They Amuse Me

My tribute to McDonalds. It seems odd that the budget they provide their employees tells them to make it they need another job in addition to their McJob. I think it McSucks.

 The following would be true in my case.

 Well it is a valid point.

 Hopefully my last comment on the "royal" baby.

 YES!

 Who hasn't felt like saying it?

 Sometimes it seems like that would have made the day a little better.

 Live long and prosper.

 Thinking about making this the sign on the gate out front.

 Tweety does have a valid point.

 Thought it was funny.

 WOW?

 I will admit I'm not much of a hockey fan but I do love this about hockey. What other championship trophy makes the rounds like Lord Stanley's Cup? You never see players hauling around the World Series Trophy or the Lombardi Trophy? The Stanley Cup makes the rounds. Fans have a chance to see it up close and personal. Maybe even get in a picture with it. I mean who knew Abe Lincoln was a hockey fan? Or that the Stanley Cup was that big way back then? Or that they had such great color photography in those days.

 They are not quite that long during retirement.

I Miss You Walter

I watch the news every night and almost every night I am disappointed by what news has become. Yesterday it was too much royal baby. I won't relive yesterday's post but really for us it isn't news. Being King of England used to mean something. Now it is basically a ceremonial title. Let the British get all excited about it.

The story that got me pissed off was this one.

Beyonce was performing at a concert and her hair got caught in a fan. The intrepid report Diane Sawyer was quick to tell us that  Beyonce was the consumate professional and continued to sing while stage hands freed her from the fan. Sorry folks but that is not news. If the fan had pulled her in and chopped her into Beyonce head cheese, then that is news. If the fan she had been pulled into was Jeffrey Dalhmer or Ted Bundy that is news.

 

I  miss this guy.

 

I grew up watching Walter deliver us the news every evening. It wasn't about celebrities getting hair caught in fans. It was about civil rights, what was happening in Congress, race riots, the war in Vietnam, the shootings at Kent State, and a hundred other things that were real news. We look around at a world that is increasingly in chaos. Unrest in the middle east, banks that were too big to fail in 2008 that are even bigger now, troops who continue to fight in Afghanistan, NSA domestic spying, Edward Snowden.... The news- Beyonce's hair caught in fan. Royal baby goes home from hospital. DILLIGAF!!!!! In my minds eye I can see Walter Cronkite looking at the teleprompter in disgust. Briefly hanging his head in shame and as he composes himself saying: "I can't do this anymore. I won't read this shit to a public who don't want to hear the real news. I quit."

 

We don't want to hear the "real news" because it hurts. Our elected officials can't or won't work together to solve the problems our country faces. They get 30 to 60 seconds to address critical issues and the result is sound bites spewed out to gain political points with their base supporters. The news now is celebrity or someone reporting with a right or left wing agenda. We gets news reported on a slant we like instead of just facts that allow us to make an informed decision. Don't try to lead me one way or the other just lay out the facts and let me see where they take me. Immigration, the economy, foreign affairs, war are not topics that should be covered in one minute. Until we get an attention span longer than that of a gnat nothing will change.

 

So, Walter, I miss you. And that's the way it is July 24, 2013.



Tour de France

The Tour de France concluded yesterday and I will admit to watching none of it this year. I heard a British fellow won. Well, bully for him and them. They are having a good year. Home country wins Wimbledon, win Tour de France, and a new royal baby. Don't care about any of that. Carol and I went on a motorcycle ride the other day. While I'm motoring along wondering if some idiot texting is going to cross the center line and hit me or a deer will run out of the woods and take us out I thought about Lance Armstrong.

Why Lance Armstrong? Well I knew the Tour was ending and I was always interested and followed when an American had a chance or had the lead. So now Lance has been stripped of his 7 Tour wins because he cheated. He doped. He used blood transfusions. He took hormones. I don't care. He won. Did the other guys cheat too? I don't know. We sent over a one nut cancer survivor and he won. I don't care how or why. He just won. The race is over 2000 miles over about a three week period against the best riders in the world. I'm willing to cut some slack to the one baller from Texas. This year some douche from Britain one. Probably has both his nuts. Fuck maybe he is the male equivalent of Ann Boleyn and has three nuts. Don't care, didn't watch. Maybe next year.

Royal Baby- DILLIGAF

It is Monday July 22, 2013 and the news is full of coverage regarding Princess Kate. She is preparing to push the royal heir to the British throne through her diamond encrusted crevix, down her emerald and ruby lined birth canal and out of her golden vagina. The world is abuzz with the news. Twitter is twittering in anticipation. I have other thoughts. The world will welcome with open arms this child be it boy or girl who will want for nothing. The newborn royal will immediately enter a life of privilege and excess. The finest of everything all the time. No struggles for the necessities of life. Food, shelter, clothing, all provided in abundance. Adoration, attention, fame, fortune, and any other thing its little royal heart could desire will be provided. Excuse me if I puke now.

I took a minute to look at how many children will die today from hunger or hunger related causes. It is surprisingly hard to get an accurate number. Some sources put the number at 15,000, some at 18,000 per day. The per year number is even more confusing ranging from 1.5 million to 15 million per year. It is easy to understand the difficulty. The children die in areas of the world where we don't like to look. Africa, India, Southeast Asia. So much easier to look to London. OOOOHHHH Look its a new ROYAL. Was it a natural birth? Did Kate have an epidural? What will the name be? While that happens a child somewhere takes its last breath. It dies from starvation, or disease caused by hunger or the lack of clean water. A mother and father mourn the loss and suffer out of the sight of the cameras and attention that are focused on the child who will have everything. A child starves to death while we turn food into fuel for our cars because we don't want to pay so much for gasoline made from oil. We burn so much oil because we don't want to practice conservation. We subsidize farm commodity prices and ethanol prices to keep the gas and oil prices under control. While children die of hunger. The number per day is shocking. Thousands. Not hundreds, THOUSANDS! Every day. All year. Starvation doesn't take the day off. We turn our heads and look the other way. Easier to think about a princess and a future king or queen.

I will step off my soap box now. You may go back to whatever it was you were doing before I bothered you with these mental images. We have all seen them before. The distended bellies, the ghostly stare in those huge starving eyes. It is wrong. It is unacceptable. We claim to be a Christian nation. We don't turn the other cheek, we turn a blind eye. Go back and think happy thought about a new baby who has a family that never worries about food. Never goes to bed hungry. Sorry to have disturbed your day.

Small Town Living

Yesterday (July 20, 2013) Carol and I did one of those things we do every year. We went up to Oneida for their annual festival. It used to be called Oneida Days. This year in an attempt to convince more folks from out of town to visit it was renamed the Oneida Sweet Corn Festival. I don't know that it worked but it didn't hurt attendance. We did manage to accidently be there during the sweet corn eating competition. I guess for the winner it is a double succes. You get as much sweet corn as you can eat in 10 minutes and $20.00 cash. My only comment to Carol is that it was going to be ugly later. Lots of roughage in sweet corn if you get where I'm going. They will be going and going and going and going....

One of the reasons I go to Oneida is the car show. I'm not a big car show guy and generally this is the one car show I attend each year. It isn't a big show and the plus for me is there isn't a big crowd. All those years in prison and the crowded conditions there leave me with little interest in going anywhere with a large crowd. I wanted to share a few of the vehicles there that caught my interest.

The first gem is this 1930 Model A truck.

I included this view because I have a fondness for grills. It is special when form and function combine to become a piece of art work.

This beauty is a 1935 Ford 3 Window Coupe. Once again an amazing grill. 

 

 This is a 1937 Chevy Master Coupe. What great lines and curves.

This is a 1940 Ford Pickup Truck. Once again a fantastic grill.

 

 



I included this 1960 Mercury Station Wagon for a couple of reasons. It reminds me of the 1960's, big families and vacations. This boat is long enough to qualify for a zip code.

 

This is a 1964 Mercury Montery. It is included because when Carol and I were dating she had a 1966 version of this car in white. It was a gas guzzling giant. 

 

This is a 1965 Cadillac Hearse. If you are going to go to your final resting place, why not go in style?

 

 

I included this 1966 Chevy Pickup to make a statement. It is your truck and you can do what you want. I will not fault the restoration or the workmanship. Personally I enjoy the look as it would have been originally without the huge blower.

I enjoyed this GMC Truck which I assume was from Roseville, Illinois. No year listed on it but what exceptional workmanship.

 

This is included to make a statement about what is wrong with modern cars. The vent window is gone. Sorry folks but cracking open the window a bit at the top just isn't the same. Right Mike?

 

This is a 1956 Ford F100. I will say no more. 

 

 

We came around a line of cars and spotted a topless beauty. My first thought was "My God, this is a family show. Have some respect." I was then lost in awe of her glorious backside. No point in rushing around front when you can view an ass end like this one. 

 

 

 

For those hoping for a full frontal view of her topless glory.

 

One thing about this era, steering wheels were huge. You needed something that size to control this beast.

 

For the curious this is a 1959 Cadillac. I am normally a truck guy but for me she was the Best of Show!

 

Stupidity

There are days when you wonder if the collective IQ of the world is somehow managed to move lower than the average annual temperature of Siberia. There was recently a crash involving a passenger airliner in San Francisco. One of the local television stations reported the pilots names as follows.

The names of the alleged pilots on the flight were broadcast over the air. Really? No one at the station realized these were a joke? No one? They claim the names were verified by the National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB claims the verification was done by a summer intern. I thought about that and put myself in the intern's position. If you are stupid enough to call me and ask for verification of those names I am quite sure I am stupid enough to verify them for you. My defense when approached? First I would have given them a fake name when I verified the story. Probably something like Suk Mai Dik or Fook Yu. If they managed to figure out it was me then I go to my fallback position. "I'm just an intern and all you guys were busy with a real disaster and couldn't be bothered." Stephen Colbert did a good job covering this mess. Here's a link to his video.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XtpYGHJ34w

 

 

If you think this is just an isolated incident and collectively the world has not gotten that stupid I offer for your consideration the George Zimmerman verdict. The verdict is not only stupid for its complete failure to consider what happened the Florida stand your ground law is crazy stupid. There are certainly times to claim self defense but when you call the police and are advised to stop following someone, you confront and subsequently shoot an unarmed teenager and stand your ground gets you off. Well then my friend something is wrong. The problem to me is that there really are two people who know exactly what happened that night. One is dead and the other one, as is his right, did not testify in court. He has, however, made several inconsistent statements in the months since the incident which make me wonder. A jury of his peers has spoken and as with the verdict in the O J Simpson trial we must live with the results. It does surprise me what folks are willing to believe.

 

I can always count on George to put things in their proper perspective.



Heroes

A few years ago there was a television show called Heroes. I got hooked on the show for a few reasons. First the original tag line was "Save the cheerleader, save the world." It made you wonder how those two things could possibly go together. The second thing was it had the best evil guy ever, if you are willing to ignore Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker. The evil guy was named Sylar. If you are a fan of Star Trek he plays Spock in the last two films. The final draw was that ordinary people were in possession of extraordinary powers or abilities. They could for instance fly, or read minds, or teleport, or heal from any injury, or move objects with their minds. It makes you wonder. If you could have an ability that no one else had what would it be? Every special ability I think about I see problems.

Reading minds- Really? You want to know what other people are thinking? Don't we all at times show a remarkable lack of control over our thoughts. You are talking about something vitally important like how much insurance I should carry on my car. I am thinking: "Why doesn't he notice that chunk of dried snot hanging out of his nose? You would think that the air going in and out would cause a noticeable vibration. Maybe he's a mouth breather. Do I want someone who has a bat hanging out of the cave and breathes through his mouth telling me about car insurance." Since I have a remarkable inability to deal with two things at once I now have no idea what he just said. Since I have these kinds of thoughts I don't want anyone reading my mind and I assume everyone else has a head full of this kind of shit. I would rather just hear people talk and hope the world is all rainbows and unicorns.

Flying- I see this as a real problem. Not afraid of heights when I am in an airplane. Take away the plane and it is just me and my skin and all I can say is look out below. If you don't like bird shit falling on your car you don't want me flying. The other problem I see is that to save money friends would be asking me to take them to their destination. I love you folks but I don't want to be flying you around on my back.

Invisibility- Why? Really aside from being able to go around and see people naked what is the point. Sure you could listen in to conversation and hear things people didn't want you to, but isn't that rude beyond belief. In some ways worse than reading their minds. Since I have been to a nudist resort and seen what the average person looks like naked the appeal of sneaking around seeing naked people is gone.

Healing- Since I am not a big fan of pain and the character in the show who had this ability still felt pain. I am thinking this ability would be of little use to me. If I could heal others? Not really. At first glance it would seem like a good idea. If you look a little deeper it loses its appeal. How do you decide who to heal? There isn't enough time to heal everyone. How do you decide who is worthy? What if you heal someone who would have died and later they kill someone else? How do you live with that? Best to leave well enough alone. This one is similiar to time travel for me. You always think you would go back and change something that happened or that you did. You would make it better. Would it be better? Read Stephen King's book 11-22-63. We will talk after that. For now my advice is that the past should stay the past.

So that is my take on having a power. Take a few minutes to think about one you think you would like to have. After you get through the initial warm glow take a few minutes and pull back the curtain and think about what it would really mean.

HOT-HOT-HOT

Summer has officially arrived in Illinois. Yesterday we went out to paint our deck before 8:00 a.m. thinking we could get done before the heat got too oppressive. We finished at noon. I was pretty sure at one point after 11 I was going to pass out. You get that light headed feeling first so I decided to sit down on the steps. As luck would have it  a cloud passed between me and the sun and a little bit of a breeze started to blow. It wasn't much but it was enough to allow me to finish the 20 square feet I had left to paint. I went out again today (7-17-2013) to take the steps off the deck Lily Lu had basically destroyed and put on the new ones.

She is quite the  chewer at times.

 

I am done working outside today. If you are interested it is currently 10:04 am, the temperature is 85 degrees, humidity 64%, wind from the southwest at 3 mph so it feels like 93 degrees outside. The prediction for later today is a heat index of 104 and an actual temp of 90. It is one of those days where it is so hot fat guys are making their own gravy. It is dripping ball sack hot. You get the idea. The heat got me to thinking? Could it be worse? If you read this you know from time to time I comment on things going on elsewhere in the universe. It is a big place and there are strange and wonderous things out there waiting for us to find them.

 

Earth is a blue ball hanging in a sea of blackness when viewed from space. We tend to think of blue as a "cool" color and not a warm color like red. A blue exoplanet was recently discovered. The exoplanets don't get cool names like Mars or Venus it is simply known as HD189733b. A mere 63 light years from Earth if I left now and traveled at the speed of light I could be there for my 122nd birthday. The good news is due to the theory of relativity I would not have aged so I would be a young looking 122 year old. In this case blue is not a cool color. The blue color is from all the  silicate particles in the planet's atmosphere. It is a bit warm there, about 1832 degrees fahrenheit so it is raining glass. It gets better. It is raining glass sideways because the wind is blowing 4,350 miles per hour. So the molten glass particles are blowing sideways reflecting a blue light. Sounds lovely. The planet is hot because it is the size of Jupiter but much closer to its sun. Using Jupiter as an equivalent on HD189733b I would weigh about 617 pounds. I feel better about my current weight now. Of course that weight would fall quickly to almost nothing as I was reduced to ash. So having done all that thinking I now feel cooler and lighter. Thanks science!

 

If you would like to learn more about exoplanets please visit: exoplanets.org.



Amazing photo effects

Erik Johansson is a full-time photographer and retoucher from Sweden, now based in Berlin, Germany. The wildly successful artist does both personal and commission work for big brands around the world. His latest commercial project with Adobe had Erik doing live photoshopping at a modified bus stop. The campaign went viral, with over 15.5 million views to date on YouTube.
Erik has also done a TED talk in London, and it’s clear that the sky’s the limit for this incredibly talented young artist (born in ’85). Johansson states:

“I don’t capture moments, I capture ideas. To me photography is just a way to collect material to realize the ideas in my mind. I get inspired by things around me in my daily life and all kinds of things I see. Although one photo can consist hundreds of layers I always want it to look like it could have been captured. Every new project is a new challenge and my goal is to realize them as realistic as possible.”