Archive for the ‘General’ Category

I was helping Wendee fix up her blog’s theme, this evening, and decided it was time to explore a new look for my own blog. It’s been a couple of years since I last muddied the waters, so I figured tonight was as good a time as any.

The photograph at the top of the page is an old covered bridge that we found, one day, while we were exploring the area around Peninsula, Ohio, where we used to live. The countryside was so beautiful that we would frequently go on hikes through the woods, and this was one of those days.

I’m not sure the color palette is exactly the way I want it, yet, so don’t be surprised if it changes just a bit. If you have any suggestions, feel free to offer those as well!

I’ve attached a zip file, containing this theme, to this post so feel free to try it out on your own blog!

One of my favorite discussion forums is the American Sheepdog Forum, and a recent post by "UGA" was so good that I wanted to share it with you. The specific details are a little different for each of us, but I think everyone can relate to the exhaustion that comes from working hard to "do the right thing" and realizing that our culture doesn’t care about the right thing, anymore.

I want to be a kid again…

I hereby officially declare that I don’t want to be a grown up anymore.

I’m tired of deadlines and bills due by the 1st of the month.

I’m tired of Insurance premiums and cut off notices.

I’m tired of working from sun up to sun down and have so much of my pay go to taxes and people that will not work.

I’m tired of traffic jams and idiot drivers.

I’m tired of crooked politicians and having to read the fine print.

I’m tired of car repairs and dripping faucets.

I’m tired of watching good people that fail to think for themselves, fall victim to slanted news and biased journalism.

I’m tired of rolling out of bed when I really, really, really don’t want to.

I want to look forward to Saturday morning cartoons like the Bugs Bunny and Road Runner Show on a black & white TV. It was actually fun to go outside and turn the antenna on the side of the house so that I could pick up that out-of-town CBS signal.

I want to crawl under the house with my Tonka trucks and play in the dirt, dig holes and play the doodle bug game with the sand bugs.

I want to climb trees and ride my bike until my legs give out.

I want to help He-Man defeat Skeletor.

I want to impress pretty girls on my skateboard again.

I want to go roller skating on Saturday nights in my parachute pants and feel cool.

I want to spend everyday in the woods with my friends building a super cool club house.

But you know what?

Tonight I’ll fall asleep after watching the news about how our country is going down the drain and our freedom is decaying by the day.

Tomorrow morning the alarm clock will sound and I’ll groan as I roll out despite my desire to stay in it.

I’ll climb in my truck and fight the traffic on my way to work, where I’ll put in at least 8 more hours of labor to support those that choose not to.

I’ve had a bad day…

Ok, I’m done…

This reminds me of one of my favorite lesser-known movies, The Adventures of the Wilderness Family. Particularly, the opening scene where Robert Logan is sitting in Los Angeles rush hour traffic, and suddenly realizes that he’s just sick and tired of the rat race.

He actually does something about it, like we all often wish we could, and this movie tells the story of his family.

 

NOTE: I’ll warn you that this movie is quite poorly produced… my kids would be bored before the opening credits finished rolling, but the story it tells is empowering to those of us who share UGA’s sentiments in the post I quoted above.

I always enjoy the weekly Armed American Report, an email newsletter by Tim Schmidt from the U.S. Concealed Carry Association. Last week, he started his letter with a very good example of the mindset that armed citizens should have (and, in my experience, really do have).

I was driving on the freeway the other day, following closely behind a black Mercedes Benz. In the lane to our left, next to the Mercedes was a maroon Buick. Apparently without looking, the Buick began to merge over. The driver in the Mercedes didn’t start waving his arms- he didn’t start honking- and he didn’t unnecessarily slam into the Buick.

He simply reacted perfectly- I saw him look to his right, and he merged onto the shoulder at the same speed as the Buick was merging into him, all the while gently tapping on his brakes to let me know that he was slowing down. I gave him plenty of room, and once the Buick was completely in his lane, he merged back on, in front of me.

While some people might fall into a panicked series of swerves of corrections, this driver handled a bad situation perfectly- I don’t think we even lost 10mph.
My point is this- THIS is the essence of the Armed Citizen. We don’t take things personally, we just see what needs to be done… and we do it. The driver in the black Mercedes could have retaliated. He could have been offended that this guy would merge without looking- but he knew that getting upset wouldn’t help him avoid an accident.

“The Armed American Report,” August 17, 2009, by Tim Schmidt

This is one of those funny, little emails that have been circulating around the Internet for years… I tried to track down its origins, but gave up when it became quite obvious to me that nobody would be pressing charges for violating a copyright! The only changes I’ve made have been to clean up a few typos, here and there, that were just bothering me!

To The Spoiled Under-30 Crowd!

If you are 30 or older you will think this is hilarious!!!!

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning….

Uphill… barefoot… BOTH ways

Yadda, yadda, yadda

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they’ve got it!

But now that I’m over the ripe old age of thirty, I can’t help but look around and notice the youth of today.

You’ve got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a darn Utopia!

And I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don’t know how good you’ve got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn’t have the Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalogue!!

There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter, with a pen!

Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take a week to get there!  Stamps were 10 cents!

Child Protective Services didn’t care if our parents beat us.  As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our tails!  No where was safe!

There were no MP3’s or Napsters! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself!

Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and mess it all up!

There were no CD players!  We had tape decks in our car.  We’d play our favorite tape and “eject” it when finished, and the tape would come undone.

We didn’t have fancy crap like call waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal; that’s it!

And we didn’t have fancy caller ID either: when the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, or a collections agent; you just didn’t know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

We didn’t have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600, with games like “Space Invaders” and “Asteroids”! Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!!

And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!

You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your tail and walk over to the TV to change the channel! There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday morning. Do you hear what I’m saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rats!

And we didn’t have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove… Imagine that!

That’s exactly what I’m talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You’re spoiled. You guys wouldn’t have lasted five minutes back in 1980 or before!

Regards,

The Over 30 Crowd

 

I am pretty pessimistic when it comes to the United States of America, and our odds of survival over the next decade or so. When the best the Republicans could find to face Al Gore in the 2000 Presidential election was George Bush, I became convinced that grassroots, incremental improvements would never bring freedom and liberty back to this land. Nothing short of the complete collapse of the United States of America will give true liberty a chance, in my opinion.

I am very opposed to the imperialistic invasions of foreign sovereignties that our country has undertaken just since 9/11, let alone over the past half-century. If our rulers would be honest and acknowledge the empire-building that’s going on, I would be more understanding. Nations have been conquering nations for as long as there have been people on this planet, and I have no illusions that world peace is humanly achievable. But, the lies and cover-ups that our government masters perpetrate to pretend we “fight to make the world safe for democracy” or whatever B.S. is popular at the moment, are more nauseating to me than the battles themselves.

I have no hope that Obama has any intention to do good things for you and me. In fact, I am rather convinced that he and his cronies are going to have a four- or eight-year party at our expense.

However, I watch something like this…

…and I am reminded that…

I have great confidence in The Average American to do the right thing when it really matters. On a day-to-day basis, the typical American follows the course of least resistance, and lives their lives in comfort. Remember the people of the Axiom, the flagship of the Buy ‘n Large fleet that coddled humanity for nearly a millennium in deep space? This is the image I have of the current state of the average American. Generally, these people were very friendly, and well-intentioned. They were simply out of shape because they had been living in the lap of luxury for so long.

It touched me to see the hundreds of people who took time out of their day, rearranged their schedules, left the comfort of their homes, sacrificed the couple of hours’ pay, and stood along the road with their U.S. flags to salute the fallen soldier. I’m sure many of those people don’t realize they support imperialism, but I’d bet quite a few understand the issues and don’t support the war. In spite of their various opinions, levels of understanding, and emotional support for the politics of the war, hundreds (and, maybe, thousands) of average Americans heard about a husband and father who had died, trying to do the right thing, so they stood on the side of a road and honored his memory.

My dad forwarded me this humorous email. While it claims to be true, who can really know with these forwarded emails… regardless, it’s funny!

HOW TO CALL THE POLICE WHEN YOU’RE OLD

George Phillips of Meridian , Mississippi was going up to bed, when his wife told him that he’d left the light on in the garden shed, which she could see from the bedroom window. George opened the back door to go turn off the light, but saw that there were people in the shed stealing things.

He phoned the police, who asked “Is someone in your house?”   He said “No.”  Then they said “All patrols were busy.  You should lock your doors and an officer will be along when one is available.”  George said, “Okay”  He hung up the phone and counted to 30.

Then he phoned the police again.

“Hello, I just called you a few seconds ago because there were people stealing things from my shed. Well, you don’t have to worry about them now because I just shot them.” and hung up.

Within five minutes, six police cars, a SWAT team, a helicopter, two fire trucks, a paramedic, and an ambulance showed up at the Phillips’ residence, and caught the burglars red-handed.

One of the Policemen said to George, “I thought you said that you shot them!”

George said, “I thought you said there was nobody available!”

(True Story)

 

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It’s hard to say who has the better end of the deal here, but there are possibly millions of websites using “ads by Google” to make money. This is one-time money which obviously goes away as soon as your traffic does, and like most of us on the internet know, most of our internet projects don’t last forever!

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Ron Paul Slams Ben Bernanke

Ron Paul takes on Ben Bernanke concerning the current financial crisis and government intervention in the markets.

Thanks to cspanjunkie.org for this post.

The Philosophy of Liberty

I’m not finished, but my wife “tagged” me on Facebook, so I’ve begun listing a few random notes about myself.