Step Away From the Flack

 Stay frosty bitches, Red Frosty

"Look, I  can see it in your eyes. You're starting to get all worked up. Every year we do the same thing. Buy people a bunch of shit they don't need. It is not my fault - I did not invent Christmas - so back off and don't give me a lot of flack"

"Yeah, well, Flack You!"

So with that little confab the wife and I started planning for the holiday season. Right now I'm watching the kids while She is out bankrupting us. Doesn't she know that the last election was precisely about this kind of out of control spending? Does she want us to end up like Ireland or Greece? Someone needs to stand up and say "Enough! -Stop this madness!". I mean someone, not necessarily me. I won't step in front of a runaway truck either. I do like decorating, though. Check out this year's award winning entry above. Repeal and replacing Frosty's guts was not easy.

O Captain, My Captain

Don Van Vliet (1/15/41-12/17/10)

Aquarius Tavern - Seattle Washington - Nineteen Seventy Somethingorother- Greatest concert in the history of the Multiverse.

Not Even Close

Got a letter from my brother yesterday. Yes, a letter. Weird. He sends them to me when he has something to say. Which is not often. His missives are elegantly constructed and obviously from the heart. Unfortunately his handwriting renders them virtually illegible. My responses, on the other hand, are incomprehensible fragments of word salad rendered electronically. But you can read them. I'm mean you can't read them, they're private. But he can. I'm sure that when he gets more technologically comfortable he'll upgrade to a speedier mode. I expect this next year:

Greetings STOP Have a Merry Christmas STOP Happy New Year STOP Hope all is well STOP We are fine STOP

 Anyway, in this letter I mentioned he makes the absurd claim that the Great Garloo (pronounced Gay-loo) could take Robot Commando (pronounced awesome) in a full on family room death match  Silly, I know. I blame myself. Must been all the times I bounced a rock off his cranium or shot him in the face with an arrow. Normally I would let this pass, Robot Commando has nothing to prove to anyone. But this shall not stand. Contrast the two clips above and judge for yourself. To summarize:

Robot Commando - throws bombs with either hand - shoots missiles - has whirly eyes
Great Garloo - nothing under the kilt - claps his hands - plays with dolls

If I had a $1000 to spare I'd buy a couple and prove to the world what I already know. Robot Commando would whirl those arms so fast he'd bitch slap that stupid grin right off Garloo's face.  Good thing Garloo can bend over cause when RC is done with him that's the position he's gonna be in. Crying for his mommy.

This Could Have Ended Badly

While my wife and I were talking on the phone about what we were planning to have for dinner, she overheard one of my retarded coworkers shout out "tuna tacos". When I got home from work she asked me if we really liked to eat those. Now I don't often get fed such a perfect straight line but I played it square and explained the concept to her. I was afraid she was going to wander into Taco Bell and ask whether they served tuna tacos. That would have ended very, very badly for me.

Now I have to explain smoked hoagie before our next trip to Subway.

It's a Disappointing Life

The Easter Bunny was the first to go. That whole idea didn't make much sense. Even to a 4 year old. Followed closely by the Tooth Fairy - even then we knew where the money came from and then Santa and a few years later the Virgin Birth and Jesus rising from the dead became too counter to actual experience to be real. God the Father faded away, followed by the dissipation of the hallucinogen aided Spirit of Everything. Now I'm knocking on the door to the Hall of Eternity and no one's answering. Maybe only a little of my own echo. Me? Depressed this Holiday Season? No way, man. Fa la fuckin la - la la la laaaa.

But having Santa wrenched out of my life was bad, worst junior year ever. Every year mom and I would ride the train into Philly to go Christmas shopping at the big department stores downtown - Gimbels, Wanamakers, Strawbridge and Clothier - the works. And then we'd have a fancy lunch somewhere. Just me and her.

The train had barely pulled from the station when she dropped the S Bomb on me. Apparently the parents weren't able to come up with a Robot Commando and mom felt it was time to disabuse me of the notion that Christmas would ever be fun again. Ever. You see, my brother and I had it all planned out - we were going to have awesome battles between The Great Garloo , a green wheeled monster with a punk hairdo that could bend over and pick up stuff in his claws, and Robot Commando, who could throw stuff and fire missiles to boot. Of course, come Christmas morn, the little fucker had his Great Garloo and I had a stupid robot tiger named Bengali who would walk 2 steps, roar and fall over. I kind of had my suspicions about Santa but finding out like this made if far worse. Not only was I not going to get everything I wanted in life I found out that sometimes I was going to get what I didn't want.

To top it off, I wasn't allowed to tell my brother because that would "ruin" the "magic" of the season. Why spoil Christmas for an innocent little boy? Why indeed? So I told him.

Shown actual size

Happy Thanksgiving America and Quit Yer Whining

Memo to Mr. and Mrs. America: I know you'd rather waterboard a thousand brown people than spend one extra minute in an airport security line but really, get over yourselves. No TSA screener is going to get excited over a scan of your flabby private parts or your shrunken scrotums, fupas, and saggy asses.  Unless, of course, you're hiding a pipe bomb somewhere in those saggy folds of disgusting ass fat. Oh, and  John Tyner, nobody's that enthusiastic about touching your precious junk. That's why they're wearing rubber gloves, you dumb motherfucker. This stunt may not turn you into a lucrative commercial property. Remember "Don't tase me bro"?  No? Neither does anyone else. Not that all of this scanning and groping will be particularly helpful. That horse fled the barn a while ago. In hindsight, secure cockpit doors and isolating pilots from the passenger cabin would have saved a few thousand lives and a few hundred billion dollars. Scream for ethnic profiling all you want but all it takes is one blond, blue eyed convert with a fannypack of C-4 and we're right back where we started.

The World's Worst Catholic™ Explains the Pope...Sort of

 You know what they say about big hats

How many angels can fit in the tip of a condom? Listen to Father Fessio's nuanced attempt to explain the inexplicable. Evidently wearing a condom if you have something like leprosy of the dick shows "the beginning of a moral awakening" or some such nonsense. Father Fessio goes on to compare condom use for the HIV positive to muggers wrapping their steel pipe (oh, the irony) weapons in padding so as to stun, rather than permanently injure, their victims. I'm not even going to try to figure out how he makes the comparison between sex and violence. Maybe he was scared by a big stiff pipe at Seminary. And this staement by the Pope doesn't represent a sliding scale of morality. Oh, no, no no. No such thing. Nothing is relative. The Pope says so.  And he's infallible. And he's got the biggest hat. Father Fessio gets a little testy when the reporter suggests that the Pope's statement may be muddying the water a little. He's probably a little frustrated that maybe 1 out of 10 western Catholics pays any attention the Church's position on birth control. Now I figured a guy wearing a dress would be just the perfect spokesman for public health measures to help halt the spread of HIV. Sadly this is not the case. In fact, he might just be the worst.

I Think I'll Get the Other One

Some guys just shouldn't get a choice. I'd be a natural shopper if I lived  someplace like Cuba where you get your choice of beans or rice. But I spent all morning obsessively compulserating over which humidifier to buy. Ultrasonic? Evaporative?  Medium room? Large Room? Whole house? Filtered? Filterless? Tower? Floor model? Maybe I should check it out on the internet first. I had one all picked out in Lowes but the box was kinda squashed so I'd  probably be inheriting someones else's problem. So I went over to Walmart, picked out one at half the price but they didn't have any of the check- yourself -out thingers open so I said fuck it I'm not going to wait in line to spend good American dollars on some Chinese shit I probably don't even want. Why oh why can I not make a decision? So I went home, did my research (which more often than not turns out to be useless) and bought one from Amazon. I like getting packages. And I like my super saver shipping.

Not Sure How I Feel About This

We haven't eaten Jesus yet... but we will real soon!

So saith my granddaughter explaining the finer points of Transubstantiation. She seems rather blithe about something that totally freaked me out when I was her age. Sister Mary Joseph was very clear on the fact that the host became the actual body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ amen. Symbolic representation was for the heathen protestants. Don't take the host if you haven't confessed. Or you're going to hell. Don't ever, ever chew it or touch it with your hands. Or you're going to hell. So not only were we told, prior to our First Communion at the age of 7 (it's 8 nowadays), that we were about to engage in an real cannibalistic ritual, we were also told that any misstep during the ritual would result in horrible and permanent damage to our immortal souls and would surely result in eternal damnation. Now it sure didn't taste like blood and raw meat to me so I was sure I must have been doing something wrong. And you wonder why I'm a little jumpy.

Veteran's Day

   

"Connie’s crew thought it would be a “milk run,” an easy mission. A B-17 in one of the 3-plane formations ahead of them developed engine trouble. It left the group and headed back to England. Connie moved up to take the place vacated. In turn, a B-17 moved up to take the place vacated by Connie.

            As the group approached the target and started their bomb run, a red flare suddenly appeared in the sky and all hell broke loose. German jets* were above the American planes and they suddenly swooped down past the formation, and then reversed their direction climbing rapidly in order to fire into the bomber’s bellies. The plane which had taken Connie’s place in the formation was hit, and plunged toward the ground. From his ball turret Scrip saw the plane explode on impact. There were no parachutes.** The crew of the plane was flying its 34th mission. Only one more and they could have been on their way home." - Lee Kolankiewicz

      

All those guys are gone now. My dad was the last of the flight crew and he died about a year ago. We grew up in a new suburb filled with newly minted GI bill, GI loan middle class. Almost all the neighborhood men were the same age and had been in the service, many of them combat veterans. We never heard much about the war. Most of them were certainly cynical about any kind of power structure and guys like my dad attributed their survival to dumb luck and the actions of their immediate crew. Some seemed to let it go more easily than others. My pal Jimmy's dad loved to shoot off his 45 into the bank behind his house. We thought that was so cool. We got to keep the brass and dig the bullets out of the bank. Great Uncle Frank was with Patton and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Mom told us not ask him how many Jerries he killed. Uncle Pat was a mate on an LST in the Pacific and was kind of a mean SOB. Mom didn't think it was the war, he was that way before he went in. At any rate, we weren't allowed to ask him how many Japs he killed. Uncle Vince on the Texas, Uncle Joe in the Dirigible Corps, Great Uncle Frenchy developed electronic marine mine detection equipment, Pete and Don in stateside support roles. Jack got in right after the war and served in occupied Germany. His stories were about beer and girls. My favorite uncle. So here's to all my fading neighbors who fought in the Big One and all those who fought and are fighting in all the little ones.

* Dad said the jets moved too fast to track with his turret, that by the time he spotted them they were through the squadron.. He thought they knocked one down but it was more a matter of the jet running into the bullet stream rather than the gunners being able to target them. The archives claim 3 enemy planes downed.
**According to the archives 4 chutes were spotted. Out of a crew of 9- 1 MIA, 3 KIA and 5 POW.

Greatest Health Care System in the World?

Maybe for John Boehner. But he's well covered (and not just with Ban de Soleil Mega Tan) by the federal government. But what about the rest of us? Those of us who are too lazy or stupid to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and become congressmen. I suppose that if number one means the freedom to go bankrupt because of medical bills, we fit that bill. USA! USA! But, really, by what metric are we number one? How do we compare with the rest of the western democracies? For the sake of clarity I'll limit the comparison to prosperous western democracies, the ones that supply health care to all their citizens.Unless you live in Texas or Mississippi it is hardly fair to compare our circumstances with the Republic of Congo. Lets take a tour -

Average life expectancy (from our friends at the CIA) :

1

Monaco

89.78

2010 est.

2	Macau	84.38	2010 est.

3	San Marino	82.95	2010 est.

4	Andorra	82.36	2010 est.

5	Japan	82.17	2010 est.

6	Guernsey	82.08	2010 est.

7	Singapore	82.06	2010 est.

8	Hong Kong	81.96	2010 est.

9	Australia	81.72	2010 est.

10	Canada	81.29	2010 est.

11	Jersey	81.28	2010 est.

12	France	81.09	2010 est.

13	Spain	81.07	2010 est.

14	Sweden	80.97	2010 est.

15	Switzerland	80.97	2010 est.

16	Israel	80.86	2010 est.

17	Iceland	80.79	2010 est.

18	Anguilla	80.77	2010 est.

19	Bermuda	80.60	2010 est.

20	Cayman Islands	80.57	2010 est.

21	Isle of Man	80.53	2010 est.

22	New Zealand	80.48	2010 est.

23	Italy	80.33	2010 est.

24	Liechtenstein	80.19	2010 est.

25	Norway	80.08	2010 est.

26	Ireland	80.07	2010 est.

27	Jordan	79.92	2010 est.

28	United Kingdom	79.92	2010 est.

29	Greece	79.80	2010 est.

30	Saint Pierre and Miquelon	79.74	2010 est.

31	Austria	79.65	2010 est.

32	Malta	79.59	2010 est.

33	Faroe Islands	79.58	2010 est.

34	Netherlands	79.55	2010 est.

35	Luxembourg	79.48	2010 est.

36	Germany	79.41	2010 est.

37	Belgium	79.37	2010 est.

38	Virgin Islands	79.19	2010 est.

39	Finland	79.13	2010 est.

40	Wallis and Futuna	78.83	2010 est.

41	European Union	78.82	2010 est.

42	Korea, South	78.81	2010 est.

43	Puerto Rico	78.77	2010 est.

44	Bosnia and Herzegovina	78.66	2010 est.

45	Saint Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha	78.60	2010 est.

46	Gibraltar	78.53	2010 est.

47	Denmark	78.47	2010 est.

48	Portugal	78.38	2010 est.

49	United States	78.24	2010 est.

50	Taiwan	78.15	2010 est.

OK. Top 50 isn't too bad. At least we beat Taiwan. And there is no indication that this is healthcare related, even though those countries that beat us have some version of Obamacare - only better. It may well be lifestyle. Compare a bunch of fish eaters to us Twinkie soaked Americans? - no fair!

If by best Speaker Boehner means most expensive he may well have a point-

  Per Capita health expenditures in US dollars:
Iceland - $3294
Australia- $3123
Canada- $3173
France - $3040
United Kingdom -$2560
Japan - $2293
United States - $6096

Yay! Numero Uno! We get to spend twice as much as those countries listed above and still manage to rank below them in average life expectancy. Maybe Boehner meant something else. Maybe he meant that, despite all evidence to the contrary, we think we have the best health care system in the world. Let's see - (from Fox news, no less)

Here's someone who's already laid it all out (I could have saved myself the trouble):
Percent of people who believe their health care system needs fundamental  change:

United States   60%
Sweden          58
United Kingdom  52
Japan           47
Netherlands     46
France          42
Canada          38

We won again. To recap - the United States has the best health care system if you are a wealthy Republican congressman. Or an Insurance executive. Or maybe a plastic surgeon. Basically Boehner is full of shit. But you knew that already. Boehner is afraid, and rightly so, that once the American people find out the benefits of the incremental changes in the admittedly flawed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act   they will come to view  universal health care as a fundamental right in a prosperous and civilized society.  Boehner and the Republican party has never gotten over the fact that Social Security and Medicare are popular and irreversible accomplishments of American progressives. Just like Boehner can't get over the tan tax.

He Promised He'd Never Hurt Me Again

Battered wife America has lifted the PFA against the Republican Party and agreed to a 2 year trial reconciliation. "He promised that he has changed" she said "And will never leave me broke and destitute and will never again touch the kids ( Defense, Social Security and Medicare), and never ever flirt  with that skank Discretionary Spending."

John Boehner, wearing an understated pale umber skin tone for the occasion, mentioned frequently that he has learned his lesson and will now work diligently to implement the Will of the American People. Not the american people of two or four years ago but the real American People. The half of the half of the people who agree with him, anyway. He outlined a specific plan for  revenue enhancements and spending cuts to control the burgeoning deficit. (Hah! Got ya! Just kidding)  After warning the President to play ball or he'll umm...uh... be sorry,  Boehner  choked up at the thought that a poor orange boy with plastic hair could rise from humble beginnings to become the Speaker of the house. Either that or he was stifling a chuckle at the fact that, in this economic climate, even a guy running on a family values platform who shows up wearing  a diaper and flanked by a hooker can get reelected as long as he has an R next to his name.

None Dare Call It Sleazin'

Do you ever get that "not so fresh" feeling?

 
Poor Ann Coulter. She's been kind of marginalized since the wingnuts have found fruitier loops in the box. Far fruitier. Even though the new breed, Palin, O'Donnell and Bachman have trouble generating a tweet between them and can't answer a direct question on any topic without resorting to Constitution, freedom or momma-somethings, they seem to have reduced Ann to a vague web presence and syndication in two bit small town newspapers (which counts for balance in these parts - point and counterpoint with Eugene Robinson - god help us). Even though Ann has managed (I assume on her own) to write whole books full of incoherencies and an actual column with real words and everything. Sad, really. Her desperate aging fame-whoredom reminds me of an aging hooker strutting around in her muffintop hot pants trying to get a reaction out of someone, anyone. At best Coulter's attempts at vitriol elicit the same confused and vaguely nauseated reaction as Wolf Blitzer and Chris Coons had during the debate.. Liberals? Yeah, I've heard of them. Kind of like the Whigs or something, right? But she gamely keeps applying the face paint and pressing on, hoping for some sort of reaction. Here's one, more out of pity than anything else:

In all of life's tribulations, there is nothing so aggravating as being condescended to by an idiot. In last week's CNN debate in the Delaware Senate race between the astonishingly well-spoken Christine O'Donnell and the unfortunate-looking Chris Coons, O'Donnell had to put up with it from Coons for 90 minutes.
O'Donnell wiped the floor with Coons, moderators Wolf Blitzer and Nancy Karibjanian, and the idiotic University of Delaware students asking questions – all of whom were against her.

Wiped the floor with Coons? Well, O'Donnell didn't throw up and no monkeys flew out of her ass so I suppose that counts as a victory of sorts. Astonishing is right. And I really think a woman with a bad dye job and an adam's apple shouldn't characterize anyone as "unfortunate looking". Stupid students, anyway. Always with the questions.

And the Problem Is...?

Yo! I'm talking to you

  "The social transformations we have seen over recent decades have complex causes, the roots of which are distant in time and have profoundly modified our perception of the world. ... If, on the one hand, humanity has seen undeniable benefits from these transformations and the Church received further stimuli to give reasons for the hope she carries, on the other, we have seen a worrying loss of the sense of the sacred, even going so far as to call into discussion apparently unquestionable foundations, such as faith in the God of creation and providence; the revelation of Jesus Christ our only Saviour, the shared understating of man's fundamental experiences like birth, death and family life, and the reference to natural moral law".

From the apostolic letter Ubicumque et Sempter (Everywhere and Always) issued Moto pro prio (because I can) to announce the founding of a new Vatican Agency tasked with evangelizing the backsliders. Issued originally only  in Latin and Italian. I suppose the Popester wanted to see how it played with the home team and Classics scholars before disseminating it in a language someone actually speaks. Sure there's the grudging admission that 400 years of post Enlightenment scientific and social progress in the Western European democracies has increased the standard of living beyond what 2000 years of Christian statehood could even dream of but don't these poor souls know that while their bellies are full, their souls are wandering thirstily in a spiritual desert. And even if these Europeans know, they don't appear to care. Funny how the least religious countries are the ones that you would most like to live in. Excepting the good ole USA, I guess. We appear to be a special case where evidence based knowledge and superstitious dumbassery uneasily coexist, often in the same person.

So good luck, Papa Bene. You're gonna need it. One question: If there is such a thing as Natural Moral Law why do we need religion at all?

Fox Hires Guy Named Juan

How about that. They are fair and balanced. NPR dumps Williams and he surfaces with a 2 million dollar contract from Fox News. Tragic. I know how Williams feels - guys in camo make me nervous.

Goo goo G'joob

Far out - if she is me than who am I or is I am you as you are he as we are all together? Freak me out - I think she is a witch

"I'm nothing like you've heard"
Are you anything like what you've said?

"I'll go to Washington and do what you'd do"
Visit the Hall of Human Origins? I doubt that.

You're At That Age...

When you can't get it up and you've forgotten everything you ever knew about cars. Seen that Viagra commercial with that "self reliant" can do guy driving through the desert in his primered '69 Camaro? He looks relaxed but more likely is depressed. Not only can't he get it up or afford to paint his car but everything is in black and white and he doesn't have so much as a bridge abutment to run into to end it all. Anyway, the car overheats and this guy rolls into a two bit service station, gets a liter of chilled water and pours it in the radiator and cruises on down the road. How he popped the radiator cap without suffering second degree burns and poured the ice cold water into radiator without cracking the block I do not know. My experience in cars of that era involved heavy towels, fountains of rusty scalding coolant and a lot of running around screaming "Oh, shit!". Maybe Mr. Self Reliant is at that age where he spent 3 hours trying to piss and everything cooled down by the time he got back to the car.

So he cruises back into town and pulls in next to the wifey's minivan. The implication being that she can't wait for her Mr. Softee  to get home.  Hope he remembered the boner pills or, at least, is good with his hands..

I Still Ain't Got It

You know how some people say "I'm not getting older, I'm getting better"? Well, those people can go fuck themselves because it ain't true. Nothing like 5 minutes on the soccer field to disabuse one of the notion that "young at heart" makes up for "old in body". It was during the weekly Giants vs. Trolls pickup game at soccer practice that I found out that my current limit of full tilt running is less than 5 seconds at a clip, followed by a ten minute recovery time. And I used to play club soccer in high school. Faster than most with no left foot (to clarify, I have a left foot but I just can't kick with it), I loved to race down the sideline and arc the ball towards the goal where those team mates more temperamentally suited  to pain would take the shots. It didn't even matter who it went to, I just loved that arc. Now I just dribble down my shirt. My brother was one of the inside guys due to a rather unique genetic mutation. Picture Schwarzenegger legs on a Pee Wee Herman torso (with a Grizzly Adams forehead) and you got yourself a striker.

What made my performance even more embarrassing was that every time I turned around one of the 57 little buggers was practicing his (or her) slide tackle and planting me on my ass.  Real funny, pick on the old guy. In my defense they were 3rd graders. Mostly.

Not a Winner

Well, it was 1.24 miles. That's a long way for an old guy. We'll do better next year if we don't get diverted again by George Washington or do a Rocky on the Art museum steps.

The Parkway Run/Walk was the wife's idea.She enjoys being part of a community fund raising effort. She likes people. Even around her. Strange. Me? I'd rather write a check. I don't travel well. But Brenda and Jas do. Especially Jas, being a hotel and hospital kid from all the operations, cancer treatments and doctor's visits. We stayed at the Hotel Windsor which I highly recommend. Clean and way cheaper than the Four Seasons. Efficiency, centrally located, nice restaurant down below and heated rooftop pool. I floated on my back and looked at the glass walled Comcast building towering above. Just like being in a commercial for the good life. Valet parking so these Jamaican guys disappear your car when you get there and if you need something out of it you have to get them to bring it back and disappear it again. I'm not sure I like that. I like having at least three vehicles and their contents wilthin easy reach. I guess you're supposed to tip them. Hell, I don't know - I did - every trip. Why I should care if a couple of Jamaican guys think that I am a clueless rube I do not know. But I do.

Philly makes me a little uneasy, although it seems cleaner and safer than when I was a kid. Part of the unease resulted from my wife's boy howdy attitude towards everyone she met as she dragged us to every fucking fountain in the city. I guess when you're from the suburbs of a cow pasture any conversational encounter is a good one. She is so nice that she will stop to give directions to total strangers even when we're lost. In my humble opinion, that's a little too nice.

Better class of bum than in the old days, too. More mellow. Not like the wild eyed obscene agressive juicers of my youth. Maybe they're dispensing Prozac down at the shelter. Here's where I get deep: You have to wonder what brought these men to this sorry state and how close any of us are to having our function switches turned off. I suspect any accidental turn of the screw could sit any one of us down at any time. I'm sure some of these guys had families. And some of them had stuff. I can almost see how it happens.

Don't Touch That Wiener!

Oh goody. Bachman, Palin, Angle - I guess the crazy just wasn't deep enough for the new Know Nothing Party. Of course, that was back in the 90's (the 1890's) before it was discovered that masturbation was good for you. After all, if Jesus didn't want you to masturbate he wouldn't have invented porn. Here's another tidbit from the Republican nominee for one of the Delaware Senate seats:

CHRISTINE O’DONNELL: Now, he said that it’s based on fact. I just want to point out a couple things. First of all, they use carbon dating, as an example, to prove that something was millions of years old. Well, we have the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens and the carbon dating test that they used then would have to then prove that these were hundreds of millions of years younger, when what happened was they had the exact same results on the fossils and canyons that they did the tests on that were supposedly 100 millions of years old. And it’s the kind of inconsistent tests like this that they’re basing their ‘facts’ on.

This is so unbelievably wrong on so many levels and there are so many logical fallacies embedded in that one statement that it is almost impossible to parse out what she is trying to say. The anti-intellectual fruits sprung from the poison seed of Rushdoony . We're a country half full of half educated dumb asses. Let's send one to the Senate.

Not Exactly Don Draper

Well, this is a little embarassing. I stopped in the company president's office this morning for a little chat and to brag about my mad estimating skills and about how I am the man. I was just getting into what percentage of total sales was the result of my bidding efforts when he looked at me and asked me if my shirt was on inside out. Shit. It was. I just walked out. God, I hope some of these jobs make some money.

More Invasion of the Species

My entire back yard was graded down to the clay when they built the highline next to the house. That was in 1913 and the soil has yet to recover. Shaded by a row of decaying rock maples,  the flat spots can grow only dirt and the occasional clump of quack grass and the railroad bank and fence line grow everything else, mostly a feeble vegetable garden and my collection of invasive plants. I do have some native plants - poison ivy and pokeberry. Yay.

Trumpet vine (Campsis radicans) - inherited this. The parent vine seems to have died but runners are popping up all over. No blooms this year, though.

Morning Glory (Ipomoea nil) - my fault. Can't say I wasn't warned. I managed to infest my father's place with these things and I heard about it until the day he died. They looked nice on his trellis, though. Supposedly the seeds have hallucinogenic properties if you eat hundreds of them. Blecch. Oddly enough I don't know if this is true. I also have a wild variety embedded in my garden that seems to propagate by runner instead of seed. I'll never get rid of it. It's the hydra of morning glories.

Garden of Invasive Species

Apparently, I am very, very good at growing invasive species. Invasive Species gardening is easy - they practically grow themselves! So easy you can do it, too. But if the DCNR gets wind of what's infesting my quarter acre estate they will order a napalm strike on my back yard.  Here are some ecology destroying plants that I either inherited or planted myself because I'm not all that bright :

G

Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima) - Jumped the railroad tracks about 30 years ago. Heaven must stink if it's full of these dirty, smelly useless punkwood bastards. Easy to uproot but they just keep coming back - prime candidate for chemical warfare.

Golden Bamboo (Phyllostachys aurea) - grabbed a couple of clumps as a screen for the railroad from an old homestead when I moved to town. It spread pretty well just north and south alone the high line bank although  over the last year or so a couple of shoots have escaped down into the yard. So what. What's it gonna do - disturb the dog shit? It would have to get by the chemical barrier my neighbor's massive English walnut puts up to escape west. There's a bridge north, the chemical wasteland of the double track east so all it can do is go  south. At the rate it's spreading it will be 50 years before it crosses the property line and I'll be dead or way beyond caring.  Besides it has to get by some other successful invaders to go any further. Stay tuned...