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Thursday, April 30, 2009

Alliterator Animal Sh*t List: The Letter 'U'

You guessed it. The letter U. Animals that start with U are hard to come by. I think sometimes we used some kind of mythological horse.

I've decided to stick with this:
Unsavory Undulating Urchin Under Uglies


My apologies. Internet access sucks.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Blah Blah Blog and Travel

Tomorrow afternoon I board a plane for Italy.

I'll be flying into Roma. Then I'm going to wing it to get to Lamezia (further down the West coast).

I'm thinking I'll take a 5 hour train ride. I could take a 1 hour plane ride, but where's the fun in that. I'll get me a first class seat on a south bound train! I need to be in Lamezia by Monday evening.

I'm going to go give one of our customers warm fuzzies so they don't ask for a refund. I'm good at handing out warm fuzzies. Although I don't think I've ever given warm fuzzies to an Italian before. It may be more difficult.

The frequency of my blogging may be slightly interrupted. I tend not to think on connectivity problems when I'm doing something I've never done before. They have requested Internet access in my hotel room though so I'm thinking it'll be fun.

When I travel, I don't like seeing things. I like meeting people. I mean what's more fun? Going to see The Sistine Chapel or meeting some locals for dinner and then hanging out with them at a pub underneath The Sistine Chapel? I'm fairly certain there is not a pub underneath the chapel. That comment was purely for example.

My friend Ed seems to be rather good at this type of thing. He visited Sri Lanka not too long ago and he wrote about his tour guide. I really can't give you more details than that. You should really read it for yourself if you are interested. I'd end up discrediting Ed's creative writing style.

Stephanie gave me a 5 minute crash course on Italian last night. I don't remember any of it except that it was an easy language for me to speak. But my vocabulary skills suck. I can say most words correctly but I can't remember which words go where. Stephanie can speak 6 languages. She was my wedding planner because one of the languages she speaks is German.

So ciao for now. Unless something inspirational hits me in the next 24 hours or so my next post will probably be from Italy.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Blogging and Whining and Drinking oh Why?


I've been blogging for over a year now. I think I started during the first week of April 2008. It seems like only yesterday. I'm sure you agree.

Time progresses so quickly when you are being relentlessly entertained.

Alliterator Animal Sh*t List: The Letter 'T'

I've got an entertaining announcement concerning next week's blogs. I'll have to write about it later.

But today is all about the letter T. The T's started it all. I think my dad probably used it as a nickname for my sisters and in a bout of random wackiness decided to come up with like minded alliterations for the rest of the alphabet. You have to say it out loud to fully appreciate it. I'll wait while you do.

Tough Tiny Turkey Turds

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

John Adams

After yesterday's escapades, I decided to sit down with a nice dinner, tea and a DVD from Netflix tonight.

If you haven't seen the HBO mini-series, "John Adams", then you should. There is a description on IMDB.

The entire mini-series is in my Netflix queue, but I'm thinking of purchasing it.

I don't know how much of it is historically accurate, but I figure it's close enough. Not long ago I watched a PBS documentary on Thomas Jefferson. The writing of the Declaration of Independence was represented a bit differently in this mini-series than it was in the documentary.

The 2nd installment entitled "Independence" almost made me shed a tear. I'm sure there is something meaningful I could say about taxes, tea parties and Obama, but after listening to actors portray the thoughts and words of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Frankin, and George Washington, I don't feel qualified to write much more than I already have.



Apologies

I must apologize for my, as Ed said, "Chimablogging".

I was tempted to delete the blog post in question out of some misconstrued fear that someone would actually read it and take it the wrong way. I have decided to leave it as a reminder.

I woke up this morning and meandered down to the kitchen to check the label on the bottle of beer. Let me just tell you that it's a good beer and I didn't drink it fast. It lasted me through an hour of Braveheart and an hour of a History Channel documentary on Shiloh. But that stuff is potent. 9% alcohol by volume and 75 CL. Far too much for a Tuesday night and far too much before blogging. My experiment was near disastrous.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Random Thoughts After A Quiet Period

Do you ever drink then blog?

I was at Target the other day. I think Durango has once pondered how Target stays in business. Well, I'm glad they do. I love Target. Wal-Mart charges 2 cents too much for Milk.

Oh yeah. I was at Target the other day shopping for groceries. I had a $5 off coupon for groceries if I spent over $50. I hate coupons that have a minimum dollar amount. Like cars that say, "You save $1000 for all purchases over $20,000!".

I left my coupon at home and by the time I noticed I left it at home it was too late. I was already there.

Target had some beer on clearance. All kinds of beer. I bought me some bottled brew that had little wired-on cork tops. I must say it was very good. Well, it still is very good. I'm about 80% done with a bottle. I think it must have been about a liter of some very potent brew. Chimay's the name. I'm thinking of going back to Target and buying some more. But not now. Maybe tomorrow.

I watched a history channel show about the battle of Shiloh. For those of you who went to Texas schools to learn history from a football coach, that's the name of a Civil War battle up in Western Tennessee. It got me to thinking.

The governor of Texas recently mentioned seceding from the union. It has caused lots of undue drama. I personally believe he was joking. Now, I've never liked Perry, but I don't think he's stupid and seceding would be beyond stupid.

But, it got me to thinking. Back in 1861 when the Confederate seceded from the Union, it started a civil war. The way the armed forces are today and the size of the federal government, nothing similar will ever happen again.

People, like Ted Nugent, who I blogged about earlier are pro-guns. They want to maintain their rights to carry fire arms. A large number of these people claim that they have this right in order to protect themselves from oppressive government. In today's world, you can sit there with your rifle all day long, but if the government decides it's your time to go, you'll be sitting on your couch with your rifle when Mr. Smart Bomb comes through your window and desintegrates your sorry ass. So, protection from the government has nothing to do with gun laws. Drop the argument.

People that are anti gun-laws (read that carefully) are normally too fanatic for my blood. Fanatics always turn me the wrong way. However, I am of the opinion that the government has too many departments and too many rules. They should let us do anything we want as long as we aren't hurting other people.

Obama recently encouraged various department heads to make cutbacks in an effort to save $100,000,000. If you do the math and look at the federal government's budget, they are spending $100,000,000 every 13 minutes.

When Obama was elected I had high hopes that he might actually shrink the size of the federal government. Everyone must agree that it's way too big. It you're not a fan of "business as usual" then a sure fire way to win popular opinion and save money is to shrink the size of the federal government. Obama created a department to shrink the size of the federal government. He grew the federal government to shrink the federal government. Very disappointing.

My friend at The Whited Sepulchre has a long list of departments that should be done away with (18 comments). It's a good list. My friend Durango recently posted a story about how government cutbacks have allowed petroleum industry to pollute our drinking water. What a conundrum.

In a capitalist country, the little people must ban together to prevent the evils of industry and the power they wield via wealth. But what happens when the little people's broker (the governmet) becomes, itself, corrupted by the evils of power and wealth?

I think we all hoped by some miracle that Obama would make appropriate cutbacks in the federal government and make the little people feel safe again by reigning in the evil industrial empires. I'm still waiting for this to happen, but at the same time I'm not giving up hope. My last drink of Chimay goes to Obama and to the power of the little people. May he really shrink the size of the federal government and quit bailing out industrial empires.