captured, and these idiots are all up in arms about the evil Bush administration approving waterboarding on the poor, defenseless terrorists.

Big Boo Hoo. I just don't get it.

Decades of waterboarding many thousands of US servicemen is no big deal, but now that we do it to half a dozen stone cold killers it's suddenly a torture technique?

Putting a known murdering terrorist in a dark cell and telling him they are loosing caterpillars in the room with him to let his own mind freak him out is torture?

Putting a known murdering terrorist man in a dark cell and telling him they will release stinging bugs in there with him is torture?

Give me a break people.

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks was waterboarded and revealed a far-eastern based al Kaeda plot to fly planes into buildings in Los Angeles, and this knowledge was used to capture more terrorists and to PREVENT a 9/11 level attack on Los Angeles, and this murderous thug gets sympathy from the morons who all of a sudden consider waterboarding to be torture?

I just don't understand the thinking of millions of my fellow Americans.

If waterboarding our own people was training, not torture, for decades, then waterboarding CANNOT be torture for known enemies we have captured, who refuse to wear a recocgizable uniform according to Geneva Convention dictates, who dress as women, hide behind the innocent, and murder many thousands of US citizens around the world.

I do NOT see our waterboarding a half-dozen terrorists as a dark stain in America's recent past.

I see the waterboarding as something American servicemen and women went through as training, that proved useful with captured terrorists, and was certainly worthwhile in doing because it save untold thousands of lives in Los Angeles alone.

As far as I'm concerned, the waterboarding of captured terrorists by the US was not torture.

CNSNews.comCIA Confirms: Waterboarding 9/11 Mastermind Led to Info that Aborted 9/11-Style Attack on Los Angeles
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief

Khalid Sheik Mohammad, a top al Qaeda leader who divulged information -- after being waterboarded -- that allowed the U.S. government to stop a planned terrorist attack on Los Angeles.
(CNSNews.com) - The Central Intelligence Agency told CNSNews.com today that it stands by the assertion made in a May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that the use of “enhanced techniques” of interrogation on al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) -- including the use of waterboarding -- caused KSM to reveal information that allowed the U.S. government to thwart a planned attack on Los Angeles.

Before he was waterboarded, when KSM was asked about planned attacks on the United States, he ominously told his CIA interrogators, “Soon, you will know.”

According to the previously classified May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that was released by President Barack Obama last week, the thwarted attack -- which KSM called the “Second Wave”-- planned “ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles.”

KSM was the mastermind of the first “hijacked-airliner” attacks on the United States, which struck the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Northern Virginia on Sept. 11, 2001.

(this article continues here)

Fatties Cause Global Warming

Scientists warned that the increase in big-eaters means more food production — a major cause of CO2 gas emissions warming the planet.

Overweight people are also more likely to drive, adding to environmental damage.

I'm proud to say I'm doing my part in this important issue of pissing off people who believe in the "global warming" nonsense.

Even the UN's IPCC, who badly want people to believe in global warming, have admitted that the earth's average temperature for the past five years have been plateaued, while looking back to 1998, the average earth temperature has GONE DOWN.

So, in actuality, the earth has been cooling for the past 11 years.

But, the whole global warming hoax has been entirely based on computer models!

Morons.

Computer models can't predict local weather anywhere on earth within a certain level of probability, how can they expect us to believe in computer model projections on the earth's mean temperature 100 years from now?

Hmmm. What's for lunch? I'm feeling like a double helping of something, just to help out.

Two Peas In A Pod

(AP Photo/Mariamma Kambon, Summit of the Americas, Pool)

You'll have to excuse me, I think I'm going to throw up.

Picture Post, Sunday April 19, 2009

Abbreviated Version

I have taken very few pictures lately, but I did like these that I took of Lovely Wife's Easter flowers.

Guilty Pleasures - Music

A Rather Long, Aimless Ramble On Musical Likes, Dislikes, and Critics

Just looking at the title, you can see where I'm going, and indeed, I could probably write a list as long as my arm of songs that we're supposed to hate, songs that music critics hate, but that I actually like. I can never think of them all at one time.

Songs that I love to hear despite how others hate these songs.

While driving to work the other morning, I had my usual struggle to find some music on the radio. Most radio stations have folks on there talking and I was not in the mood for listening to people yakking. I simply wanted to hear some music.

Finally found a station out of Vero Beach that was actually playing music and they played Come On Eileen by Dexy's Midnight Runners from the 1980s, and I turned it up.

I'll wait a minute while you roll your eyes, or finish throwing up…

The music to that song sounds "happy" to me. They could take out the lyrics as far as I'm concerned, and I'd still like the song. The tune is really upbeat in a pleasing way that never fails to improve my mood. Driving in Palm Bay, Florida, in morning traffic is a life-or-death roller coaster ride on the best of days, and a little upbeat music is helpful to me.

But who can top the great lyrics in this song?

Come on eileen too-loo rye-aye
Come on eileen too-loo rye-aye
Toora toora-too-loora

Just kidding on the lyrics, to me, the music to the song has an uplifting quality to it that never fails to improve my mood. The lyrics are kind of dumb if you listen to them.

Plus, this song has one of those elements to it that, in my book, helps make it a classic.

Yes, you guessed it already…

The Banjo!

How can you hate a song with banjo in it?

I don't like country music, so hearing banjo on rock or pop stations is darn rare, but there it is, all through Come on Eileen.

Then, after Come on Eileen was over, they played Pour Some Sugar on Me by Def Leppard, yet another guilty pleasure of mine.

As a confirmed guitar nut, I have to say that I think Phil Collen, lead guitarist for Def Leppard is a really good player. For me that means, I really like both his guitar tone and the style in which he plays.

Def Leppards music is filled with neat guitar riffs by Phil Collen, and most are the kind of little guitar melody pieces that stick in my mind. I don't mind having a great guitar riff stuck in my head, unlike the lyrics or tune to any song that annoys me.

Anyway, Pour Some Sugar on Me is song that has great catchy guitar in it, and though the lyrics are pretty much from the mind-set of a 14 year old, I love the song because of the huge sound of Mr. Collen's guitar in there.

So, going to work the other day was quite pleasant because I heard these two classics that I happen to like.

A person's taste in music is as unique to them as their personality.

There's no imagining how many gallons of print ink has been used over the years to discuss music, but for the most part, these writings are done by music critics, one of the lowest forms of life on earth in my opinion. You can like anything you want, I'll have no problem with that, but I dislike a person pontificating on what they think is good or bad as if I MUST agree with them.

That being the case, I tend to disagree with most music critics (and movie critics for that matter). My main problem with critics is that they usually discuss music with the intent that I am wrong if I disagree with them. I really hate that.

Professional critics are a form of life I think we could do without. I find it hard to believe that a person can make a living listening to music and then trying to create a written opinion that will sway the public in one way or another, just because they say so.

For me it all comes down to a gut feeling, to like, dislike, love, or hate individual songs. Come on Eileen and Pour Some Sugar on Me just happen to be a couple of songs that I have always liked, one for the uplifting tune, and the other for the great guitar.

I would suspect that 99% of music critics hate these songs, but that has no effect on me. That's why I have never liked reading Rolling Stone, one, I could not care less about their music critics' opinions, and two, the only other articles in Rolling Stone tends to be politically way-far left stories.

I am not way-far left in my political beliefs. I'm pretty much way-far right, so that pretty much kills my desire to read anthing that Rolling Stone has ever printed.

Yeah, I'll sit and discuss musical opinion differences with you, but in the end, nothing you can say will make me like or dislike a song on your say-so because music is such a gut-level thing in my life. I would be surprised if my musical opinions swayed you even a tiny bit.

Aside from the song itself, for me, music is a time machine.

Hearing Come on Eileen and Pour Some Sugar on Me takes me back to the early and late 1980s in a way that just recalling the times cannot match. Something about music immerses me in feelings about the times that the songs were a backdrop for.

This can be good or bad, many songs were the backdrop for good times, but some of those good times are so beautiful to me, that hearing some old favorite songs brings up a bittersweet feeling in me; the times they recall are so sweet that thinking on them can actually hurt.

Consequently, over time, I had created my own mix CDs on our computer of songs that would take me, in mind and spirit, to certain times in my life. Such as the first year of mine and Lovely Wife's marriage. You get the idea.

I've translated these song groupings into several playlists on my iPod, so that I can dial up a set of songs to match my mood.

For example, I have been repeatedly playing my playlist of favorite songs by King's X, one of the best rock bands ever, that you've probably never heard of. Ty Tabor's guitar is always great, and Doug Pinnick's 12-string bass is massive. But, in the way of things, they've never had a great amount of commercial success.

Anyway, I started this to simply talk about one morning's drive to work when I was pleasantly surprised to hear a couple of old favorites. But as I thought about writing a blog post about them, I realized that many people probably absolutely hate one or both of these songs that had put me in a great mood the other morning.

This led to thoughts on differing musical opinions, music critics, and musical likes and dislikes in general, so the post ended up being this behemoth about nothing much.

I just know that I have always loved music.

I like what I like, especially great guitar, whether it's in rock, heavy metal, jazz, or whatever.

Music critics annoy me, so I avoid their opinions where possible.

And that's enough for today.

Bye.

I'm an Embarrassment to Obama

I'm an embarrassment to Barack!


I only scored 17 on the Obama Test

I would be excited, but I'm actually kinda bummin'.

Don C. (my Dad) didn't live to see me graduate from engineering school, and I also won't be able to show him my new test score.

Actually, I'm wondering how I managed to score as high as 17.

Fishing

Back in my high school days, some of my friends and I went bass fishing a lot.

I like bass fishing, and the friendship too.

But marriage, children, work and other things fill up your life and the result is that I haven't been fishing in many years.

Here in Florida, I am always staggered by the number of boats I see.

Living by the Atlantic, and in a state with thousands of lakes, and quite a few rivers, you see sailboats, fishing boats, air boats (a la Gentle Ben), canoes, kayaks, you name it.

Folks are down-right serious about their fishing here.

One of the custom Florida vehicle license plates you can get down here has a big snook pictured on it.

I'm not really one to pay extra for a fancy license plate on our cars, but to pay extra to have a painting of a fish on your license plate tends to be the domain of serious fishermen (or fisher persons).

Lots and lots of cars and trucks here with that old fish on there, lots of serious fishermen.

But I'd almost be willing to take the time and money expense of taking up fishing again just so I could get me one of these bumper stickers I've seen around here.


I love that. Always good for a laugh from me when I see one of them on a truck.

April 15th, Tax Day - Losing Exemtions

Well, both Number One and Number Two daughters are no longer tax exemptions for us.

Last year, we had to pay $29 in additional Federal Income Tax.

This year, it's somewhat more than that, but not too bad.

Time to resubmit my W-4 at work with them taking out additional tax with every payday.

I'd rather have a little coming back to me than to have to pay, because in my life, it seems like there's always something, a car needing repair, home repairs, or other expense that needs doing around April 15th.

Makes it tough to pay taxes.

I have our taxes all filled out, and a check for what we owe in the envelope with the tax forms, and one of them already-been-licked stamps from the US Postal Service on the front, all ready to mail.

I'll drop it off at the Post Office sometime tonight.

Can't let the government have my money one more day than necessary.

Did you know that, if the Obama administration confiscated ALL income from those taxpayers making $75,000 per year or more, it still wouldn't be enough to cover the budget his administration submitted to Congress this year?

All income, from all tax payers who make $75,000 a year or more, isn't enough money to finance Obama's first budget.

The over $10,000 we paid in Federal Taxes this year isn't even a drop in the bucket for Obama, but it sure puts a hurt on us.

As a family, we have to live within what Lovely Wife and I net in our paychecks.

There's a dark day coming for America because of how all US presidents and Congresses have overspent.

Sword Fight! And Also Something Really Rare

Two men and a woman died as a result of two men fighting with swords in Indianapolis.

Rondeau and Adolf Stegbauer got into an argument at a home in the 5200 block of Raceway Road that escalated when one of the men grabbed a sword, prompting the other man to also brandish a sword.

Sword fighting is pretty rare these days.

Even more rare is the use of the word "brandish" in a sentence.

This reporter got a two-fer.

Cool.

Kudos to President Obama

I know that it would not be easy to give someone authority to kill another person, but when Somalian pirates took an American ship captain, Richard Phillips, captive, President Obama allowed the US Navy people on site make the decision to use force to rescue the American prisoner if they deemed the prisoner to be in imminent danger.

During tense negotiations, the Somali pirates were seen to have their AK-47s pointed at the kidnapped American ship captain.

From the nearby US Navy ship, snipers shot three pirates with guns pointed at their captive.

The captain was rescued by US Navy Seals.

Hats off to a gutsy call by President Obama to allow the Seals to do what they are trained to do.

Of course, now critics are whining and moaning and predicting a rise in violence, and indeed, the pirates still alive have promised to hurt American or French captives in the future, but they should understand that when you point a gun at someone, you have opened the door to having one used on yourself.

Can you imagine the skill of a person with a rifle who could pick off bad guys bobbing around on a boat, while themselves on a ship in the ocean?

There's no glory in killing someone, but when a terrorist kidnaps an innocent person and points a gun at this person, it's serious. In my opinion, by kidnapping and holding a gun on the kidnapped person, that man has opened the door to be killed himself.

I'm proud of our Navy, and I'm proud President Obama was able to make such a tough call.

Our Special Forces are heroes.

I think Obama and the US Navy did the right thing.

A Cool Place To Kill Some Time

Bored?

Tired of looking at the same old web sites?

Nothing good for sale on Ebay?

Like good photography?

Go over and see the archives at Life Magazine.

Their archive is searchable and there are millions of images there. You can look at everything from classic life photos up to present day images.

I personally tend to get a bigger emotional impact from the older stuff for some reason. (I have always loved National Geographic's photography too, except for articles on bugs and spiders.)

The site won't let you download anything, but you can link to photos.

Here are a few samples from WWII.

An Excellent Find

In the early 1980s, around 1983, I read a book called Long Voyage Back by Luke Rhinehart.

When I was growing up, my parents would go to the local paperback book exchange and take in at least two paper sacks of books they had read, and come home with a couple of sacks of books that needed reading.

It was pretty much a genetic given, that I would love to read.

I didn't read much for pleasure until after I got out of high school though. I began to read more and more around the first time I was in college.

I don't read a lot of non-fiction for pleasure. I have to read so much technical stuff for work, and I buy engineering texts to help keep current with technology changes for work, so when I read for pleasure, I tend to read fiction novels. (I do like to read non-fiction about physics and mathematics, however.)

In one of my parent's sacks of paperbacks, I found and read Long Voyage Back.

It was my first post-apocalyptic novel.

Something about the story just struck me, probably because I had always been intrigued by "marooned on desert island" or "last man on earth" type stories and movies.

The book has as it's background, and all-out nuclear conflict between America and the USSR, but never gets very close to the actual bomb sites.

The main character is a US Naval Academy graduate, Navy veteran, and current captain for hire on rich folk's sailboats.

As the story begins, he's coming into Chesapeake Bay to bring a man his sailboat, when a flash occurs to the north. Washington has been nuked.

The story follows this man, the boat's owner and son, and others as they flee fallout to the ocean and for months as they try to survive.

The book has a good, hopeful ending, which I'm a sucker for, and it just really stuck with me.

Over the years I've read many other post-apocalyptic novels, and some were more intricate and complex than Long Voyage Back, but that one always stayed in the back of my mind.

Several years ago, I thought about the book, but couldn't remember the name or author, but since Al Gore was nice enough to invent this here internet thingy, I did a search and found that folks have whole web sites on post-apocalyptic novels.

One site I found had a list of one man's favorite books in this genre, as well as a brief synopsis of each book. I read through his list, and sure enough, he mentioned this book and I was able to relearn the title and author.

I always wanted a copy of this book, but it's out of print, and paperback copies of it that I had seen, can be $15-$20, so I never bought one.

But a couple of weeks ago, I found a web store called Alibris, which has a huge network of book stores and I was able to locate a very good condition hardback version of Long Voyage Back, with dust jacket, for a mere $10.

I couldn't resist. So for less than $15 with shipping, I finally got a good copy of this old favorite of mine. (I'm one of those people who likes to reread books I really like every few years.)

So for me, this was a fun, inexpensive score.

It was great to reread the book.

Some good post apocalyptic novels that I've read:
Long Voyage Back by Luke Rhinehart
Swan Song by Robert McCammon
The Stand by Steven King
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

I Needed A Laugh

Frank J., founder and fount of incredibly funny wisdom, at IMAO, had a blog post about dubious things that Europeans do and say, and had this final remark:

I’m just glad there is an ocean between us and Europe. We should fill it with sea monsters (like Predator X) to be on the safe side, though.

That just cracked me up for some reason. I got a mental picture of old drawings of sea monsters and stuff, keeping us from being contaminated by European ways.

Picture Post, Sunday April 5, 2009

Cars And Guitars

Kowabunga, Dude!

Several shots of a custom Dodge in front of Ron Jon Surf Shop in Cocoa Beach, Florida. I'm no surfer (too old, too fat, don't care), but I'd be proud to drive this ride around.



This inexpensive copy of a Telecaster Thinline was my present from Santa this past Christmas. I suck too much as a player to plunk down $900 for a "real" one with the Fender logo, but this SX brand copy is easily as good as Fender's Squier range of guitars. And at a mere $150, easy on the wallet.

The bridge area of an SX brand Stratocaster copy that I've had for several years. I guarantee this is the best $100 guitar you will ever find. (Yes, literally, $99.99) And the pickups are surprisingly good; this thing has great tone.

Been A While / Venting About Obama

Just working and not much else.

Last week I went in and had a procedure done on my back where they cauterize nerves on each side of my lower spine. This burning of the nerves can lessen pain. Though the procedure and the soreness from the procedure are no fun, if the pain reduction works, it can last a year. It's worth the gamble. Two weeks of soreness from the procedure, and then, hopefully, a year or so of relief.

Well, a week into this, I have to say that I am having some relief of the pain in my lower back. I hurt in my lower back, much as if I was having a migraine in my back. I also have pain in and down my left leg, though that is not affected by this procedure.

The migraine in my lower back feeling, has been lessened. So at this point, I'm glad I had the procedure done.

I wish I had some amazing stories to tell, humor to share, SOMETHING, but I don't. I have just felt so bad that I had no desire to be witty, erudite, or even just plain spoken.

The whole Obama as president thing is a bummer of incredible magnitude. (If you love Obama and what he's doing, then do not read any further.)

We have gone mad and elected a MadMan as our president, and he's surrounded himself with other madmen.

For someone who was supposed to be a great orator, Obama says "uh" and "um" more than any other human I've ever seen. Bush couldn't open his mouth without people calling him stupid, but Obama makes Bush sound like a genius by comparison when Obama isn't on a teleprompter or if they haven't set up a large TV in the back of the room for him to speak from. I went to Louisiana public schools and Louisiana and Georgia public universities, but even I know that you are not supposed to say "uh" and "um" in public speaking. Listening to Obama answer press questions is painful for me. Obama says "uh" so often that it makes Bush's occasional use of "NOO-kyoo-ler" sound quaint and sweet.

Obama gives the Prime Minister of Great Britain a set of DVDs as a gift, and if that isn't the perfect example of the MOST LAME GIFT, EVER, GIVEN BY ONE HEAD OF STATE TO ANOTHER, then I don't know what is. But it gets better; the DVDs are coded for use in North America. Gordon Brown cannot even watch his lame gift if he wants to. Stupid idiot.

Then, for the G20 summit, Obama gives the Queen of England an ipod. Yep, an ipod. But it gets better as well. The Queen already has an ipod, well publicized, so there was no excuse. It gets better still, Obama has already loaded the ipod with things he, in his infinite conceit, thought the Queen should be listening to. But it gets ever more better, Obama has also loaded audio of his own speeches on there too. He's so frickin' egotistical that he actually believes the lies that people love his campaign speeches. Whoop-tee-doo. The man can read from a teleprompter. He hasn't had an original thought in his life, certainly never voiced anything new in any of his campaign speeches, but because he's not Bush, he's loved.

Now while these gift items aren't really important in the scheme of things, it's a telling look at what a low-class schmuck Obama is. Even a nobody like me knows those were two mega-lame gifts.

All I can say is, as much fault as I found with many of Bush's policies, I miss him, because Obama is plain scary. Dangerous, unbelievably egotistical, and nowhere near as intelligent as his fawning followers believe.

Mr. Obama promised the most ethical administration ever, and he just nominated his fifth income tax cheat as his choice for high office. What a liar.

Mr. Obama promised there would be no lobbyists in his administration, but he's appointed several to important positions. Liar again.

Overall, Mr. Obama's promises of change and high standards have fallen under the onslaught of his penchant for putting corrupt cronies in high position.

And through it all, a fawning national media give him a free pass on everything.

It's all pretty sickening.

Don't get me started on his 3.5 trillion dollar budget that Obama submitted. We cried foul and thought the Bush administration and the Republican held Congress spent like drunken sailors; Obama and the Democrat held Congress' spending make Bush and the Republicans look like penny-pinching misers.

I'll try to come up with some more stories from my youth, and more positive things.

Getting back into the habit and thought process of remembering things that I'd like to write for posterity, and creating the mood to write by sitting my rear end in a chair and starting typing, is difficult.

There's a lot of inertia to overcome.

Hope I can do it and start posting here again on a daily basis.

God Bless America.

Over and out.

The Cause of Gray Hair, or, Scientists Is Stoopid!

This proves that researchers and scientists can be dumb as rocks.

Read:

Why Hair Goes Gray
Study Blames a Chain Reaction That Makes Hair Bleach Itself From the Inside Out
By Miranda Hitti
WebMD Health News
Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

Feb. 25, 2009 -- Scientists may have figured out why hair turns gray, and their finding may open the door to new anti-graying strategies.

New research shows that hair turns gray as a result of a chemical chain reaction that causes hair to bleach itself from the inside out.

The process starts when there is a dip in levels of an enzyme called catalase. That catalase shortfall means that the hydrogen peroxide that naturally occurs in hair can't be broken down. So hydrogen peroxide builds up in the hair, and because other enzymes that would repair hydrogen peroxide's damage are also in short supply, the hair goes gray.

Putting the brakes on that chemical chain reaction "could have great implications in the hair graying scenario in humans," write the researchers, who included Karin Schallreuter, a professor clinical and experimental dermatology at England's University of Bradford.

The study appears online in The FASEB Journal; the FASEB is the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

That's just silly.

EVERYONE knows that children are the cause of gray hair.

Buncha dummies.

So much for me thinking that scientists and researchers are smart.

I'm glad there were no engineers mentioned, I'd hate to have been lumped in with this know-nothing bunch.

The Biggest Orange I Ever Did See

One of those really cool, cheesy, but fun roadside pieces of Americana that is along US1 in Melbourne, Florida.

Although this one is well taken care of, so many things like this have disappeared over the years.

I love stuff like this.

When I was a kid in the sixties and seventies, it seemed like we saw all manner of goofy stuff along highways.

You don't see this kind of thing near as much now, and to me, it's sad.

National Groundhog Abuse Day!

Well, chalk up another win for the animal abusers of the world.

That animal travesty known as "Groundhog Day" is today, and as has happened since the 1800's a bunch of schmucks in black coats and Abe Lincoln style top hats ripped a poor, hibernating beast from his peaceful winter's hibernation and woke him with the cheers of 13, 000 mentally deficient animal haters.

According to the perpetrators of this ancient pagan rite, there will be six more weeks of winter because the poor little fella saw his shadow this morning.

Let me get this straight.

They pull this hibernating wonder of God's creation from his toasty warm hole and loft him up above the cheers of thousands of idiots who should have still been in their warm beds if they had a lick of sense, and because it was sunny enough for the groundhog to have seen his shadow, this somehow means that there will be six more weeks of winter?

I think next year I'm gonna round up a bunch of my PETA friends and take a trip to Pennsylvania to throw red paint on all these vicious animal haters.

Morons.

Do groundhogs not have teeth?

I really did like the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray though.









(Just kidding, people. I don't have any PETA friends, since I'm a life-long omnivore.)

It's Freezing in Palm Bay!

This has happened only 4 or 5 times in the twelve years we've lived here.



I actually wore my denim jacket yesterday. I haven't worn that since we went to Louisiana in December of 2006.

Though of course I wore a short sleeved shirt under it, because when it gets below 60 degrees in Florida, the masses overreact and crank up the building's heaters.

I spent part of my work day yesterday fanning myself because they had the heat up so high inside.

---

On a separate note, I went yesterday and had my second of three shots in my back.

They don't help with the back pain, but it almost totally knocks out the leg pain for a while, so I'm happy with that.

If the procedure itself wasn't so uncomfortable, even with the anesthetic, it would be a wonderful thing.

It's just a mental challenge to walk in there knowing that they will hurt you, but that in a day or so you will feel much better and that it will last a couple of weeks.

In all, not a bad trade-off; a day of pain for two weeks of pain relief.

A Mini Van Adventure

I had a doctor's appointment yesterday morning, Monday, in Merritt Island, Florida.

Interstate 95 is a pretty potent death trap. I have driven the 10 miles or so of it between home and work many times, and have seen the aftermath of several auto accidents.

Yesterday morning, there was an accident in the northbound lane right where I needed to exit.

You can ask Lovely Wife, taking alternate routes to anywhere is not my strong suit.

My modus operandi is to learn the shortest/easiest/fastest path to any destination and then I DO NOT DEVIATE FROM THE KNOWN PATHWAY.

But, with the wreck there slowing the off-ramp traffic to a standstill, I thought I'd go north one more exit, just a couple of miles, and circle back through town to US 1 from which I could get back on my original road.

Alas, there was a wreck blocking the southbound exit onto US 1 where I needed to go! The cops were waving people past, and I had no choice.

(By the way, the paramedics were working on a man laying spread eagle on the road next to his motorcycle. I've never seen a fresh motorcycle accident like that, it was quite disturbing.)

The added horror was that I was now on my own in a strange location far from known roads. both of my know pathways to this doctor's office were blocked.

What's a guy to do?

After submitting myself to the fear of the unknown for a few seconds, I called the doctor's office to tell them I'd probably be a few minutes late.

Then I thought I'd just find the biggest road that would take me back south from my present location, and after a while, actually found my way to the doctor's office, but it was definitely touch and go there for a little while. Way out of my comfort zone as they say.

That's one good thing about totally flat terrain like here in Florida, most roads run pretty much north and south, east and west, because there are no hills to necessitate winding roads.

I saw the doctor and got some prescriptions.

They made three upcoming appointments for some shots in my lower back to hopefully lessen the pain in my left leg, starting Wednesday. That's "tomorrow" Wednesday, for the first shot. I've got scar tissue from four back surgeries down there so they usually end up having to work the needles around a bit to get them into the location they want to release the injection. Yes. That feels just about as bad as it sounds too.

But. If the overall effect is pain relief, then it will be worth it. I don't sleep well much any more, mostly because of leg pain.

And I keep picturing the guy from the motorcycle laying on the side of the road, and was glad I was driving a mini van.

Then I went to work.

Well, I didn't say it was an EXCITING mini van adventure now did I?

A Late Happy New Year to All

First, Happy New Year to all of you. God bless you all and give you a wonderful 2009!

Several years ago, Number Two Daughter decided she'd like to learn to play the guitar.

But if you're left-handed and want to learn guitar, your options are limited. You can either learn to play guitar right-handed, or pay a lot extra for a left-handed guitar (it's absurd how much more a left-handed guitar costs than the equivalent right-handed guitar), or you can convert a right-handed guitar to be playable by a left-handed person.

Number Two Daughter is very left-handed, so I searched for a reasonably priced left-handed guitar, and in the meantime, I looked for an inexpensive electric that I could convert to being left-handed (I remembered that Jimi Hendrix seemed to do pretty well on a right-handed guitar that had been converted for left-handed use).

Turns out that a guy I knew at work had a nice Samick brand electric guitar that he only wanted $50 for. But when I went to his condo to look at it to see if it was a guitar I thought I could work with, I was blown away by this lovely cherry sunburst, stratocaster-styled guitar. Of course I bought it.

I took it home and played it a bit, and looked it over again and fell in love with the grain and color of the mahogany body of the guitar.

But, the guitar wasn't for me, so that night, I took off the strings, removed and reversed the nut, put on new strings and intonated the guitar so that it would play in tune for a left-handed person.

I left it sitting out in her room that night where she could see it when she woke up in the morning.

Later that year, for her birthday, we bought her a nice, true left-handed guitar from an online store called Rondo Music. (They have a great selection of good quality left-handed guitars for incredibly low prices. I own several of their electric guitars and an electric bass from there.)

After she got the new, left-handed guitar, I took the Samick and re-converted it to right-handed playing, and I've played it since then.

With my back being so screwed up the past few years, I'd almost completely stopped playing guitar, and a few weeks ago, I started leaving one of my electrics beside my recliner in the living room. So now when I watch TV, I can practice chords and scales and whatnot on an unplugged electric which is quiet enough that I don't bother others in the room.

Many mornings my back wakes me up pretty early and I go sit in my chair, leaning on a heating pad to help relive the pain. Right now, the early morning sunlight comes into the room and shines for a few minutes right where I stand the guitar.

One morning I went and grabbed my camera because I loved how the warm morning sunlight enhanced the grain and beautiful colors of this $50 guitar.