Here's a picture of my father, the late Donald Gene Patterson, and my daughter, The Aggie.
My father was the greatest man I've ever known. The End. Full Stop.
There was a time during the "Men's Movement" scare of the late 1980's early 1990's, where men would go out into the woods and sit in drum circles and take turns slamming their fathers.
I have no idea, no background, or no experiences to help me fathom what those guys were talking about. Lucky me.
If you visit this site regularly, what you're reading is merely an expansion of what I learned riding around our farm in his pickup truck. While he would've never supported, say, the right to use marijuana or gay marriage, I believe he was doing the best he could with the light that he had to see by.
I miss him so very much.
BTW, for Father's Day, The Aggie gave me an original drawing of Peyton Manning, our football hero. Pretty dang cool.
From the greatness of Reason magazine, on how to deal with Nanny State legislators who don't know how to find their way out of a sack, but who believe they know what's best for you to eat:
San Francisco's ban on giving away a free toy with a child's meal containing a certain number of calories, salt, and other particulars is set to kick in tomorrow. McDonald's, the clear target of the ban, had a year to figure out a way to change its business practices. Seems like they used the time wisely, reports the SF Examiner.
The San Francisco ban on providing free toys to entice children to eat unhealthy foods goes into effect Thursday, but McDonald’s plans to comply with the law by charging 10 cents a toy for their Happy Meals and donating the money to the nonprofit Ronald McDonald House.
(Catch that nice bit of editorializing about what's "unhealthy" there?)
And from the SF Weekly:
In any event, it appears the fast food chain's sharpie lawyers have McTopped San Francisco's legislators. Count this city's lawmakers as the latest among the billions and billions served.
Good for McDonald's. They got around the toy ban by charging a dime for the toy.
The Aggie grew up eating McDonald's Happy Meals, and has now upgraded to McDonald's Value Meals (or the WhataBurger equivalent) and she now has the body fat of a mop handle and can do enough pull-ups to qualify for Navy Seal training. Out of 120 people who tried to make it into the YMCA's lifeguard training program, she's one of 12 who qualified, and one of only 7 who finally passed the class. (Not that I'm proud or anything....)
There's a lot that's unknown about proper diet and health, but this much is clear:
1) The San Francisco City Council doesn't know jack shit about this topic. The Federal Government knows even less. Go here for a personal testimony.
2) Michelle Obama tried to hop on the Food Nazi Bandwagon last year, releasing some guidelines from her throne for all of us who truly love our children to follow. Go here for the pics of Barack feeding a hot dog into The Teleprompter's orifice a few days later.
3) When I was in the Literary Retail business, I sold every diet and nutrition book that was brought to market. The new ones couldn't be kept on the shelf, they sold so quickly. They had totally different content than the old ones published the year before. The old ones couldn't be given away, mostly because they were old and had different contents than the new ones that were recently featured and slobbered over by Oprah Winfrey. The only things these books had in common were dietician authors and a short shelf life.
4) I grew up being told to eat my fruit, eat my fruit, eat my fruit. But that stuff turns to sugar as soon as it is digested. I don't eat quite as much fruit now. I feel better.
5) All laws, rules and regulations have unintended consequences and create different incentives from the ones intended by the prophets who bring them down from the mountain. As an example, Happy Meal toys are now cloaked in the righteousness of the Ronald McDonald Houses. Good work, guys !
Here's the great Jonathan Edwards, doing his 1971 mega-hit "Sunshine". (I especially like the line "Some man's gone, he's tried to run my life, he don't know what he's askin'. He can't even run his own life, I'll be damned if he'll run mine.")
One last thing, totally off-topic....Edwards mentions performing this at an anti-war rally. Are we going to have any more of those rallies, or do we have to elect a Republican president first????
Traveling to Lynchburg, Va., to speak to students at Liberty University...., (Rick) Perry made light of his bad grades at Texas A&M.
Studying to be a veterinarian, he stumbled on chemistry and made a D one semester and an F in another. “Four semesters of organic chemistry made a pilot out of me,” said Perry, who went on to join the Air Force.
“His other D’s,” Richard Oppel wrote in The Times, “included courses in the principles of economics, Shakespeare, ‘Feeds & Feeding,’ veterinary anatomy and what appears to be a course called ‘Meats.’ ”
He even got a C in gym.
Perry conceded that he “struggled” with college, and told the 13,000 young people in Lynchburg that in high school, he had graduated “in the top 10 of my graduating class — of 13.”
It’s enough to make you long for W.’s Gentleman’s C’s. At least he was a mediocre student at Yale.
Yeah, bad grades are a problem. Going to Jerry Falwell University to address the Baptists in Lynchburg is a bigger problem, but not for most Republicans.
So how do Perry's college grades stack up against those of our current Commander-In-Chief? Let's got to the Occidental College website.....
The 1974 federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (34 CFR Part 99) protects the privacy of student education records. We, therefore, cannot disclose students’ classes, grade point averages, majors or other such information. President Obama's transcripts and other student records have not been released by Occidental.
Nor will they ever be. They're too damn embarrassing. Based on my own research, I've been able to determine that teleprompters were not allowed in the classroom in the early 1980's. Therefore, Obama's college grades sucked.
I suspect that Barack Obama failed Economics, he failed American Government, he got a "D" in Political Science, a "D" in Speech, and a "Fails" in a couple of simple "Pass/Fail" basic math courses. Those are just suspicions on my part, though, based on the current evidence.
Enough about Rick Perry vs. Obama. We don't have Obama's transcripts to hold up to one of Dowd's pitiless investigations.
Here's another section from Dowd's editorial, which is primarily about how Republicans disregard college transcripts in choosing who to put at the top of the ticket:
The Republicans are now the “How great is it to be stupid?” party. In perpetrating the idea that there’s no intellectual requirement for the office of the presidency, the right wing of the party offers a Farrelly Brothers “Dumb and Dumber” primary in which evolution is avant-garde.
Well, yeah, the Republicans might have difficulty finding their way out of a sack. That's why they aren't Libertarians yet. But who are the scholastic giants that the Democrats put on the ticket prior to the Scholar From Chicago/Kenya/Indonesia?
Here's an evaluation of the college transcript of St. Albert, The Goracle Of Music City Tennessee:
Gore arrived at Harvard with an impressive 1355 SAT score, 625 verbal and 730 math, compared with Bush's 1206 total from 566 verbal and 640 math. In his sophomore year at Harvard, Gore's grades were lower than any semester recorded on Bush's transcript from Yale. That was the year Gore's classmates remember him spending a notable amount of time in the Dunster House basement lounge shooting pool, watching television, eating hamburgers and occasionally smoking marijuana. His grades temporarily reflected his mildly experimental mood, and alarmed his parents. He received one D, one C-minus, two C's, two C-pluses and one B-minus, an effort that placed him in the lower fifth of the class for the second year in a row.
For all of Gore's later fascination with science and technology, he often struggled academically in those subjects. The political champion of the natural world received that sophomore D in Natural Sciences 6 (Man's Place in Nature) and then got a C-plus in Natural Sciences 118 his senior year. The self-proclaimed inventor of the Internet avoided all courses in mathematics and logic throughout college, despite his outstanding score on the math portion of the SAT. As was the case with many of his classmates, his high school math grades had dropped from A's to C's as he advanced from trigonometry to calculus in his senior year.
(Gore) took the religious studies courses while also working full time as a journalist at the Nashville Tennessean, and after getting off to a strong start with an A-minus in Ethics, he failed to complete any of the three courses he took in the fall of 1971, and those incompletes eventually lapsed into F's. He returned for another semester in the spring of 1972, when two more incompletes turned into F's.
In the meantime, George W. Bush, our first president to earn an MBA, was knocking out a 2.75 GPA in a Harvard MBA program while, by all accounts, he was partying his ass off.
I repeat.... While The Goracle was flunking 5 out of 8 courses at a freakin' seminary, Bush was doing ok in a Harvard MBA program.
W. was not a good president. Until The Teleprompter Jesus came along, George W. Bush did more to increase the national debt than any other president. But I can assure you that George W. is not the anti-intellectual dolt that the Maureen Dowds of this world have portrayed him to be. While I was running bookstores in Dallas, GWB was a regular visitor, purchasing Current Events, Politics, Sports, and lots and lots of history. I don't know if he read 'em, but he sure bought 'em and knew how to talk about them. Ask anyone who worked at the Dallas Preston/Forest Bookstop back in the day.
Well what about John Kerry? Surely he outperformed Bush? Naw. He didn't. Here's CBS News:
Senator John F. Kerry's grade average at Yale University was virtually identical to President Bush's record there, despite repeated portrayals of Kerry as the more intellectual candidate during the 2004 presidential campaign.
No, their grades weren't "virtually identical". Bush's grades were 1 point higher.
Kerry had a cumulative average of 76 and got four Ds his freshman year - in geology, two history courses and political science, The Boston Globe reported Tuesday.
His grades improved with time, and he averaged an 81 his senior year and earned an 89 - his highest grade - in political science as a senior.
"I always told my dad that D stood for distinction," Kerry said in a written response to reporters' questions. He said he has previously acknowledged focusing more on learning to fly than studying.
Under Yale's grading system in effect at the time, grades between 90 and 100 equaled an A, 80-89 a B, 70-79 a C, 60 to 69 a D, and anything below that was a failing grade.
In 1999, The New Yorker magazine published a transcript showing Bush had a cumulative grade average of 77 his first three years at Yale, and a similar average under a non-numerical rating system his senior year.
Bush's highest grade at Yale was an 88 in anthropology, history and philosophy. He received one D in his four years, a 69 in astronomy, and improved his grades after his freshman year, the transcript showed.
Kerry, a Democrat, previously declined to release the transcript, which was included in his Navy records. He gave the Navy permission to release the documents last month, the Globe reported.
So the best Dowd would be able to say about Kerry is that he wasn't quite as sharp in the classroom as Bush.
How about Republican John McCain, another Republican dunce? He barely passed.
Biden graduated College in 1965, with a Bachelor of Arts and a double major in Political Science and History. He was 506th in a class of 688.
At Syracuse University of Law, 1968, Biden graduated 76th in a class of 85.
Wow.
I couldn't find anything on Ron Paul's GPA or his college transcript. But if grades really are that important, let's point out the obvious.... Ron Paul did well enough to get into medical school. But then, he's not really a Republican. He's a Libertarian. And a genius.
I'm with Maureen Dowd on this one. Grades matter !!!
Please excuse me while I bet the crap out of this dead horse....one....more....time....with some help from the Wall Street Journal. This is from an unsigned editorial that ran a few days ago:
Perhaps you've already noticed around the neighborhood, but this is a rotten summer for young Americans to find a job. The Department of Labor reported last week that a smaller share of 16-19 year-olds are working than at anytime since records began to be kept in 1948.
We've had stimulus packages, bold new initiatives, bailouts, TARP's, and an increase in government spending that would be the envy of every corporatist/fascist since Mussolini. How in the heck can we have the lowest level of teen employment since 1948?
Only 24% of teens, one in four, have jobs, compared to 42% as recently as the summer of 2001. The nearby chart chronicles the teen employment percentage over time, including the notable plunge in the last decade.
So instead of learning valuable job skills—getting out of bed before noon, showing up on time, being courteous to customers, operating a cash register or fork lift—millions of kids will spend the summer playing computer games or hanging out.
The lousy economic recovery explains much of this decline in teens working, and some is due to increases in teen summer school enrollment. Some is also cultural: Many parents don't put the same demands on teens as they once did to get out and work.
I respectfully disagree with The Wall Street Guys on this one. I've been getting in about 65 hours a week since the first week of June. Mrs. Sepulchre easily logs in the same number. The Aggie, our offspring, has been putting in 70. Yes, 70. Every summer, I get a cycle of calls from parents that I know, and they're always wondering if I've got a spot for their Jason, Jeremy, Justin, or Josh. If things go as planned, Dr. Ralph's youngest kid might be coming to work with us this summer. While there might be some parents who don't want their delicate little snowflakes to be stunted by premature labor, I've not met many. There's something else going on in these unemployment numbers. Back to the Wall Street Journal:
...But Congress has also contributed by passing one of the most ill-timed minimum wage increases in history. One of the first acts of the gone-but-not-forgotten Nancy Pelosi ascendancy was to raise the minimum wage in stages to $7.25 an hour in 2009 from $5.15 in 2007. Even liberals ought to understand that raising the cost of hiring the young and unskilled while employers are slashing payrolls is loopy economics.
Yeah. Well. Their battle-cry is "It's not fair !" or "Corporate greed !!" or "Would you want to work for $5.15 an hour?" But it is indeed loopy economics.
Or maybe not. The Center for American Progress, often called the think tank for the Obama White House, recently recommended another increase to $8.25 an hour. Though the U.S. unemployment rate is 9.1%, the thinkers assert that a rising wage would "stimulate economic growth to the tune of 50,000 new jobs." So if the government orders employers to pay more to hire workers when they're already not hiring, they'll somehow hire more workers. By this logic, if we raised the minimum wage to $25 an hour we'd have full employment.
Think about that for a moment. Enjoy it. Roll that sentence around in your mouth like a fine wine. The ironically named "Center For American Progress" is going to increase the sales of something by raising the price.
Back on planet Earth, the minimum wage increase has coincided with the plunge in the percentage of working teens. Before the most recent wage hikes, roughly seven million teens were working. Now there are closer to five million with a job and paycheck.
So why in the hell would anyone in his right mind continue to defend these arbitrary minimum wages? Could it be that The Sepulchre Family has benefitted at the expense of some of the unemployed? Is The Aggie racking up overtime because she's gotten some advantages over those who are less skilled because they didn't get onto the employment ladder at an earlier age? Yes.
Black teens have had the worst of it, with their unemployment rate rising to 41.6% in April from 29% in 2007, faster than almost any other group. A 2010 study by economists William Even of Miami University of Ohio and David Macpherson of Trinity University found that as a result of the $2.10 increase in minimum wage, "teen employment dropped by 6.9 percent. . . . For the teen population with less than 12 years of education completed, teen employment dropped by 12.4 percent." For teens priced out of the labor market, their wage fell to zero.
Whew. Thank God my family is white, and can avoid the burden of government regulatory help of this kind. Perhaps if the Center For American Progress can get the minimum wage raised to $10.00 an hour, black teen unemployment will hit 75%, guaranteeing better employment opportunities for white folks like us. (Seriously, for more info on the racist origins of the minimum wage laws, go here.)
The great tragedy is that even discussing the role of the minimum wage in teen unemployment seems to be a political taboo. The other day we saw ABC's George Stephanopoulos baiting Michele Bachmann on the minimum wage, as if refusing to raise it would be some epic political gaffe. Ms. Bachmann didn't back down from saying that the minimum wage has contributed to unemployment, though she didn't explain why.
The great tragedy is that even discussing the role of the minimum wage in teen unemployment seems to be a political taboo.
Yeah, thanks to our public school system, which does a great job of teaching victimology but a lousy job of teaching cause and effect, if you discuss anything about repealing minimum wage laws in public, you're painted as an evil, uncaring, slave-driver. And the people who arbitrarily increase these wages above the market level are painted as heroic champions of the people. Go figure.
What she or another candidate should do is stop playing defense and ask why Mr. Stephanopoulos doesn't seem to mind a black teen jobless rate of 41.6%. Someone truly brave would come out for a teenage sub-minimum wage of, say, $4 an hour. In certain circumstances employers can now pay teens a minimum of $4.25, but only for 90 days. This makes employers reluctant to hire at all. Make the case on moral grounds that a mandated wage that is too high blocks the young and unskilled from grabbing a place on the economic ladder.
Teenagers who work part-time while attending school generally make more money and have more successful careers as adults than kids who never work. As a 2006 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago put it: "The drop in teen labor force participation may also have implications for future productivity growth. In general, labor market experience tends to raise subsequent earnings."
The U.S. has long had a labor market flexible enough that when the economy grows, the jobless rate falls smartly. This time has been different, and the great danger is that Obamanomics has moved the U.S. to a permanently higher jobless rate as in so much of Europe. For America's teenagers this summer, that reality is already here.
But not at my house. My kid is doing great, pulling in overtime pay with both hands and a shovel.
Her employer could take a risk and spread the wealth by hiring some of those black kids in the neighborhood where she works, but why bother? Why take the risk on a new hire at a high rate when you can hire an experienced white girl who has been doing the job for two years already?
It's because of the minimum wage, one of the few Federal programs that has worked exactly as intended. It guarantees full employment for whites at the expense of others. I keep expecting it to show up on on the "Stuff White People Like" website. So thank you, Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat Party. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I am trying to get the child known as The Aggie through college.
College is expensive. Textbooks, thanks to this idiot, are still incredibly expensive.
The Aggie wants to be a veterinarian. She has loved mammals, reptiles, bugs and amphibians ever since she learned to walk.
During the summers, she works as a lifeguard. Lifeguard training and certification, if I remember correctly, required that she undergo a grueling series of qualifications, then pass a ten day lifesaving course. The cost for all of this was $200.00
A degree from Texas A and M will cost you around $16,000.00 per year.
Until today, I saw lifeguarding as a means to an end, nothing more. Depending on whose statistics you believe, a good vet can bring home between 75K and 115K per year.
High pay and benefits for lifeguards in Newport Beach is the latest example of frustrating levels of compensation for public employees. More than half the city’s full-time lifeguards are paid a salary of over $100,000 and all but one of them collect more than $100,000 in total compensation including benefits.
When thinking about career options with high salaries, lifeguarding is probably not one of the first jobs to come to mind. But it apparently should. In one of Orange County’s most desirable beach destinations, Newport Beach, lifeguards are compensated all too well; especially compared with the county annual median household income of $71,735.
It might be time for a career change.
According to a city report on lifeguard pay for the calendar year 2010, of the 14 full-time lifeguards, 13 collected more than $120,000 in total compensation; one lifeguard collected $98,160.65. More than half the lifeguards collected more than $150,000 for 2010 with the two highest-paid collecting $211,451 and $203,481 in total compensation respectively. Even excluding benefits like health care and pension, more than half the lifeguards receive a total salary, including overtime pay, exceeding $100,000. And they also receive an annual allowance of $400 for “Sun Protection.” Many work four days a week, 10 hours a day.
I don't begrudge anyone whatever they earn, as long as they're not taking it from someone else by force. But these are government employees, and their compensation is taken from others by force.
If you live in Newport Beach, and put your foot down, and refuse to pay your share of this, and say "I'm not going to pay $200,000.00 per year to have Jack Johnson sit on a tower all day, watching damp supermodels frolic in the sand and the surf," the government will show up with guns at your house and take your assets or put you in a steel cage.
But all libertarian rants aside, how in the hell can you justify paying $200,000 per year to a freakin' lifeguard? Is it possible?
Well, yes. You just compare the compensation to that of other lifeguards in government jobs, and it all makes sense.
In a phone conversation, Brent Jacobsen, president of the Lifeguard Management Association, defended the lifeguard pay in Newport Beach: “We have negotiated very fair and very reasonable salaries in conjunction with comparable positions and other cities up and down the coast.” “Lifeguard salaries here are well within the norm of other city employees.” And therein is the problem: Local public worker pay has become all too generous and out of line with private sector equivalents.
On face, the compensation packages for these guards are staggering. But take into consideration the retirement benefits being paid to currently retired lifeguards and lifeguards who will retire at these pay levels in the future and the problem is further compounded. Lifeguards are able to retire with 90 percent of their salary, after only 30 years of work at as early as the age of 50.
Note to The Aggie: Pack your bags. Pack up Fat Kitty. Pack up the idiot Labrador. We're going to California !!! (The City Of Los Angeles is hiring Duplicating Machine Operators, and I think I could work my way up to Senior Duplicating Machine Operator before retirement time. Hit the link.)
Some blog posts deserve a soundtrack. In this case, let's use Charlie Robison's "Good Times".
Just let it play while you read.
Imagine 45,000 of our children jammed into a South Texas pasture, listening to music, dancing, and drinking beer.
Lots of beer.
As long as the next generation can get this creative with transporting their beer, our nation will be saved.
The event is called "Chilifest", and they've been doing this in Shrum Snook Texas since 1981.
Lord have mercy, what a party. This year the soundtrack was provided by Rob Baird, The Cody Johnson Band, the sheer incomparable mellowed-out greatness of Smooth Max Stalling, Emory Quinn, Sean McConnell, and the Bandera Texas Demigod and Patron Musical Saint of this website, Charlie Robison. That was Friday.
Saturday was the Bart Crow Band, Jason Boland and The Stragglers, Stoney LaRue, the Randy Rogers Band, Wade Bowen, and Dierks Bentley.
The Aggie tells me that there were some other adults there who weren't police officers. I didn't see them. The next-oldest audience member was about half my age.
This was at The Aggie's apartment on the morning we left for the show. I'm holding an adolescent hog that they call Fat Kitty.
The good people at Chilifest will allow you to bring in all the beer and (boxed) wine you want, but have a strict prohibition against anything else. This was going to be my 11th or 12th time to hear Charlie Robison, and I've never experienced Charlie without Jim Beam. I'm way too old to start any new habits.
Some of The Aggie's earliest memories are of me using her like a Bolivian Cocaine Mule, taping drink, food, or Cuban cigars to her so that I could enjoy various events the way God intended. But since The Aggie is now approaching adulthood, she could be thrown out of Chilifest without me if she got busted with my Jim Beam on her person. I would be inside the fence, and my bottle would be outside. That would be tragic. I had to be responsible for my own supply. I tucked a bottle into one of the folding chair carrying bags and vowed to get it through the Chilifest checkpoints or die trying.
The Aggie has a new friend named John who rode to Shrum Snook with us. He's a handy guy to have around, took me shopping for our supplies of consumables, provided the chairs, etc etc etc. John has been powerlifting since middle school, and looks like he could whoop a fencepost if necessary.
John and The Aggie got through the checkpoints first. They only had some backpacks, I think, as our beer had been loaded onto one of our wagons (see pics above).
I was carrying three folding chair bags, one of which contained my Precious Treasure, my Pearl Of Great Price, my Living Water. The Chilifest staffers were looking through everyone's coolers, looking through pockets and backpacks, and in some cases opening up bottled water containers to make sure that they didn't contain Everclear. I elbowed past some of the female security people with a wild look in my eye, screaming things like "Mary ! John ! Wait a minute ! Peacocks ! We have to find the killswitch to the system !! Wait on the roots to my timing !! This can't be the right one !! Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa !!!!!"
The female rent-a-cops gave me plenty of room, kinda like they probably did for everybody else who looked stark raving mad. I was only a few steps away from freedom when one guy who took himself waaaay too seriously stepped in front of me and asked if my chair bags had been searched.
I craned my neck around as if trying to look into his ear canal and yelled "Searched? Bags? Searched? Mary !! John !! Mary !!!!!! Search ! Search ! I'm gonna be searched over there and I'll meet you back at the car !! Search ! Where do I remove pants ?? Search??"
The guy waved me through.
Mission accomplished.
Inside the campground and concert site, it was like another world. There were hundreds of Chili cooking teams, each with their own distinctive look, theme, shirts, motives and soundtracks.
Here's a creative use for a tent:
Every Chili "team" had their own T-shirts. This one got straight to the point....
Here's a creative use of a quote from one of my all-time favorite books/movies, Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove:
Charlie Sheen references were everywhere. Bi-winning. Tiger Blood. Beer-winning.
My favorite:
If these pics have a 1930's Oklahoma Dust Bowl quality to them, it's because 45,000 people can stomp up a lot of dust.
Since our first wagonload was nothing but beer, John, The Aggie and I made a trip back to the car to get sleeping bags, food, and other necessities. The Aggie, who has inheritied her father's sense of ridiculousness, got John to pull her in the wagon back to the car.
A couple of the rent-a-cops looked at John and said "Boy, you're setting yourself up for a lifetime of misery."
True. So true.
Here's what the stage setup looked like:
I don't know who this is.
I was wearing one of these John Jay Myers produced T-shirts.....
....which got me into some interesting conversations with a lot of the Aggie students. They're overwhelmingly Republican, and can't quite get past the Libertarian insistence on getting the government out of people's bedrooms, medicine cabinets and personal lives. When I pointed out that most of them were underage, yet drinking like fish, it helped make my point. Maybe. I eventually went back to our camp and changed shirts, just so I could be "old guy having a great time" instead of "old guy who is a political conversation piece".
When I got to the camp, The Aggie had already gotten a tattoo. Lordy, I'm so proud.
I made it back to the stage, this time wearing something generic, in plenty of time for Charlie Robison. He has a new band that rocks a little harder than the previous Enablers. He sounded great and the crowd was loving every minute of it. (If you've made it this far, it's probably time to play the Charlie Robison Youtube again up top. Hit play, and get back to me.)
In fact, Charlie went over too well. It got so crazy that they had to shut down Charlie's set about 2/3rds of the way through. Bummer.
The next day, we took one of our couches up to the stage area. From left to right, that's John, Jordan and Tyler.
Here's the look of the place in daylight.
Jordan, John, The Aggie and Chris the cook.
Four young ladies that I didn't know, but who were very friendly.
I had a wonderful, wonderful time at this thing. Can't thank The Aggie enough for inviting me, especially since fathers were such a rarity at the campsites. Shrum Snook is a nice place, and the Aggie kids are incredibly polite, looked after me, made sure I didn't lose my Blackberry down in the craziness near the stage. Well, MOST of the Aggie kids were polite and respectful....
I wasn't passed out. I was just resting my eyes and brain for a while.
Great weekend. Good times. I love my big girl so very, very much.
Here's Charlie Robison's classic song "Photograph"
From Reason magazine's "Daily Brickbats" feature. I don't recommend going there very often, because you'll spend the rest of your day praying for the damnation of the human race.
In Canada, Shirley Anderson abandoned her son Ken when he was just 15. Over the next 31 years, he says the only times he spoke to her was when she called asking for money. Now, Shirley, 71 is suing Ken and four of his siblings under British Columbia law that requires children to support dependent parents. A court has already awarded her a payment of $10 a month from each child, but she is now seeking $300 to $350 a month from each of them.
When Ken Anderson was just 15, his mother, Shirley, made it clear: She didn't want him anymore.
Ken's father, a long-haul trucker, had been transferred from Osoyoos, B.C., to the province's Kootenay region. Although their marriage was rocky, Shirley followed, taking second-youngest son Darryl with her.
Ken was left behind. He had plenty of time to think about it as he wiped bug splatter off car windshields and pumped gas at the local station to make a buck. He says he can't even remember how many couches he slept on, or how he kept himself going. He just knows he never got to go to a prom, finish high school or even think about college.
The way he sees it, he never really had a mother.
On Aug. 3 and 4, Ken, now 46, will face off in B.C. Supreme Court against the woman who gave birth to him.
Now there's a family that puts the funk back in dysfunctional. The Whited Mama has made it very clear to her children that they will inherit little or nothing. Whenever she reads of someone "dying penniless", she sees it as a case of perfect timing. We've made it clear to The Whited Mama that if she gets to feeble to take care of herself, she can stay in an extra bedroom with 5 dachshunds, a yellow lab, and whatever reptiles The Aggie has brought in. So far, she claims to be healthy.
The Aggie has always taken pride in doing things that others say are impossible, but this stunt took it to a new level. This is from the Downtown Fort Worth YMCA, where she has worked as a lifeguard all summer:
Dear Fellow Texans, Last week Tracy and I met with a member of the staff of Senator Hutchison. He was very interested to hear about Senate Bill S373, the so-called anti-python bill (actually, pythons, anacondas and boas). We gave him a lot of printed information and he listened to what we had to say for over an hour. I feel that he will well represent our interests to the Senator.However, he gave us this good advice. Politics is a numbers game.
Our representatives only know what we tell them, and right now we Texans have not told the local offices of Senator Hutchison anything. We were told that we are the first and only people to talk with any of our Senator’s local offices on the matter of S373. If that is so, it seems likely that not many have contacted Senator Cornyn’s office, either. It may be that a lot of you have called the Washington DC office, that’s good. Hopefully all of you are contributing to the USARK letter-writing campaign.
Based on letters we have seen from Senator Cornyn’s office, he has taken a position to oppose S373. Senator Hutchison has not yet taken a position on S373. It is particularly important to call her offices and let her know that we Texans, her constituents, do not favor S373.So we all need to pick up the phone and make a quick call to the closest local office of each of our Senators. Please tell the staff who answers the phone that you oppose S373 and you want the Senator to oppose this ill-advised, Democrat-sponsored bill.
Isn't it funny how, after only one year of Democrat control, the phrase "Democrat-sponsored bill" is now an effective scare tactic?
If you have a business, if you breed snakes, If you are a vendor or a participant at reptile shows, if you have made an investment in snakes, you need to stress that this bill will hurt Texans and hurt the Texas economy.
The Aggie and I have been going to reptile shows ever since she got out of diapers. At one point we had 27 lizards in the house. One was a Basilisk named Norbert. If you've ever watched Animal Planet (The Aggie went through a stage where she turned all the TV's to Animal Planet and threw away all the remotes) you might remember seeing a long lizard running upright on top of a pond. That's how Basilisks got their nickname - The Jesus Lizard - since they can walk on water.
The first time Reverend Brett Younger saw Norbert, and learned of his water-walking abilities, he went on an extended riff about the now-extinct Simon Peter Lizard, which would try to run on the water, lose faith, and then sink.
You either think that's really funny, or you don't. I liked it.
Even if you just like these animals, and you feel that Americans should have the right to possess animals, then you oppose S373 and you need to let your Senators know.
Even if you don't give a rip one way or the other about people keeping animals, you should be aware that Congress knows as much about keeping reptiles as they know about Taiwanese socket set manufacturing practices. Nothing. Nothing at all.
Some people want money, some want fame. Government wants power and control.
The point that Tracy and I feel is most important is that S373 is an inappropriate national law for what is a local problem in a small area of South Florida. Any monies generated by S373 will go only to Florida, Texas will not benefit in any way and Texans who choose to keep and breed snakes will be damaged.
And besides that, it's none of Nancy Pelosi's damn business. Let's worry about getting the snakes out of Congress.
And please realize that as soon as S373 is voted on in the Senate, then we all face another bill, S669. This law will ban almost all herps from American homes. If passed, even in a modified form, you can bet that most exotic snakes and ALL VENOMOUS SNAKES will be banned. Even if you personally don’t keep pythons, anacondas or boas, realize that if we all don’t beat S373 now, we will probably not beat S669. Please call and tell your Senators what you think is bad about S373 and ask them to oppose it. The phone numbers for those offices are listed below. A call takes only a few minutes.
One more thing, please send letters to the USARK campaign, and that means two letters from you, and also letters that you print out that are signed by your mom, your dad, your co-workers, your friends, members of your PTA, your nature center—anybody and everybody you can think of. Go to http://cts.vresp.com/c/?TexasReptiles/cdaf3a35fe/9375505a95/168911799d for instructions and sample letters. We have to get them in the mail this week. We need a lot of letters! Don’t fail.
I have a bathroom full of these things. Dachshund puppies. Go here to see pics as newborns, go here for a week later. They go into the bathtub when we're cleaning the bathroom floor, and they go onto the bathroom floor (yeah, they GO there) when we're cleaning the bathtub.
They've been fun, but it's now time for these guys to go. (All are now spoken for, BTW.) This one was recently adopted by a Fort Worth couple. Mom works at TCU, and Dad does some kind of computer work near Dallas. Dad is a University Of Texas graduate, and is a diehard UT fan. Guess what they're naming their new puppy?
The Aggie talked me into taking her to Billy Bob's tonight to hear Texas A&M alum Robert Earl Keen. I didn't require a lot of persuading. Great show. The band was the same as you'll see here, minus the banjo:
Rich Brotherton, the guy playing the guitar solo at the 1:20 mark, probably isn't human. Or he's made a deal with Satan.
I think The Aggie turned down two different cowboys who wanted to dance. She claims that she shot one of them down because he had on a University Of Texas shirt.
I could've listened to REK all night. Great, great show. Go hear him if you ever get a chance.
My Aggie daughter came home from College Station this past weekend, and she was outraged.
Unlike most large packs of academics, the A&M tribe seems to be somewhere off to the right of Barry Goldwater.
(A friend of mine sent me a press release today about A&M's Young Conservatives losing their faculty advisor....He was rumored to have an Obama sign in his yard. In the same link, check out the Young Conservatives' response to the "demonization" of the despicable William Ayers. The demonization of William Ayers, in my opinion, is like the demonization of Timothy McVeigh....just because the bastard failed to kill a couple of hundred people doesn't get him off the hook.)
Anyway, back to my point.... My Aggie's Animal Science professor had gotten the students worked up over California voters passing Proposition 2, a ballot initiative that regulates the minimum amount of space in which farm animals can be confined.
(Proposition 2 shouldn't be confused with Proposition 8. Proposition 8 is the California ballot initiative that regulates the type of marriage arrangements within which two people can be confined.)
Some obvious abuses have already been identified and partially eliminated in the cattle, swine, and of course the infamous veal calf industry. But my little Aggie was still angry, saying that the government had gone too far this time. She was under the impression that stackable A-frame chicken cages would be slowly outlawed in the course of a 5-year phase out.
Well, dang it, any professor who works Anti-Big Government rants into his VooDoo Arts Of Animal Healing lectures should have my full support. (She was bothered enough about it to demand that I go online and write something about governmental over-reach in California's stackable chicken industry.)
And here's the always helpful Wikipedia, which claims that actress Alicia Silverstone supported the proposition. The L.A. Times and the San Francisco Chronicle opposed it. Alicia Silverstone, star of "Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed", prevailed in the voting.
Here's what the thing amounted to: Cattle were lumped into the same category as poulty, mostly for emotional reasons. (Voters don't give a rip about chickens.) But California doesn't have a significant Cattle industry. California, until election day, had a huge poultry/egg industry.
The passage of Proposition 2 basically ends the industry in that state. California's Chicken Stackers are going to relocate elsewhere in the next 5 years.
(I've tried for two minutes to think of a closing sentence with the phrase "flew the coop", but I've failed. Be grateful.)
Remember how I used to sing a harmony part to whatever song was on the radio or CD player? And you used to beg me not to, because you said it didn't sound good? And you would beg me to pull the truck over to the side of the road so you could get out and walk, instead of listening to me sing the harmony parts to songs by Tom Petty, or Willie Nelson, or (God Help Us All) Journey?
Damon and I have been singing harmony parts for 6 days now, through Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, and now we're on the return trip.
I now understand that singing harmony parts in a crowded vehicle can only be enjoyed by the person doing the singing.
Damon sings harmony PERFECTLY to the music on his iPod.
Anyway, I just wanted to apologize for doing that when you were a little girl, and to anyone else who has had to listen to me sing non-existent harmony parts to recorded music, regardless of the circumstances.
It's 1:00 a.m., and we're somewhere north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I'm ready to be home. I'm very sleepy, and little things inside this Ford F-250 are starting to bother me.
Guess what they're naming their new puppy?
