I Could Be Wrong

I could be right I could be black I could be white.

Wednesday's Digressions

Clickify to enlargenate

• Recently after multiple queries regarding the apex of man's musical endeavors known as the 90's a younger  friendly acquaintance asked me to compile a list of bands and songs from the era. Imagine my surprise when I found it was for a playlist for the radio program she conducts for her broadcasting degree. She used my 3 page list with few additions or subtractions. Among the cool things in my life- that is one of the cooler things I have accomplished.
• I can overlook a lot but I could never marry an HIV positive person and cannot comprehend how an HIV negative person could marry a positive one (or even have have sex together). It would be like sleeping with a live hand grenade and the pin is pulled part way out.
• A minute ago (1727 on 04/02/2014) I did an image search under this blog name. I was surprised to find some of the images that returned were similar in composition and subject to images on the blog but I had never put them up- the search engine can take note of those parameters and reach out and find similar images on other sites.
• Another: while attempting to send myself a product detail from a website an EMail address I have not used in years, never on this machine and in fact may have never used to order any merchandise online defaulted in auto fill as a choice for me to use.
• After thinking some more about that last bullet I think the referenced EMail address was made up in Iraq- in 2005 to have a not well known address so it wouldn't take forever to download a bunch of spam or EMails from people I didn't want contact with (it could take 5 minutes to download an EMail you wanted).
• In the words of the inimitable American poet and philosophizer Nikki Sixx You can't breathe until you choke. You gotta laugh when you're the joke Sixx AM- Life Is Beautiful.
• Or, if you prefer- here it is in the manner of the acoustic

Never Worry So

much about your rights you forget your manners.

Monday's Missives

The theory is that is a space ship over Washington's right shoulder. My guess is if we dug it would be found to be something much more pedestrian and possibly Bible based imagery but I'm not sure.

• For back pain sufferers it is hard to go wrong with a high quality air mattress. Forgo the Intek brand,
  spend a little more and get a Serta. The queen size is about a 150 bucks and a thing of beauty. I first bought one for the kids to use when they came over and checked it out one day at nap time and have slept on one since. Queen frames, toppers and sheets etc. fit them like a traditional mattress. You can get them at Walmart online with free shipping.
• I'm lightening my gear and a buddy has been scoring big on my heavier camping items. Some I give him, some I offer cheap. He hasn't turned down either.
• I may also sell Big Agnes as my closet looks like Campmor and REI got drunk together, hooked up and then vomited their guts up in there. The vestibule to her has never even been out of the house.
• We love the Timberline Eureka! tent. The setup is very intuitive and ventilation great.
• The REI XT85 is a great- great large volume pack. It is like I designed it myself. 
• The other day I stumbled on a yoochoobs playlist for Clutch. I listened for hours to them- great, great music.
• It is quiet in the house. Everyone is asleep except for me. It is like I'm alone in the world but I know I'm not- and it is a good feeling.
• There are green-ish logs in the fireplace I have been trying to get lit for 2 weeks now. What a mess it will be to clean it out when fireplace season is totally over. Although, if Spring is ever going to get sprung it needs to get on the stick and get it done- it is March 29, 2014 and in the mid 40s outside.
• It is odd to me when people compliment other on having pretty eyes or nice hair when the eyes are colored contacts and the hair is extensions- so what? It isn't a matter of time spent taking care of natural hair or even good genetics. Colored contacts are popped into the eye or another persons hair or synthetic imitation is weaved into the hair after paying a lot of money the person maybe could not really afford.

EDGEFEST 2014

Click on the poster to go to the EDGE homepage.

• Seth Avett's crowd surfing says it all as they say.
• Beck stole the show- with an awesome cover of... Billie Jean. No, I'm not joking.
• I have a dent in my nose where a crowd surfer tapped my glasses on the way over.
• All in good fun as they say.
• We missed Cage The Elephant as I wasn't going to give up my primo standing spot to go to the second stage.
• It was the second time we saw Grouplove. If you get a chance to see them- take it.
  
  
  

  

  This is a pic they Tweeted. I am in the angle formed by the guitar players arm, shoulder and guitar head or possibly just below.

• Some friends showed an hour or so after us- we never saw them.
• There was a huge group of SMU law students there.
• The weed everybody was smoking were what is called blunts- a hollowed out cigar with weed stuffed into it or cigar wrapped weed. It all smelled and looked exactly the same. My guess is it comes out of Colorado.
• Multiple people were falling out or staggering away as if to die way too early for tickets that were well over 70 bucks. My educated guess is heroin but who knows these days.
• One dude fell smooth out right in front of us. Literally- his legs folded up like he had been shot in the brain. I did get to yell, Saccurity though, so there was that.
• He was gray as a battleship.
• The Avett brothers were awesome as were their cello and violin players.
• The singer for The Neighbourhood crowd surfed all the way out to the vendors area. Somebody jacked his shoe as he went by. Yikes, he had some funky smelling feet.
  
• Beck said something about our mosh pit referring to is as a, mosh pot.
• Beck's sound was incredibly well engineered and they were loud. None of the instruments were stepping on each other and his voice sounded great.
• Somewhere I have heard to the effect, You really gotta see him live to get it.
• I get it.
• Well, real life starts bright and early Monday. Have a good day today.
  
  

I'm Walking Out

the door to see Black Comedy at the WC. Tomorrow it will be EDGFEST and Sunday Scarborough Faire. If you work with me, you may not want to expect much from the Ole Kev. on Monday. Here- have some acoustic Flyleaf 

My Day Started

with Fuel performing Falls On Me. So, true story- I'm in church in Henderson Tennessee and my friend says, Hey Kev. turn around and look. There sat a bunch of people with purple, pink and bright red hair all with a number of piercings, tattoos and chains. In all his glory in the middle of them sat Carl Bell the lead singer for Fuel baby! He always refers to that day as the time he went to church with Kevin. True story.

Friday's Dispatch

• The remains of LtCMDR Michael "Scott" Speicher have been found and identified in Iraq. His loss occurred on the first night of Desert Storm 1991 when he was shot down in his F18. His recovery happened exactly as I would have guessed and could have predicted: he died during the shoot down and his remains were buried by Bedouins. I'm glad- his loss has been misused and abused by POW/MIA opportunists for the past nearly 20 years.
• Anyway, this won't be the last you'll hear of his story but, I hope the recovery of his remains will help the family.
• His best friend in life married his widow- that is a very honorable, peaceful and perfect thought to me for some reason.
• I know a very bad, evil person who is dying right now and I'm a little bothered by the fact that his impending death doesn't bother me at all. I'm tempted to feel some satisfaction at the thought of him burning in hell forever but, can't even say that's true- I feel nothing but, maybe some hope of relief for some women whose healing can have a chance. A whole lot of people are going to have feelings they don't quite know what to do with when he dies- both victims and enablers (I hate that word too but, it's apropos).
• We had to be around that person somewhat when our children were little. I cornered that monster once and while literally breathing down his throat said while pointing to my toddler nearby, If you touch that baby I will strangle the life out of you. If you so much as speak to him I will kill you. I mean, I will choke you until you die. I - will - kill - you. Do you understand me? Tell me you understand."
• Oh, yes I did.
• Took 2 nephews who had never met to the Gainesville Zoo this weekend. It was about 3 in the afternoon when we got there so I don't remember a lot about the trip except the sound of my pulse throbbing in my ear. Good grief, what was I thinking? 97 degrees and 59% humidity.
• No not a duplicate post if you remember me saying the same thing about a month ago- I really did it twice. The first time it was me and Zac.
• Both nephews went to one of the caretakers and asked to be hosed down.
• When we were about to leave I went into the restroom and there caught up with both of the older boys who were sitting on the floor under the hand dryers with their shirts open allowing the air to blow in. They said, Look uncle Kevin we're cooling off!
• Without missing a beat I looked over my shoulder and said, Who are you kids and how do you know my name?
• I saw a capybara fart in the capybara pool. I mean epically fart- a big bubba-aloop of bubbles that startled the one who cut it and made him turn around and look where it bubbled up from.
• The other capys didn't seem to mind.

Thursday's Thoughts

• Through a website that lists thousands of headstones in Texas I saw my dad's headstone for the first time in a long time. It was weird to see the hand of someone I don't even know holding back the weeds to take a picture.
• I also saw the headstone of someone I know to be dead with the date of death still blank.
• It also led me to a census from 1930, it listed the father of my best friend as 12 years old at the time. He killed himself in his sixties (I believe that's right) by shooting himself in the head in his front yard. I remember being pulled out of class to be with him after his dad died.
• The same boy came and picked me up from school when my dad died.
• I had an uncle who after my grandfather died if someone put flowers on his grave he would pull them out and throw them over the fence.
• He's dead now.
• My favorite grandfather was actually a step grandfather. He was known as a simpleton around his town and got by doing odd jobs. He loved us kids and we loved him back and were fiercely defensive of him. His name was Paul and that is what the older people called him. I always said Pa and thought that was what he was being called by everyone.
• He walked a lot and would pick up little discarded toys and all kinds of junk (I remember several calibers of bullets) and would put them in a shoe box and give them to us when we came to see him.
• He called them play pretties.
• They lived in a tar paper shack.
• I wonder about the nature of graveyards. It seems they inevitably become overgrown as families age and die off. Often a highway or reservoir comes and covers them and they aren't always relocated. The person isn't there, they are gone forever but, I guess it is a good way to feel connected if it's available for future generations to visit.
• I'm going to take my kids out this weekend and tend to my families graves.
• I wonder how many people will come to my funeral?
• The rumor was at my dads funeral there were several women who didn't belong to the family and weren't friends of the family who carried on and acted way upset for people unknown to the family.
• Supposedly, there were also a lot of phone numbers of women in his wallet.
• I like that kind of stuff in a sly, dark kind of way.
• My dad died in 1979.
• It seems like it could have been yesterday. It seems like it could have been a hundred years ago.

Ladies And Gentlemen

would you please bring your attention to me. My day started with the much underrated band Saliva- how did yours start?

Wednesday's Digressions

My new Bass Bremmers are en route as I write this.  Man, I have literally been waiting on a shoe like this- they look
 like I designed them myself. Prediction: not only are they a timeless style- They're so well made, I'll be getting compliments on them 20 years from now.

• There was time when being called a pimp was a vile pejorative now it can be very complimentary if still a bit crude.
• Sobering tattoo commercial.
• There is a book out I believe titled Soldaten- On Fighting Killing and Dying. It was written from manuscripts of secretly recorded conversations of German POWs during WWII. The premise seems to be the Germans were monsters as their own conversations proved from their blase attitudes toward violence.  My first thoughts: The average German infantryman saw more combat than the average American could ever dream of and the odds were much more often stacked against him- in a material sense at least. The Germans were professional soldiers- few Americans would have termed themselves that. American GIs murdered prisoners out of spite, robbed civilians and raped women- maybe not to the extent as would happen in the wake of a German advance but it happened. History is written by the winners.  
• When I was a boy the boys who chose the Americans for WWII combat play were the lesser informed who only knew WWII from episodes of Combat! and Rat Patrol.
• I had homemade potato masher grenades and wore old adult cowboy boots for hobnails. I could also curse in German and cry out in pain when shot.
• Hey cut me some slack- I could also beg the American to not shoot me when captured.
• Man, I could have sworn Pet Shop Boys did this song. Regardless, it is straight up 1980s.

What I'm Listening Too

Fats Domino Ain't That A Shame.

I'm Not Saying I'm

Superman, I'm just saying no one has ever seen me and Superman in a room together.

Monday's Missives

What would a stock show be without a hamburger bigger than your head?

Or a new friend and a PBR rodeo bull and a pink and black pig to play with?

Or dangerous metal farm equipment to play on? Probably not too great says Zac.

• The Asteroids Galaxy Tour- Around The Bend. I'm told this has blown up with it's use in an IPOD commercial? Don't know, I haven't seen it, but fun, cool music in a trippy video.
• Zac told me he loved me "finintity" this morning. It does not get any better than that.
• Building up another aquarium. It's of decent size, but small-ish-er than I thought where I'd be now in my aquaria endeavors. It will be pretty nice though. My concept will be all natural colors with natural appearing decorations with a large school of a species that's been standard aquarium fish for the last 100 years and some interesting oddballs. Also, due to small size and fact I want the tank very easy to maintain none of the fish will exceed 3 inches at full growth potential. It will be live planted and I might experiment with natural light cycles and spectrum's if I can figure out an inexpensive way to accomplish same.
• Next tank will have black sand substrate, black rocks, be lit with ultraviolet light and house albinos and species with colors that will pop under that light.
• That one may deserve a webcam.
• I own a gun that's killed someone. It's ridiculous to assign any kind of malevolence to an inanimate object, but yes that fact jumps out at me sometimes when I handle it.
• Watched Cars with Zac again. Amazing animation for a great story. I love it and I'm very confident will never tire of it and it's a shame it wouldn't lend itself well to a sequel.
• Zac went into Davids Western store in Weatherford and said, I need a new hat and I've got my own money in my pocket!

Army Flashback

• My old Kaserne in Bad Hersfeld Germany. Nothing will make you feel quite as old as when such important parts of not only your life, but world history are either gone, re purposed or commemorated by a museum.
• My first thought when I saw pics of the old K Troop building? I recalled standing in formation in front of it at 0600 in the morning getting our hurray for us speech and safety briefing before leaving for a big multi national maneuver in the northern part of Germany and seeing R. Tatum come staggering by in his civvies. He had the day off the day before, got insanely drunk and passed out in a ditch near the park. He stopped and stared at us as he passed the formation with the most genuinely puzzled look. He thought it was 6 o'clock the night before and he was coming back to post with plenty of time to get some good shut eye before we left the next morning. Loading weapons and rail heading your Bradley Fighting Vehicles is tiresome while sober and not hungover. That must have been one miserable day for him.
• During a stint as a COs driver I drove the entire trace of our sector to rework our battle maps. Some of my best friends were in Border Ops. Add these to the fact I had a decent camera and loved taking pictures and you can guess I had some pretty awesome pics- night life, concerts, historic architecture, battlefields and lots of East German scenes. There must have been hundreds of loose photos and two albums of the better stuff.
• A woman I was involved with went through them and finding two pics of women she knew to be old girlfriends threw it all away.
• Makes sad Kevin sad.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Turkish thugs who were called Gypsies were prone to carry screwdrivers and assault people during those days. One of my friends was walking to a club with a friend when the friend made a couple of long strides toward a Gypsy nearby and smashed him in the face. As they looked down on the guy whose faced was obviously rearranged and covered in blood Marcus said,  What did you do that for?! The other guy pointed down to the screwdriver still in the Turk's hand.
• Oddly/interestingly Marcus would later be stabbed 3 times by another Turk in a scuffle shortly before he returned from Germany.
• When I'm in a good story telling mode I might say, I was in this whorehouse in Germany once...
• Good times.

Save Yourself

from all the lies of the beautiful people.

Hey, don't look at me- I didn't invent the Internet. I didn't even upload the pics with a," beautiful people " tag

Wednesday's Digressions

Chorizo  and Mozzarella stuffed smoke jalapenos over black beans. Have this with chorizo cheese fries at Tequilas in Weatherford and you will be good to hook! 

• The Brain That Wouldn't Die.
• Most recent brain rotting, so bad it's good movie I've watched.
• So over the top and cheesy in every way- they had to know what they were doing but, how could they have pulled it off if they were trying to make it that bad? Very cute movie anyway- you can find it on hulu.com. It would be a great sick day movie.
• Share it with someone you love
• or hate.
• As a nurse you'll find it more true in some settings than others but, I can assure you I've worked areas in nursing where patient after patient (in fact the bulk of the patient population) is only there in front of you due to a history of personal choices they've made from substance abuse to failure to manage chronic disease processes to simply not eating like they have some common sense.
• I know nurses who flat refuse to waste their breath educating patients about exercise, nutrition etc.. Generally speaking, humans won't change- they will die before they commit to any type of change.
• Saw an ad for a cat appetizer the other day (no not a tasty treat made of cats for humans) it was an appetizer made for cats by humans. It was sea bass and shrimp flavor in a delicate broth. Can't decide if that demonstrates how awesome or pathetic we are. We have the extra time, energy and money on our hands to be able to worry about the delicateness of our cats appetizers broth while we obliviously spend billions on our pets every year as the world falls down around our shoulders, people on this planet literally starve to death and die of easily preventable (and curable) diseases?
• Another way to look at this: I've never eaten sea bass in my life and the expense of shrimp is a consideration that makes it a rare treat.

Just Tuesday

• The Pennsylvania kid who stabbed the other students in his school was said by another student in an early report I read to be smart, fairly popular and have friends. I saw his picture and his name-Hribel. There is not a chance that first report was accurate. I can guess he was literally tortured and not least of which that last name was used against him with various combinations of Horrible being involved.
• Hot sports opinion: in five years nobody will know who Johnny Manziel is other than a trivia question.
• The luster has worn from my work schedule. We work late one night a week for overtime then late one night for the trill of getting off early one day. I am exhausted- literally exhausted and tired all the time.
• There are a lot of series from HULU, NETFLIX and FX etc that the ads don't really tell you anything about them. I don't know why I even looked up the show Fargo. The ad didn't even intrigue me I just randomly did it.
• A patient recently referred to her isolation status as insulation status. Funny foibles of otherwise fluent foreign born people are funny.
• Another recent patient stank so badly when he came for meds that when I went to another nurses office to help her with a computer problem I could smell the funk and I swear it was on me and didn't just waft down and across the hall.
• Holy smokes. I just realized- she must have thought that aroma was me!
• Stunk or stank?
  

Monday's Missives

• Last night (01/10/2014) started at Rio Mambo and ended at Fuzzy's. Among my fellow revelers was a 20 something macho Latino named Fabian and a 60 something oilfield worker who met his wife while doing rehab after he broke his hip. Another partay-er a 20 year old female power lifter who can lift 400+ pounds. One was a team roper back in the day before an injury (broken neck?) sidelined him.
• I laughed until my face hurt.
• One girl got tired of being misheard and/or ignored and used an empty paper towel roll as a megaphone to tell her stories.
• Overheard as one girl looked at the pictures on another's phone: Uh, whats with the picture of your hand?! Oh, I was drinking that day and shot a staple into it by accident so I took a picture.
• My kinda people.
• Kevin is rubbing his beard and watching TV while he sings along to the music. Where is he rubbing his beard to? He's just rubbing it further down his face... Lyrics to impromptu song one of the girls sang about me.
• (01/11/2014)  I am soaking in the tub while watching Mad Max.
• FG is watching CMT in the living room on the home theater system I gave her for X-Mas. Today's country music is very horrible.
• Although I generally believe the harder we work, the smarter we act and the better start we had in life- the luckier we'll be I have an old friend who is the luckiest person I've ever met. When he was young an aunt who he was very good to and helped often died leaving him 500 thousand dollars. No one knew she had anything. He was a military reenactor and after buying a gun in a pawn shop he thought was just a random battlefield bring home he paid 100 bucks for, he opened the butt stock up and found the original cleaning kit and the original paperwork including the name and address of the German soldier who carried it into battle during World War II. It was also a sniper rifle worth over a thousand dollars before he found a scope for it at a gun show for a 100 bucks. After getting a worthless degree he thought would be the hot thing for the times he found an unrelated but very good job, the only requirement for which was a degree- worthless kind or not. His hot wife was preoccupied with getting pregnant when they absolutely couldn't afford it. He tried for her sake. Predictably, she didn't get pregnant until they were making money and had insurance. Then they had 2 perfect kids- a boy and a girl one right after the other. You go to a drink machine with him, it would spit out 2 drinks and give him all his money back...

Friday's Dispatch

• The video for Chevelles The Clincher gave me an odd flashback. I was in west Texas with a friend exploring during the Monarch Butterfly migration in an unusually dry year. We were walking in a creekbed that had some water in it and as we came around a corner there were tens of thousands of them- so many you could hear them fluttering around and if you stopped moving they would land on you since space was already short for landing areas. No video, no pictures just a couple of peoples memories.
• From an NBC news article: " A bomb dropped during the war that never went off exploded Friday killing a construction worker and injuring eight others NBC's Brian Williams reports " Does any of the preceding sentence strike you as odd or is it just me? Although it was basically part of the byline placed after mention in the title of World War II, I'm tempted to ask, What war? but the bigger questions are, The war never went off- or the bomb ? If the bomb never went off,  I wonder what that construction workers family thinks about that.
• NBCs Brian Williams reports on a blast caused by construction equipment detonating a World War 2 era bomb.
• You're welcome NBC.
• Women sometimes disparage men for wanting a woman who is, A lady on the streets and freak between the sheets. So what. That is what everybody wants. A woman wants the same thing in a man-  respectful, responsible and civil in polite company and then yeah, that proverbial freak between the sheets.
• I learned earlier the oldest surviving cast member from Gone With The Wind died recently. Maybe I knew but forgot- that movie was made in 1939 meaning there would have been plenty of people born into slavery still alive at that time. If asked to guess I would have said it came out in the 40s and late 40s at that.
• Somebody recently made fun of me a little too hard that an ex had a name commonly associated with being a guys name. I'm not sure exactly what is going on there but I think they might like to believe I'm a homosexual.
• Kill me: for the past 12 hours or more that country song where the guy says, I've got some of that real good, feel good stuff under the seat of my big, black jacked up truck has been playing in a loop in my brain.
• Really- kill me.
• We watched Texas Chainsaw this afternoon. It was pretty fun.

I Started

my day with Son House banging away on a guitar that if he didn't make it himself he found in a pawn shop for a dollar. A great philosophizer once referred to his voice as," the 7th string ". I like that. How did your day start?

Thursday's Thoughts

• I recently stumbled across another military faker website that exposes guys who made outrageous (and often illegal) claims about military service. In some I ways I get it- may help with chasin' the ladies and make you look hard in a bar but others- how can they do that, especially when they defraud the government and soak civilian assistance programs?
• There are guys who wait months and years for their claims to be decided by the VA while these monsters collect disability-and some of them literally never served a day.
• I cannot remember the last time I played a video game but would buy an Asteroids console model in a minute if cost were no object.
• Chili with shredded triple cheddar cheese, Cheez It crackers  and Pringles Southwestern Ranch Tortilla chips and washed down with orange juice- its whats for lunch (03/31/2014).
• Pro Flowers over charged my card the last time I sent flowers through them. I told them  about the overcharge and to quit sending me E Mails. They replied with a, " 20% discount- For your next order! " and literally doubled the E Mails.
• Here- watch the most awesome and realistic car chase scene in the history of ever.

Wednesday's Digressions

You call it a tent. The North Face calls it Mica 1. I call it Dirtbag Castle.

• Do a search on the question, Has anyone ever had sex in space and be amazed at the number of responses. Many people have actually contacted NASA- the official line is no and there has never been any studies conducted regarding sex in space. Many articles go into the bio mechanical difficulties and privacy issues. You also may come across some of the private ventures that are planning a private space aboard their craft so a high bidding- paying couple can be the first.
• There have been males and females in space for months on end and in 1991 a newlywed couple on a shuttle mission together.
• There has been sex in space.
• When I was little boy I would fantasize about being the Rifleman's son.
• Gooberhead I never said I was not.
• A headline I saw earlier was to the effect, " Party of the rich may surprise you " and the supposed spoiler was that more Democrat politicians represent wealthy areas than Republicans. I would have been shocked if that were not the case- you'd have to be rich to think that way in the first place if in a position to affect policy and call yourself a Democrat.

• An interesting video about the Khorengal Valley combat and support operations.

Thoughts On President Obama- From Old Draft Clean Up Day

• The Obama administration dropped it's European missile defense shield for a few different reasons (none of them based on good military or political policy) but, the unspoken one is the Russians would be more likely to talk sanctions against Iran- it doesn't work that way, sorry fans.


• He is in a terrible, unwinnable I think political fix on Afghanistan. We've heard Gen. McChrystal wanted 40,000 more troops. It's coming out now that he feels he really needs 80,000 but, it was thought the 40k number would be more palatable to civilian leaders and more attainable. There's no stomach for an expansion in his base. The war will be lost without the expansion- there's simply not enough troops for the mission. As soon as that war is declared unwinnable or as soon as thousands more troops are mobilized he's sunk- politically dead in the water.


• Funny, how Afghanistan could (or has) become the Vietnam so many were screaming Iraq had become.


• The recession is dragging out only because business knows health reform will be harmful to some businesses, disastrous for some but, no one knows to what extent it will cost the economy. This is another factor that guarantees the recession will drag on for a while- even once it's passed investment will be reluctant in business expansion and the markets.


• They should be ashamed to try and saddle us with this at this time.


• I don't like hearing a detractor speak of him as Obama- like it or not he is The President.


• I like it even less when a fan speaks of him as Obama to try and cut down on the adulation factor- we can see right through that.


• He really, really shouldn't have campaigned for the Olympics and it shows how naive his administration is- Chicago was not going to win the bid and it's just another in the loss column for him.


• Wonder how much that flight cost?


• The vacations he's taken to reward his base for their support during his campaign has cost the taxpayers nearly 2 million dollars. If this is news to you, you gotta know you wouldn't have learned about it from some weirdo on a blog if he was a conservative- you would have been awash in the news from every source in the world.


• You know I'm right.


• I finally watched the speech where he apologized for our arrogance etc. I thought I was going to be sick if for no other reason that it showed some incredible political naivete'. He was in Europe- France to be specific. No problems we have or have had in the past with France have anything to do with our arrogance and these kind of apologies don't do anything but, make a leader and by extension his country look weak. So, he didn't help us a bit by putting us down in this public way in Europe where the only people with problems with the US are European liberals not the governments but, I can assure you it made us look weak to our real enemies. Maybe it shouldn't be that way even but, it is.

This Day

started with Dwight Yoakum, GG Allin, Flaco Jimenez and Warren Zevon. Zevon and  Letterman were very good friends. In fact Zevon's last performance was on the show. After the show he gave Letterman his guitar and the world a great quote. When Letterman who knew Zevon was dying  asked Zevon what he knew now about life and death Zevon replied, Enjoy every sandwich.

Take it away Warren with Knocking On Heaven's Door.

Not any one of Zevon's iconic photos- but my favorite.

Monday's Missives

Not a timely traffic report image- it happened weeks ago.

• Pork, it's sooo good, bacon is made from it.
• The brown recluse that lives in the US came from South America in the 1950s. It entered in the baggage of a troupe of Shakespearean actors. No- really, I'm not kidding.
• From the home page of an overseas based website of cabin plans: " This might not be earth shattering merely so is your well disposed- state government. Moisture from the glue will be absorbed by the cooky and that bequeath make the biscuit swell upwards toward the atomic number 49..." Hey, sounds legit to me.
• If I am in  a mood to be disgusting I can make belch in a way that will make you vomit into your shirt pocket. 
• Recently I saw a kid with his cap cocked around backwards on his head. He was squinting his eyes from the sun as he left our clinic and literally stumbled his way out the door. I stood there in awe shaking my head.

  

  Not the kid

• A smart person would invest in a trailer park. Invest in making it nice, clean and safe and charge a little more than average for the area. Pay a manager OK but provide a free trailer. Don't put up with crap from any renter. Buy nicer trailers from distressed owners for replacements and/or work deals with dealers and banks. Do as much maintenance and repair yourself as you and your manager can do without costing yourself 50 bucks trying to save a nickel.  When there is a building boom on or you're ready to get out, scrap or auction all the trailers, sell the land and walk away.

  

  Not the park I have envisioned

• Yeah, I have a lot of good ideas, in fact some call me an ideas man. Its why I'm so rich.
• Yesterday (03/22/2014) I scored a normally 300 dollar down bag at REI for 125 bucks. Score! Besides Army issues it is the first down bag I have ever owned and the 15 degree F. rating ought to serve me well. Yes, 15 degrees might sound ridiculous in Texas but I'm a ridiculously cold sleeper and camp year round.
• The guy talked me into joining their co-op plan with a sweet 20% discount and gave it to me on the items I just bought after some confusing return/refund/resale hi jinks on the register.. Double score!
• This past weekend (03/30/2014) after I proudly dished up the last of the breakfast burritos I sat down for the coffee I had also made on my Coleman dual fuel stove. I knew I had splashed some hot water on my crotchal region but also knew it wasn't much and assumed the burn would fade quickly and was looking for my delicious caffeinated beverage to take me away. As these thoughts and many others circulated through my tiny brain FG's eyes got wide and pointing to my crotch where I had dropped the towel I had used for a pot holder said, Kevin... Fire! Did you  know old, dried out cotton towels are flammable if passed too closely over a camp stove flame? Yeah, I know- me neither. No one was more surprised than me and my boys.

  

  Not the aforementioned towel. No wait- that isn't true.That is totally the towel that scorched my man-junk.

Take it way Iggy and tell us about that lust for life

What I'm watching.  What I'm listening to.  Have  great weekend and be careful.

Friday's Dispatch

• Red Dawn- caught it on Google Video recently. It has aged very well- man, it's just a good movie- not only a good depiction of the subject matter.
• For all the actors who are still prominent still the strangest one to see so young was Charlie Sheen who played Patrick Swayzes characters younger brother and I don't know why- some others have died, some look rough for their years.
• For years it was in The Guinness Book- for the most violent movie ever. I believe an act of violence happens every 2 minutes.
• Rarely do I decide I want a dog and then find one- they generally find me after being dumped or we are otherwise brought together by fate.
• What ever happened to Dog Chapman the bounty hunter? The saying, Some people are their own worst enemies was made for that guy.
• It's ridiculous but, I hate when people discover things I loved that were at one time not so well known.
• I want to re-read Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. My last copy was given to me by an Ibu person from Nigeria.
• Nigerians, Ungandans, Rwandans, Congolese and Sudanese- the good ones are salt of the earth.
• An old friend dated a girl whose father was a Colonel in an SS unit during WWII. I still have a Hitler postage stamp from him. I've heard it's worth a couple of hundred bucks but, I doubt it- they made jillions so Hitler could profit from the royalties.

Thursday's Thoughts

I think I paid 17 dollars for this steak. As beautiful as it may be I could not have dreamed as a young man I would ever say that.

Cypress knees in the snow look out of place

Ridiculously FG put her ridiculous house shoes on me. Ridiculous.

• I know the mouthwash commercial that says "Imagine that everyone in the world is having one big party- in your mouth." is meant to sound gross and demonstrate the absolute numbers of bacteria in a human mouth I just think they did that a little too effectively.
• Eeew.
• A day shift nurse from another company once gave a patient 200 mg of morphine instead of 20 before I got to the home- accordingly the patient was feeling no pain during my initial assessment. Actually, she wasn't feeling much of anything, but thankfully the massive overdose didn't finish her off.
• Can't get the Pearl Jam song Just Breathe out of my mind today.
• It is unbelievably humid today. How can it be this humid without actually raining?
• Unless dehydrated when I get sweaty from being active outdoors I don't stink.
• Earlier (12/25/2013) there was a headline about Justin Bieber announcing his retirement. He thought it was a goof- the discerning music lovers of the world thought it a beautiful Christmas miracle from heaven.  The world couldn't get that lucky.

Wednesday's Digressions

                                                                        Carrying the laundry to the laundry room- Zac style.

• Every few years I'm reminded of a story that has always fascinated me- the bison of Catalina Island. In 1924 several were taken to the island 25 miles off the coast of California for a western movie shoot. After sadly not even getting their shot at the big time in the movie they were left behind. Being mammals they did what mammals do, so what do you do when there's too many for their own good?
• I had a best friend once who was morbidly obese- say, 500 pounds obese? When she would make a weight related statement regarding herself she would refer to herself as being heavy. It was the only time I gave any thought to her size but, it sounded ridiculous for her to use that expression. I don't know what I expected her to say, Ginormagantuan?
• I had a patients tongue in my mouth once.
• Holy guacamole'- assault and sexual abuse right? That's probably what would have happened if there had been a witness. In a patients room as I stood at the bedside holding a clipboard in one hand and a thermometer in the other the patient called me closer and then closer again. When I got close enough, her her arms shot up with the speed of a Ninja. She grabbed my head with both hands and pulled it down and as I called out something brave like help! our mouths banged together.
• And yes, she slipped some tongue in there.
• What would a court sworn eyewitness report seeing in those situations if they'd walked in at the moment of impact?
• You know as well as I- the families would have owned everything I had, there would have been jail time and my nursing license? Pfffftht- I would have been lucky if Goodwill let me sort merchandise.

On The Cellular Level

• One of the ATCs involved in the collision between the helicopter and airplane that crashed into the Hudson killing 9 people was on the telephone with his girlfriend when the incident occurred.
• Regardless of circumstances I won't use the telephone while I'm with a patient- because of how bad it would look.
• I would not be surprised if actual numbers of accidents and mishaps caused by cel phone use absolutely dwarfed published reports from DOT, NTSB, insurance companies etc. 
• I'm on the road quite a lot and there's not a single drive I make to or from a case that I don't see someone driving erratically while they are on a cell phone- especially texting.
• The 2 times I really needed a cell phone- as in real emergencies it couldn't be found.
• They seem to facilitate a lot of adulterous relationships.
• I wish I had posted the prediction I made years ago reporters would start augmenting their stories with pics and vids they themselves took with their phones and start leaving cameramen behind. The cameraman will never go away completely but will become as we know them an anachronism.
• I remember when a cel phone was over a 1000 dollars and weighed as much as a brick.
• The phone I have chosen has a 20 megapixel camera and the plan allows for 4 Gb of storage- literally amazing.