Harleys, Cars, Girls & Guitars

I Was About to Apply for This Gig... But...

I'm a regular reader of the craigslist.com Musicians Wanted ads. You never know. The Boss might be looking for a new keyboard player. I was about to apply for this gig, until I read the last line.

Don't be a diaper wearing, pre-alzheimer brain dead idiot like the rest!

How to answer an ad like this? Let's see... Pre-alzheimer... Check! Brain dead idiot... Got a few years before I get there. Diaper wearing... No Way! Only slightly incontinent. I can sleep through most nights without getting up to take a pee.

I'm a vicitim of discrimination! Lawsuit!

Maybe I'll sent these guys an e-mail anyway. ... John Paul Jones, John Entwhistle, Jack Bruce, Paul McCartney, Stanley Clarke... Sounds like these guys might be wearing diapers pretty soon themselves.

Barn Swallows Divorce! Love Nest Doomed!

Don't know why, but the barn swallows have decided to divorce. I found their nest on the concrete slab of the porch. No eggs. So, no baby birds shitting all over my porch this year.

I didn't hear Mom and Dad fighting. No signs that it wasn't working out. One day, they were busy buzzing about with twigs and mud and feathers and building their little home. The next day... everything gone!

I'll miss watching the chicks develop and fly off. Some years, I've been lucky, and I've been here on the day the chicks fly the coop. Always, the last one needs a little help. The chick teeters on the edge of the nest, unwilling to fly away. Might end up on the concrete slab. I pick up the little fellow and place him in the safest place I can find in the grass.

Maybe some temptress came along and lured Poppa barn swallow away. Maybe the construction wasn't up to the standards of Momma. Whatever, all that's left is a broken home.

No Flash, So No iPad

I've visited the Apple store several times to play with the iPad. It's a beautiful piece of engineering with a serious flaw. The damned thing doesn't support the Flash plug-in. For a piece of hardware that functions primarily as a web browser, this is fatal. I ain't buying.

I could use a cheap tablet computer, because I'm going to be working a lot in a client's office over the next few months. The client will set up a work station for me, but I won't use it for any purpose other than for work and company e-mail.

Using the client's computer to browse the web or to check my personal e-mail can lead to disaster. Once you log in to your Yahoo e-mail or to Facebook on the computer network, they've got your number. Nothing you do after that is private, and everything you write can be held against you.

I don't want to spend fifteen hundred bucks on a new laptop, so the price of the iPad, 500 bucks, is attractive. Unfortunately, the damned thing is useless without the ability to run the Flash plug-in. A majority of websites will be rendered useless.

So, I'll have to look for something else to use for personal business in the office. HP's Slate isn't out yet, but it's a candidate.

Don't think Apple's going to change its policy. The sales people at the Apple store told me that the iPads were selling out as soon as they get them in the store.

Just Call Me Baldy

My dad was buried with a full head of black hair. So, I thought that that would also be my fate. Even as my hair turned white, I thought I'd always have a full crop on my head. So, imagine my horror when I recently had my hair cut, and the hairdresser showed me the back of my head!

I'm developing a bald spot on my noggin. Yet another insult from advancing age.

This body is beginning to fall apart. Arthur Itis won't go away. Circulation ain't so good in my feet any more. My nose turns red if I drink a couple of glasses of wine. Gotta use magnifying glasses when I read.

Maybe it's time to just throw in the towel and buy those checkered pants and suspenders.  The girls love bald guys, right?

UPDATE:  May 24, 2010:

I thought Big Joe was kidding.  Who would have thought that there was a medication for what ails me?

I'm gonna talk to my doctor about getting a prescription.

We Visit the Cows and Drink Raw Milk

For some reason, the Karaoke Queen got a wild hair up her butt about buying raw milk on Saturday.

”Do you suppose there's anywhere around here you can buy it?” she asked me.

”Well, yeah,” I replied with my usual cynicism. “This is Woodstock. Woodstock is into every food fad.”

So, a quick web search later (“raw milk retail”) and I found F&C Brooks and Son in Stone Ridge, only about 15 miles away.

So, on a beautiful, sunny day, we drove off to look at the cows. Once we arrived at the farm, we started opening doors and looking for somebody to help us out. No office. No obvious store. Finally, I opened door number four, and there they were. Cows.

I grew up in farm country in Illinois. It's been a long time. So, the smell of straw and shit and cows brought back old memories. A girl popped up from behind all the cow butts and asked us:

”Can I help you?”

We had to buy quart sized Mason jars for two bucks apiece. The milk itself cost two bucks per quart. As soon as we walked out of the barn, the Queen opened one of the jars and we drank a sample.

Brought back even more memories. When I was a kid, a farmer delivered raw milk to our door every morning. The milk route. Raw milk is smooth and creamy, and you can still taste a little bit of cow udder.

So, there it is. Visit the farm. Drink milk straight from the cow. Seems like a remarkable thing today. Par for the course when I was a kid.

Subscribing to MLB.TV and the Cubs

I did it. I finally broke down and subscribed to MLB.TV. For 20 bucks a month, I can watch every game played in the major leagues, streamed over my computer via the Flash player.

Today, I'm watching the Cubs vs. the Marlins from Wrigley Field. Cubs currently up 4 to 2, middle of the seventh. The Cubs stink this year, but so what? I'm a Cub fan from birth.

The picture quality is pretty good in the standard 800 x 450 pixel popup screen. According to MLB.TV, the broadcast is in high def. Blow up the screen to cover my entire monitor, and the picture starts to degrade with blurs and strange artifacts. I don't know if this is a problem on the transmission end, or on my cable reception end.

I've applied for a job at MLB.TV a few times, but the son-of-a-bitches never call me. My experience is on the corporate website side. Unfortunately, the art and media sites seem to think that this is a disqualification. I think they're full of shit. But, my opinion doesn't count.

One of the advantages of MLB.TV... no commercials! Don't know if you can see on that bottom panel, but you can pull up a box score and a highlights panel whenever you want.

Go Cubs Go! Maybe I can conjure up some mojo for the boys by watching the games. That Starlin Castro... he's The Natural. Please God, won't you satisfy this Dying Cubs Fan's Last Request!

Illegal Immigrants and Unemployment

Have you noticed? The number of Americans out of work is just about equal to the number of illegal immigrants estimated to be working in America. Odd coincidence?

Our political class, Republican and Democrat, seems oddly unconcerned with the fate of their own electorate. Shutting down the border to secure jobs for native Americans seems to be an impossible task.

On the Democratic side, charges of “racism” are hurled at voters who are angered by this failure to secure American's jobs. The Dems, of course, are counting on Mexicans to be Democratic voters once the next, inevitable amnesty is enacted. On the Republican side, pols are terrified that they will lose Hispanic votes if they enforce the border.

The ensuing paralysis is a disaster for out-of-work Americans.

You'd think the Republicans would seize this issue to secure their base among white voters. No. That's not happening. I'm scratching my head to figure out why. Securing the border, and evicting illegal immigrants is the obvious answer to our current levels of unemployment. Compassion for poor people is fine when the system is fat. We can worry about the misery of poor Mexicans when we've put every American to work.

The Democratic Party's stance is that predictable contempt for middle class Americans we've come to expect from the party of racial quotas and racial hatred. White middle class voters who are concerned about their own economic and political interests are denounced as “racists.” The discrimination jihad seems to be all that the Democrats have to offer.

I can't remember a time in my life when the political class seemed more detached from, or openly hostile to, the people they should be serving. The anger that is welling up from the electorate doesn't seem to move the political class to anything... except name calling.

In some ways, the U.S. is beginning to look like the Philippines. The system is breaking down in massive, systematic corruption. The subprime mortgage scandal, caused by flagrant corruption in both parties, enriched everybody in the political class, while it decimated the savings of middle class people. Our political class noticed that there was no punishment.

Somewhere, in the not too distant future, there will be hell to pay.

Another Spring at the Patterson Farmers Market

In what has become a yearly ritual, the Karaoke Queen and I trekked over to Railway Avenue in Patterson, New Jersey to buy vegetable sets for my garden. Below, the Queen amid the racks of vegetable sets.

The attraction at the Patterson Farmers Market is price. The Market seems to be largely in the hands of Muslim immigrants. Calling this area a “farmers market” seems a little strange from my point of view. The strip along Railway Avenue is lined with permanent stores. This is not trucks backing up to a park and unloading onto card tables.

I bought four flats of sets at $9 per. All the sets for my garden... about $40. I've generally had very good luck with sets from Patterson. Last year was an exception, but that was because it rained so heavily all summer that many of my plants rotted out at the roots.

Interspersed among the garden stores are several grocery stores that do not really pass muster in terms of cleanliness. They do, however, offer breads and speciality items (like pink pickles!) that appeal to Middle Eastern immigrants.

Muslim women shopping or working at the market wore a wide variety of Westernized versions of the burkah. On really hot days, I marvel at their ability to wear heavy clothing and still function.

I've got my eye on shrubs at one shop: Green Giant Arborvitea, only a foot tall, three for ten bucks. I'm debating whether to buy at the Market or at Costco, where I can get the same plants already mature and six feet tall for twenty bucks apiece. The mature plants will be functional as a screen from the neighbor's house as soon as I plant them.  The shrubs from the Market are cheap, but it will be five years before they mature and provide a screen.

End the Drug War Now... SWAT Team Attacks in Columbia, MO

This has been all over the web. Not much to say that hasn't already been said.

Hard to believe. Crazy fucking cops fired repeated shots while a kid was in the house. Cops shot the family dogs! Over a few grams of pot!

These cops must be fired and brought to trial for their assault on this family.

Maybe some good will come out of this tragedy. This video is the most compelling argument for an end to pot prohibition you will ever see. This kind of police behavior cannot be tolerated... not even once.

Why and How are We Racist Today?

Every day, we discover new ways in which we are irredeemably racist. I'm 60 years old, and I can't recall a day in my life (approximately 22,000 days) when new evidence of racism has not been offered up in the media. Racism is an all-consuming growth industry... virtually the cause of everything.

So, why and how are we racist today? We already know we are irredeemably racist because of the following:

• Opposition to any policy of the Obama administration
• Support for enforcing U.S. immigration laws
• Opposition to paying higher taxes
• Failure to pay reparations
• Our hereditary white guilt over slavery
• Our complicity in institutional racism, whatever that might be
• Noticing that blacks really do commit all that crime
• Living among our own kind
• Hating our enforced attendance at Diversity training
• Believing that racial quotas are a form of racism
• Noticing that Muslim Arabs commit almost all acts of terrorism

This list is endless, but it's all old hat. We need some new racism allegations. Anybody got some new stuff? I'm bored with all the old racism stuff.