This Just In- Truck Fire In Weatherford East Of The Love's Truck Stop. Expect Onlooker, Cleanup And Delays Due To A Single Open Lane

Wisdom Of A Chupacabra

You can learn a lot by spending a rainy day with a box of old National Geographic magazines.

Wednesday's Digressions

A previously unpublished picture from WWI which started 100 years ago this month

• We have a dog park in Weatherford now within another park. It has only been open some days as of this writing but already that end of the park smells like rotten dog crap. But hey, on the plus side they cut down down a lot of trees and poured concrete over some ground that was only being used by stupid wildlife so there is something to be said for that I guess.
• There have been multiple people who reported being brought to tears when President Obama was elected citing pride that we could elect a black President. That is OK if that is what a person wants to believe, it just seem odd to me- he is half black anyway and maybe his being President actually shows a problem with our critical thinking skills and nothing more, something else altogether or nothing at all.

  

  My mom's old buffet that my sister had restored. On the top shelf to the right my dad kept a homemade barometer. It was made from two bottles one inverted into the other and the bottom one was filled to the opening of the top one with colored water. A pressure change would force the water from the bottom to the top bottle. When that happened we would go fishing- or was it the other way around?  Which ever way it was dad simply would not go if the barometer wasn't right.

• Inevitably when I leave home with my camera I cannot get the lens right. I carry the lesser- I need more and vice versa. When I'm rich I'll carry both on separate bodies, while wearing a vest and boonie hat and look like a Vietnam era combat photographer.
• The UPS guy just left my Nuts.com order. He looked like he was ready to burst into flames. I felt awful I didn't have a cold rink to offer him. My fruit was all melty and disgusting but delicious.

  

  Here, have a picture of a cat riding  a Pegasus

• The story of Phineas Gage has intrigued me since I was a boy and we continue to learn more about his case all the time. His skull and the bar that passed through his head are both in Harvard's Warren Anatomical  medical collection.
• Yes, I know I have mentioned him before. Hey, I said the story intrigued me and anyway, I saw a show yesterday (07/25/2014) that highlighted his case.
• Black Sabbaths Paranoid has been playing in a loop in my brain for 24 hours.
• Shoot me.
• The coverage of the war in Gaza proves my contention we will believe what we want to believe and base our perceptions of  military action on politics- not evidence. There have been multiple reports showing Hamas rocket launches from a school. The reports will show the launches yes but spend 10 times more time highlighting the civilian casualties near the school after the Israeli counterattack. The counterattack was well- a counter to an attack. The most perplexing thing for me on this subject is people who would be going beserk if Bush was in office aren't making a peep about our alliance with Israel and the people regardless of their political leaning calling for cease fires would be demanding that Palestine be flattened if it were the US they had been rocketing.

Underworld Born Slippy Nuxx

Everybody grab your X and dig out your Glo Sticks. And thennnn what you say?  And then- everybody skate backwards...

Monday's Missives

Ugly beast.

• The new truck is great- so far so good. It only has 60,000 miles on it. The guy I bought it from said he was having a little trouble selling it as nobody could believe the miles for the age of the truck. I sense everything is legit. He was the original owner. He bought it at the end of a lease period as his wife liked it. It was her (very short) commuter wagon and grocery getter. It wants some new shocks and one tire and that is it. I want HID/LED lights, a bed cover and a new sound system for it.  I'll install the system myself. Kicker and Alpine come to mind as brand names as I sit here rocking back and forth wanting.
• A WWE type wrassler has come out. Nobody cares dude- everybody just thinks they're supposed to act like they do.
• The attitude it sometimes creates as the above illustrates is the only downside to not seeing race or sexual orientation when I deal with my fellow man.

  

  FG got a little weirded out when I cleaned her hairbrush out. She settled right down and got in the spirit and thought it not weird at all when I told her I did it to fashion a doll in her image to hang from my rear view mirror.

  
  

  

  Zac and FG played dress up- good grief.

  
  

  

  I fixed FGs necklace.

  
  

  

  Together at last- it works while making your skin soft and smell pretty.
• People distanced themselves from Mark Cuban a bit when he said something about crossing to the other side of the street when he sees certain people. The funny thing about that? The groups of people he mentioned dress and look the way they do specifically to appear intimidating, hard, thuggish and/or menacing.
• ISIS the terror group in Iraq are monsters but they certainly have a cool sounding acronym for a name. They jacked 450 million dollars from a bank in Iraq. You can bet they have plenty of plug and play options on hand to deal with the US if we get involved. It doesn't mean that should stop us if we decide to act, we just better be as smart as they are and be willing to make sacrifices. You can also bet they have some good surface to air missiles (SAMs) supplied by Iran and plans in place for captured aviators. They will also make it nearly impossible to kill the ISIS fighters without killing lots of civilians.

  

  What?! Me ugly?

• I have determined to limit myself to 3 cups of coffee per day. Although today (06/14/2014) is only day one- I haven't died yet.
  

I'm Not Saying. I'm Just Saying If You're Going To Antagonize Our Ideological Enemies Don't Make It So Easy To Hit Us Back

Friday's Dispatch

• People who have an inkling of historical context may think the Tet offensive was a military failure in 1968 for the US military. It is often cited correctly as a if not the turning point toward a lack of support for the war. So the US lost that battle right? No, it was a resounding and complete military victory for the US, so much so what we call the Vietcong was so decimated it was never able to reconstitute.
• The sun feels good at 1240.32 hours on 06/08/2014 as I sit by the pool.
• When I was Zac's age I went to the pool by myself and would stay gone all day. Sometime I would dive for change and when I had enough added to the money I got picking up Coke bottles to sell I would buy something from the snack bar to survive. Those days are long gone now- in more ways than one. The pool in Decatur Texas by the football field was long ago filled with dirt. People have even argued with me it was there in first place.

  

  Here I demonstrate how to properly eat a yellow jacket maggot. They're sweet and slightly nutty, tasting vaguely like sweet corn

• My no dry cleaning experiment is now completing it's second month. I am not spending money on dry cleaning and instead I hit my clothes with a freshener, wipe the inside of the collars with a wet washcloth and pass the iron over them. Then I leave lots of breathing room between them in the closet and spread the wears out of each item as much as possible.. There are no odors and they look like new. As time goes by unless I reach some kind of critical mass and there is an explosion of funkiness in my closet I'll use the money I save to buy new clothes to improve my rotation. I'll buy 2 new shirts and some socks today.
• The fly catchers are back- working the trees over the pool. You see a black dot flying near them, the bird darts up and does some fantastic aerobatics, the black dot disappears into their beak, they then alight for a minute on an open branch and this repeats every few minutes.
• The Cramps song New Kind Of Kick has been playing in a loop in my brain for over 2 hours now. It is a great, in fact favorite song but enough is enough. Quit it head-brain. I mean it. Here, together we'll watch what cricket looks like to Americans and see if it helps rid us of this earworm.
• About 20 minutes ago (on 06/08/2014 @ around 4:20) FG said, I'm going to try cutting Zac's hair. About 15 minutes ago she called out, Hey Kevin, look up a hair place in the area that is open on Sunday. Ten minutes ago she said, I'm quitting while I'm ahead and getting out of here before they close. Five minutes ago they were a blur as they ran out the door like he had drunk a quart of antifreeze and she was afraid the emergency department was about to close. How bad was it? I didn't take a picture to put up here as I didn't want it to haunt him for rest of his life.

  

  Not for everybody (even car guys) but this is a perfect hot rod in my book.
  The long wheel base and color besides red and the factory-ish two tone colors make it look different  for a hot rod and work great.  It has an up-gunned small block and two turbochargers.