Good Afternoon, I'm coach O'Hara

Wednesday, 05/13/2020 at just spot on 6:00 a.m.

Hello good morning, have some coffee, sit back and relax, sashay yourself to the living room,

My wife is a wonderful person. I learn from her examples almost every day. I don't know how she puts up with me, but I'm sure glad she does. She said its because she loves me. I'm so goofy sometimes and aggravate her so much I am reminded that Lizzie Borden probably loved her family too. Everybody has a breaking point. Yesterday I insulted her sort of accidentally while I was messing with her , aggravating her on purpose. She got highly offended and for the life of me sitting here at this computer, right now, I cannot remember what I said nor what exactly I did. I know it was something pretty stupid, but isn't it weird how I can't brain my brain to the moment in time and brain my brain to come up with what I said or did? I'm sorry honey. I'm an idiot. Whatever it was.

Oh and she sews too. She was just playing around with some cloth and some elastic and popped out a couple of face masks or three for the whole family if we needed to go out, just in case. Mine fit perfect even though it is tough to breathe in any of those damn things. You suck air in and feel suffocated and when you exhale you fog your glasses so bad you can't see. That is just how they work, but the masks are great. Thankx honey. My buddy John Hall's wife Penny is the same way. She can just take a hunk of cloth and fiddle with it in her seamstress way and pop! Next thing you know poof!! Here's a pillow cover or a cushion cover or an apron. It's amazing to me. I mean I can do that with wood, but nobody would ever sleep on a wooden pillow.

I tried out for wrestling once in the 7th grade when we lived in Great Falls Montana. I didn't have a clue what wrestling was about and had seen no matches nor had I ever saw it on TV or anything else. I just wanted to what the sport was all about and the cheerleaders for wrestling were pretty hot so off I went to tryouts.

The tryouts were held in the gym in the same place where we had PE class, only the mats that usually hung on the wall behind the basketball goals were now on the floor, There was probably about 30-40 kids there who wanted to wrestle. It looked like about 1/3 of us knew what was going on and the other 2/3rds of the tryouts were totally clueless as to what happens next. We were standing around sorta mumbling and this chiseled muscular-looking walking pyramid of a man came through the doors at the end of the gym. He had a coach look about him and had a whistle around his neck. He had a head that looked bolted onto his shoulders, he didn't really have a neck, his torso was a big V and it appears as if his legs were made of rock. Later on, I found out he served as a politician in Montana, and the second semester of that year he was also my PE teacher.

Found this on the internet - Same Guy - Click here
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His name was Jesse O'Hara and apparently he was some sort of wrestling legend in this part of the world. Someone told me later that he was the Montana State champion in his weight class or some such, but as for me, I had no clue. He looked like he was in charge and acted like he was in charge and everyone automatically settled down and shut up as he walked to the center of our gathering. He didn't say much, this ain't one of these "Oh he's going to inspire us with a wonderful speech on wrestling" or a some sort of  humble brag about who he was or anything else. He just blew the whistle and said very plainly "Good Afternoon, I'm coach O'Hara." That was it and the room went totally silent.

Next he just explained he was going to be evaluating us today for our suitability to be wrestlers for the "Grizzlies" as our team was called in our brand new, just opened up middle school. He pointed at me and another kid about my size and said "You two, upfront". Not knowing what was happening I just ambled up to the front of him and next to me (I'll never forget) was this pimple-faced scared-looking kid that was wearing glasses and a gym outfit that was about to fall off of him. Coach O'Hara said something to the effect of "We are going to see what you two can do in 2 minutes", and he blew the whistle. Neither one of us moved because as I was to find out later, he was too scared and I was clueless and had no idea what to do next. After a few seconds the coach blew the whistle again and said "Do you guys know why you're here?", and see right here I just want to insert a Men in Black movie quote or something like "Because you're looking for the best of the best of the best sir", but that movie hasn't been made yet at this point so the other guy just says "Uh, to wrestle?" Coach smiles and says "Rigghhttt, so get to it , when I blow the whistle again, you wrestle, understand?"

Ok, I get it, he wants us to show him our moves! Of course. I totally understand and when he blew the whistle again, I moved in and reached over and slapped this kid on his chest with my forearm as hard as I could, got around behind him, grabbed him around the waist and while pressed up against him, slammed him back into the prettiest flying suplex you ever saw! I was feeling pretty good about myself when I found myself flying across the mat and the whistle was blowing like mad and coaches face was like an inch from mine and he is yelling at the top of his lungs "WHAT IN THE NAME OF (whatever he said), WAS THAT?"

Uh, ... Army training sir!! That's a fact Jack! No wait that movie hasn't been made yet either. I was confused, so I just meekly replied "Um wrestling?" The other kid wasn't saying anything at this point because I had knocked the breath out of him, scared him so bad he was crying and he was pissed off, you could just see it on his face. The coach was right in my face and man was he pissed off. He went on about how what.... I was doing was that TV show fake crap and nobody who really wrestles would ever do anything like that and did I think I was funny and was I trying to hurt this young man and so on and so forth until he finally came up for breath and said: "So Dummy before I kick your butt out of here, what do you have to say for yourself?".

First, you should have seen the faces and the laughter on virtually every other face in the gym. Second, my Dad yelled louder than Coach and he wasn't beating my ass so I didn't react to the screaming that much which sort of made it worse in a weird way, and Third, DUDE !! Man was I in trouble, I mean I understood that much, what I wasn't clear on was the why? I mean didn't he just say to show him what we had and for us to wrestle? I said something quickly trying to somehow extricate myself from this mess like, "Um, Coach, I know exactly zero about wrestling, I just did the only thing I have ever seen even called wrestling and its what my brothers did to me all the time when we wrestled in the back yard and said I'm sorry If I did something wrong but I really do not get why you're so pissed because I just did what you told me to do. Before today I had never seen anything BUT TV wrestling." He just looked at me dumbfounded, speechless and silently for about, oh about 15 seconds. Then while he explained to the rest of the people that were there to try out what Olympic style wrestling was about, I ran laps around the gym for the rest of the session. I finally did try out for the team and did wrestle one year, but that first day was a doozy!

Please put your tray tables up and in their stored position. No smoking in the bathroom.

1. My wife said whenever the new Soprano's movie comes out, we are getting HBO back no matter what. I mumbled Yes dear because she was still pissed off at my stupidity, go figure.
2. Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court Justice has been calling for a shrinking of the first amendment for quite some time and now it is making news again. He says the court should reconsider its overbreadth doctrine which basically says there has to be a very compelling reason why free speech isn't considered inviolate, meaning not available for review. He has long held the opinion that children and teenagers have no first amendment rights to free speech at all. He says their rights or exclusion of them are totally controlled by their parents, not the courts until they are legal adults. Unless of course you are a corporation or you are a rich political donor then you have all the protection that a right-wing justice can allow.
3. Every time I see a doctor on TV, he is wearing a long white coat and has a stethoscope slung around his neck. I don't actually know if this is real or not but even in commercials where they sit behind a desk, a long white coat and stethoscope draped around his neck. Sometimes my wife talks with me about stuff like that, and she will casually mention a lot of times the doctor wants to borrow her scope because he doesn't have his with him. Weird.
4. I wonder who is going to replace Alex Trebek on Jeopardy when he either dies or retires whichever comes first? I mean the guy has pancreatic cancer, has a contract that runs through 2022, and is currently 79 years old. Some people say they think it will be Ken Jennings and others think a woman is going to replace him. I have no idea, I was just thinking about it.
5. Now it's getting real. Vladimir Putin's' spokesman has come down with and has contracted Covid-19, after news that cases have spiked in Russia. I wonder if this guy will live to see treatment?
   
   How dare he endanger the boss.
   I understand they have a fine lead cure for Covid-19 in Russia.
   
   BigMike

and Now a reminder from IKEA

Tuesday, May 12, 2020 at almost 10:00 a.m. Can you believe it?

Hey there Sports fans Bob Euchre here with all the latest news that's fit to um, yeah,

Today is one of the good days to talk about. It's a rare day that only happens every so often and it only happens when you can afford it. I am of course talking about New Mattress day! Yay!! We have a King Sized bed and the mattress needed to be replaced about 5 years ago, my back hurts just thinking about it. we finally got our new mattress delivered and maybe I will be able to sleep tonight. I have to get the old one to the dump but what a problem to have amiright folks? Combine new mattress day with new sheet day and it will feel like I am in a Hotel room on a luxurious new bed!

I read where the National Guard is being sent into nursing and long term care facilities in Pennslyvania and other states to help to get COVID-19 infections under control. I think that is a good thing as they have specialized units that can teach infection control and they can afford to throw increasing amounts of manpower at the problem until the mission is achieved and they definitely need help. In some areas the infections and deaths in those areas are the majority of new cases and some facilities have just been decimated from infections leading to deaths in their older more fragile patients. Supposedly they are there to train the staff, test everybody on-site to find out who is infected and take appropriate action and help scrub the facilities clean and eliminate the virus from them. We shall see.

I met both of my wives at work, we all worked at the same restaurant in the same era, when we were all teenagers. One didn't turn out so well, but the other has seemed to be what I needed because it helped me to get my head on straight and to be a better husband. I don't know how it could have happened today with the way restaurants are run. There are about 1/3 to 1/2  of the staff that we used to be and with face masks and social distancing and contactless deliveries, when would I have found time to sexually harass either one of them in the walk-in cooler or in front of the ice machine?

One thing is for sure, with the way they have cut expenses I wouldn't have had the luxury of a clean linen towel to wrap around her wrist and say "with this towel, I thee marry", and then plant the shocker kiss on her and walk away. That's another story though.

Stuff that's making the news today. 

1. Tesla and Elon Musk is defying an Alameda County Health department order to stay closed and have opened the Tesla Freemont California car production facility in a show of defiance. Over the past few weeks he has been highly critical of the order and has even threatened to move his HQ and facility somewhere else in response to it. This morning the parking lot is packed full, and Mr. Musk has said "I will work on the production line if I have to in order to start making cars again." In effect he is daring them to shut him down and arrest him for opening the plant.
   
   Your move Alameda county.
   
   
2. In a shocker of a personal news story, the rumors are absolutely true. I have paid for and expect to start receiving twice a week deliveries from my local newspaper again. I had stopped the delivery because it was more than half full of ads and coupons and such and never really had any stories in it beyond marriages, deaths, and arrests.
   
   So I am old school and used to go and get the weekly Sunday paper that came from the Chattanooga Times Free Press out of Chattanooga TN about 55 miles away. Ever since the pandemic hit though, they have stopped supplying area stores with the paper. The same thing happened a few years ago with the Atlanta paper which is why I had to switch to the Free Press. All of my relatives and acquaintances just shake there heads at me at the wonderment at someone who still actually reads the paper.
   
   See, here's the thing. If you don't pay for journalism and you think it should all be free on the internet, pretty soon (if it isn't already there) there won't be reporters reporting on much of anything. If you think that's a good idea possibly you need a subscription to Pravda.
   
   
3. I read this morning that Steak `n Shake, my old employer has permanently closed another 51 locations, and supposedly temporarily closed another 62 more. I don't think they are long for the world as the current owner is seemingly intent on redefining the brand and reshaping it to be something it was never meant to be. Sadly it is my opinion that they will be gone from the landscape in two years or so. What a shame.
   
   
4. NOVA replayed recently the story about what has happened in Flint MI to their water supply. I am in shock that this is still a story all these years later. Hey Bill Gates!! Hey Warren Buffet!! Hey Mark Cuban!! Hey Matt Damon!! Hey all the rest of you rich bastards, you need a project to feel good about, where you help people in the third world to have safe and clean water?
   
   How about a little more directed effort in America you clueless bunch of sphincters?
   
   
5. IKEA recently has had to post gentle reminders in their stores for customers that
   It is not appropriate to "pleasure oneself on the furniture or in public in their stores even if acting in a porn production", such as one Chinese woman did and whose antics were captured not only on her cameraman's' video but on the in-store security cameras.
   
   This happened allegedly at one of their stores in China but their attorneys said they do not want the reputation as a "place where you could film these kinds of things."
   
   I knew they sold meatballs.
   I didn't know they offered popcorn too!
   Later taters,
   
   BigMike

Screw California Elon

Monday, May 11th, 2020 at about 6:00 a.m. in the morning

Howdy fellow who-mans,

One of the things I remember the strongest about being a kid was the experience we all had living as military dependents, as we were called. The military likes to classify things and there were service members and dependents. I remember a couple of times when the line got a little blurry, but it was always easy to snap back to reality.

When I was about 15 or so, after my Dad had retired from the service, I somehow had gotten some sort of infection. I also had a couple of other symptoms. I had a hard time staying upright and was wobbling when I walked as well as having a nasty bad cough that went really deep. I worked very part-time in a gas station pumping gas and they thought it had something to do with where I worked.  I was covered by my Dad's retirement dependent insurance so we got our care at military facilities and they hospitalized me in the Army hospital at Ft. Benjamin Harrison in Lawrence Indiana.

It turned out it wasn't really bad. They were unsure whether I had a cold or if I had a neurological problem of some sort because of the wobbling I couldn't control. One of the diagnostic tests they ran was to do a couple of spinal taps over three days. That was actually pretty scary but I calmed myself by staring right at the nurse's boobs that were stuck right in my face while she held me in place. She was holding my head in place and had my left arm stuck between her knees for some reason. I was 15 so guess where my brain was and take a wild guess what was going on in the rest of my body at the time. They were being serious, however, I'll bet my heart rate and blood pressure were off the charts.

It turns out they found an infection of some kind in my cerebrospinal fluid. They thought I had spinal meningitis for a short time but it turned out it was due to something else, I don't actually remember what. I remember I slept for 48 straight hours and didn't know had somehow I lost an entire day. That's all I remember about that time other than a funny story about what exact same TV program was on TV as when I closed my eyes and when I opened them. I also didn't understand how my brother had magically changed the clothes he was wearing in the blink of an eye. It was weird. Your brain can do some really wild stuff when you ain't actually in control.

The line between being a service member and dependent got a little blurry one morning after I woke up. This doctor I had never seen before came in and basically started yelling at me about the condition of my room, the bed is unmade and the trash and dishes lying around and whatnot. The room was pretty much trashed and I didn't care one way or the other. I had just gotten a haircut before I went in because I wanted to join the Civil Air Patrol and one of the regulations was you had to have regulation hair. The doctor assumed I was in the military because of my hair I suppose. He was yelling at me because of their room regulations. They believed that unless you were next to dead or in a coma, you had to be up by a certain time, had to have your bed and area cleaned up, and had to be ready for a room inspection by 7 a.m. He got really pissed off and liked to had an apoplectic fit when he asked me if I thought this was a country club? and wanted to know who my company commander was so he could put me on the report (for my behavior I suppose).

He didn't like my answer.

I told him my mother was probably my company commander and she was definitely going to be pissed off at him for yelling at me. I laughed at him fairly rudely and called him "dude"  and his face got so red that he had a vein popping out on his forehead. I couldn't resist it so I dug in a little further. I told him I was curious and I asked him if he ever had his ass chewed out by a career retired Staff Seargent? I told him that much more of this yelling nonsense from him and my Dad would probably want to punch him in his Officer's nose. I said it all real calm and cool because, at the time, I loved to tweak authority as much as I could get away with. His reaction was the funniest thing I think had ever seen up to this point.  He seemed to recover a tiny bit and said something like "You're a dependent and not in the military?"

I wish I would have had a mirror and Video recorders were invented because I know I was smiling big enough to be the poster child for cheesiest kid smile ever by an Eddie Haskell imitator. It was great. I was on fire and he was some seriously pissed off Major doctor dude.

He looked stunned, spun on his heel, and left the room. I never saw that guy again, although I did see a nurse right after that and she was giggling and laughing for about 15 minutes, I remember it took about that long for her to settle down and she had to sit down for a couple of minutes in the chair in the room. The only thing she said or did was give me a high five and said "Good One", and left the room after she got her composure back. It was probably one of my better and funnier days. Even my normally taciturn Dad thought this story was funny and laughed a bit. My Mom thought I was a tad disrespectful but she laughed a little bit too.

The other memory that sticks out concerning that time in my life is that I was a clutz. While my Dad was still in the service, every so often he had to go to work in his dress blues, which was the formal uniform they were required to wear on occasion. Gleaming Dress shoes, jacket, tie, and the whole bit was required. You did not want to be the kid that scuffed the shine on Dad's dress blue shoes he was wearing on inspection day. My word, now THAT was an ass-whupping!!

Everything you always wanted to know about crap I absolutely hate

1. I have a question, to begin with. Can Oprah "her face is on everything" Winfrey just go ahead and retire and go away already? Man, I am so sick of seeing her mug every time I turn on the TV, every time I go shopping, every time I look at the menu for TV programs. There she is on the cover of every single month of her magazine named..,, you guessed it "Oprah". She has her own "OWN network", she owns enough of weight watchers that she is in every one of their commercials and it goes on and nauseatingly on. The whole schtick she does that she knows what is good for you to watch, to eat, to drive, to read gets on my last nerve. It makes me want to yell at the TV screen and tell her to STFU already. Too Much?
   
   
2. It seems like after every story I read anymore I see the same targeted ads. The one that I see first all the time is the one that says something like "Let us show you how to EMPTY your bowels", according to top doctors. Its always got the picture of the bananas floating in the water and says click here to find out more. Do we really need help with this? Does anybody click this crap?
   
   
3. I refuse to believe there is anyone on the planet who hates Phil Swift and his Flex seal brand of goopy leak fixing the leaky shit line of products more than I do. Can't be. I devote considerable energy to hating this guy. To no avail I understand, but man!
   
   
4. Nurses. They are treated like crap by everybody from administrators and their supervisors to Doctors, to Patients and their families, and everybody else. The level of disrespect they are accorded pisses me off. Every idiot who doesn't understand how vital they are has the same stupid comeback, "Well that's what they signed up for", "They knew it when they started" or another clueless comment about what role they play in our society.
   
   Doctors who think they are god yell at them, administrators lie to them and play games with their health and their pay to suit the needs of the corporations, patients and their families think they are their personal servers to order back and forth like they demeaning a server in a restaurant for fun, and their supervisors just think of them as pawns to move around at will, without regard to their personal safety or well being. It sickens me that all these same groups want to call them heroes so when they have to sacrifice them later they can call them martyrs to the great and noble cause, when these people are the same ones that cut staffing so bad they can't care for your grandmother properly.
   
   Over 10,000 nurses have tested positive for COVID-19 according to surveys done in February through April of this year. Actual cases are probably higher because only about 45% of ICU and ER nurses were surveyed. At least 79 of them have died caring for patients, usually, it is patients who didn't know had the disease because they had NOT BEEN TESTED.
   
   Let me just be clear. They are not your sacrificial lambs to be slaughtered on your altar of political expediency, they are not soldiers in the fight here because you at least give soldiers weapons not locked rooms full of face masks they have to use for a week.
   
   
5. Elon Musk says he is going to move from California because he is mad at some health official who will not let him reopen his manufacturing plant. I think he can do whatever he wants, it doesn't matter to me.
   
   Here's what I have to say about the broader subject though. I do not understand why anyone would want to start or operate a business in California in the first place. They have the most onerous business regulation environment, their laws are famously anti-business and anti-competitive. The environment to do business there is over-regulated, the 9th circuit court of appeals is one of the most liberal anti-business courts ever, Taxes there are OUTRAGEOUS and it is the hardest place in the US to make money.
   
   I saw screw California Elon, go ahead and move,
   
   BigMike 

You heard me, she said

Its Mother's day on May 10th, 2020 at 7:30 a.m. I slept in today !!

Good Morning and Happy Mother's Day to all you Mothers out there in the blogosphere,

This morning I read that J.C. Penney, the retailer has filed for bankruptcy. I knew this was coming however I am a little bit surprised it came so quickly because I was sure they would have to wait to have a clearance sale first to raise cash. According to all reports I read, they did not have the cash on hand that it takes to file because (surprise of all surprises), attorneys and courts don't let you file on the promise that you will pay them later. I wonder why that is?

Little Richard died yesterday. I think they said he was 87 years old. No more tutti-fruity, unless you want to hear it with John Wayne and maybe Johnny Cash in the audience.

Yay!! No More Booger McFarland on Monday Night Football. If we ever get to see football ever again, at least we won't have to see his mangled fingers anymore ( Pics of Boogers fingers) or listen to his insane commentary.

You know how you sometimes are not sure if you learned the lessons that your mother was trying to teach you all those years ago? I have a way that works for me, maybe it will work for you too. First a tiny back story. There is a restaurant in Indiana, I think it is called (or was?)  Gray Brother cafeteria. Its been a while since I ate there so I'm a little bit shady on the facts, however I'm pretty sure it is in Mooresville IN. ( Gray Brothers Cafeteria ) Anyway, I took the kids, my wife and I, and my mother to this restaurant one time for Sunday afternoon Lunch/Dinner.

We were all sitting at a big round table, my mother was on my left-hand side (and she was right-handed), having a fabulous meal and everybody was talking and having a blast, it was one hell of a good time, just sitting around telling jokes, making everybody laugh until suddenly out of the blue my head was ringing, my eyes were unfocused and I had a concussion I think,  tweety bird was flying and man, I was seeing stars just like in the Bugs Bunny cartoon! The next thing I hear is my mother sitting next to me saying "Don't ever let me hear you call your children stupid again." Apparently while joking I had told my son Michael that he was stupid although because of the concussion, I do not remember saying it, and the next thing I know I'm mumbling "Put me in coach, I can play."

The kids and my wife had that home alone look on their faces and my son Michael Jr. was laughing so hard he was spitting soda out of his nose. If you were not me, I am sure it was quite a funny scene. However, I was me and I actually didn't remember what I had so eloquently said and I said to my mother"What was that for? I didn't do nothin", in my best-aggrieved voice. Well that set off a new round of laughter. Apparently, there was something in what I had just said that was quite the funny statement, because not only were the children and my wife laughing but so was the server and the folks at the next table were too.

She just said all serious and Samuel L. Jackson like "You heard me."

Now, whenever I either am getting ready to do something that is probably not such a good idea or I am getting ready to say something that is the wrong thing to say, I look over my shoulder to see if she is standing there because (Did I tell you she played baseball?) It would be just like her to appear long enough to whack me upside the head for doing something stupid or for what I am just getting ready to say. Not only that but to this day I can hear her voice saying "You heard what I said." So if you ever want to know if you had any teaching in you that was instilled by your Mother, just close your eyes, say something stupid in your head, and see if she isn't right there, telling you to knock off your silly shit. That's how you know. I hear her all the time. She's always trying to guide me right and kill my buzz. Damn. I hear Dad too but his stuff is completely different.

Extra Extra Read all about it !!

1. There is one big reason the economy can't really reopen fully right now. There is not enough testing going on and I don't understand why not. How can you contain and understand where this SOB is in terms of its strength or direction unless you test enough to understand the direction? How can you contain it if you don't know where it is in the first place?
   
   The state of  (I think) Idaho or maybe Nebraska has proudly proclaimed that they "Have zero cases of the virus identified" in their prison system for example. They didn't bother to also say however that they have not tested a single prisoner or staff member.
   
   Since February 2020 before this disease even had a name and before the conspiracy nuts opened the flood gates on all the (curse word redacted) theories about where it came from, why it was unleashed, whether or not it is a hoax, almost 70,000 people have died from this monster. Unemployment is more than was seen at the peak of the Great Depression and our economy is in shambles. Only about 1/2 of Adult Americans who want jobs have them. To fix the economy we have to fix the Public Health Crisis. People are just afraid to leave the house. Surveys indicate that even if your state doesn't have a shelter in place order, the reason people are not going out is FEAR of becoming infected. Without testing (a lot more), to find out where the infections are and isolate those who are transmitting the disease to have a chance at containing this mess, we have a huge problem. What problem you say?
   
   Well, there is no national policy to increase testing or to coordinate a national response at all.
   I cannot for the life of me understand why or why not. It makes no sense.
   
   
2. A polar vortex is bringing snow to the eastern US this weekend in my opinion because chaos loves the company. That's gotta be what it is.
   
   
3. I'm sorry if you like it but is there a worse piece of crap on TV right now than this 90-day fiancee junk? My God! How can you watch this drivel and why on gods earth would you want to? There has to be something more productive to do with your time.
   
   
4. A 12-year-old boy/child has invented, made, 3D printed, and is selling online his solution to touching surfaces that may be infected with the COVID-19 virus. It's reportedly got a hook on it for opening doors and some sort of jabber for keying in ATM-like keys among other things. So far he has sold about 300 of them at $14.99 a pop.
   
   I think at 12 I was looking at my male junk in a mirror and trying to count the newly formed hairs so I could tell my buddies I was a man. We had a theory you weren't a man until you had over 50 pubic hairs. That was very heady important stuff back then because you couldn't hide it in gym class, everybody had to shower.
   
   He is inventing stuff, we counted pubes. Not the same planet I don't think.
   
   
5. The White House is infected. Mike Pence's press secretary and one of President Trump's personal Valets have tested positive for the virus. Apparently Mr. T-rump thinks he can distance himself from a pathogen by saying he didn't really know the man.
   
   
   Sometimes I just cannot help myself.
   Those pesky facts just keep getting all twisted up in me.
   
   BigMike

Tales from the dark underbelly

05/09/2020 at about oh I don't know 5:00 o'clock in the a.m.

More tales from the dark underbelly of old age,

When I was a kid living on a military base several things were pretty apparent to you very quickly. One was if you wanted to stay entertained and not stay constantly in trouble, you had to get out of the house. Two was you lived on a military base, your father was in the military, there was no extra money for you to fritter away buying cokes and candy and junk with. And three if you wanted to keep whatever money you had, well, you better learn to fight and defend yourself because the other kids on the base learned the same lesson pretty quick. These lessons applied in civilian life too although to varying degrees, but they were the same lessons.

If you put the desire to get out of the house and coupled it with the desire to have money it wasn't long before I was looking for money-making schemes that would allow me to live the luxurious lifestyle that I wanted to be accustomed to. I liked candy and sodas and they both cost money. Money wasn't given away for doing nothing and the parental units tended to get pissed off if it disappeared due to a little in-home five-finger discounting. I figured out pretty quick that I was gonna get blamed because;

A) My little brother couldn't even really talk yet why the hell did he need money? and
B) My older brother was 5 years older than me with a wicked fast left hand and if I got his ass in trouble that shit was gonna hurt. He didn't screw around if you got him in trouble with your bullshit.

I knew that from experience. Some lessons you only have to tell me once. He got really pissed off at me once (I deserved it) later in life and smacked me upside the head with that sneaky assed left hand open-faced and I swear to god I never even saw it move. I just remember the pain. Killed my buzz that's for sure. That's another story but I think that was the point. He beat my ass so my Dad wouldn't kill me. Thankx Man.

Anyway I became the industrious ten-year-old tycoon earning sometimes as much as $80-$100 or so dollars a month depending upon the time of year and what reason I could come up with for smooth-talking people out of the money they had just waiting for me that was in their purses and wallets. It turned out that no one on a base had a lot of money but everybody had .50 cents or a $1 they could spare. Also the men wouldn't pay you squat, but the Moms? Well nobody could resist my cute little smile. I also noticed everyone hated to edge their lawns. It was a military requirement that all lawns had to be edged properly to allow for drainage. People were willing to pay me to edge their lawns and I had figured out that if I edged your lawn and noticed one little extra I could do and tell you when I was done that I picked up all the cigarette butts too for example, Not only would I get the $1, but usually another 10-25 cents too. In 1967 or so at ten years old, this was BIG MONEY. You only had to do four or five customers a day two or three days a week and pretty soon you had a clientele and a fairly steady income. Some months were better than others and I never saved a dime, but I went to the movies, played pinball and pool, paid for my own haircuts after a while, and fished, and bought tackle and never needed the money from Mom or Dad to do it. Kids today talk about being bored and being broke, I just laugh at them, the lazy little shits.

That went on, the earning money doing odd little jobs, the fighting to keep it out of the clutches of the neighborhood kids until we moved to Indiana. During that whole time I learned a couple of valuable lessons too. Things like Yes it hurts to get punched in the face and Yes sometimes you bled a little bit if you chose to fight. You get over the pain and I found out it's not really that bad anyway. You can put up with it even if you get kicked in you know where's or hit in the nose. Your opponent is waiting on you to give up, and when you laughed and spit blood on them and fight back usually they have already used their signature move. Nothing is more fun than punching a bully in the nose and watching him cry.

I also found out that you didn't really have to go very far from home to make money. One thing I did for money was stand in front of the base exchange and sell GRIT newspapers. They would sell you 20 newspapers and you got to keep a nickel from every sale. Every paper was a quarter and I could sell 100 papers every month without really trying hard. That went on for a while until I got tired of lugging them around and by then I had a racket going everywhere I went for some reason or another. The other thing you always had to do was hide your money from your family. Those assholes always wanted to "borrow" it and then they never paid you back. I remember I paid my own entry fee for Little league every year, I paid the entry fee for being in the JRCA (Junior Rodeo Cowboys of America) where I learned to shovel horse manure, I paid for my own Civil Air Patrol stuff, paid for my own socks and added some money for the shoes so I had a tiny say in what kind I got, I always sold extra pens, pencils, and candy at school.

I tried a little bit of everything but also learned to be a master of the cost-benefit analysis before computers and before Excel, when looking at a new racket. If it carried too much potential for getting in trouble, then no way Jose`, I ain't doing that because then they want to take the stuff, the money, and the scheme. I got away with it at school by giving people pens and pencils when they needed it, usually in front of teachers so they could see me being this cute kind little kid and then all the other people I sold it too. Its how I figured out that there might be a ton of money in illegal shit, but there was way too much risk and it put everything else in jeopardy too.

It's why I never sold liquor, drugs, beer or cigarettes, or anything else like that. You only have to see one 14 or 15-year-old idiot searched and arrested for selling weed or pills and you figured out that somebody will always tell on you. There is no such thing as a secret at 14 years old. You scare me enough and I'm spilling my guts to you. So I learned the safe rackets to be in. When I got searched I never gave up anything but candy. "OK you can go Michael" they would say - hee hee I know thankx I would think in reply. It sounds sorta evil when you put it on paper doesn't it?

I just knew my parents didn't have any money or didn't have the amount of money I wanted and I was too young to get a job and I either had to figure it out or do without. I couldn't have a Reeses' cup? No way. I shoveled snow even though I detested it (I hated and still hate everything to do with snow -YUK), I edged and mowed lawns, I washed cars, I babysat, I took out the trash in several homes (but couldn't be bothered to do it for free at home), I pulled weeds, I picked up cigarettes, I sold GRIT, I sold candy door to door, I sold stuff at school and probably a bunch of other stuff I noticed at the time but have forgotten now.

I would tell the mom that the money was for whatever sounded good at the moment and wasn't too big of a lie. Usually telling the truth was a better option but maybe sometimes you had to embellish a tiny bit to get what you wanted. I have always been a good storyteller. If you needed a cute little kid to help you with your chores, I would smile and say "Yes Ma'am". Mom's big rule was if I was going to be inside somebody's house I had to be neat, clean, and nice and I had to make sure she knew where I was.

You would be surprised how many 30-35-year-old women want a nice kid around that they can pay to do stuff for them.

Later in life at 18 or so (yeah 18 that's how old I was !! and I'm sticking to it), I found out that 35-year-old women wanted a nice older kid around to do lots of other physical stuff for them if you know what I mean.

Those were the years !

No top five today, just dusty memories,

BigMike

It's not the heat its the humidity

05/08/2020 at around 05:00  a.m., Or as I like to call it, the time of the pre-rooster.

Welcome back to exploring my faulty memory with BigMike, I'm your host, BigMike,

Let us begin shall we?

During just the time I went to school, in those formative 12 years or so we lived in several different climates. We Lived in the Pacific Northwest in the State of Washington at McChord Air Force base (Now joint base Lewis-McChord), In the midwest in the state of Indiana in Indianapolis and in the wild wild west in the state of Montana in Great Falls on the airbase called Malmstrom Air Force Base, we also moved back to Indiana when my Dad got shipped off toTerrejon Spain for a couple of years but the climate is the climate even if separated by a few years in between.

As an adult, I lived in Indiana, Florida, Tennessee, and Georgia and settled in Georgia. I drove a truck for a few years in between and experienced everything from the heat of Arizona (It's not the heat, its the humidity) to the cold of the Continental Divide. I have to say, my favorite was anything above 65* on a normal basis.

In the Pacific Northwest in Washington state, it rained. A lot. I mean I think it rained every day. At least it felt like it did although realistically I know it couldn't have rained every day. The thing I remember the most is all the adults always fiddling with umbrellas and windshields and windshield wipers. It seemed like one of the most important things that people did was check their wiper fluid levels when they got gas. Nothing worse than trying to see out of a muddy window with bad blades and no fluid.

In Indiana the problems were almost always centered around how cold it was. It would snow alright and then because the weather gods would want to screw with everyone, it would thaw a little bit and the BLAM freeze solid overnight. This would create frozen streets, sidewalks, and roads. It would mean everything was so damn slippery you couldn't make it to the car without busting your ass a couple of times, and everywhere you looked all the surfaces were covered with a thin sheet of ice. Icicles on the houses waiting to stab you in the eye, the locks on the doors of your cars were frozen shut because who could afford a garage right? and more importantly, you usually had to follow behind the snowplow to get to work and guess what he was doing? That's right spraying road salt out the back of the truck destroying your car in the process. It was great, why would anyone ever want to leave that crap? I just don't know. I absolutely hated shoveling snow.

In Montana the main issues were a lot like Indiana with two notable exceptions. One (1) It was colder than crap in the winter and when it snowed and it was usually well below zero a lot of the time, so the snow wasn't this wet heavy sticky messy snow like we got in Indiana, no sir, we had our own special snow. Our Montana snow was light and fluffy most of the time and there was usually a foot or two or three of it coming down coupled with well with a lot of below zero temperatures. That was awesome because (2) The wind. When you combined the three-foot snowfall of the light fluffy friendly snow with the horror film temperatures and your friend the wind guess what you get when this is all added together? You get mountains of drifting snow. Virtual 10-15 foot high mountains of snow. Do you think we got excused from school and took a snow day off though? This is my version of the walking backward through 6 feet of snow uphill both ways story.

Oh and my name wasn't Ferris Bueller, so we had to sit on that damn school bus after standing out in the colder than humans should be able to live in the wind and grind our way to school. I remember first hearing the term wind chill during this time. It would be 20 below zero and the wind chill would make it feel like it was -99* below zero. You had to plug in your car water and battery heaters every night if you thought you were going to have a prayer of your car starting the next morning. Almost every parking lot had power outlets in the parking spaces for plugging in.

The mind can't comprehend this crap in the 6th grade and never having the first cup of coffee yet. We would go 10 miles per hour and be lined up behind a piece of Earthmoving equipment called a road grader which would plow the mountains of snow out of the way so the bus could make its way through. Some times if it was bad enough, the snowplows would fall behind the grader and finish topping off the roads so that travel was safe enough for us to make it to school. Those sonsabitches. We never got a snow day unless the snow turned to ice.

As an adult when we first moved to Georgia from Tennessee, the very first thing I did when the moving truck showed up was throw away my snow shovel and stopped using the terms blizzard, wind chill, and below zero. I am so over that crap.

Ideas that are different and mutually exclusive

1. Plenty of people are weird and depending upon your perspective, it might include you, who knows? It seems like the rich are just getting weirder by the day though. Maybe it because of their higher visibility I don't know but strange things keep popping up. I generally love all things Elon Musk however this time he gets on the weird list with help from his girlfriend "Grimes" (a singer, never heard of her?). They named their baby a word that embodies characters that you have to have special instructions on how to type them, as it is not part of the 26 letter alphabet. I don't exactly know how to describe it except to say part of it looks like scientific notation.
   
   Elon Musk is a nerd. He must know this, as he is just about the smartest person around. Did he forget what it was like to be a smart kid? Does he want his kid to get his ass beat every day just because he has a weird name? Kids are cruel and they will make fun of him just because his old man is a nerd, do they really want the burden of that name to carried with him too? I mean they better have an alternative like maybe "Gary" or this kid is gonna have a weird name and two permanent black eyes every day until 10th grade.
   
   
2. They are making a prequel Sopranos movie which is going to explore the character's lives before the TV series. It sounds cool and is supposed to be ready in March of 2021. The cool part is who they have cast to play young Tony. He is being played by none other than Michael Gandolfini, who is the late great James Gandolfini's son. I understand Ray Liotta has a role as well. I can't wait to see this, It is coming out on HBO, and that may make me want to get that channel again.
   
   
3. The CDC has been effectively sidelined from making any suggestions, briefings recommendations advice that pertains to the coronavirus outbreak in any way. I mean why would you want the Centers for Disease Control talking about diseases?
   
   How stupid is that?
   
   
4. This week and the weekend it is going to snow in New England and the NE USA. They are calling it historic not only because of it being the month of May but because some places could see as much as maybe 8-12 inches of new snow. Oh and it's going to reach record low temperatures, with maybe 40 mph wind gusts for 12 hours or more, and is going to affect about 75 million people. Tell me you are not staying at home in New York huh?
   
   
5. They have arrested a suspect in a 29-year-old serial murder cold case based on a hit from a long-ago collected DNA sample. A guy named Clark Perry Baldwin, 59 Y/O was arrested and charged with 2 counts of murder in one case because his victim was 24 weeks pregnant at the time. He has also been charged in Wyoming.
   
   
   Gotta love DNA testing. Now if they could just see the way clear to testing those 200-400 hundred thousand untested rape kits that are sitting around everywhere in police departments.
   
   End the rape kit backlog - click the link to read more
   BigMike

No Soup for WINK

7th uh of the 5th of uh the uh 2020 at before pink sky 5:30 a.m. ish

It was a well lit, dark and stormy calm and clear morning that night,

So anyway to continue a theme, when I was a kid living on an Air Force base because I was a military brat, me momma was a stay at home momma and me dada was a career sergeant (mostly of his own choosing and actions), we used to live on a SAC base in Montana for a time. SAC was the Strategic Air Command made famous by the movies as the service that always had bombers in the air ostensibly carrying nuclear weapons ready at a moment's notice to bomb the crap out of our enemies thereby implementing the M.A.D. philosophy of the time.

If you were not aware,  M.A.D. stood for mutually assured destruction, which is the old "you bomb me, I'll bomb you and we both die" philosophy. It was a term of art as it really meant the end of all mankind except for those idiots in Afghanistan and all the other 'Stans that could live in caves, no problem. Everybody else? Poof, Dust.

Anyway, being a 10-year-old on a military base led to all kinds of free time after school. Unlike today, where hover mom has to know exactly where little Timmy is at all times because there are 25 registered pedophiles within 5 miles of the house, we just had to be able to see the light on the front porch go on and off about 5-10 times and be in the house shortly after. You could roam a great deal and go just about anywhere on the base you were allowed if you were an accomplished storyteller (a liar) and had a convincing backstory that seemed plausible enough. I was both a great storyteller and a great creator of stories. Looking back now I'm sure my Mom knew at the time that I was full of shit, but I got away with it a lot of the time. I think she let me because she knew somehow that I needed the space.

One of the things I am sure is not allowed anymore, we used to be able to sit on top of the wooden slat fence and also just inside of it on the ground for a while (when it was busy) in the area that defined the runway of the military airport. It's called a flight line and it was where the aircraft of various types took off from and landed at. There were more runways I guess, this was the one closest to our house. We had this one place where we could sit and still could see the front porch light on our house. We would sit there as long as we were could, watching the jets take off and land, trying to identify the various jets, other aircraft and cargo jets. It was great fun if the B-52 was landing because that sucker was huge! Watching jets take off and seeing some of them hitting the afterburners especially at night was great. Man it was noisy too. We were there so often and we never approached the runways and we talked to the AP (the cops) so much that after a while they would just drive by and nod at us. We would nod back and feel like adults getting away with something.

The coolest time of my life, only I didn't know it at the time.

One time the Air Force demonstration team, The Thunderbirds (check it out The Thunderbirds ) came to visit and we were allowed to walk over through the gate and see the planes up close. During that time I think they were flying the F100-D Super Sabre jet. That jet was a beauty and man I couldn't get enough. I remember my Mom put my little brother who was about 5 years old in a stroller and we all walked over to the flight line. For some reason she didn't want to use my shortcut. I knew all about the jets, the cargo plane and the names of the pilots, their ranks the narrator and all the stuff any normal kid would know about their favorite baseball team, except my team flew jets. We didn't stay very long (at least I don't remember it that way) because we had to walk everywhere as my mother didn't drive and we only had one car anyway, as Mom had to get home to make dinner. I remember her telling the story about this day and she said I didn't shut up for about 5 days. It was so cool.

Did anybody else ever get smacked in the face with the tetherball?

1. First "Iron Mike" Tyson announces at age 53 that he is returning to the boxing ring for a series of exhibition fights to raise money for various projects. Now Evander Holyfield has announced he is going to strap on the gloves again too at age 57 and do the same. At age 57?
   
   Shit I couldn't tie my shoes properly by myself at 57. At that age my back hurt so bad I couldn't do real actual physical labor anymore. That is right at the age I was forced to retire against my will due to disability and some surgery I had. And these guys are lacing up the gloves again? For Charity matches? Hell guys make a donation! I wonder if they will box each other? If you remember this is the boxer that Mike bit the hunk of his ear, leaving his with a bite mark,  during one of their last fights. Supposedly they are great friends now. There is no way in hell you could convince me to get in a boxing ring with either one of these guys. You are crazy.
   
2. I've been sort of loosely following the ESPN series about Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls called the Last Dance. It's interesting stuff, but its also rarified air as it probably is at the top of any profession. Finding out he had to pay a grocery store to open up for him after hours so he could shop in peace in his early rookie years was sort of fascinating, but hard to relate to. Once he started to really become "Air Jordan" of course he had hired a house manager, so he didn't do his own laundry or his own shopping anymore.
   
   Now he has a Gazillion dollar house for sale in the Chicago area, complete with a huge 23 on the front gate and a complete regulation-sized basketball court with his name all over it. I've been thinking about moving.....
   
3. Why in the hell do we have to see those gruesome pictures and videos of people in the ICU all hooked up to the ventilators and 20 other machines like a big science project? Isn't it bad enough they are going to die? Do they have to die in technicolor? With a breathless reporter and a microphone yapping away at some helpless mother or sister or husband who is crying their eyes out because their loved one is in such agony just trying to breathe?
   
   I know you can turn it off and I do quickly, But why in the hell is it there in the first place. Its total nonsense if you ask me, I cannot stand to see people crying their eyes out on national TV, it's the epitome of cruel and is beyond me who would approve this sort of shit in the first place.
   
4. It's National Nurses Day! Yay! Time for another coffee mug, another set of medical or hospital branded drink koozies and another $20 Wal Mart gift card! Yay! I'm the husband of a nurse. Do I sound sarcastic or jaded?
   
   I should because it should be criminal the way nurses and CNA's are treated by their employers in the quest for profits by the conglomerates they work for. I'm not going to say more, because my wife doesn't deserve to be fired for my comments.
   
5. Ok so I got the Memo.
   No RING Cameras or Ring branded products in my house. Check.
   The RING doorbell cam and other products have so many security holes and privacy problems it is ridiculous and I haven't heard a thing about them being fixed. They somehow think it is a feature to share your videos automatically with your neighbors or give your videos to the police without asking you as if you didn't own them. Geeze, Not here.
   
   Add to that No WINK branded items or WINK branded home automation products either.
   Got It. Check.
   Wink has told all of its users they have 7 days from yesterday to sign up for the mandatory $5 per month subscription process on all their products or they face having access to the products they BOUGHT and PAID for shut off and bricked. No pay, No play. It's ransom pure and simple and is BULLSHIRT.
   
   No soup for WINK.
   
   What's better than a booby hug Bobby?
   
   BigMike

It is what it is until it isn't

Wednesday, May 6th, 2020at 5:30 a.m. why in the hell am I awake?

Objects in the mirror are closer than they seem especially if you're high,

I do this all the time. I sit down at this keyboard and amuse myself by inserting little references here and there that don't have any real meaning to the larger scheme of things in the world, they are just funny little snippets of stuff from other things like songs or plays or film. Most of the time, the vast majority of the time, nobody sees them and there is very little recognition to be had that they existed. Usually, it just flies on by,  zoom zoom,  and we all go about our business, I giggle about it later. Being as that there are really only a few readers of my blog in the first place, most people don't even know it ever existed. That's what it's like being inside my head, chortling at stuff no one else even knows ever existed. I'm not trolling for readers here, if I were I would choose a platform with more readers to do it. Ironic huh?

Here's one that's out in the open. You know what's really ironic? (Maybe even funny depending upon perspective), Did you know that the colors Red, White, and Blue almost always convey images of freedom to most people? The most notable exception to this idea is when they are flashing in your rearview mirror. Think about that for a second.

In America it is possible to get the best of everything there is. You can have the best food, the best service, the very best medical care, the absolute best representation and advice from an attorney, the most wonderful careers that can be had, the highest levels of education and the most exquisite houses and all you have to do to achieve this wonderful ideal way of living is to be born rich. If your mother and father were uber-wealthy, well you are set for life. You probably don't even have to go to school if you do not want to as all will be provided for you if you just give it time. Even medium rich will do it if it covers the basics for you forever however, if you are born to the uber-rich, well learn how to sail Bucko because summers are gonna be lit for you for the rest of your life.

This scenario I've just described actually exists for a few. It exists for people who have summer homes on Martha's vineyard or for people who go skiing in Vail at the winter home and for those lucky few that can say their Daddy has a house in the Hamptons. If you have to ask where the Hamptons are, then this doesn't apply to you.

Sadly, as anti-American as this may seem to a lot of us, this is what is held up to the world as the American Dream, where it is possible to be anything, to do anything, to have anything in America if you are just willing to work hard enough. Most of this is bull-hockey for the average American. It may have been possible for this to happen in the distant past however my opinion those times are long past and are never to return. I really don't know why but I choose to blame the rich just because they are easy targets.

In the world we have 3,665, 912 cases of the coronavirus right now and 257,337 people have died of this crap so far. In The USA only its 1,204,475 cases and 71,078 deaths. In the US, about 6 % of all cases result in death, and in the world its around 7 %. I would imagine the standard of living or the standard of medical care accounts for the difference. I'm not sure it even matters or ever has.

Useless advice and notes from the spinning wheel of my brain

1. They say the best way to stop your glasses from fogging up while you are wearing a cloth mask is to wash them with soap and warm water, then don't touch them with your fingers while drying. Never use anything made from wood or wood pulp when drying your glasses. This includes tissues, toilet paper and paper towels as wood pulp products will scratch the lenses. Use cotton-based products like bath towels instead. I'm not sure if it works or not but I also heard that cleaning the lenses with shaving cream will stave off the fog too. Good to know I suppose.
   
2. Most economists and the talking heads on TV said that job losses and business closures were temporary and that most of them were expected to make a complete recovery. I said from the beginning that this was pablum as the market could not and would sustain temporary closures. Most businesses even if closed, still had monthly expenses to pay even if the business was closed and they were producing zero revenue. Some sectors of our economy will never recover from this. Most that don't return to full operations will restructure, reduce, or will close, liquidate, or go bankrupt. A wave of bankruptcies will begin as soon as the sectors have met their conditions imposed by the collection of stimulus funding. It is beginning to look like I'm right even though I do not want to be.
   
   Other business sectors such as airlines, airline industries, airline part manufacturers, and their service suppliers, and even employee unions will see major drops in their numbers that are inevitable. GE, for example, has announced 13,000 jobs are being removed and won't be replaced. UAL (United Airlines) COO Greg Hart has stated publicly that it would be better if their employees would just go away and quit on their own.
   
   Our unemployment rate could spike at 22% for May compared to 15.8 % for April.
   Heady times Bro!
   
3. Ironic still is the news that some retailers are expected to file for bankruptcy just as soon as they can re-open and put a little cash in the bank that would finance liquidation sales and bankruptcy filings. Most shuttered businesses had only 2 weeks of operating cash on hand when they closed. In other words they are too poor to go bankrupt.
   
   Look for great deals and great sales at J Crew, JC Penney, Nieman Marcus, and a slew of others as they hold everything must go sales to liquidate excess inventory. Hertz will soon file and Victoria's secret just called off a private sale due to cash balance issues. They are all in trouble.
   
4. I hate cliches and the constant use of buzzwords. I use them as badly as anyone and I still hate them. The worst of all of the popular ones right now is the dumbass phrases "It is what it is". Of course, it is, what else would it be?  How else could you think of it? It is what it isn't? Dumbass crap.
   
   I just love it when someone puts out something like "They are going to have to tactically evaluate it from 40,000 feet before it uncycles productivity or negatively impacts the cross-functional team members that are coordinating the multi-pronged approach to synergizing our strategy".
   
   Aaaargggghh! I get crazy asking them to extract themselves from this word vomit and say what's on their mind. It makes me nuts trying to make sense of this shit.
   
5. You know when people are shown going underwater without diving gear in the movies? I like to hold my breath to see if I would have survived in the same situation. Its pretty fun to do this. It provides a lot of giggles.
   
   I almost died during  "Finding Nemo" though.
   
   
   On your feet Navy Diver !,
   
   BigMike

Hold on to your ass Fred

5:00 a.m. on the most hallowed Taco Tuesday that is also Cinco de Mayo May 5th, 2020

Hey Lazer lips, Yo Mama was a snowblower!

A short Coronavirus update about the fake news COVID19 virus that is and is not killing people as fast and not as fast as the lamestream media has reported because by god my beer drinking, loud talking. truth spitting friends know more than your epidemiologists and doctors could ever know. Your facts don't scare me. Everybody knows that all hospitals and doctors want to do is make more money and everybody knows that hospitals make way more money by calling a death as a Covid19 death rather than as a regular death. Everybody knows that because duh! dead people pay their hospital bills way faster than live people do and you can cram that bill way high if you call it a coronavirus death. It makes perfect sense to me however this is why I could never be a good conspiracy theorist. Notwithstanding the impeccable and irrefutable logic and the long run-on sentences I just cannot think that stupidly and not spit my drink out while saying it.

Anyway as of yesterday evening sometime, the USA has 1,182,998 Covid19 cases and 68,932 people have died from this agonizing pandemic. That's a death rate of 5.82 % or if you are determined to drink wine spritzers instead of the hard liquor, 94.18 % of all people infected survive this crap. The ones that do die (for the most part) die agonizing hard-fought deaths and die alone and die in the most horrible ways possible, hooked up to breathing apparatus and surrounded by masked, gowned and gloved medical people they don't know and couldn't identify if they saw them on the street. A high percentage of these deaths are of the most susceptible and the frailest, but not all of them. A lot of them got infected by people who transmitted the disease to them and didn't show any of the symptoms of being sick. Medical personnel are dying at unheard-of rates, with more medical people dying from direct infection than ever did from being infected by HIV positive patients.

Hell, I'm probably wrong, ask any know it all on Facebook, they'll tell you what they heard their neighbor say different because he has a friend that has a cousin that works in the IT department of a major hospital in Wyoming, who said it ain't that bad. Who you gonna believe, them lying ass experts or your good friend that drinks your kind of beer?

Did you know the murder hornets have arrived? The 2-inch long Asian giant hornet was just discovered in the State of Washington. They say not to worry about it though because the federal government has a plan to find them and kill them. They are going to use psychics to tell them where they are.

Most Laugh tracks were recorded in the '50s. 

We've been listening to dead people laugh for decades.

1. Here is an interesting tidbit.
   
   As a consequence of the Covid19 shutdown which basically shut down the entire economy, we have and are going to experience a small business die-off like we have never seen before. Many industries in various occupations like travel agents and Insurance agents will not be able to recover from this and will just go away. According to data gleaned from credit payment processors more than 30% of all small businesses have shuttered and many will never reopen. Most have less than 2 weeks of operating cash on hand and most are waiting on loans and relief from the government to pay basic bills. It is a damn shame.
2. OH! Wait, What? The pandemic is not over? We still haven't peaked the death rate, as a country? and our death rate is still slightly increasing?, eh, anyway what the hell, UNLEASH THE PEOPLES, and let's have a party! The headline actually said "More states ease virus restrictions as US Cases on the rise".
   
   The predictive coronavirus statistical death models the government has been relying upon have all basically assumed various things, chief among them that we would stay home through May and that all states would order shelter in place initiatives. Once the models were adjusted to face reality and include what's actually happening two things happened. One (1) the death prediction rate doubled and two (2) the government stopped using those models. Sweet.
3. I don't know where she learned it and I don't know how she got so good at it, however, my daughter Megan can cook like a Mofro. We didn't teach her as neither my wife nor I cook as well as she does (Sorry Honey, but you know its true!), The dishes she makes sometimes are so freakin cool that I think Emeril has been stayin over sometimes! So far I have not hated anything she has prepared and I've only given her advice one time on one thing I wanted her to cook for me, and everything has been tasty as heck durn! The only things I haven't been a big fan of are the overly spiced meats from the crockpot and that's been a couple of months ago.
   
   She asked me a few days ago what I was gonna do when she finally moved for good.
   I said "Starve probably"
4. I found out this one today. Apparently as you die, you are totally aware that you are dying right up until the very last second when your brain shuts off for good. Great. So at least we have that to look forward to huh?
5. I wrote about being a kid on a military base the other day. It struck me that there was also one great big difference between then and being a civilian kid. I might be wrong and I just remember the good stuff but I cannot remember experiencing racism (seeing it or hearing it) until after my Dad retired and we moved to civilian housing in Indiana from Montana. I mean maybe it was because Montana is 99.99 % white folks but I don't think that's really it because the base was not just white kids. I just never really felt it or saw it be anywhere as ugly as it was later on when he retired.
   
   One time I thought it was I was wrong. I got in trouble for talking to a girl, later at night (around 9 pm), through her bedroom window, I was in the yard, she was inside. Her Dad caught us, I ended up being escorted home by the Air Patrol because I was out after curfew.
   
   When I got home my Dad was explosive mad! I asked him (sort of accusingly) if he was mad at me because I was caught talking to a black girl? He was stunned and it took a second for him to gather himself. When he did he said "Listen here dipshit! I didn't know what color she was, I'm pissed off because she is my commanding General's daughter and you're getting my ass chewed out with your bullshit! Now go to bed, you're grounded."
   
   I'm pretty sure that was the only time I got grounded with a smile on my face.
   
   
   (Say it like a cadence) I don't know but I've been told, Ice cream is pretty darn cold,
   
   BigMike

Go for throttle up

It's another Monday. May 4th, 2020 at 4:30 a.m.

Yeah yeah May the fourth be with you too blah blah blah,

I have another hobby. I have about 20 hobbies now in my quest to stay mildly busy, to learn new things and be more adequately engaged with my life, I've found something else to occupy my time that is interesting and I can put a science spin on it. Before you even get started I don't need nor do I want your advice about what I should do next. Every time I start to talk about this some well-meaning schlub starts in with the "You should do this or that " spiel about how they think I should spend my free time.

It usually starts off where they give me their wonderful great advice to go be a volunteer at someplace like a homeless shelter or the animal shelter or another place. I just think to myself " I don't want to involve People, That's what I am trying to avoid!" That aggravates the crap outta me because my objective is not to be busier, it is to learn new things. I am way too lazy to be any busier, ask LaDonna or Megan, they will tell you. It's not like I'm looking for something to interrupt my afternoon nap.

Having said that I know one of my close friends is already calculating a way to get under my skin with this. I guarantee before the morning is over, Susan will get more advice about how to quit whining, or stop bitching or something and then BLAM, under the bus I'll go. Well, not so much under the bus just aggravated and made fun of really. It doesn't bother me that much as I know she cares enough to do it and we both laugh about it. I know that most of you just think I'm crazy and I should move on and grow up anyway.

I have begun to provide care and support for wild birds. I also send dog food to our local animal shelter every two weeks. Apparently I also care for rabbits, mice, and squirrels although all of them are sort of incidental. See we cleared out a bunch of the tree line that borders my property over the last couple of years, and when I say we,  I mean I paid someone else to do it, as no way I can do that kind of work anymore. Then we created a path that I could travel in my wheelchair. After that, we installed a birdbath, 5 birdhouses, 2 big seed feeders, 3 squirrel logs and the poles to hang the feeders on, and about 12 suit feeders. I've been working on this idea for about 3 years now and it is complete to this point. I'm farther along than the bypass is and I only took me 3 years from start to finish, with a lot of help from Brian and others.

There is a bird highway rest area now, complete with 5 hotel rooms and about 15 different restaurants to eat at plus free-range insects at the all you can eat ground cafe`. I sit on the deck in the morning and watch the squirrels destroy everything and eat all the seed, and whenever they are full the birds come by and make a ton of racket while they feed. It is pretty cool for a city boy like me. My friend PJ helps me to keep everything full whenever we can, but my wife has been helping me lately because we are under a quarantine order. It's really cool to do stuff with her too, usually, she is so busy keeping the house and the job in order or getting what little sleep she gets that I don't bug her with it unless I absolutely have to.

Is it weird that I don't try to identify or count the different species that visit? I've seen a little bit of everything including Cardinals, Wrens, Robins, Cat Birds, Sparrows, tons of Bluebirds, and a few others. It's pretty awesome. Birds make a shit ton of racket though. You get a bunch of them together eating and it sounds like a busy bar on a Saturday night and every ten minutes a bar fight breaks out.

It is something else to behold. The side benefit is that birds like insects and ticks and they eat the crap out of them including the wretched ants. I watched it yesterday while these birds went to town on the friggin insects. It was great. Also after we harvested the weekly grass (Its what I call grass cutting an acre and a half), the birds went to town on the back forty and picked the yard clean. I wanted to go out and give them all coupons for half off dining but cha know.

By God I'm going to invite more birds to come over and play!

5 Opinions that nobody asked for but got anyway

1. Up until I was at the beginning of 8th grade, I was a military brat. I lived on one Air Force base or another until then. I look back at that time with real fondness as we had a great time being kids on the base. The culture then and at that moment was worlds apart from what came next in the civilian world. Everything was different from going to the movies to what was considered normal.
   
   For example, usually, even 10-year-olds carried your ID cards on them if you were out playing without your parents around. God forbid if you lost it. If you had to get Mom (Please no not Dad), to take you back to Pass&ID to get another ID card,  you more than likely were going to get your ass beat for losing it. It didn't matter how you lost it or why you lost it, you just didn't lose it. Period.
   
   Consequentially because it was a military installation, you occasionally would have to talk to the Air Base Police, or Air patrol (AP) for various things. Being in a restricted area, playing in a construction zone, taking a shortcut through the flight line, talking to the Generals daughter through her bedroom window at 9 p.m., walking on top of the missile silos or playing in the ammo dump would all get you questioned. They would say things like "How in the hell did you get in here and nobody saw you?".
   
   Mundane things like being out after curfew or when the base was locked down either during an exercise or during an alert, would get an inquiry too. The worst part was every time you got talked to or questioned, they would contact your father and report the contact for whatever the reason was. Man, that sucked. The cops would call your dad and then deliver you in a cop truck to your parents, even if you were within walking distance to your house. It felt like the last mile you would ever walk.
   
2. I want to go and see the movie Venom2 whenever it comes out. In terms of what movie upcoming excites me, this one is it. Also Deadpool3 but I don't know when that one gets released. The last James Bond movie that Daniel Craig will play Bond is on the list too. What other movies are on the horizon?
   
3. Hollywood celebrity Emily Ratajkowski didn'\t make the news this week for being naked for once. That's her go-to mode for generating headlines I think. She has appeared nude on the internet so often that they don't even include her images in search results for naked movie stars anymore. Or so I've heard, I don't know for sure, as I don't like to look at naked movie stars.
   
   Anyway, this week she has lost her mind and held a wedding ceremony. For her dog. She married off her dog to, wait for it, another dog. Another one of her dogs.
   
   These people are unfathomable.
   
4. The headline is all I have on this one. A man goes to clean out his mother's apt in Manhattan after she passed away. He finds a body in a duct-taped shut freezer. It is so deteriorated the body's sex cannot be easily determined. It has been there for at least 10 years and the man has no idea who it is. Now, imagine this is your mother and your mother's house. All of your relatives are accounted for.
   
   Who in the hell is in the freezer? Wow.
   
5. We have a Space Force as a 6th Military service. It has already happened. so nothing to bitch about here. Apparently it ain't about planes and bombs though according to the pentagon. Coming to light this week is a revelation that we have had a spaceplane called the X37-B in orbit for around the last 3 years and nobody will explain what it does or why its there. Not that they should have to at all, I just find it interesting. Right now its all-black files and budgets that are part of about 100 Billion dollars in appropriations that you cannot see the details of. Apparently also it has a relationship to Reagans SDI initiatives of the '80s and '90s and it is all about satellite tracking and space-based defenses for the time being. It is interesting as hell though.
   
   
   This is Houston,  Challenger you are a go for throttle up,
   
   BigMike

Happy Anniversary America

Sunday, May 3rd, 2020 at too damn early in the morning or as you call it 6:00 a.m.

Happy celebration of the transected orbit of our blue rock around the source of all life,

I have started using Grammarly (the free version) when I write. I love it. It does a great job with spelling and punctuation which is why I use it. There is also a so much per month version however I am retired and this is about all I write, and I do most of that with a microphone, so no need for all the bells and whistles. If you do a lot of writing in your job, I highly recommend it.

You can get it for free at Grammarly free download

I have come to the conclusion (just for the old folks in the audience), that any kind of remodeling is best left to the young. My daughter has been working on a few upgrade projects in the house, she says I've been helping, however just watching her work from a chair has left me sometimes too sore to stand up. I can't imagine being her and doing 99.9% of the work and then even just breathing afterward. It is a stunning revelation that making new is for the young. Crap. Just think, I would be damaged irreparably if I had to lift a hand or swing a hammer. It sucks being old. I hate every minute of it. Being old, being disabled, being unable to play sports, all of it. If it were a thing I would hit it with a brick. Such is the life I suppose.

May 1st is the start of the burning ban in Georgia. That's the state-mandated ban on outdoor burning of debris, tree limbs and etc. We are always banned from burning trash. If you live in the city and don't have trees or have heavy trash pickup it is not a problem. Out here, if we couldn't burn it, we would be engulfed by it eventually or it would just be overgrown and get out of control. You would have piles of tree limbs everywhere from all the last dozen storms that pass through.  Ours has been extended to start June 1st, because of the early season storms that passed through this spring and caused so much destruction, but I don't like dealing with it anyway. Who the hell can go to the dump that often?

Speaking of going to the dump, I don't have any idea how I accumulate so much crap every year. I have an outside open-sided storage area that has three stalls and one of those stalls is crammed full of crap that has to go to the dump. I just can't wrap my head around how a disabled guy in a wheelchair (I can walk, just not well) whose kids are grown and do not live at home, can gather so much crap. I would bet all of my friends except for the couple that has a 1500-foot long driveway that looks like the infantry has been training to dig foxholes (you know who you are), They probably have more crap than I do. I mean, he built a dwelling and has the debris of other family members to contend with too, and not all the land is his, but I think they are the only people I know that contend with as much crap collection as I do. I have no idea how it happens.

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy

1. Happy Anniversary !!. On May 1st, every year it should be a national holiday. That day in 2011 was the day that Seal Team 6 shot and killed that bastard Osama Bin Laden. May he Rest in Hell the piece of dog crap. I have written about this before and about how we should have responded to his family when they objected to how he was killed and buried.
   
   You can read the previous statement I made (in this blog) here .---> Previous Blog Post
    
   I'll admit my language was a teeny tiny bit passionate at the time but I stand behind every profane NSFW word I wrote then. I just have chosen to not express myself so crudely and so bluntly in this forum anymore in deference to a great woman that I admire and love very much for whom it was displeasing to read. I am forever in her debt, she mothered me as a young man, and also snatched my ear a time or two and I respect her wishes ( Love you, Marilyn!!)
2. The family and I sat down and watched Animal House (1978, John Belushi, etc) last evening. The veil was lifted a little bit as my son David got to see the origin story of stuff he has heard his entire life. I have a lifelong habit of repeating movie quotes and dialog and even play with my wife with the occasional snippet. It was good to see him (and Megan) smile and laugh every time they saw one in the movie that they have heard me say over and over. It gave them context, if only a little and it's sorta like having an origin story for your Dad played out on the TV. It was cool. David has the greatest laugh.  ---> Ramming Speed !!
3. Why in the hell does anyone watch a movie made by the fat bloviating piece of human waste Michael Moore?  I cannot for the life of me figure out how he ever shoots a single frame of film and why he is not working in a junkyard or a landfill shooting rats for a living! As far as I am concerned and is it just my personal opinion, he contributes ZERO to society, and has made NOTHING worth watching.
4. Apparently, there is a plan to re-open the legal brothels in Nevada in such a way as to keep the workers and the clients safe from exposure from the CoronaVrus (Covid-19).  It's a so-called "Risky Race" to see how they do it. I understand it has something to do with more than one thing being required to be wrapped. The jokes just write themselves. I'll just leave this right here....
5. I didn't know normal everyday people had no clue how to make sure their own food was safe to eat. Someone actually wrote to one of those advice columns and basically said? How can I make sure I am eating safe food", meaning unspoiled and not out of date food with nothing to do with the pandemic at large. I was stunned. Shocked. Anyway here are some free tips. Use these or your own and get cracking. Nothing is much more important than this stuff.
   
   * Know the danger zone for food - Keep hot foods hot and cold foods cold. The danger zone is between 40* and 140*.  Bacteria is basically present on everything and keeping your food in the right zone doesn't necessarily kill the bacteria, but it does retard the growth, until you prepare it. This is especially important for egg and dairy-based products, which are like Petri dishes for mold growth. If your freezer is not cold enough (usually around aero degrees), then even frozen foods can spoil in the freezer.
   * Do the maintenance on your appliances -  Every so often you should clean the refrigeration coils on your refrigerator. Usually, you can do this with a vacuum cleaner but it might require the use of a stiff brush. Defrost your freezer whenever it needs it. If your freezer is allowing Ice to form in it there is a failure of some sorts with your automatic defroster. Usually if this is a problem and you cannot afford to repair it right away, you can keep it running correctly by using a hairdryer to melt the ice. Remember to be careful using an electric dryer inside of a wet freezer, and it is a safe practice to have plenty of towels on hand to keep the water from going everywhere. You may have to turn off the freezer for a short time to accomplish this. Make sure the seals on the doors seal the doors shut and if they don't, you can replace them usually for less than $75.
   * Rotate your food - FIFO - Use the system that every good restaurant in the world uses, put new products you just bought behind the ones you already have where ever they are stored. This one thing ensures you use the oldest product first. The first thing you bought is the first thing you use when preparing a meal.
   * Obtain and install - Thermometers that are independent of the installed ones in the appliances and the oven (Don't put metal ones in the microwave dumbass!) This one thing keeps you from being lulled into a false sense of security when the installed thermometer is wrong or broken because a second one independently verifies the actual temperature. Make sure to put one in the oven also and to calibrate your oven temperature to match the knob or display. It is easy to do and the directions can usually be found on every manufactures website, or if not remember, Google is your friend.
   * Use cooking Thermometers - Whenever you cook, whether you are cooking on a grill, the stovetop, or in your oven you should always use a probe-type thermometer to measure the final temperature of your prepared food. Guidelines are available on the internet to tell you what specific temperatures should be of any food you serve. In general, if you achieve meat temperatures equal or above 165*, you will kill any bad bacteria the food may have had when you put it in the oven. It will not however cure spoiled food.to do that you must do one final thing.
   * Visually Inspect and smell Raw food before cooking - You would think this is a no brainer but I've seen it time and again, the hamburger was gray and the cook made it anyway. Even cooked above 165*, it will still taste and smell bad, even if the bacteria is dead.
   
   Anyway, I have to go, Megan is throwing out leftovers again and I want to see if she is getting rid of something I want to eat this morning.
   
   BigMike

Long live the curmudgeon

Its that time again folks rise and shine, It's not Groundhog day but it is May 2nd, 2020 at 4:30 a.m.

The boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that's why I poop on company time,

Well, gee whillikers, golly gosh and gee-whiz ain't life just a grand little chocolate covered peanut sometimes? You used to be able to get my fire LIT UP about some subjects in the past and it's not so much nowadays. I think I either have a much longer burning fuse than I used to have or I have a lot less testosterone free-floating in my system or it could be there is so much stupidity in the air that I'm just drowning in it and I just can't react to it fast enough. I just ain't sure. Is it arrogance to feel like the little boy from the movie the "Sixth Sense",  (Haley Joel Osment, Bruce Willis ) only my line in the movie would be "I see stupid people" instead of what he actually says. I feel like it would be. It probably is, You know I can be a prickly jerk sometimes. Shaddup PJ. Shaddup Kelley Ann.

Why in the hell do I have to have a subscription account to see breaking national news from a few of the biggest news companies? It irritates the absolute crap out of me to see that paywall pop-up come up that gives you the old "You must have a subscription to view this content" or the other one you see is "You have reached your limit of 3 free articles this month, please verify your subscription to continue". It's absolute top-level brainiac genius marketing to get your reader to start to read an article you published, only to get stopped by your dumbass paywall (that everybody else has also) and then somehow this makes you think "Eureka I've got it, this will make the dumbasses plunk down $20" or so to be able to read this here story about beet production and the farm forecast.  No wonder newspapers can't retain subscribers. Who is giving the people advice anyway? These people are so stupid.

It's just as bad if not worse with my local chain of birdcage fodder (or as Odie calls it "fish gut wrappers) because they have a policy that puts some of the oddest stories and things behind their paywall. You can never predict what is going to be behind it and what won't be. It's crazy as sometimes obituaries get behind the paywall (mostly not), but it has happened, and then there are the arrest reports. They publish standard and online new editions on Wednesday and Saturday and these open-source public records end up behind the paywall in every edition. What in the hell makes you think anyone is going to go to the effort to have an online access account to see if some other Methican American in your neighborhood has been arrested? This kind of stuff shouldn't be behind the wall at all.

It makes me crazy when they release blocked reporting to news aggregators such as Google News. If you aren't aware, these news sites are really nothing more than digital news racks that allow you to customize the display of stories to suit your tastes. However you never know what is going to be blocked and what is not. Sometimes there may be a teeny tiny disclaimer in the bottom edge of the box around the story however, you can't always see it. It happens to every gathering spot for news at one point or another. It really doesn't matter what homepage your ISP provides nor whether you use Google, Bing, or Yahoo or some other source so it has not much to do with that. They just scoop up the stories and categorize them, you have to deal with the news site garbage. I stopped allowing certain sources from displaying any content because it aggravates me so much. "Too much paywall? No soup for you!" There, I feel much better now. When is the next group therapy discussion?

They are closing in on the 400-mile range travel barrier on electric car travel. Well Elon Musk is anyway, I don't know about anyone else. He is being feisty as hell this week. Tesla is currently involved in a dispute over a 9-mile increase in average concerning their Tesla Model S Long Range they submitted for testing to someone. The testers say it gets a 391-mile range and Tesla says its right on 400 miles. There is some dispute about leaving the door open or leaving the keys in the ignition or something, anyway, my striking thought is that its funny to me as I can remember when this argument was about getting to the magic 75-mile mark and making it take less than 12 hours to recharge the batteries. How time is flying.

I had a laugh about this one. Until I read it and watched the video. 53-year-old Mike Tyson is in training to do 3-4 round charity boxing bouts. 53 years old. Last boxed and lost in 2005. The video currently circulating shows him hitting boxing mitts with speed and agility more like a 25-year-old. It would scare the crap out of me to just be the guy holding the mitts. Man, I don't care what you paid me, I would never get back in the ring at 53 years old and furthermore, you couldn't pay me enough to stand in the ring with this guy and then somebody is gonna ring a bell and let him start hitting me. Are you insane? What if something in his head goes off, he breaks a blood vessel and you somehow start to look like Michael Spinks. Scratch me from this undercard.

5 thoughts that aren't connected to reality. 

1. Why is there still a market for stories from Dear Abby and furthermore, why in the hell do people still think that Horoscopes are a real thing? Just two questions I wanted to ask. Nobody ever answers my random ignorance but I can't see the point in either thing for the life of me. Both of them are made up stupidity, well at least Horoscopes are. Dear Abby has just outlived its usefulness if you ask me. I guess it makes more sense to ask Dear Abby than it does to watch the friggin moron, Dr. Phil, in action, but that's like saying a turd floating in a pool is cleaner on the left end. Geeze.
2. Fringe political craziness is either getting worse or its always been this bad and the internet has just made it easier to observe it in real-time. Yesterday I read about another Q-Anon loser conspiracy nut who had the absolute brain brain to think here is a good idea. Let me live-stream my experience in trying to find and attack the Democratic candidate for President, Joe Biden. She was supposedly, allegedly, wanting to "Take him out" live to prove the theory that he and Hillary are "Cannibal-Pedophiles", who kill and eat children so they must be stopped. She had more than 12 knives on her when arrested and said she was inspired by videos from various organizations, most importantly Q-Anon.
   
   She is not the only one. Last month the story emerged about a train engineer who derailed his train on purpose in an attempt to stop the USN Comfort (a navy hospital ship), because they were proving comfort and aid to the enemy. Last year some guy shot up a pizza parlor on the East Coast (my details are fuzzy) to stop a Democratic-led child sex ring. I'm not making this up, even if my details are a tiny bit off. What in the hell is wrong with these people?
3. They are Oh so popular and engaging and handsome and I'm about sick and tired of the Property Brothers. The sound of Drew's voice is a cheese grater to me and the inspirational speeches they give people just make me want to hurl. That's all.
4. I'm old. I get that. Reminding me of that continuously is a pointless endeavor. OK, boomer? Here's my question. Why does every food now, have to be hot in order for it to have a taste? I don't get it. Why would anyone (unless it is to drink beer), want to eat chicken that is so hot it makes your eyes water and it makes you want to wipe your tongue with a napkin? While I'm on it, I cannot be the only one that feels that way, I mean I don't care if you love the stuff, that's on you. Your taste is your taste. But why is there never a "This ain't hot option". Even mild salsa is too damn hot to eat (to me) sometimes. I went through about a dozen brands of salsa looking for some that didn't raise bubbles on my tongue and the best I could do is Pace Mild and that shit is still too hot. Don't even think about asking for mild at a Mexican restaurant, those torturers do not know the meaning of the word. I know, I know, I'm a lightweight. What a pussy. Yeah I get it. My point is still valid though.
   
5. They are calling up 200 specialized reservists to active duty status to assist 22 partner nations in mounting anew concerted effort at stopping cartels and other drug smugglers and etc. My opinion is we do not go near hard enough at these assholes. All of the doctrines we have about each country being responsible for their own problems are fines except for one small thing. They don't control it now and can't get a grip on it, I do not see how allowing them to enforce their own laws that they don't enforce now solves the problem.
   
   I don't know what I'm advocating here not exactly, I'm just saying we have satellites that can read a license plate from space. If that thing can spot illegal activity that is going to cause harm innocent (or drug-infested) Americans, why can't we call in a couple of fast movers on afterburner to blow their shit up? For example, I think we should deploy whatever number of snipers we need to shoot everybody with a weapon that threatens civilians just across our border with Mexico. Why don't we just get busy and burn all the poppy fields in Afghanistan and that whole area, instead of letting them continue to grow that crap and use the money to buy more weapons? Our policies regarding this nonsense are sheer ignorance if you ask me. I guess that is why they don't.
   
   But then again, who would buy our weapons?
   
   BigMike