Time Warp

Watched a documentary yesterday called, 'War Room' about the 1992 presidential campaign for Bill Clinton. It featured George Stephanopouloss and James Carville. Interesting how Carville is so politically incorrect. Love him or hate him, he says it how he feels. What is striking is how much time has gone by since. Seems like it was only last week everyone was imitating Ross Perot.

It's just a mind warp for me to think of the issues that were talked about were exactly the same issues that we talk about today. 8 years of democrat, 8 years of republican....Can you really tell why and and when you were better off? Put a different coat of paint on the same ol piece of shit car and call it better....right....I specifically remember when Carter was president and older friends of mine couldn't afford a home because of interest rates. His fault or not..? This isn't a political statement as much as a question to who was in office when you felt you were doing good or not so good.I hear a lot of banter by pissed off people about who's running things and I just wonder if they just like taking a side because it's more comfortable,,,, or they can put their finger on the politicians who while in office, made their lives miserable. I generally, as a middle class white dude can't tell shit from shinola. Yeah, I'm pissed too but I'm pissed at the car and not the color of paint that hangs on it. I'm not running for office and have some drunken picture of me in Vegas show up in some campaign add. 'Do you really want this guy making your decisions?' I'll bet you have the same pictures.

Onward -

I never heard the word email. Mostly they were looking at faxes. The tv's of that time weren't much different than the ones our folks had. Cell phones...ha ..They had some bricks. The technological advancement is stunning on 1 hand and sad on the other. Kids these days(not all)  have the option of being really soft. I totally understand our parents saying they walked uphill both ways to school. I've seen it with my own eyes, kids are more excited about the latest phone than the latest bicycle, dress or whatever...(we'll get to that later). It's easier to write 1 time on FB than 20 times concerning important events. Almost like the greeting cards you get from the morons who take awkward pictures and drool their yearly accomplishments. As if staying alive wasn't good enough. I see both sides. I can have all my music on a small device but then I gotta make play-lists...easy compared to making a cassette tape from an album but those cassette tapes are still with me today even while deteriorating.  I guess there is the gluttony factor. Too much to keep track of.

Bicycles - 1996 I bought a used 1995 model Trek y22. One of the finest bikes of the time. Later to be buried and hidden for some traits I never felt. Brake jack, stiffening up while standing...the list goes on. The bike was light at 25 pds and I've yet to build a lighter full suspension bike. It held up to all the abuse I gave it. Now we have disk brakes and suspension that changes and changes back. I have friends so disgusted with it they ride rigid. Back to the mid 80's on that one. Not me. I'm full steam ahead with something to be named at a later date.

I look back on that period(90's) as some of the best days of my life and watching the show reminded me of it...The normal gain/loss you would experience after 18 years of living.  It's just amazing to think that now most folks have 1/2 their music library on their phone, better camera and the ability to call from almost anyplace on a fucking phone. It's no wonder kids are so excited. My father would have tripped out and it's only been 6 years since he passed.

I suppose as I write this the idea would be that technology can solve some old problems but with it brings on another set that nobody can comprehend.

Peace and Love..Peave and Love...Ringo Starr

Watch out, you might get what you're after.

I've found that I'm less mad when I'm doing something, anything, even work than I am when I'm scanning the internet for anything. Invariably I will run across a headline that pisses me off or a stupid post someplace.

They say ignorance is bliss but ignorance has no ability to effect a change. What do I want changed and what pisses me off. Depends on the day I suppose and what battles I've fought on those given days.

Idea #1 politicians before becoming elected must go thru at least a 6 month(paid out of pocket) world preparation course. A crash course in Theology, Political Science, spend some time in a hospice, a pharmacy and any other place you can think of that will make them stop taking 1 for the team and think for themselves. Cops, fireman and many other professions either do a crash course or need a serious degree. The only thing a politician needs is a smart haircut and an ability to play for a team. 1 came to the house yesterday and I sprayed him with Weed and Feed.

Burns my ass story - Dr gives me a prescription for 15 days for sleep aids. Yet I can only get them filled every 23. Catalyst Health for ya. Pharmacist said they are so bad I should file a complaint. I log-on to the consumer affairs website but there is no funding for that anymore. Who in their right fucking mind thinks health care in this country doesn't need to be fixed. I'll tell you who. Healthy motherfuckers who've never had to deal with it. My point is not only financial. It's also ethical and those of you who've been around to see the unnecessary treatments doled out on the dying will know what I mean. If I'm dying, please just send me home with some painkillers. Don't take the last 6 months of my  life away with needless treatments even if those treatments don't cost me a dime. This is the point - they make money for almost everyone involved.

I guess knowing who to help and knowing who is using the system is a big challenge. Seems like they care more about if you water your lawn on Mondays(yes, I saw a ticket being written) than they do if you're getting full time disability without being disabled.

I guess I won't go on anymore...some people call it a kaiser blade but I call it a sling blade... ummmmmmmmmm.

ps. ..the stupid motherfucker who thinks this has become as socialist country. We've become something even worse!  When 5 percent of the folks control 95 percent of the dough I think somethings wrong. And the people are mad at the government for not making jobs. How bout those 5 percent that do their business in such a way that it puts farms out of business, ships other business overseas and has bottom line efficiency as their only goal. And these 5 per-centers are so smart they run everything yet lead you and me to believe its either the Republicans or the Democrats causing the problems. While we're out bashing each other over politics they're out doing what they do.

A visit to my mothers house.

a day not long ago but far away
the smell of a familiar house
up the steps to a warm hug
how you doing
supper, laughter and love
living rooms, cigarettes and furry babies
backyards, birds and feeders
rag mags, beers and silence
hugs goodbye until the next time
a day not long ago but far away

Thots...

Immigration -  just a few quick thoughts..Not living on a boarder state I might get some input from those who do before I spout off.... but I will anyway..If I'm shaking in my skin just trying to get a new Nevada license it might be OK for somebody who just walked over the boarder to have to show some paperwork...I've heard the folks that do have the wherewithal to be in this country are pissed at the people who don't have to show proof. If we can't get into their country why should we let anyone in....You see...this isn't a Republican or Democratic idea..Its' common sense...

Along those lines the unemployment rate in Nevada in now 14 percent.....You wanna know why? Who cares I'm telling you....Because government has taken away our survival skills.  1 week you get more and the next you don't. It's my firm belief that 2 years unemployment is enough. At some point you have to get off the couch and take the jobs the so-called Mexicans are taking. I just talked to a small business owner in Carson and he said the new minimum wage rate is killing him as well. Who's making the decisions that make an entire town an empty storefront? Carson City is well on it's way to a ghost town. On 1 hand I don't care since I have no family here but on the other I think it's a beautiful city and I would hope a few wise folks figure out it's destiny.

The other thing that strikes me as odd is that most of my friends who own small business's have to be republican to survive. Just for that reason. Business. It has nothing to do with their humanitarian beliefs.

A country fucked into 2 choices and neither has a big enough dick to make a solid LOGICAL difference...

When will government be by the people for the people..???????

3 years ago today.

Been 3 years today since my ma died in the hospital on a quiet Saturday evening in Maryland. She'd been struggling with the will to live for a period of time. She stopped eating and became so weak she couldn't walk so off to the hospital she had to go. What turned into a nourishment visit ended in pneumonia and death. Hospitals are no place for the weak.

My mother always knew when to give me a push and in later years I tried to return the favor. I'm not entirely sure I succeeded but who's counting. It's hard not to become angry at times and I was more than angry on more than 1 occasion. When someone won't eat it's maddening but that's how it goes for a lot of folks.

One day she is semi lucid and the next she's pretty much out. My sis warned me what to expect before going in so I went straight to the liquor store and bought some Jim Beam before entering the automatic doors of life and death. Docs said on Tuesday she pretty much had a day or 2. They didn't know my mother. She was on morphine and nothing else and I think she was in her own little heaven before she took off. She lived on morphine and nothing else for 5 days! She hung on until Saturday evening around 5pm.

When the docs say a day or 2 you think, 'l'll just stay the whole time' so that's what I tried to do until I became a walking zombie. I finally took to going home at night and coming back 1st thing in the morning.

Saturday evening with just Ellie and me in the room the nurse said she thought it was time and sure enough it was. It was very peaceful. Few last breaths and then things stop. We walked out into the evening and it was surreal. No mother, no real direction. It's a relief on 1 hand but on the other you know you're at the bottom of a mountain and the top layer of snow is about to let loose. And it does. You slowly crawl out of the darkness and begin life without something. Time heals and if you're lucky you have good friends and family to help and I was very lucky.

I like the fact that your healed but you still have scars and those scars make you a better person. Empathy is easier than it ever was. I'm more sensitive than I ever was and I don't mind. If something moves me to tears it's a pleasure and not something to hide.

Cheers to my mom for all her wisdom and her faults.

Thomas Paine - Age of Reason

excerpts from  Thomas Paines 'Age of Reason'....My father turned me onto this only after I was old enough that he felt we had become like minded concerning the subject. He in no way, shape or form tried to strong arm his religious opinions on me....So here are some of the ideas that mean a lot to me and are highlighted in his copy of the book.
----------------------------
I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.

I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.

But, lest it should be supposed that I believe in many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.

It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive any thing more destructive to morality than this?

Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet, as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.

Each of those churches show certain books, which they call revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say, that their word of God was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say, that their word of God came by divine inspiration: and the Turks say, that their word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from Heaven. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.

----------------
and so it goes. This book took this man from a person who was looked up too, who helped  the French and American revolution to somebody who died mostly condemned and broke. All I can say is I thank him and others like him for expressing their opinions in spite of the dangers those opinions brought. I think we need to be reminded of why folks got the fuck away from King George in the 1st place in spite of the danger. This one line from the Declaration of Independence rings of tolerance even though we didn't exactly tolerate the natives. I guess the founding fathers should have read their own writing....Anyway, this seems to be forgotten. ------- We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.------

It's officially beer-o-clock...Cheers

As my dad used to say...Shit or get offfff-aaaa the pot

Power and powerless..........Congress went on the last vacation without signing unemployment extension benefits. Not to bore you but what this means.....It means some folks won't get their dough and others will due to this vacation lapse. We're talking 1 fucking week. If you happen to run out of benefits in that 1 week you will not get the same benefit as somebody who didn't. 1 f'in week! I will set my alarm for 11.30pm Saturday night and walk into my spare room and disable this transaction that will effect the entire state of Nevada only to do the same thing next Saturday to re-enable it when they come back and vote to extend it. To say I'm disillusioned is an understatement. I wasn't so anti-govt until I got too close as a worker bee.


So it goes,,, the luck of the draw. Feels like the movie Cool Hand Luke...digging holes only to refill them a bit later just because ..

Logic, common sense and information does not enter into the minds of people who run this land......Re-election, money and more power is the drug..same as it's ever been. We're human I suppose and that's what a lot of weak folks strive for....Excuse me if I don't shake your hand.