Great Headline

Now here's some good news!

Next 'Apprentice' to Be Shot in Calif.

Wed Nov 30, 9:29 AM ET
LOS ANGELES - Donald Trump is leaving New York to fire people on the West Coast. NBC announced Tuesday that "The Apprentice" has been picked up for a sixth season and will be shot in Southern California.

I've never sat through a whole show of Apprentice, but I'd watch (and record) THIS one.

Now she's gone!

She has always been my favorite.
We just looked good together.
I knew at first sight she was right for me and just had to have her as my own.
She always had a way of selflessly providing me comfort after a tough, hard, cold day.
I'd come home and she’d just BE there. Either hanging around or laying on the bed, just where she was when I left the house that morning.
We enjoyed many outdoor activities together, like barbequing or putzing around in the garage or simply messing around in back yard, playing with the dog.
Thought we’d be together forever.

But then she was looking a little haggard over the past couple years.
It was getting to point where I was a little hesitant to be seen in public with her.
Maybe living with me just finally wore her out?

Sure, sometimes I had to cuff her, and it was probably wrong to throw her on the floor like that so often.
Although I never, ever heard her complain about that.
She was always getting picked up by someone else, it seemed.

So, so warm and cozy when I slipped into her.
Never could stand to have her hanging around my neck in public, though. I could never get comfortable with that.

Now she’s gone.
Probably going to have to break in another one and that always takes a lot of time and effort.
I haven’t found the right one to replace her, yet, but have been shopping around.
Haven’t had to do that in long, long while.
Some say the grocery stores are good places to pick one up, but I think they’re wrong, as I have yet to find one there, even after many hours of aimlessly strolling up and down aisles while pretending to shop.

Sure going to miss her.
Somehow I’m going to have to find it in my heart to forgive my wife, who, yesterday, threw out that old favorite sweatshirt.

Just Wrong, Wrong, Wrong!

A contestant prepares to drink six cans of beer at one time at the Great American Trailer Park Pageant in New York November 17, 2005. Contestants across the country showcased a vast array of talents for a panel of judges and talk show host Jerry Springer during the competition REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton



Wrong on so many accounts, I can't begin to explain.
It must be one of the signs of End Times.

Media vs Soldiers

The Iraq story: how troops see it

By Mark Sappenfield Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Like many soldiers and marines returning from Iraq, Mayer looks at the bleak portrayal of the war at home with perplexity - if not annoyance. It is a perception gap that has put the military and media at odds, as troops complain that the media care only about death tolls, while the media counter that their job is to look at the broader picture, not through the soda straw of troops' individual experiences.

Yet as perceptions about Iraq have neared a tipping point in Congress, some soldiers and marines worry that their own stories are being lost in the cacophony of terror and fear.

"We know we made a positive difference," says Cpl. Jeff Schuller of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, who spent all but one week of his eight-month tour with Mayer. "I can't say at what level, but I know that where we were, we made it better than it was when we got there."

It is the simplest measure of success, but for the marine, soldier, or sailor, it may be the only measure of success. In a business where life and death rest on instinctive adherence to thoroughly ingrained lessons, accomplishment is ticked off in a list of orders followed and tasks completed. And by virtually any measure, America's servicemen and women are accomplishing the day-to-day tasks set before them.

It happened one day when he was on patrol. Out of nowhere, a car turned the corner and headed down the alley at full speed. "A car coming at you real fast and not stopping in Iraq is not what you want to see," says Mayer. Yet instead of jumping in his truck, he stood in the middle of the street and pushed the kids behind him.

The car turned. Now, Mayer and Schuller can finish each other's sentences when they think about the experience. "You really start to believe that you protect the innocent," says Schuller. "It sounds like a stupid cliché...."

"But it's not," adds Mayer. "You are in the service of others."

For Mayer, who joined the reserves because he wanted to do something bigger than himself, and for Schuller, a third-generation marine, Iraq has given them a sense of achievement. Now when they look at the black-and-white pictures of marines past in the battalion headquarters, "We're adding to that legacy," says Schuller.

This is what they wish to share with the American people - and is also the source of their frustration. Their eight months in Iraq changed their lives, and they believe it has changed the lives of the Iraqis they met as well. On the day he left, Mayer gave his "girlfriend" a bunch of pens - her favorite gift - wrapped in a paper that had a picture of the American flag, the Iraqi flag, and a smiley face. The man with the lighter asked Schuller if he was coming back. He will if called upon, he says.

Whether or not these notes of grace and kindness are as influential as the dirge of war is open to question. But many in the military feel that they should at least be a part of the conversation.
Says Warner of reaching an overall verdict: "I'm not sure that reporting on terrorist bombings with disproportionate ink is adequately answering that question."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1128/p01s02-usmi.html

I side with the soldiers' version of their experiences.

Gettin sand in it!

A man passes by sand sculptures of girls wearingbikinis at the Copacabana beach, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2005. A new law restricts the sale of postcards showing scantily clad women, a campaign aimed at reducing exploitation and sex tourism that has drawn mixed reactions in Brazil's tourist capital. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

Remember Your Uncles

My Dad's brother asked me to post this, so here it is.


Touched by an Uncle
On Thanksgiving, Pause to Remember Your Uncles
Uncles are a dying breed.

Today's male siblings—brothers, they're called—are tomorrow's uncles. But Americans are having ever-smaller families. Most couples aspire to have one child, maybe two. So the uncle—that non-authority figure, that often drunk, childish, pseudo adult—is going extinct.

Growing up I had a dozen uncles by blood and marriage. My kid only has three uncles. When my son is an adult, he will likely marry someone who is also an only child, and their children—or their only child—won't have any uncles at all.

So it is only fitting that we pause on Thanksgiving to remember our uncles—good, bad, drunk, sober, morose, helpful, molestful, homicidal—because it was the one day a year when you could count on seeing your uncles. But soon we will live in a world without uncles, so it's important that we write down our uncle stories now, while we still can, while uncles still walk the earth. DAN SAVAGE

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=25351

The stories aren't so heart-warming.
Not like the kind that would warm your shack on a cold November night.
Uncles always seemed to me to be those "extra" people on this Earth.
Until I became one, that is. Then they seemed to serve more of a purpose.

Office Party fun

Confessions of a photocopier repairman
By Will Sturgeon
Special to CNET News.com
November 23, 2005, 9:30 AM PST

Photocopier supplier Canon is warning customers to take better care of their office equipment during the Christmas period, claiming that the festive season traditionally leads to a 25 percent hike in service calls due to incidents such as the classic backside copying prank.

Such a stunt, a mainstay of the office party, often results in cracked glass on the copier, with 32 percent of Canon technicians claiming to have been called out to fix glass plates during the Christmas period after attempts to copy body parts went wrong.

Tim Andrews, a Canon employee from London, said: "We always fit lots of new glass to copiers after New Year due to 'rear-end copying.'"

In fact, Canon claims a shocking 46 percent of service calls are in response to non-work-related breakages.

Geoff Bush from the north of England said one case he'd attended, where a young lady had cracked the glass mid-scan, also jammed the scanner so that it wasn't until the machine was fixed and her colleagues all sober that copies of her backside starting pouring from the machine.

WARNING!

Ruth M. Siems created Stove Top stuffing
The New York Times
Ruth M. Siems, a retired home economist whose best-known innovation will make its appearance, welcome or otherwise, in millions of homes Thursday on Thanksgiving, died Nov. 13 at her home in Newburgh, Ind. Siems, an inventor of Stove Top stuffing, was 74.The cause was a heart attack, according to the Warrick County coroner's office in Boonville.

Wolves celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday.

SNOWTIME

Area snowplows were out in force as the first of the white stuff blanketed the northland. Roadways showed some icy areas before salting began. Photo by Pam Roberts
http://www.elyecho.com/

I'm so blues.

Going to see B.B. King.

Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

It's just around the corner and up the next hill.

It makes me so MAD when this happens

Get it NOW?!

Al explains

Quagmire

Playing politics with our military strategies is bullsh*t!
For either Party to be doing this is shameful and wrong and damaging to our troops.
Iraq is NOT the quagmire. Washington, DC is!

House GOP Seeks Quick Vote on Iraq Pullout
Nov 18, 3:37 PM (ET)
By LIZ SIDOTI
WASHINGTON (AP) - House Republicans, sensing an opportunity for political advantage, maneuvered for a quick vote and swift rejection Friday of a Democratic lawmaker's call for an immediate troop withdrawal from Iraq.
"We want to make sure that we support our troops that are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. "We will not retreat."
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi had no immediate reaction to the planned vote.
The GOP leadership decided to act little more than 24 hours after Rep. Jack Murtha, a hawkish Democrat with close ties to the military, said the time had come to pull out the troops. By forcing the issue to a vote, Republicans placed many Democrats in a politically unappealing position - whether to side with Murtha and expose themselves to attacks from the White House and congressional Republicans, or whether to oppose him and risk angering the voters that polls show want an end to the conflict.

Read more if you can stomach it.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20051118/D8DV3NHG7.html

Help spread the word from this soldier.

Sgt. Hook received a letter. It's quite powerful. It gives us all marching orders.

Mom,
Be my voice. I want this message heard. It is mine and my platoon’s to the country. A man I know lost his legs the other night. He is in another company in our batallion. I can no longer be silent after watching the sacrifices made by Iraqis and Americans everyday.Send it to a congressman if you have to. Send it to FOX news if you have to. Let this message be heard please…
My fellow Americans, I have a task for those with the courage and fortitude to take it. I have a message that needs not fall on deaf ears. A vision the blind need to see. ...


Go read the rest. Then go help him.

http://sgthook.com/2005/11/17/taste-of-freedom/

Christmas is coming!

Turbo Tap nozzle

On Monday, Nov. 14, 2005 the company will start selling home kits online for those who have drilled holes in refrigerators to make 'kegerators' or bought special coolers to serve draft beer in their basements, garages and recreation rooms.
(AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Now if I can just talk her into letting me drill a hole in the 'fridge.

Headlines

From Yahoo! main page, which happens to be my designated Home page, comes these two News Headlines, one on top of the other.

Martin to tell Bush Canada is "right" on softwood

Viagra Effective Against Deadly Lung Disease

Too funny. One on Candian softwood followed by one on Viagra.
You can't make this stuff up.

Oh, heck!

It's finally happened!



And I witnessed it first-hand.

Roosevelt on Peaceniks and Liberals

Political statement of the Month in the words of Theodore Roosevelt from 1899.

I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.

The work must be done; we cannot escape our responsibility; and if we are worth our salt, we shall be glad of the chance to do the work—glad of the chance to show ourselves equal to one of the great tasks set modern civilization. But let us not deceive ourselves as to the importance of the task. Let us not be misled by vainglory into underestimating the strain it will put on our powers. Above all, let us, as we value our own self-respect, face the responsibilities with proper seriousness, courage, and high resolve. We must demand the highest order of integrity and ability in our public men who are to grapple with these new problems. We must hold to a rigid accountability those public servants who show unfaithfulness to the interests of the nation or inability to rise to the high level of the new demands upon our strength and our resources.

Remember that justice has two sides. Be just to those who built up the navy, and, for the sake of the future of the country, keep in mind those who opposed its building up. Read the "Congressional Record." Find out the senators and congressmen who opposed the grants for building the new ships; who opposed the purchase of armor, without which the ships were worthless; who opposed any adequate maintenance for the Navy Department, and strove to cut down the number of men necessary to man our fleets. The men who did these things were one and all working to bring disaster on the country. They have no share in the glory of Manila, in the honor of Santiago. They have no cause to feel proud of the valor of our sea-captains, of the renown of our flag. Their motives may or may not have been good, but their acts were heavily fraught with evil. They did ill for the national honor, and we won in spite of their sinister opposition.

http://www.bartleby.com/58/1.html

Being an American

Wise words from the past which are also applicable today, and quite possible even moreso.

Theodore Roosevelt on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN in 1907:

"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American. There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile. We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room f or but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."
Theodore Roosevelt 1907

North Country

If yer up town anyways, might just as well go show. This one's worth seein.
Fairly accurately reflects the tougher side of life on The Range.



Synopsis:
When Josey Aimes (Academy Award winner CHARLIZE THERON) returns to her hometown in Northern Minnesota after a failed marriage, she needs a good job. A single mother with two children to support, she turns to the predominant source of employment in the region – the iron mines.
The mines provide a livelihood that has sustained a community for generations. The work is hard but the pay is good and friendships that form on the job extend into everyday life, bonding families and neighborhoods with a common thread.
It’s an industry long dominated by men, in a place unaccustomed to change.
Encouraged by her old friend Glory (Academy Award winner FRANCES McDORMAND), one of the few female miners in town, Josey joins the ranks of those laboring to blast ore from rock in the gaping quarries. She is prepared for the back-breaking and often dangerous work, but coping with the harassment she and the other female miners encounter from their male coworkers proves far more challenging.
Times are tough. The last thing the miners want is women competing for scarce jobs – women who, in their estimation, have no business driving trucks and hauling rock anyway. If these newcomers want to work the mines they’ll have to do it on the terms set by the veteran workforce and it won’t be easy. Take it or leave it.
When Josey speaks out against the treatment she and her fellow workers face she is met with resistance – not only from those in power but from a community that doesn’t want to hear the truth, her disapproving parents and many of her own colleagues who fear she is only making things worse. In time, even her friendship with Glory will be tested, her already difficult connection with her father, a lifelong miner, will be pushed to its limit and elements of her personal life exposed to scrutiny. The fallout from Josey’s battle to make a better future for herself and her children will affect every aspect of her life, including her relationship with her young daughter and her sensitive teenage son, who must first cope with the embarrassment of his mother’s sudden notoriety and then face harsh details of her past she was hoping he would never have to know.
Through these struggles Josey will find the courage to stand up for what she believes in – even if that means standing alone.
Inspired by a true story, North Country follows Josey’s journey on a road that will take her farther than she ever imagined, ultimately inspiring countless others, and leading to the nation’s first-ever class action lawsuit for sexual harassment.

http://northcountrymovie.warnerbros.com/

New Cabin Project

Started building our new cabin this weekend.

Slow, but steady progress should have it ready for next summer.

Sure it's a kit home, but better than nothing!

Blackberry test from the road

If this works, that would cool.
Blackberry post.

READ THIS GUY'S BLOG!!! NOW!

Ma Deuce Gunner
Military blogger from Iraq, asks questions to Iraqis.
You've GOT to read his blog.
http://madeucegunners.blogspot.com/

Here's a sample.
Hope he doesn't mind.

The Straight Word, Straight From an Iraqi Citizen, Final Installment

Q. Is there anything that they have learned/gained from you guys (military) that you'll keep with them for their lifetime? (Culture, skills, knowledge etc)
A. Jay: Social skills...being around different people of faith, personality. We have leared to be tolerant of other people, and the knowledge that the regular American soldier is a good person.

Q. How do you view the world differently now than they did before?
A: Doc: We see the Americans in a different light. We saw the Americans as a 'bunch of jerks'. Now we see that the Americans are right. I want to keep working as an interpreter, because I believe in our cause. I believe in the way you (the American's and British) are dealing with the other countries.

But when I get home....

Weekend Work To Do!

Road Trip!!

Gone for the rest of the week on big bidness in the South.

Catching a jet tomorrow.

Hope he's as good a "pile it" as I used to be.

Daily Work Out

Just ten minutes a day. That's all it takes to add years to your life.

Quite Disappointed

After posting some really creative crap, and receiving a couple of comments from singles of people, this blog still is worth $0.00 according to that program and calculator.
Maybe it's broken? I mean the calculator, not the blog.
Oh well, I'll keep trying.

Note to self: Maybe try a another bathroom story?

In Sports News

I don't really care that much about the Titan's football team/players' problems or their status, but I thought the headline was good. Way to go, Jimmy!

McNair's Sack Pain Lingers

Likely to play Sunday despite ailing back
By JIM WYATT
Staff Writer
Titans quarterback Steve McNair... blah, blah, Titans football news, blah.

Go Vikings! (on another boat tour!)

Real Man story

Man Kills Buck With Bare Hands in Bedroom
Tue Nov 1, 9:39 PM ET

BENTONVILLE, Ark. - It looked like a crime scene, but no charges will be filed after Wayne Goldsberry killed a buck with his bare hands in his daughter's bedroom.

The engagement lasted an exhausting 40 minutes, but Goldsberry finally subdued the five-point whitetail deer that crashed through a bedroom window at his daughter's home Friday. When it was over, blood splattered the walls and the deer lay on the bedroom floor, its neck broken.

Goldsberry was at his daughter's home when he heard glass breaking. He went back to check on the noise and found the deer.

"I was standing about like this peeking around the corner when the deer came out of the bedroom," said Goldsberry, demonstrating while peering around his kitchen wall. The deer ran down the hall and into the master bedroom — "jumping back and forth across the bed."
"I could tell he was really tearing up the place back there," Goldsberry said.

Goldsberry entered the bedroom to confront the deer and, after a brief struggle, emerged to tell his wife to call police. After returning to the bedroom, the fight continued. Goldsberry finally was able to grip the animal and twist its neck, killing it.

"He was trying to get up a corner wall and I just came in behind him and grabbed him by the horns and just started pushing down," said Goldsberry.

Goldsberry, sore from the struggle, dragged the dead animal out of the house.

"He got kicked several times. He was walking bowlegged for awhile," Deputy Doug Gay said.
Benton County Sheriff Keith Ferguson said that when he arrived he found the deer dead in the front yard. Goldsberry intended to have the deer processed for its meat.

Gay said that, this time of year, bucks that see their reflection in windows often charge them, believing the mirror image to be a rival.


Deputy Doug leaves us hanging as to just how much they often charge them, though.

Twenty bucks says it all happened in a double-wide (not that there's anything wrong with that!).

Small Events Can Cause Big Changes (or not)

Flags fly at half-mast today in remembrance to Rosa Parks’ extraordinary life marked by the events she set into motion.
She was somehow placed on this planet (Intelligent Design, anyone?) to play a role in what must have seemed like a rather small event at the time, which obviously took more courage than many of us could muster, even with the backup of a few large friends. Quite an amazing story when you stop to think about how it all went down and how it impacted our country and culture.

All that being said (and not to diminish her contribution in the least!), it does seem a little unfair that other small, yet remotely similar, events happen each day which don’t end up changing much of anything.

Like the time, road weary from travelling all day, I walked into the women’s restroom inside a restaurant in the middle of Ohio, instead of the one I was "supposed to use", according to local laws and social norms.

Did THAT small act of civil disobedience make me a "diminutive figure who sparked a revolution"? No.
Did it beak down the restroom sexual bias and barriers throughout the world or even the country or at least in Ohio? No.
Are we men now free to use either restroom? No.
Did it change anything at all? Apparently not.

Sure, at the time I was completely oblivious to having entered the "wrong" restroom.
Sure, it was unoccupied at that particular moment.
Sure, I used it for its intended purpose, as well as to change into a fresh shirt prior to dining.
Sure, nobody noticed except for the lady talking on the pay phone outside of the bathroom door, who, by the way if she's reading this, didn’t have to give me one of "those looks".
But it was a radical move, none the less.

It’s hard to understand how history should chose to ignore it.

Yea, Mun, Worries!

As a Dad, and I suppose you could say a somewhat overly protective one at that, who regularly reads the news and occasionally happens across a few minutes of the 7x24 cable news coverage of the latest missing person story/hype or terrorist strike or hurricane or Montezuma's Revenge or sunburn, it is with mixed feelings that my baby girl is arriving in some tropical paradise right about now to attend a friend’s wedding celebration.
I DO believe in guardian angels! I do. I do. I DO!
Happy for her on one hand, but will be much happier upon her safe return.
Wish I was there.

Politics Today

Fraudulent Fund raising

Indictments

Guilty until proven innocent

Closed Sessions

Anti-Everything

Bi-assinine

Power hungry

Career politicians

Flame wars

Bad intelligence

Bad memories

"is" = "is"

Poor losers

Vote buying with Pork

Party OVER Country

Special Interest OVER Country

Racial Divide

Kool-aide drinking

Us versus Them

Horses Asses

Get Back To WORK!!!

Trade paper AdAge.com reports that American workers would waste the equivalent of 551,000 years during 2005 reading blogs, online web diaries and gossip sheets, which have exploded in numbers in recent years.

About 35 million workers - one in four of the labour force in the United States - spend 3 1/2 hours, or 9 per cent, of their working week on blogs, the survey found.

What's this Blog worth?

My blog is worth $0.00.
How much is your blog worth?

Pretty accurate, I'd say!