It’s Saturday morning at 0530, which means it’s weekly blog time again. But what I’m about to write isn’t what I had in mind when I sat down because just now, I had to slide my computer monitor about three inches closer to the edge of my desk so it would be in focus. Is that a function of the time of day and my yet-to-wake-up physical condition or is it time to change glasses? Again!

My eyes, like just about everyone my age, need a little help and have for a long time. Beside the fact that they don’t know red from green (or blue from gray, blue from purple, tan from….) they can’t see stuff that’s either up close or far away. The good news, however, is that they are both equally screwed up, so I can get away with nine dollar drug store glasses. But, the way my eyes keep coasting down hill, I’m keeping the glasses industry in business.

There isn’t a drawer, a shelf, a nightstand that doesn’t have at least three or four pair of too-weak glasses. They were fine last week, but now they can’t cut the mustard. In fact, the pair of 400’s I’m wearing right now were perfect for assuming my slouched-back-in-my-chair computer position only last night. This morning they don’t work. Or should I say my eyes don’t work. At this rate, I’m going to have equip my Pitts with a white cane and curb feelers by mid-afternoon. My long distance glasses and sunglasses are 250’s, which are what I used for readers only a couple of years ago and yesterday I noticed they aren’t quite right either. I guess it’s time for another visit to the on-line glasses emporium, Debby Burke (www.debspecs.com).  

This will sound like an ad for Burke, but it’s not. It is, however, an endorsement: they have a huge selection, their prices are right, and their delivery immediate. There: a short and sweet endorsement from someone who refuses to budge from his computer or pick up the phone in search of anything.

These don't look nearly as dumb as you'd think they would.

Here’s a tangential piece of information having nothing to do with age deterioration but is an example of Google replacing the Yellow Pages: I don’t like flying with a regular baseball cap because the bill is too long and I can’t bend my head back far enough to see over my head when in a steep bank or a loop. For a while, I cut down the brim on a hat and wore than, which looked really weird. Then I remembered umpires wear short brim hats for the same reason and to go under a catcher’s mask. It took me a while to figure out the right search words “base umpire hat” but I came up with what I was looking for at www.anacondasports.com. They come in 1 ½” (which are so short they look stupid), 2” (which are just right) and 2 ½” (which are too long). Just another piece of information from airbum.com that I know you’ve been searching for, right?

Anyway, as soon as I post this on Airbum, Debby Burke and her eyeglass munchkins are going to get yet another order from me. Now I have to find a place to put the glasses I received from them only last month. Of course, since my memory is going the way of my eyesight, I won’t remember where I put them anyway. And I don’t want to even talk about how tight my jeans are these days. Getting old is such a bitch!

22 Dec 07 –Confessions of a Project Junkie

Being an incurable project junkie, the holiday season is extremely dangerous for me. Because the holiday season breeds so many days that feel like a Friday, my brain wants to go into Friday Afternoon Mode and begins thinking of things it “wants” to do, rather than things it “should” do. I am constantly bedeviled by an overwhelming urge to say “To hell with it” and start a new project.

There’s a rush attached to finally pulling the trigger on a new project that, in my mind at least, is one of the most pleasurable feelings on Earth. Like most folks, I have a long list of sometimes silly, sometimes serious projects I’ve wanted to do most of my life and it’s during the holidays that I often lose control and kick some of them off.

It was on Xmas day, 1997 (I think), that I decided to dip my toe into the world of fiction writing. I always spend a few hours early Xmas morning sitting by myself planning what I’m going to do or who I’m going to become in the coming year.  The phone rang and it was my son, who had recently graduated from college. After the usual holiday talk, he said, “Okay, dad, I’m officially asking for advice. I just graduated and I’m trying to figure out what to do now.”

My response was, “I’m the last guy on the planet you should ask that, since the way I’ve lived my life is definitely not a good model for anyone. I am, however, going to tell you something I absolutely don’t want you to violate: don’t go into your late forties carrying any regrets of any kind. But first, understand what a regret is. It isn’t regretting not owning a Mercedes or anything like that. It is having a dream, whether big or small, and not pursuing it. You’re young and unfettered and right now you can do anything. So do it! If you don’t, you’ll coast into middle, and then old, age and that regret will become caustic and will continue eating at you until the day you die.”

He came back with, “Okay, but do you have any regrets?”

I thought about it for a moment and said, “Yes, I regret that I can’t write fiction and haven’t worked at it.”

“How,” he asked, “do you know you can’t write fiction?”

“I tried in college and it reeked!”

“Don’t you think you should try again?”

We hung up and I sat there in front of my computer for a few moments thinking about what he had said. There was a blank Word document on the screen and with absolutely no forethought or intentions, I turned to it and typed, He was out there. Somewhere. The pre-dawn light painted the desert in shades of purple-blacks and grays and he was waiting in the shadows. He had already proven himself a predator. And he was out there.

I had no plot in mind, no characters, no nothing, but the movie in my mind started rolling and I started writing. By the end of the day, I had 25 pages. By New Years day I had 325 pages and a novel named The Terror Brokers. And it truly sucked! But I didn’t know it at the time. Still, I had scratched an itch and had taken a divot out of a regret. I also unknowingly came up with a way of writing fiction that seemed to work and I still use it: I make believe I’m watching a movie and I’m describing it to a blind man. I don’t have it in me to be a fancy writer, so I just tell the story as I see it on the screen in my mind.

FYI- I’ve since written five novels but only allowed two of them, Cobalt Blue and The Stonewall File, to escape out into polite society. The next one, The Second City, is simmering on a back burner.

Kicking off that first novel infected me with “project glow,” where my brain is positively on fire with the new possibilities. And “project glow” is addictive. You begin wanting to start a new project just so you can feel it again. And again. Which explains why I have so many unfinished projects laying around. “Addictive” isn’t too strong of a word for the feeling and I’m fighting it like crazy.

I don’t need any more projects. Still Xmas is this coming Tuesday. Maybe I owe myself a present and should at least make a big step forward on a current project. Maybe get that octagonal, tapered barrel put on the rolling block action I’ve been diddling around with for years. Or maybe move The Second City to a front burner.

Still, I’ve always wanted to build a hyper-accurate, long range, iron sighted target rifle. Yeah, I know where I can get a Mauser action, and I could laminate a stock blank out of the walnut from my childhood tree back in Nebraska so it would be stable. I’d go with .308, a Douglas barrel and a Timney trigger and….

There I go: see what I mean?

16 Dec 07 – Christmas Lights and the Chinese Conspiracy

I have this theory that the Chinese understand our ways of thinking and our frustration levels much better than we think they do and they have some devious long term goals. All you have to do is look at Christmas lights to see this. Incidentally, since Marlene has taken over the entire hang-the-lights-on-the-house/trees/cactus program, what I’m reporting is from observations and the occasional trouble shooting foray into her usually-frustrating Christmas-time world.

First, I think the Chinese push their sales of Christmas lights by engineering in a form of programmed failure. For instance, why is it that a string of lights that worked perfectly, when you put them away, have some form of inscrutable, impossible-to-understand, glitch, when you hang them next year? Wires and light bulbs don’t have shelf lives. Or do they? Damn, the Chinese are clever!

I also think that the Chinese have figured out our weak spots, a) we’ll screw around with a gadget thinking we can fix it far longer than we should, which generates a high level of frustration that ALWAYS leads to b) saying to hell with it and buying a new set of lights, generally two, to have one as a back up to avoid another trip to the store.

Hidden within the previous scenario is a clever plot aimed at the long-term deterioration of the American spirit and an eventual Chinese take-over (I’m only half-joking here, folks).

Don’t kid yourself, the Chinese are capable of delivering quality levels as high as we are. Any nation that can be viewed as a viable military threat because of their missile and aerospace capabilities can certainly make tools better than we find at Harbor Freight and lights better than we mess with for a week before getting them to work. They are preying on our gullibility: we think we can pay two dollars for a set of lights or twenty dollars for a quarter-inch drill and it’ll last “almost” as long as a better one. They know we’ll dumpster dive to save a buck so they’ve set the hook for the frustration-leading-to-resale-leading-to-eventual-takeover scenario.

By flooding us with guaranteed-to-fail products they frustrate the general population just enough that it is a) easy sell a replacement item for the one that failed and b) keep us hooked on cheap crap, which further weakens our national resolve to rebuild our manufacturing base, which makes us even more dependent on the Chinese. The slide to the US becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of China, Inc. is in process in such subtle ways, we don’t even realize it. And it’s all rooted in our desire to get the lowest price, which forces American manufacturers to contract with the Chinese in the first place.

I definitely don’t hate the Chinese as a people. But I can’t help but fear them as a nation. If I hate anything, I hate what we’ve willingly let them make us into. I wish I had a fix for this, but I don’t, past avoiding Chinese products as much as possible (a near impossibility). This does not include egg rolls and mu shu pork, by the way.

I just can’t get past the feeling every time I see a gaily-decorated house, my own included, that each time the lights flash, China is flipping me the bird.

Ho-Ho-Ho doesn’t mean what it used to.

PS
I didn’t mean this to get serious. Sorry. Holidays bring out the Grinch in me. 

8 Dec 07 – The Day the Modern World Began

Today is December 8th, which means yesterday was the anniversary of the day that changed the world in ways we’re only just now beginning to fully appreciate. Oddly enough, many of the changes are good and wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for devastation and pain beyond comprehension.

Let’s look at the US, for instance. We were on the way to becoming a solid manufacturing nation, but the war accelerated that so wildly, that it is absolutely impossible to believe what we accomplished on the manufacturing front in such a short time and the legacy of that acceleration stood us in good stead for decades.

Some figures worth pondering: exactly nine months elapsed between Pearl Harbor and the Marines wading ashore at Guadalcanal. December 7th, 1941, the concept of amphibious landings didn’t even exist. In that short nine months the concept was developed and refined, the landing craft designed and built, the ships for carrying the men and equipment designed and built. Think of everything from shoelaces to training the men that had to be stirred into the pot. THEN IT ALL HAD TO BE SHIPPED TO THE SOUTH PACIFIC!!!  Unbelievable.

My favorite number is the Sherman tank: approximately 49,243 were built in three years by eleven companies. That’s one tank every fifteen minutes, ten hours a day for three years.

Could we do any of the above today? Not likely!

But, our manufacturing wouldn’t have rocketed upward like it did if it hadn’t been for women. After the War, German leadership freely admitted that they had miscalculated America’s ability to respond because they didn’t figure we’d put women to work. Besides giving us a huge edge in war production, bringing women so solidly into the work place changed the face of American business and the way the sexes interfaced from that time on.

Japan and Germany were literally flattened, but look what rose from the ashes. If Japan had continued on the internal course it was pursuing in 1940 (ignoring their expansionist programs), they would have been so restricted by their own leadership that they never would have developed into the economic and manufacturing power they are today. They still, to a large extent, play down the war in their history books and national remembrances (other than to point a nuclear finger at us) but, as painful as it was, they owe who they are to having been torn down and rebuilt from the round up. Initially, the rebuilding was done with American money, something they seem to forget.

Germany is a ditto to the foregoing: they would be a different, much less happy or prosperous, nation today if it hadn’t been for the war. Actually, in their case, had Hitler not been such a nutcase and determined on taking on the world, they would have probably come out of the depression and prospered. A different leader would have gone another direction, but being put through such a brutal form of regime change, reset their mental processes and pointed them in a new and terrific direction.

Of course, if we’re going to be brutally honest about it, we have to admit that in doing such a good job of helping rebuild Germany and Japan, we created the chief competitors for future generations of American businessmen.

As you all know, I have an incredible soft spot for the American soldier and December 7th can’t come and go without me constantly thinking of them and what they did for history. At the same time, I date the birth of the modern world, as we now know it, as December 7th, 1941. The ultimate act of terrorism set a much needed world change in motion and we’re still feeling its effects.

1 Dec 07 – I Just Wanna be Left Alone

The other day I received a note that said, “I read a lot of what you write and agree with most of it, but you’re entirely too profane. I couldn’t finish your novels because of that. Why don’t you think about changing?  God, bless you.” Give me a break!

I sat there for a couple of minutes with a thousand smart alec remarks ricocheting around inside my head before answering. When I did, I took the high road rather than giving into my baser instincts and replied, “I guess I just live in a more profane world than you do. Sorry.”

I swear too much. There, I’ve admitted it. But, I don’t think that makes me a bad person. I’ll tell you one thing though: I’m really getting tired of people trying to foist their beliefs and behavioral patterns off on me. I don’t do that to them, so what gives them the right to do it to me?

Just about everything I’m passionate about, from flying to firearms to hotrods, etc., is under fire from do-gooders somewhere. They feel it is their right to tell me I don’t need a rifle with more than ten rounds or a fun-loving little airplane that can do cartwheels or a funky little car with no fenders. I’m not hurting anyone. I’m environmentally conscientious and I do my best to be considerate of my fellow man. Still, they feel it necessary to not only tell me how to run my life, but the politicians amongst them feel it necessary to make me a retroactive criminal by passing laws against what I do or own.

As an example, I’ve been an active gun owner/enthusiast/historian/shooter for over half a century and not once have I seen a pro-gunner hounding someone and saying “You have to own a gun. You have to!” Still, think of all the energy and rhetoric the other side expends saying we shouldn’t have guns. It’s the same thing with airplanes and so many other things I love: I’m always involved in a defensive action, not an offensive one. And I’m getting tired of defending myself and what I do.

There’s no possible way you can have an intelligent conversation with someone who is anti-gun any more than you can argue blondes versus redheads. Their mind is made up. So I don’t have those conversations with the anti-gun crowd. However, I do have a fifty-year history of trying to have conversations with people around airports who complain bitterly about our existence and the concept is similar. I’ve been based on many airports and every one of them had a local group lobbying to close it down.

In the course of those conversations one fact ALWAYS emerges: the people who are complaining the most, whether it’s guns, airplanes or whatever, have no passions or specific interests of their own. They see us doing something they don’t and it automatically irritates them. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. The current airplane foe I’m fighting (in a very tactful, friendly way, I might add) looked me right in the eye and said the reason he was filing so many complaints was because he just didn’t want me flying over his neighborhood. Simple as that. He just didn’t want me overhead (at 1100 feet with the power back). And no amount of explaining my mission (training) was going to change that. He’d continue haranguing the airport and the city council until the airport was gone (the nation’s busiest single runway airport, by the way). His only passion appears to be complaining so I just make it a point to avoid his neighborhood. But he still complains. .

And now I have someone telling me to stop swearing because it bothers them. Actually the line in his e-mail said “…it makes me so dad-gum upset…”  Honest, that’s what it said. I don’t swear in front of ladies or in situations that it’s clearly inappropriate, but in some situations, a good healthy “damn!” sums up a lot of emotions. And “sh*t”  covers so much ground in a frustrating situation, that there is simply no substitute.

So, I guess I’ll go on swearing, shooting, flying, hot rodding or whatever, and continue irritating a certain percentage of the population. What else can I do? After all, all I want is to be left alone, so screw ‘em all!

25 Nov 07 – DNA and the Character of America

Years ago I ran into an old copy of Science Newsletter mixed in with other out-of-date magazines in a doctor’s lobby. A weekly publication, its purpose in life was to keep us up on what had happened in science that week. In this issue, a feature article described a study that seemingly proved risk takers to have discernibly different DNA making them a slightly different species from the rest of us. That got me thinking about America: weren’t we settled by a bunch of radical risk takers and does that explain something about our national character?

Those first boat loads of people who set off for America had no idea what they were getting into. What they did know was that America was pure wilderness and to get there they’d have to spend two months or so bobbing around in the Atlantic ocean in a tiny boat. That’s a helluva risk, wouldn’t you say? No one would take that trip who wasn’t a risk taker. So, if you extend that thought, that means the breeding stock upon which much of America is based had a different DNA so we had no choice but to be a nation of risk takers?

Now, let’s take the above just a little further. When we were a string bean country that was clinging to the eastern seaboard, everything on the other side of the Appalachians, especially places like Kentucky, were looked at as if they were on the other side of the moon. In fact, the Indians (who we had yet to recognize as Native Americans) had lots of spook stories about the region around Kentucky. Still, colonists began pushing west, many lining up behind the likes of Daniel Boone, to wend their way through mountain passes and hostile natives to “go where no man had gone before.” It could clearly be said that those who left the security of the East Coast were more willing to take risks than those who they were leaving behind who have already been proven to be risk takers. Does this say something about the differences between peoples in various parts of the country?

The West has an image of daring do and it’s not entirely because of the movies. To this day, The West represents a hostile environment with the only difference between then and now, being that no one is shooting arrows at the residents any more Even today, parts of the west literally dare man to try to do something with it and so he has. Not that Las Vegas or Phoenix are the pinnacle of anything, but considering where they are located, certainly no one would have attempted a settlement there who was afraid of risk.

Everything about the old west challenged man and it weeded out those who weren’t strong and ready to match its challenges. Isn’t that the way we still see The West versus The East? One group is a little rough around the edges and more insular, but definitely ready to take on all comers while the other is more sedate, more group-oriented and less likely to have grease under their fingernails. One isn’t better than the other, but I do think this is part of the reason East and West don’t always get along.

So, if you put any faith in the DNA theory of risk, what we apparently have is a nation of born risk takers that range from your everyday risk taker in the East to hair-on-fire risk takers in the west. Yeah, I’d say that’s about right, wouldn’t you?

17 Nov 07 – The Writers' Strike: lives seldom realized

The world is full of mirages and misunderstood phantoms. As I read about the movieland writers strike, I couldn’t help but include the writer and his life among the mirages and misunderstandings we all live with. The writer’s life is definitely not as it appears and his complaints are valid. Unfortunately, however, the world is rapidly developing a digital alter-ego, which has trapped writers and almost everyone associated with his product between several digital rocks and lots of cyber hard places.

When the public sees a writer’s byline, whether it’s in a magazine or on the screen, there’s a subliminal assumption that the writer got lots and lots of money for his words. If that weren’t the case, goes the assumption, his name wouldn’t be right there in front of God and the reading/seeing public. That’s usually not the case.

Part of the erroneous image is rooted in news stories that chronicle some young writer who lands a multi-million dollar script or book deal on his first time out of the chute. Although the general public recognizes this is a one-in-a-million happening, as soon as they see another writer doing an article or selling a book, they seem to think there is little, or no, difference. The truth is that there are practically no outlets for everyday writers that can generate a living wage. Let me say that more clearly: IT’S NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE TO MAKE A LIVING BY ONLY WRITING.  For that reason, when a writer finally does get a by-line or screen credit, they absolutely need the income they feel is owed them for creating that particular combination of words.

The basis for the screenwriters’ strike is that their work is showing up in dozens of new venues for which they weren’t compensated when the piece was originally submitted. Although that last sentence seems simple, it’s not because what has happened during the DVD/WWW explosion is extremely complex. Dozens of new venues to show or present their work have suddenly surfaced. The studios/publishers see a way to make some income (they are often in worse financial shape than the writers) from a product that is already in hand and want to hang on to as much of the profit as they can. They feel the writer has been paid once, why should he get paid again for a secondary use of his work?

The writer, on the other hand, feels the company is making money from their work, so they should share in the profits. Which seems logical, but from the publisher/studio side, this squeezes an already small profit. So, the stage is set for a battle. Also, the stage is changing so rapidly that regardless of what happens in the strike, the writers will continue to get screwed and publishers/studios will continue to go broke. And it’s only going to get worse.

Most people reading have some sort of narrow niche interest such as airplanes or cars, etc.. And most know the names of many of their favorite writers who publish magazine articles on a regular basis. Do you want to know what most of those writers are being paid? $400-$850/article with $500 being a good average, and the writer only publishes an article every other month or so because the magazines only need just so many articles. Writers can’t pay the bills on that. By the same token, publishers can’t pay them much more than that and stay afloat. Yes there are super star writers in monster magazines, like Sports Illustrated, who make much more than that, but “nut book” writers never make more than that and most make much less.

Incidentally, the average $500 nut book article runs 1500-2000 words (5-7 typewritten pages) and takes ten-fifteen hours to totally finish, including research, editing, etc. $30-$50/hr ain’t bad, but it pales beside the $75/hr Nissan mechanics make and the $125/hr you pay a plumber. Also, a plumber doesn’t have to put up with his work showing up in re-prints of the magazines, on publisher websites, or on CD/DVD’s.

Writers may appear to live a glamorous, effortless life, but few lives include more insecurity and stress than a writer’s. So, the next time you see something and say, “I could have written that!” go ahead and do it. But do so knowing that in entering the wonderful world of publishing/movie making, you’re about to dance on quicksand and will probably get screwed in the end (and you can interpret that any way you want).

3 Nov 07 – Sticky Notes and Me

I can imagine a world without soda (I’m a sodaholic). I can even imagine a world without TV. I cannot, however imagine a world without Sticky notes. These are, in my humble opinion, 3M’s most worthwhile contribution to mankind (followed closely by duct tape).

I’m more than just a little addicted to Stickies, and apparently, I’m not alone: they wouldn’t be making electronic sticky note software for our computers, if I were the only one who depended on them. However, even though a series of electronic Stickies cascades down my computer desktop, they aren’t the real thing. There is simply no substitute for a yellow square stuck where it’s not supposed to be to call your attention to something.

Mice make their presence known by leaving brown “sprinkles” everywhere they go (how can they poop that much and not shrivel down to nothing?). You can tell where I’ve been by yellow Stickies and empty diet soda cans. This may be some sort of marking-my-territory thing, since it’s not PC to lift your leg, but I don’t think so. I think it’s my way of avoiding having to remember anything.

My brain seems to function okay (most of the time), but the “save” key doesn’t  work worth a damn. I’ll have something cross my mind that I recognize as a good idea, or I remember something I’m supposed to do, and, if I don’t write it down right that instant, it’s gone. I mean totally erased, never to be seen again. So, jotting it down on a Sticky and sticking it somewhere has become a reflex action.

The result of continually substituting Stickies for my brain is that my life is a series of yellow rats’ nests. For instance, there is a two-foot square section on the wall right next to the bedroom toilet totally covered in Stickies. I guess I think best sitting down. Or is that too much information? Sorry.

The wall-sized bathroom mirror has a wide band of Stickies from above my head down to the counter top. Plot ideas and scenes for whatever novel I’m hacking on at the time stare at me every time I shave.

And then there is my office area: to the casual observer, it looks as if a grenade went off in a Sticky factory. But, don’t let anyone kid you; the wall behind the computer holds several decades of important advice, plans and the random philosophical thought.

My computer monitors serve as bulletin boards for the more important Stickies. They totally cover the frame of my left monitor and an anal-appearing double column of custom made Stickies march down the screen. I cut the pads to 1/2” tall (on a sheet metal shear) so the back is all glue and each one holds a single task for the day. When the screen displays no more baby Stickies (stickettes?), I must have caught up. So far, that has never happened.

I put the invention of Stickies right up there with toilet paper, mechanical pencils and elastic bands on underwear. I don’t know how the world could function without any of them. 

20 Oct 07 – Acquired Taste: I just don't get it

It’s a fact of life that some of us have traits that cause others to look at us with a “Really?!” look in their eye. As if we’re not quite normal. I’ve always had to deal with a number of those: First, I’m from Nebraska (“really! You’re the first I’ve met.”). Second, I’m colorblind (“Really! What color does this look?). And third, I don’t drink (Really! Did you have a problem?”).

People understand color blind and Nebraska because I can’t do anything about them, but the not drinking thing often brings them up short: surely it indicates, some deep, dark secret because that’s a voluntary decision and no one would purposely avoid the fun times of good wine/whiskey/beer. They’re right, it’s a voluntary decision, but it’s not a complicated one. I don’t have religious/moral/physical reasons for not drinking, nor am I dancing through some sort of twelve-step program. I don’t drink because the concept of an acquired taste has never made any sense to me. If it doesn’t taste good the first time, why do it a second time?

Yeah, baby. I'm a Saggitarius too. Hic!

Okay, I know I’m in the minority here, and I really don’t mind that I’m always the designated sane person at any Saturday night get-together larger than two people (including me), but think about it: try to remember your very first taste of beer or whisky. It tasted like panther piss, right? Plus, It’s seldom, if ever, that first taste is done solo. You’re generally in the company of your peer group, which generally is under age (does anyone, anywhere, actually start drinking at the legal age?) and therein lies the secret of acquired taste.

You take a sip, your face screws-up in that universal “yeeeeccch” look we learned as babies, and one of your friends says, “Just keep drinking, it’ll get better.” It’s pretty funny, if you think about it. What’s actually happening is that the first time you drink, the more you drink, the dumber your taste buds become and your increasingly addled brain (aided by a pep squad of friends) convinces you that you like it.   This is always the basis of acquired taste of any kind: your friends keep you going until you’ve convinced yourself it tastes good enough to do it again.

Screw it! Call my boss and tell 'em I'm sick.

I’m not sure how people justify the brutally painful hang-over. Here too, it’s an acquired thing. I have a simple rule: if it hurts, don’t do it again. So, I don’t.

Oh, wait a minute….that’s not entirely true is it? Huh! I may be doing some selective preaching here and maybe I actually do have a little insight into acquired taste and didn’t realize it.

Just as no one actually likes their first sip of booze, almost everyone remembers the first time they pulled the trigger on something big like a 30-06. It hurt! I some cases, a lot. I remember being around nine years old, when dad helped me hold up a 12 gauge while I pulled the trigger. Wow! There’s a reason I remember that. Problem is, I also remember I couldn’t wait to do it again. Maybe the noise and the effect over powered the pain. Today, I’ll happily sit at a shooting bench all afternoon throwing fat slugs down range to accomplish nothing more than punching a few holes in a faraway piece of paper. Each time the trigger is touched, my shoulder pays for it and three days later I can still feel the effect of that afternoon of thunder.

And then there’s aerobatics: if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times to my students: “After three or four hours, you’ll build up a tolerance to it and the nausea will go away.” Simple aerobatics is totally painless, but the hardcore stuff hurts. Before the days of lap pads, I’d come back from a hard session with bruises on my thighs and a grin on my face from doing things the human body was NEVER intended to do. It took me a while to work up to that level but eventually I came to enjoy it, pain and all.

Okay, so maybe I’m wrong about the acquired taste thing. But at least after an afternoon of beating up my shoulder or scrambling my innards, I’m not loud and obnoxious. Well…not much more than usual, anyway.

13 Oct 07 – Measuring Life By a Monkey Wrench

Like so many of my compadres, I am a card-carrying, advanced crap collector: I’m always on the lookout for the unique and the interesting, whatever that may be. I only have one requirement: it must touch some fiber of my being that gives me pleasure every time my eyes light upon it. It’s seldom, however, that I learn as much from one of my finds as I did from the monkey wrench that recently came to live with me.

The AZ Redhead and I were meandering through a nothing-special antique store, when I spotted a little turn-of-the-century monkey wrench. I had never seen one so small, about six inches, and it was…for lack of a better word…cute. It instantly met the first requirement of crap collecting: it touched me. It also met the second crap-collecting commandment: it was cheap. At five bucks, it was virtually free. Few things that cost five dollars today are guaranteed to give you a lifetime of pleasure.

Now THAT's cute!

After getting it home, one of the first things I learned from this pretty little tool is that you can’t hide from Google. A few taps of the keys and my screen was full of references to the Coes Wrench Company, Worcester, Mass. In less than three minutes of digital detective work I found that my wrench was probably made around 1900. Plus the term “Monkey Wrench” supposedly comes from the reputed inventor of the concept, Charles Moncky, in the 1870’s.

Do you ever think how many trips to the library and how much time this kind of fact finding would have taken BC, Before Computers?

The second thing I learned is that the world of the serious collector, of which I am most definitely NOT, has been totally twisted out of shape by the Internet. Collectors used to search through life’s debris just the same as I do, but they are searching for specific items, where I go for anything with a high cool-factor. The Internet changed all of that, something I hadn’t thought about until I keyed “Coes Wrench Company” into Google: besides, finding more than any sane person needs to know about monkey wrenches, I found no less than three “for sale” listings for wrenches just like mine on the first page, with several folks offering all sizes of them. That’s when I realized the entire collecting game has changed.

Looking for an 1857 Single Eagle Widget in super-fine condition? Just Google it. It’s out there. No more dusty antique shops, no more long drives through the country, no more feeling like Howard Carter digging through the sands in search of Tut’s tomb. And that’s incredibly sad, since the search is at least as satisfying as actually finding the object.

I learned something else from my little monkey wrench—my life is too complicated. The wrench lies on my desk next to my hyper-fast, 2.66 ghz, dual core computer and not once have I had to reboot it to clear up a problem. I haven’t worried about it lying on my desktop too long and becoming corrupted or getting whacked by a power interruption. I haven’t had to think about updating to Wrench 7.01, and not once have I thought about a virus rendering it useless. Still, it’s always ready do the job for which it was designed.

In a beautiful, vaguely blacksmithy sort of way, my little treasure reminded me that we’ve complicated our lives almost beyond recognition. It also showed me that the old phrase, “…that really tossed a monkey wrench into the works,” may no longer be a bad thing. In this case, a monkey wrench tossed into my life certainly showed me that my “works” needs simplifying. How about yours?

6 Oct 07 – American Art Forms: In the eye of...

It seems as if it is universally agreed (in Europe at least) that America hasn’t contributed a hell of a lot to world culture, which I think is wrong. In my eyes, there are at least three uniquely American art forms that stand as noteworthy contributions to the world of art. They are: Jazz/Rock and Roll, Hotrods and Kentucky Rifles.

Jazz, and its street level siblings, blues and rock and roll, has its roots in Africa but it needed the American Black Experience to make it happen: a combination of agriculture to foster the field hollers, rural life to start the blues rolling and cities, with their juke joints, to bring it all into focus.

Okay, so it isn’t Beethoven or Bach, but it’s hard to boogie to the classics. Jazz/blues/rock and roll, however, is visceral music that touches something inside us that the classics don’t. And the world has very clearly fallen in love with it.

Does this say "America" or what?

Auto art is the result of America’s unique relationship with the automobile: the world had cars almost as soon as we did, so what about America caused the automobile to become a cult object of many diverse varieties? And why did America give birth to hotrods, when Europe went for sports cars? Is there any thing more obviously American and more universally loved than a high-boy ’32 Ford roadster, no fenders, gleaming engine exposed and a driver with a cat-eating grin ear to ear?

And then there is the Pennsylvania Long Rifle, aka Kentucky rifle. If you don’t know the rifle, picture every pioneer movie you’ve ever seen from Mel Gibson in “The Patriot” to “Last of the Mohicans” and the super long muzzleloader the hero carried. That’s an American Long Rifle and it started out as a short, large caliber “jaeger,” which came over from Europe with those who settled Pennsylvania shortly after 1700 (see LongRifle for a much more detailed explanation).

The quintessential combination colonial tool and art form

As the land was conquered and fortunes were made, the rifle became a canvas upon which the gunsmith could not only show his carving and engraving skills, but the owner carried it as a symbol of his status. By 1770, the rifle had emerged as something uniquely American and much more than simple folk art.

I’m totally aware that those imbued of European tastes (meaning a little wussie) see these art forms as crude and vulgar. But, you can’t dance to a painting, shoot a sculpture or drive like the hammers of hell in a Michaelanglo. None of us claim that Americans are sophisticated but we sure as hell know how to have fun.

29 Sept 07 – Ken Burns, The War, The Vets, and Me

This has been War Week around our household and any of you who haven’t been following PBS’s airing of Ken Burns’ documentary, The War, are missing a monumental piece of filmmaking. Find it. Watch it. They are repeating it constantly this week.

Burns focuses on the effect of the war in four small towns and, in watching, I can’t help but think of my upbringing in a small town in Nebraska during the fifties: at that time you didn’t even think about the vets because they were all around you. My generation, the so-called Baby Boomers, was raised by the Greatest Generation and it definitely had an effect.

Being an airplane nut from the time I took my first breath, I was naturally drawn to those who had flown during the war, but even so, in later years it amazed me to find that some of the “grown ups” I knew on a daily basis had backgrounds I had never suspected because they simply didn’t talk about it.

It knocked me on my butt to read in his obituary that mild mannered Mr. Struthers (Stanley’s father) our local tailor, had flown A-20 Havoc’s in the war. It’s hard to picture him streaking across the treetops machine guns blazing. And Mr. Downing in the post office flew TBM’s and SBD’s in the Navy: the guy who looked down over the tall counter and handed me the mail had countless carrier landings in the Pacific but I never had one conversation with him about combat. He just didn’t see it as being a necessary subject.

Even our coach (it was a small school so he coached everything), Ralph Bowmaster, was a Corsair pilot and, you guessed it, we never talked about it.

One gentleman who did talk to me about WWII was Fred Deeds, our low-key chemistry/science teacher. For whatever reason, he irritated the hell out of lots of students, but we somehow made a connection. Probably because I too irritated the hell out of lots of students. 

Fred Deeds and many of my heroes flew early P-51B's in the 354th Fighter Group

Part of our connection was because I showed a serious interest in airplanes and he had a serious interest in keeping me from becoming even more of a juvenile delinquent than I already was. I remember him standing behind me in the lobby during a dance, as I was combing my ducktail in the mirror in the back of the trophy case. I was wearing a black shirt with pink tie under an off-white sports jacket accessorized with cuffed jeans and engineer boots. He was lecturing me about what it took to be an adult and I wasn’t it.

He had flown P-51B’s and had been part of the 354th Fighter Group, the first to take Mustangs into combat and the first over Berlin. It was a legendary outfit of soon-to-be heroes and he’d actually been on the wing of Don Beerbower, then leading ace of the AAF, when Beerbower was shot down while they strafed an airfield.

Deeds loaned me his “annual,” a thick book the 354th put out after the war that included pictures of everyone, including him, and activities that surrounded them. It smelled of mothballs but it lit the fire that led me to start learning to fly shortly before I turned sixteen. He laid the groundwork that would put me where I am today.

We talked often about his time as a fighter pilot and I’m certain that I’m one of the few to whom he let his frustrations at not having stayed in the Air Force show. As with so many of his generation, The War had been a high point in terms of knowing who they were and what they were supposed to do, and many spent a lifetime looking for that kind of purpose again.

The world owes that generation a debt that cannot be repaid but often overlooked among what is owed is that they were our fathers, our teachers and our friends during the formative years of our youth. They, in effect, made us who we are, both good and bad, and I don’t know how you thank someone for that.

20 Sept 07 – The Mummy on Highway 69

I always seem to be sitting somewhere writing about stupid stuff and right now I’m sitting by the side of the road in a very dead Ford passenger van. The name of the shuttle company is proudly displayed on the side. It’s August in Arizona, which is to say, if this thing had died twenty minutes ago, before we climbed up out of the valley, we’d be crispy critters in about ten minutes. They are predicting 111 today. At this altitude, we’re okay: we have a solid twenty minutes before they find our mummified bodies, one with an iBook stuck to its lap. Not to worry.

There are only two of us on board. Carol, a nice lady from Washington, DC, is on her way to relocate her 91-year-old mother-in-law back to the Belt Way. I’m on my way to pick up my Pitts after having a bunch of engine work done on it. I hope this isn’t an omen.

I don’t remember the last time I had an engine in a car actually flat out die. Oddly enough, it’s only been a little over a year, however, since I had a trio of engine failures in my airplane. Like I said, I hope this isn’t an omen.

Modern cars have raised reliability to new highs. So high, that people take them for granted. Even here in AZ, where a break down in the wrong place can be fatal, people trust their cars, which is a mistake. Regardless of how modern we think civilization has become, there are lots of situations where civilization won’t help. Summer in the West, for instance, can be damn dangerous. If you breakdown on a side road and can see civilization in the distance, unless you’re carrying plenty of water you’ll die trying to get there. Guaranteed.

Almost every year here in Phoenix we hear of some tourists who decided to go exploring and died, not because their car broke down, but because they assumed this is modern times and The West has somehow become less hostile. Wrong! True Zonies carry water, and lots of it, in their car.

Different areas have different threats. When I was growing up in Nebraska, if a blizzard was coming in, you made it a point to make sure someone knew where you were going. And you didn’t venture out in a true blizzard unless you were really, really…I’m looking for a word but “stupid” is the only one that comes to mind.

Still, blizzards, oceans and some of Ma Nature’s other favorite tricks are much more obvious than the heat and low humidity that makes The West so dangerous so you know to give them a wide berth. In The West, it isn’t so obvious because it doesn’t have to be blistering hot to kill you. Lots of times it feels perfectly comfortable but you don’t realize the humidity may easily be five to ten percent, which means you’re always in the early stages of of mummification. So, you drink, drink and drink some more. If you feel thirsty, you’re already behind the curve.

The bottom line is, we shouldn't just jump in our car assuming it is going to get us where we're going. Whether we're transiting a particularly bad part of town or tryng to beat a coming blizzard we should always be equipped to handle whatever hostility that particular locale has to offer.

Anyway, enough rambling. If, for some reason, this is the last blog that shows up on Airbum, send someone up Highway 69 north of Phoenix and have them download my lap top. My last words will probably be recorded and will be something to the effect of, “I’d kill for a diet Dr. Pepper.” But, please don’t put that on my tombstone.

10 Sept 07 – Puppy Outlaw

As this is being written, it’s 0550 hours and I’m sitting on the tiled floor of a bathroom in the Sheraton Inn-LAX. I have two pillows under me, a pillow behind me, my lap top in my lap and a seven-week-old puppy, snuggled up against my bare thigh slowly chewing on my shirt tail as she goes back to sleep. This is what it has come to. I’m living the life of a puppy outlaw. We are—and I hate to admit it— hotel canine smugglers. I hope my friends will forgive me.

Meet Sháhn-deen: it would take a seriously hard nosed security guard to throw this in jail.

I doubt seriously if Marlene and I are alone in our smuggling activities. Nor are we new to the trade. Every since we found we didn’t like being separated from our dogs we have engaged in a subversive game of hide-and-seek with hotel clerks, security guards and maintenance people. We have annotated all of the Bourne Identity movies borrowing heavily on the hero’s evasive moves. This doesn’t come to us naturally. In fact, we don’t cheat on our taxes, try to pass for students at theaters, or otherwise walk on the dark side. We pride ourselves in our honesty.  But, as we have found, even honesty has its limits.

First, you should know that next to honesty, we rate being considerate to our fellow man highest in the way in which we conduct ourselves. So, we fully understand the necessity of hotels having “no pet” rules. I guess our problem is the definition of “pet:” how can something that occupies such a large part of our heart be a pet? If she occupies our home as if she’s a well-behaved young person, how can we treat her as an animal when out in public?

Although some people’s kids display distinctly animalistic traits, when in public, I don’t expect them to be caged, locked in trunks or left chained in the backyard, although in some cases, none of those are bad ideas. I’m happy to inhabit a hotel in which they are staying. I won’t call management, when I hear them crying, coughing or threatening to throw their sister out the window. That’s just the kind of soft-hearted souls we are. 

First you should know that Sháhn-deen (Navajo for ray of sunshine) is, at this point, not even two pounds. She’s a lump of red/tan fur barely larger than your hand with the face of a baby Ewok. In fact, she melts hearts so instantly that, if we’re discovered sneaking her in, it would take a truly hardnosed security guard to clap us in irons.

Because she’s so tiny, she fits nicely in a special purse that ostensibly is a dog carrier, but is obviously designed for the canine smuggler trade. I theorize that the ready availability of so many luggage lookalike dog carriers indicates the extent of canine hotel smuggling activities worldwide.

Okay, we know: just because others do it, doesn’t make it right. As far as that goes, we don’t care if others do it. We do it because it’s necessary for our peace of mind that our babies not be left alone. I can’t vouch for other smugglers, but we have a nearly sterile approach to it, including folding cages, play blankets, huge pee-mats (seldom needed), and, as my sitting here on the floor to keep Sháhn-deen from either crying or barking indicates, we’re considerate of those around us.

4 Sept 07 – Save the Sub: U-534 to be cut up

Okay, right up front I have to admit that I don’t make saving German U-boats a habit. In fact, I don’t remember the last time I asked someone to sign a save-the-submarine petition. In fact, I don’t think petitions work. Especially when there’s lots of money at stake. But what the hey, I feel as if I have to do something because the world (in this case some folks in the UK) are about to make another short term decision that will have long-term historical consequences.

History, in the form of its artifacts, is incredibly fragile. In fact, the only way to truly protect historical artifacts is to not find them in the first place. Mummies that have survived underground for millenniums are now lying in museums subject to the whims of civilization. Although they were slowly deteriorating underground, politics, depressions and wars couldn’t touch them. Put them in a museum, however, and as soon as the crap hits the fan and a civilization slides down hill, historical artifacts are of no practical use and will disappear. Museums are the first thing to feel a financial squeeze and the last thing to be protected in a war. Eventually, every civilization reaches the point that if you can’t eat it, to hell with it, and historical artifacts fall in that category. Still, at the present time, we have them in our care and need to do the best we can by them. Enter the U-534.

A IXC class submarine isn’t an arrowhead. It’s definitely not a tidy little artifact that you can put in a frame and hang on a wall. In fact, the IXC U-boats were the largest Germany produced and there are reportedly only two still in existence and the fact the U-534 still exists is something of a miracle: the war was within a few weeks of being over when a UK Liberator depth charged and sank it. The damage wasn’t catastrophic and the crew survived.  Fortunately, the water wasn’t deep and in 1993 a wealthy Dane financed the successful recovery effort. What follows next is a classic example of why we can’t protect artifacts. Especially big ones.

The U-534 was supposed to be displayed in perpetuity at the Nautilus Maritime Museum in Birkenhead, Wirral (near Liverpool). That was until the real estate became too valuable and high-rise condos seemed more important than this humungous artifact. Screw history! We need more tacky apartments. You know the rest.

The present plans are for a group to cut the gallant old boat (which, incidentally never scored a kill on an Allied ship) to be torched into three pieces and trucked off to be displayed God knows where and in what condition. Considering the time capsule of technology she represents and her rarity, she disserves better. Future generations disserve better.

I don’t know if the petition represented by the following link http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/save-and-preserve-the-historic-ww2-u-534-u-boat.html will do any good, but it’s better than nothing. The generations on both side of the largest conflict in history will be gone in a few years, unfortunately, an amazingly large percentage of the artifacts that tell us of that time have preceded them.  In the interest of cleaning the landscape and recycling, we lost sight of what we owe future generations. Maybe this time we can think a little further ahead and not make a decision we’ll rue a few years down the road.

For more  information, go to http://uboat.net/boats/u534.htm
To sign the petition, go here: http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/save-and-preserve-the-historic-ww2-u-534-u-boat.html

18 August 07– Granddad's car: passing on the unpassable
Stuff magnets. That what we all are, stuff magnets: we attract stuff by the bushels, by the yard, by the garage full. And then, at some point we realize the truth to “we can’t take it with us.” Well, actually we could take it with us but we’d have to dig our grave with a D-8 Caterpillar and it would be more of a dumpsite than a grave (not totally a bad idea). Still I have some stuff, specifically, my little hotrod roadster, that I’d love to see stay in the family. But it can’t. And that makes me sad.



My father was the original crap collector. He had tons of antiques, guns, plows, kerosene lanterns and other neat sh*t. But none of it was part of his life. It was just stuff he owned and he liked people to know that he owned it. I’ve followed his tradition of rampant accumulation of the borderline worthless, but with a difference: all of the stuff that has followed me home (a cannon, antique safe, contents of a blacksmith shop, etc., etc.) have become treasured parts of my life. I have stuff from my father that he owned, but nothing that was an actual part of his life. On the other hand, everything I foist off on my kids, when I check out, has lived with me and soaked up the vibes that have made my life what it is. Especially my little car.

I was fifteen years old, when I found a rusting ’29 Model A Ford roadster body being used to stop erosion in a gully not far from my home in Nebraska. The year was 1957 (go to Roadster for far more details than you need) and I wanted a California hotrod. I knew all I had to do was take that body and build a car around it. Which I did—more or less. It became one of the few things my teenage mind was willing to wrap itself around and focus on. I WAS that car and vice versa.

Life moves on and the little car spent nearly 40 years in a Quonset hut on my dad’s place before I literally exhumed it from a junk-filed grave and brought it here to Arizona. In the past half-decade I have recreated the car to be exactly as it I pictured it in my mind when I was fifteen years old. Every single piece of steel, wire and paint is invested with my sweat and my personal karma. And I can’t bear the thought of it going to a strange home, but I know it probably will. My kids have neither the interest nor the situations to absorb it.

Passing along something the size of a car carries with it responsibilities and burdens. It must be housed. It should be run. It needs a modicum of maintenance. Most of all, however, it needs understanding. In this case, it has to be understood that the car is a rolling time capsule of the times that existed during my youth: raised in the 50’s, tempered by the ‘60’s. It’s more than just a car, but do my kids know and understand that?

More important, can my kids make room in their lives for this kind of burden and the answer is no. Very few people can. So, as I put the finishing touches on what is probably the ultimate artifact of my life, I do so knowing that, as much as I’d like to be creating a family heirloom, I’m not. I’m creating my own little piece of personal art that makes me grin every time I lay eyes on it. And I guess that’s enough.

Still, I think it would be very cool if sometime in the distant future a young man named Mason (my only grandson so far), rolled into a drive-in, headers barking blue flame and answered those who asked, “Yeah, it was granddad’s car.”

To read more about The Roadster and the way hotrods used to be go to antique hotrods

12 August 07– A Sign of our Times: Manufactured Reality

When future generations start archiving our TV shows, papers and magazines, not to mention our web content, we Americans, and to a lesser extent, the Europeans, are going to look like idiots. Between the various so-called “reality” shows and the obscene amount of time and money spent just to watch individuals whose only claim to fame is fame itself, we’re going to look like a civilization of nuts.

As much as I hate to even mention her name, Anna Nicole Smith (among so many others) is/was a classic example of how our seemingly bottomless appetite for celebrity has perverted journalism in America. Or is it vice versa?

Okay so Anna Nicole Smith died. What happened afterward, however, although apropos to the woman’s life, was still a tragedy dressed in a clown suit: a circus life lead up to a circus death and a circus-like after-death celebration of sorts. The media whipped itself into such a frenzy that even supposedly “serious” journalists couldn’t stay away for fear of losing rating points to the competition. HEY GUYS, A WOMAN DIED, OR HAS ANYONE EVEN NOTICED?  And damn few tears were shed. This isn't right.

Smith was a cartoon, to be sure, but, had the media not been doing its usual thing and played such an integral part in orchestrating her life, she might have had a more or less normal existence and certainly would have had much more dignity in death. The fact that a human being, who was both a mother and a daughter, died got lost in the media hype. That, however, is the character of celebrity in the press.

And then there are reality shows: how, for instance, can seven people possibly survive on a deserted island with only their skill and intellect to ward off the evils of nature and each other? Of course, they can always bum a sandwich from the camera and sound crews surrounding them. Reality or not, the guys behind the camera are union, so you know they aren’t starving.

With the exception of “Survivorman,” which is as close as one gets to down-and-dirty TV survival (he is his own camera crew) the rest of the big budget reality shows have herds of production people just out of sight off-camera.   So we have half-naked people on camera being seriously threatened by all manner of challenges while gaffers hold light reflectors, sound booms hover overhead and cameras jockey for a two-shot. Gimme a break! This is flat silly! It’s a soap with sand between your toes.

The morning after - being a celebrity sure looks like fun, doesn't it?

And then there is “The Celebrity” concept itself, which is exemplified by the likes of the blonde hotel wench, whose name I won’t use—she needs no more publicity (and I need no more law suits). Future archeologists are going to dig up our magazines and start trying to reconstruct the theology behind the blonde goddess Pairs of Hill Tons. If I didn’t have to clean up the mess, I’d hurl! Wait I can’t hurl. That’s a new-millennium term she might use. My generation barfs/pukes/vomits (there’s a blog in there somewhere—I’ll get to it soon—bodily functions are my thing).

Anyway, we have so much manufactured nothingness around us, from celebrities to the  very concept of celebrity itself, to manufactured senators, to colors nature never saw even once (“teal” is a goddamn duck, folks, not a color) that we’ve forgotten what is real. 

I feel as if the entire world has been taken over by the team that created The Monkees.


1 August 07– My colonoscopy: good health can be a pain in the butt

I can’t think of any health-related event that people try harder to avoid than a colonoscopy. They’ll willingly have a tooth pulled (pain is a great motivator) but will procrastinate for years, sometimes decades, before taking a peek at what’s happening in their colon. Okay, so colon-watching isn’t something we do for fun or excitement, but a rotten tooth isn’t likely to kill you while procrastinating on a colonoscopy can. The process, however, can have its entertaining moments, depending on how twisted your definition of “entertaining” is. 

For the few of you who don’t understand the colonoscopy concept, it is roto-rootering your backside with a video camera (a small one, thank God). The goal is to get in there and catch any bad bugs early, before they turn into the big “C.” Fortunately, colon cancer begins life as a harmless nodule that is obvious to your local butt inspector and it’s easy for them to reach in with a tiny weed whacker and snip them off. 

Incidentally, for those who don’t know their anatomy, the colon is the last part of your intestinal plumbing and is where some people seem to store their heads.

Before getting into the details, let me say this: the anticipation and visual images are ten thousand percent worse than the reality.  The process is so benign that now that I’ve been through it, I don’t know why I waited so long.

Essentially, you check in, they put you in those designed-to-be-embarrassing backless jamies, put an IV in your arm and you lay down. A fraction of a second later (and this is no exaggeration), your wife/husband/doctor is saying, “ Wake up, it’s over.” You’re groggy for a few seconds and acutely aware that you can hardly wait to fart.

Part of the process includes pumping air up your colon so their little Kodak-on-a-stick (I thought about calling it a Brownie, but it seemed a little vulgar) can slip and slide its way through, If you’re in a recovery ward with other colonoscopy survivors, there’s so much farting going on that it sounds like a Mel Brooks movie.

In the vast number of cases, that’s it. Get dressed and go home with the peace of mind that all is well in butt-land. There is absolutely zero reason to fear it or put it off.

Naturally, the foregoing doesn’t apply to me. I am apparently on the fringes of colon design because my colon is something like 40% longer than normal (yes, you can make the wisecrack now about me being full of crap because apparently I am). Everything is crammed in there so tightly that the little camera  thingy can’t make all the twisty turns. On to the next chapter of ridiculousness.

I’m skipping a lot of drama here, but I wound up on an ice-cold X-ray table with half the equipment in the room dangling out of my posterior and barium gurgling around in my gut. They pumped me up to about 40 psi, then spent about an hour and a half rolling and sloshing me around looking for anything suspicious (they found nothing).

The real high point of that particular episode was when I heard a technician (who was coming at me with the world’s supply of butt inserts) say to the other tech, “I’ve never done one of these by myself,” and the other one answered, “Hey, everyone has their first time.” 

If you learn anything out of the above it should be this: the procedure amounts to nothing. It is all in your head (figuratively, not literally). It won’t kill you. Procrastinating, on the other hand, can lead to a grisly, drawn out death. So, get your ass into a clinic and let someone check it out. The peace of mind it gives is well worth the effort.



17 July 07– Shooting a machine gun at least once is good for the soul

If there is one thing that clearly cleaves society into two very separate, and sometimes very vocal, factions, it is the gun control thing. It’s right up there with right-to-life, blondes vs redheads and the whole light beer controversy. However, setting all of that aside, and, if possible ignoring any personal aversions you may have to firearms, I’d like you to let me make one concrete statement in that area: shooting a machine gun at least once does wonderful things for your soul and females seem to benefit most. What’s more, I can prove it.

Okay, assuming you didn’t hit the “delete” button   and are still with me, let me explain several things. First, there’s nothing criminal about owning a machine gun, assuming you’ve done it right. The federal laws are such that once you’ve jumped through a million hoops, pay them a fee, and give them access to the tiniest pieces of personal information, including your underwear size, you can legally possess a machine gun (state laws, however, may prevent that.).

The foregoing assumes you can even find a machine gun to buy: government regulations have fixed the supply so they’ve become the most lucrative investment commodity in town—something like a WWII Thompson sub gun that went for $500 a little over a decade ago goes for $15-$20,000 now. How did your mutual funds do during the same period?

Anyway, I say that shooting a sub machine gun has an interesting effect on even those who would normally refuse to touch a gun: Let me tell you Eileen’s story.

If you ask Eileen, a just-past-middle age, pleasant and energetic grandmotherly type, what she is, she’ll draw herself up to her entire five foot, two inches height and announce, “I’m  a Long Island JAP and proud of it,” meaning a Jewish American Princess from a prestigious neighborhood in one of the most liberal part of the country. Has she ever touched a firearm? No! Would she ever voluntarily touch a firearm? That’s a very resounding NO! And then she fell in with some of her husband’s ruffian friends, including me.

One of the airplane friends that we have in common is also a Class III machine gun dealer: the BATF has said that in their eyes he is not only a good guy, but can legally buy and sell machine guns. On one visit to his place, we all decided to load up a bunch of sub guns and go out to the range.

Eileen fidgeted around the fringes of the activity and quietly huffed and puffed, continually smirking at such a boyish, and ignorant display of toy-based testosterone. She absolutely could not believe that her friends, of whom she had previously thought highly, would engage in something so vulgar and intellectually denigrating. She hopped up on her Princess Pedestal and stayed there while the rest of us had a helluva good time making noise at the range.

As the afternoon was winding down, her husband began leaning on Eileen, “Come on honey, fire it just once.”

We couldn’t miss the opportunity, so we started on her too, especially my wife, Marlene, who absolutely loves firing full automatic weapons.

Finally, Eileen consented and, wearing the most sour puss you’ve ever seen on an human being, she numbly cooperated as we set her up on the firing line with a 9mm, H & K MP 5 with a full mag. We showed her how to lean into the gun to absorb recoil and keep it on target, how to keep her finger clear of the trigger and how to keep it pointed down range, no matter what. Then we said go for it and held our breath.

First, let me point out that women fire full automatic weapons differently than men do. Men will almost always tickle off a series of short bursts.  The ladies don’t. Their first time up to bat, they will ALWAYS, kick off one short burst, then hog down on the trigger and how ever much ammo is in the mag is gone. If it’s a belt-fed weapon, you have to tell them to let up before they melt the barrel.

She leaned into it and, predictably, emptied the mag in seconds, in the process pretty well destroying the target. None of us could have been more accurate.

When, the bolt stuck open, signifying she was out of ammo, she stood frozen for a second, determined to keep the empty weapon on target. We all held our breath.

She slowly turned, looked at her husband and in an oddly quiet, little girl voice that sounded as if she was afraid one of her Long Island friends might hear, she said, “Can I do that again?”

7 July 07–I don't know what I know, but I know what I believe.

This is an awful thing to say, but one of the words I find floating through my mind with great regularity these days is “distrust.” On a national/international scale, I don’t know whom to trust any more. Regardless of where I get information, I don’t trust it to be solid fact. The current situation makes the ‘60’s, the most misled decade ever, look like an informational love-in.

It is especially troublesome that between the media and the Internet, we are barraged with never ending streams of conflicting information about the two leading problems of the day, terrorism (in the form of the Iraq “problem”) and immigration. I’m confused and don’t know what’s what any more. However, even though I don’t know what I know, I do know what I believe, regardless of the so-called facts.

First, I believe American must remain a well-defined, law-abiding entity. Borders are one of those inviolate factors that define a country. Another is its laws. Combined, they spell out the geographical and legal unit that is the nation, but it looks as if we’re making both of those vague and ineffective. No country can survive that. A border is a border and illegal is illegal. There are no shades of gray. That’s why laws and borders exist in the first place, so we can clearly tell who, and where, we are.

I also believe a country has only one flag and you swear allegiance to that flag. That’s pretty basic. Every country does it. When someone comes to this country they do so because the U.S. is a place they’d rather be than where they came from. They made that choice as a way of giving themselves a better life. That doesn’t mean they give up their culture or the fond feeling they have for their own country, but it does mean that our flag goes on top and our laws are obeyed. Period.

I think having a country be bilingual hurts it. It works against unity, as a nation and as both a business and social community. Our language is English and it should be our first language. For any ethnic group to refuse to learn it, means they will automatically miss much of what the nation has to offer them and they’ll be viewed as outsiders and this creates an unnecessary level of divisiveness.

The Bill of Rights says every one of our citizens is to be treated equally regardless of race, color or creed. In my eyes, the operative word there is “citizen.” We should worry about “us,” the citizens, first and “them,” the non-citizens, second.  We owe our first, and best, effort to those who are already functioning parts of our nation. In addition, citizenship is something to be earned and treasured, not handed out like a Cracker Jack prize and taken for granted.

Racism of any kind hurts us. Personally, and I know this isn’t going to make many friends, I’ll be happy when we’re all so intermarried that there is only one color, sort of a coffee/bronze shade. Until that happens, since we’re a nation of mongrels to begin with, no one has the right to see another’s ethnic or cultural background as either elevating or degrading. Few of us are pure anything, so, get over it!

One of my firmest beliefs is that the Islamic Jihad, although sponsored by a minority in that community, is horrifyingly real and will destroy our way of life unless we get partisan politics out of the equation. We must face reality: there is no way we can negotiate with Jihadist thinking. Nothing we can do, short of converting to Islam, will appease “them”, whomever “them “ is. If we personally nuked Israel out of existence and pulled every troop and businessman out of the Middle East, they would still come after us.

This is war and our grandchildren will still be fighting it, but they’ll be much more intelligent about it because they’ll know politics have no place in it. This is a time for leaders with a solid backbone, not politicians with a partisan agenda.

I get so damn tired of one party pointing fingers at the other party, when what they should be doing is pointing a finger at the problem and sitting down to figure out how to solve it. They act as if agreeing with something the other guy says loses them points, even though it may make sense. Hey, troops, it’s America first, your party third or fourth. 

I also firmly believe that to pull out of Iraq will, in the long term, bite us in the butt so hard and in so many unexpected ways that we don’t truly understand the magnitude of the consequences. Iran is hiding in the background just waiting for our leadership to waffle and vacate the premises so they can move in and believe me they will. And when they do, we’ll have large scale problems we’re just not equipped—militarily, emotionally or politically—to deal with effectively.

I also believe making our involvement there a media circus and a political football is wasting a lot of lives. We have a frighteningly clear model in how NOT to fight a war in the ridiculous way we conducted ourselves in Vietnam. It took us nearly ten years, but we proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that politicians don’t know dick about running wars, much less winning them. Plus, we’ve proven that getting politicians involved is guaranteed to cause needless deaths and frustrate the goals attached to the conflict. Let warriors fight the wars and let politicians sort out the results after the fight is won. Politicians have NEVER won a war, but they’ve lost plenty. 

I have no solutions to offer but, as I’ve often said, I’ve never seen a situation where the addition of politicians has made it better. And I’ve gotten to the point that I’d vote for a chimpanzee, if I he both meant what he said and did what he promised.

1 July 07 –Early Morning Flights Suck!

I'm in a lousy mood because, as I’m writing this, I’m stuck in tourist class hell, XXXX Airline style: I suppose I shouldn’t mention which particular airline hell I’m in at the moment. It’s just that this trip has clearly shown me exactly how valuable a fraction of an inch can be: it spells the difference between having functioning legs or two tingling, sound asleep, lumps that end between my knees and my lap top.

My seatmate's little sister takes her puppy for a walk.

Incidentally, if you check airline seating specification charts, you’ll find they almost all list their seat dimensions as 17.5 inches wide and 31 inches fore and aft. What they don’t list is whether they all agree on exactly how long an inch is—there’s no frigging way you’ll convince me that this airline seat is as far from the one in front as in other airlines.

On the first leg of this trip I was sitting next to Tony Soprano’s bigger brother and a 17.5” seat couldn't begin to contain the flaccid overflow. So, for four and a half hours, Phoenix to Newark (don’t ask why Newark, that’s another whole story) my seating position was similar to that of a pre-Nubian burial: elbow/knee joints all tightly constrained as if ready to be inserted into a two dollar casket.

I’ve suffered through the usual number of lousy airline flights. I’ve slept all night on the floor of places like La Guardia Airport, spent as much as four hours in an airplane stuck on a ramp, suffered my share of crying babies, puking teens and drunk, flatulent businessmen, but, for whatever reason, it seems as if airline travel is, if this is possible, going even further down hill. Cattle car seating designed for “little people” (I can be so goddamn PC it makes me wanna puke) is just the latest indication of this. And early morning flights make it just that much more intolerable.

This particular one launched at 0630 hours, which is actually 0330 hours Phoenix time, so our wake-up call was for 0145. So, am I in a good mood? You have to be kidding! Plus, I can't sleep. Too much work to do. Oh, and a really wonderful aspect to the work thing? This flight gets in at 0855, so I’ll still be able to get a full day in at work. AAAAARRRGGHH!!

Pity the two new flight students checking in this afternoon. The good news is I’ve already advised them that, unless they want to get snarled at a lot, we won’t fly until tomorrow, when my brain (and my patience) finally shows up.

A lot of the degradation in airline travel can be traced back to Al Queda. I’m hoping they had no idea how far reaching the effects of their 9/11attacks would be in terms of encroaching on our personal freedoms and our convenience. I’m hoping their planning didn’t predict how much we’d over-react, because, if they are that smart, we’re in even deeper terrorist doo-doo than we think we are.

Oddly enough, there are some actually a few beneficial fall-outs to the 9/11 attacks. For one thing, they are the best thing that ever happened to corporate aviation. As soon as the security systems went in place, the lines got longer and the threats got stronger, upper level corporate management realized that maybe there actually was a defensible rationale for owning a corporate jet. At the same time, some smart thinkers come up with the fractional ownership concept for bizjets where several companies go together to buy a jet and operate it through a flight department that functions as a charter company.

And just think how many jobs that wonderful new agency, the TSA, has created. Then think about how they have redefined the concepts of inefficiency, inconvenience and theater. It has to be theater, because just about everything they are doing in terms of airport security is nothing but window dressing. Lots of flash, no substance.

Alright, I give up. The double mocha, hyper-latte, asphalt and cinnamon, gigungo-sized Starbucks I just chugged isn’t working. I’m rambling and the battery warning light on my brain is blinking telling me that the neuron die-off has just caught up with me. I’m going to sleep, whether I want to or not.

See ya….maybe.

23 June 07 –REALLY Deep Sea Fishing: the upside to Tsunamis

If you can believe the signs, as I write this I’m in a Tsunami Safe-Zone. As we drove into this tiny Oregon coast-town, Yachats (pronounced Ya-huts, accent on the last syllable), all up and down the coast highways, signs would alternately say, “Entering Tsunami Hazard  Zone” and then “Leaving Tasunami Hazard Zone.”

The “leaving” signs calmed that part of me that is always waiting for telephone poles to fall on my car and the Earth to open up and swallow me: unfortunately, I’ve raised pessimism to a higher art form. For that reason, when I pass a “leaving” sign, the pessimistic engineer in me looks around and thinks, “Yeah, someone decided we just went past 50 feet above sea level so we’re safe from a 50 foot wave. What about a 51-foot wave? And will a 49 foot wave obediently stop when it’s just below my knees?”

We don’t worry much about Tsunamis in Arizona. But they do in Oregon and Washington and with good reason: there’s fault line off shore that is identical to that in the Indian Ocean that devastated the entire region a few years ago. Plus, in 1700, an estimated 9.0 Earthquake off Oregon’s coast sent a 50-foot wall of water inland and pretty well erased the coastal Indian population. The same area now hosts about a bazillion non-Indians and they are worrying about suffering the same fate. Actually, their question isn’t “if”, it’s “when.”

The residents pay lip service to evacuation routes and politicians say they are doing the right things, but the truth is, you have to be in the right place at the wrong time to survive. And everyone knows it. But, they can’t dwell on it or they couldn’t make it through the day.

There is a strange upside to a Tsunami. Because it brings water up from so deep, it sucks whatever lives down there up with it. When they started cleaning up after the Indian Ocean tsunami, they found tons of fish flopping around on the beaches, which was expected. What wasn’t expected was the huge number of fish that looked like something out of a bad LSD trip—they were pure science fiction. Scientists had a field day because they were collecting huge numbers of totally unknown species. The Tsunami had proven to be the world’s deepest fishing net.

Go to Blog Fish and take a look at some of the weirdo fish the Tsunami hooked. I LOVE this kind of stuff, if nothing else because it just shows we’re not as smart as we think we are and the world is still keeping a lot of its secrets in the closet. 

So, I guess Oregon/Washington residents who survive their upcoming tsunami can expect to find ugly fish with long teeth and bad attitudes flopping around on their front lawns.

8 June 07
Von Dutch the Legend, not the Designer Crap

The first time I saw it, it was a black tee-shirt with the oh-so identifiable “Von Dutch” logo-type across the back and I didn’t think much of it. In my world, Von Dutch is a legend, so strongly identified with hotrods and individuality that he needs no introduction and defies definition. Then the person turned around and I realized yet another part of my world had been invaded by aliens

The wearer wasn’t some grizzled old gear head, nor a slicked down young rat rodder trying to connect with a past he can’t begin to understand. What I saw was a twenty-something, high-bling, silicone-enhanced bimbo, wearing West Palm Beach, knock ‘em dead  make up, $500 paint-on jeans and an a attitude that said, “I’m so goddamn hot you won’t believe it, but don’t bother to try, you won’t make the grade.”

I couldn’t resist (I’m not good at resisting) and I asked her if she knew who Von Dutch was. She said, “Oh, yeah, he works with Tommy Hilfiger, ‘ya know…or someone…and designs these awesome clothes and stuff. ‘Ya know?”  She didn’t miss a pop of her gum through out the sentence.

Somehow I knew that would be the answer.

That's when I realized some Madison Avenue marketing genius who hadn’t the foggiest idea what Von Dutch, the man, stood for, was dragging another icon of American culture down into the gutter of merchandizing.

Early photo for Life magazine in his beatnik pose. Note eyeball on his forehead

Von Dutch (his real name was Kenneth Howard, a little known fact) was…I’m not sure what to type next because he’s such an illusive character …the guy who is best known for inventing pin striping as seen on custom cars and hotrods. But that is a huge cop-out because he was so much more. A product of the late ‘40’s and early ‘50’s he was what beatniks tried to be, but seldom actually were: wildly creative and so give-a-shit that he was absolutely his own man until the day he died (September 19, 1992).

His soul was that of an artist commingled with…again I’m searching for words…a taste and flair for contradictory mediums that sometimes seemed to have no connection except the man himself. The finely painted pinstriping, often displaying in linear form some of the demons within the man’s mind, the often unusual custom firearms that, although technically were weapons, somehow weren’t, the finely shaped and engraved knives that were far ahead of that culture’s times, cars of his own distinct design, and the occasional painting that, again, defy description.

Von Dutch was simply Von Dutch and, although he was super high profile, he left such a phantom-like trail through life that he has frustrated those few biographers who have attempted to put him on the printed page.

So, when you see those ads for Von Dutch socks or flying eyeball earrings (the eyeball was his alter-logo), think of a true American original and at least pay him the courtesy of knowing he wasn’t invented by some graphics geek for a clothing manufacturer.

….worked with Tommy Hilfiger my ass!

PS: go to CarTech, www.cartechbooks.com for Pat Ganahl’s book on the man.

4 June 07
To Pee or Not to Pee: That is a Question??
I hate having to make the toughest decision of the day before I even wake up: my alarm will go off in fifteen minutes, but my bladder is ringing right now. Do I try for that extra fifteen minutes of sack time or do I hop to the head and then dash back and try for the few remaining minutes of pre-alarm warmth snuggled under the blankets? Good idea, but it ain't gonna happen. Enter Nizhoni.

It is one of my personal theories that just as animals supposedly sense seismic events (earthquakes) before they happen, they also sense the surface tension of the human bladder and, when it reaches a near-critical state, they want to pee as well. This is based upon personal observation.

The Nizhoni Alarm Clock

I'm laying there but a corner of my mind senses the yellowing of the body ’s basement. I look dead asleep, but my mind is floating on a sea of pee and is looking for dry land.

Inasmuch as I’m used to this, I could easily lie there and enjoy that delicious not-asleep-but-not-awake-either period. But, I can’t—the aforementioned psychic connection with my dog, Nizhoni, absolutely guarantees that, if my bladder has reached critical tension, she senses it and starts making quiet “ruff” sounds as she tears at the carpet at the foot of the bed.

If I get up and quietly, but sternly, say “no” right to her nose, she’ll shrug her shoulders and go back to bed with an “oh, what the hell, I tried” look on her face. But then, I’m standing up, so I might as well go pee. But, while I’m standing in the john in man’s most vulnerable position while involved in a process, which normally has a distinct start and stop to it, she starts digging at the rug again and wakes up my wife, Marlene. So, whether I want to or not, I have to stop and take her out (the dog, not my wife).

The current procedure, and this is the honest truth, is that, if I wake up to either my own pee pains, or those of my dog, and if is after 0430, I just get up, grab my clothes and head for the kitchen. But I can’t get dressed yet because Nizhoni is now officially going bat sh*t and doing her high speed circle-dog routine so I hustle her out the back door while I pee in the utility room bathroom. Then I let the dog in and get dressed standing in the kitchen and my day, such as it is, has begun.

I realize that this is a helluva lot more information than anyone needs. I just figured that if I’m going through this, others are too and it’s only right that they know they aren’t alone. Or maybe I’m the only one experiencing this. Boy, I hope not. If so, I just made a fool of myself. Again. 

25 May 07
It’s Only Rock and Roll, but we Like it!
sound tracks of our times

The other night we were at a highschooler’s graduation party and they were playing his favorite albums for background. About half way through the Beatles’ Rubber Soul album it dawned on me that I hadn’t heard any rap, hip-hop. In fact, the entire evening was backed by albums I had pretty much come of age listening to. This knocked me on my butt — the Beatle tracks were exactly forty years old yet an eighteen-year-old had listed them among his favorites.

I remember, the exact moment I heard my first Beatle song (I Want To Hold Your Hand, Golden Cue Billiard Parlor, Norman, Oklahoma, a senior in college). At the time I was a professional musician who imagined himself above that kind of pop crap, but I had to begrudgingly admit that a change in musical direction was taking place, whether I liked it or not. Now, more than forty years later, I’m still hearing the same voices singing the same songs. And the Beatles are far from being the only group from my youth that’s still on top of the heap.

Google "Elvis," there are 43,500,000 listings

For this kind of longevity to have applied to songs in the mid-sixties, we would have had to be listening to Rudy Valli or Eddie Cantor from the 1920 ’s. Truth is, we recognized no music that predated Bill Haley and the Comets (except for blues wailers). I, for instance, finished every night with a set entitled “Elvis Songs You've Never Heard Of” (Blue Moon of Kentucky, Mystery Train, You’re Right, I’m Left, She’s Gone, etc.). Our musical memories only went back to about 1954. That hasn’t changed much.

For those of us who grew up in the ‘50’s, then came of age in the ‘60’s—a period when rock and roll was first invented, then perfected—it now seems as if later generations have hijacked our memories. Our songs never went away so they co-opted ours and made them their own. I’m not complaining. I am, however, flat amazed that what generations of parents had assumed would be throw-away music has become such a staple in our culture. Can you imagine any decade, from the ‘fifties on, without the music of the day (did the ‘90’s have music? I forget.)?

So, what belongs solely to my generation? Way too many feathers in our ducktails have fallen out and we’re not about to twist the night away. Nor are many of us still playing screaming guitar in smoke-filled rooms until oh-dark-thirty. I guess about the best those of us who actually remember Bill Haley, Elvis on the Sun label, Lavern Baker, Gene Vincent and sooo many others can do is glory in the fact that we rode the crests of so many waves of social change that it’s a miracle we aren’t all sea sick.

We watched the Big Band era get shoved aside by rock and roll. We went from crew cuts to male ponytails. From thinking “dope” was a pronoun to funding THE underground industry.  We rode the Vietnam, Kennedy-to-Nixon roller coaster and even today don’t trust anyone over thirty. Or is that we now don't trust anyone under thirty? We were raised in the ‘fifties, amazed in the ‘sixties, and bored ever since.

One thing is an absolute fact, however: we had some really kick ass music and every generation since has agreed!  After all, musical theft is the sincerest form of generational flattery.

PS
Twenty years from now what will this generation be dancing to at their weddings? Get Jiggy With it?

PPS
Not all rap totally sucks and some is both clever and hilarious. I fall out of my chair every time I see Justin Timberlake’s video “Dick in a Box” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dmVU08zVpA&mode=related&searchDon’t watch if you’re easily offended and remember I warned you.

28 May 07
Memorial Day, 2007

The flowers with the American flag sticking out of them are sitting on the dining room table. This morning, Marlene, aka “The Arizona Redhead” will take her yearly trip down to the cemetery to visit her brother, the late Captain Tom Abert, Vietnam Cobra jockey. As I shuffled past the display of colors, the sun still rising and my brain searching for a gear to engage, the flowers jolted a pack of neurons into action— I remembered what day it is but I’m not sure how to react. Am I sad? Am I proud? Am I frustrated? I think I’m all of those. Or maybe not. Time for some coffee.

I’m sad because just saying this day is a reminder of the price paid by so many young men for us to be free has become a maudlin cliché that also understates the investment made. The price they paid was only the acquisition fee for a packet of sorrow and anguish that affected every person each of them knew. It started with their parents and siblings and rippled out over everyone they had touched in their lives. Death is never a solitary event, regardless of how it happens. It leaves its mark on many.

Am I proud? Yes, I am. Regardless of how misguided so many of our wars seem to have been, I’m proud that there have been a few times in our history that we have stepped up to the bar and said “enough is enough” and we’ve been willing to back that up with blood.

I’m frustrated because my lifetime has been populated with conflicts in which too many decisions have been made by too many politicians. You’ll notice I didn’t say “political leaders” are making the decisions. We haven’t seen many true “leaders” in my time, but although I wasn’t crazy about Reagan at the time, I’d love to see how he’d handle our current situation. He would have fun with both the battles and the politics behind them.

We desperately need a leader with backbone but I’m sickened when I see the absolute dearth of leadership depth that has been represented by the last half dozen elections. And the one that’s coming up may be the worse one ever. How can the most powerful country in the world exist if we can’t come up with better presidential material and continue to elect politicians rather than leaders?

I’ll make one comment about the current occupant of the Oval Office: he’s far from being the most brilliant leader we’ve had and I often disagree with him, but, in his defense, I seldom see him make a decision because he thinks it’ll help his political future. His time at bat has seen him handed some real sh*t sandwiches and he has dealt with them the way he thought necessary, not the way the polls said would be politically smart.

I’m a totally apolitical individual and belong to no political party, but I think I do recognize when a man is doing the best he can with limited tools (both mental and political) in a politically hostile environment. His heart has been in the right place. You can’t always say that about Presidents.

Another political observation: whomever is seeking that office right now, either doesn’t understand what’s going on, or has a political agenda in which they just want to wear the mantle of president. They want to be President not because they know how to fix things but because being The Prez is cool. The ultimate merit badge. No one in their right mind should want to be president right now. It’s a lose-lose situation and I’m afraid neither party has the right man (or woman) for the job. Those of us who vote independent are once again going to be forced to pick the least offensive out of a very offensive bunch.

The first cup of Joe is finally starting to kick in and I’ve reread what I’ve written here. I apologize. I’m not normally a politically oriented guy. However, let’s remember all those young men who are resting under American flags at home and abroad. They carried a torch that we must pick up, or we do their memory a huge disservice. Read the words below and think about them. They may be old, but they still work. 

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918), Canadian Army

IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.