Where is my summer?!?!

" Hot town
summer in the city,
Back of my neck
gettin dirty and gritty..."

Love that song, but it seems like this year it sure hasn't been true so far! This is mid-July, and I am comfortable wearing jeans and long sleeve shirts. That is completely wrong. I should be sweltering in hot, sticky weather, waiting for the end of the work day so I can jump in the swimming pool and enjoy a refreshing dip. I have been in the pool exactly once! and that was to work on cleaning it. In fact I haven't even been too worried about getting it completely cleaned yet, because I'm shivering in the morning and just happy to be warm in the afternoon.

I know that it's related to the global warming, and the truth is that in our temperate climate the loss of hot summers is one of the things that will happen, meanwhile the equatorial regions will be sweltering and probably in drought. It's all related people. I remember back in the early 90's when we had some doozy winter weeks and Time Magazine had a cover that showed Niagara Falls ice bridge, and the headline was something about a new ice age. It's all related. The warming melts the ice at the poles, which in turn slows the ocean currents, because the temperature gradient isn't as high, so the warm weather stay in the warm regions, and the cold weather stays in the cold regions. Eventually the cold builds up and the heat builds up and neither the twain shall meet. Yep The ice age is brought on by global warming. See? It's all related!

Oh well, I just want to be hot and sweaty and looking forward to a swim!! I can't do it this week, because now it's gonna RAIN!! (Plus it's still too cold!)

4 months later

So it has been 4 months since my favorite radio geek has come back on the air. Wease is Wease and now that the show has gelled and everyone has begun to get used to each other, I can give an honest critique of the show. I still love the show, but there are somethings that get to me.

One thing that I have noticed is that I am not impressed with the executive producer, Anthony. As I have said before, I am aware that I don't actually know these people, but the persona that they present on the air each day, that being said, the producer seems to me to be a nice guy, but not the brightest bulb on the tree. I hope that it is a persona, because I trust that Wease will surround himself with competent people, but sometimes I wonder about this guy. He believed that his daughter was born with Vick's Vapo-rub™on her head, because his wife ate the stuff when she was pregnant! Not the sharpest knife in the drawer! That is just one example, but there are many others where his beliefs seem to trump his visions of the truth.

I enjoy his producer Nick. He seems a genuine guy, but a little too conservative or right wing for the person he is working for. To be honest he is the main producer for the right-wing talk show host on the AM station, so he has a little bias coming into the show. I like his way of injecting his view when he disagrees with Wease. He likes to remind the show and Wease in particular, that not all the world is as liberal as he is. In fact, Nick has occasionally made some good points that I even agree with. Especially when he speaks of the money that has been wasted by local governments in the multitude of snafus over the years, and how that money would have been better used for education, infrastructure and law enforcement, rather than just "cool stuff."

The male sidekick, Jamie Lissow, he is a stand-up comedian who has been on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, he has been on Fox News show Red-Eye, and he has his own 1/2 hour comedy special on Comedy Central. He is funny in a dry sort of way. His humor reminds me very much a the kid in the back of the class making stupid jokes at the teachers expense. He is a jock and a health nut. He likes his healthfood snack and he reminds everyone just how unhealthy they really are! He has his own little segment where he gets some of the local news items that are pretty stupid. They make us laugh, and everyone comments on the items so it takes a good half hour to get through the bit. I like him over all and I hope he gets better, he is good now, but I think he has some development room.

The female sidekick is Lilly, she is a complex little girl. Interesting in some ways and infuriating as all hell in other ways. One day I like her and I would love to have a conversation with her, then she says something later and I hope I never have to talk to her. Who knows the mind of a woman? Not even a woman!! Oh well, it's not like I want to date her or anything, she's just a voice on the radidio! I am curious about her though, She is a first generation American, as her parents are Albanian born. She was raised in Jersey, and has a decent education. I wonder if she speaks Albanian? If so, does she speak any other languages? I would really like to talk to her on the informational level just for my own curiosity. She has said that she finds religion silly. A great thought to me, but a strange wording. Silly? Maybe frightening, morbid, insane... but silly? I guess, but as long as she isn't a freak about following some ancient useless cult, I give her points for intelligence.

All in all the show has come together pretty well. I'm sure that there will be changes and adjustments to come, but so far, it's good. Could be better, and it sure could be worse. Right now I give it a 3 out of 5 stars. The interactivity of the show now is great with the webcams and the chat room, and the accessibility of the show is the best it has ever been. I can email the show and be acknowledged on air in a few minutes. That is great. The content hasn't been stellar. Some of the guests have left a little to be desired, but last week with Bobby Slayton! That was batting 1000. The various interns have provided some great radio, for sure, and they are learning from a true master of the medium. The phone screener Leah and the computer chick Colleen are great to chat with occasionally. I hope it gets better, because it is already good, but it still can be great!!

Get out the Lube!!

It's Insurance Time!!! Yes indeed, it is time once again, to pay that mandatory extortion money to the wonderful auto insurance company! Can you tell I'm so freakin' thrilled!!? The lobbyists have made it so that not only do you HAVE to have insurance on your vehicle in order to drive on public roads and to register your vehicle. Failure to have coverage will result in fines, license revocation or suspension, and possibly even jail! You know that when I say "the Lobbyists" I mean that they have lobbied the state legislature successfully to enact these laws.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not against the "security" that insurance gives us, to not have to pay out thousands of dollars more if we were to get into an accident or be involved in such by no fault of our own. However, what I am against is the constant increases in premiums even though I have not had a claim, let alone a violation, that should affect my rate in nearly 20 years. The only ticket that I have had since 1990 is a seat-belt violation 5 years ago. ( In the passenger seat of a van that was so beat up that I couldn't FIND the seat-belt!) The closest that I have come to a claim was denied in 1996 when my dad dropped a 5th wheel on the bedrails of my truck, and they denied me the $750 repairs. I drove the truck with those dents for 9 years! ( I did get a new set of tires out of it though since dad felt so guilty! LOL )

SO here is my proposal, Let's all get together and petition the Federal Government for a redress of this Grievance thus: make it so that after 5 years without a claim or a moving violation the insurance premium goes down by 20%. Each year for the next 5 that you remain free of violations and claims your premium will be cut by this same amount ( The amount of the original 20%, not 20% of the new premium), resulting in a $0 premium after an accident free 10 year period. Any violation or claim will reset the clock and you will once again be back to paying your full premium.

The current system sucks and barely benefits the public that it is meant to protect. Trying to get payed for a claim takes a team of lawyers, and sadly they end up with a part of your payout so your screwed at the start! You just can't win it seems that the system is set up so that the rich get richer and we little peons continue getting screwed in the ass by the corporations.

We need to Organize against the Tyranny!

who's a grown-up?

When are you a "grown-up"? It doesn't happen over night, and it seems that some people achieve this milestone at a later time than others. Am I a grown-up yet? I really can't say for sure. I'm responsible, in that I have a job and I pay my bills. But I am not responsible for anyone but me. Does being a grown-up mean that you have to be responsible for someone other than yourself?

Sometimes I feel like I'm finally to the point in my life where I feel like I'm an "elder", a Grown-Up, someone who people should listen too. But then I sit in a room with my own elders and man I feel like a kid all over again. I have never introduced myself to anyone as "Mr." anything and when kids call me "sir" I have to look around to see if there is someone behind me who might be old enough to be called "sir". Or perhaps a knight?

I am so much aware of what I don't know and what I haven't experienced, that I wonder if I will ever consider myself a grown-up. Probably not, but someday maybe I will have the chance to teach a new generation how to be a grouchy bastard just like me. Someday I will be the oldest generation. Someday I will be in a nursing home where the speakers pump out Metallica and AC/DC just like they pump out Tommy Dorsey and Duke Ellington today. In a few years they will be swaying with the sounds of Motown to get the Baby Boomers in the mood to get their walkers in motion and down to the shuffleboard room. In a couple generations the nursing homes will have kicker bass so that the Millennials will be able to feel the music that wasted their hearing! That makes me laugh! Can you imagine the senior citizen buses in the future? Coming down the road thumping away. ;-0) I hope to be dead by then, because I would take the chance and really start shooting then!! End up with a life sentence...

I guess if that stuff still pisses me off I will still not be a grown-up!

Tired of winter....

Yeah, Yeah, I know, I live in Western NY and I may as well get used to winter because it's pretty much here until the end of March. Truthfully we have already had a few little tastes of the spring weather that is to come. A few days where it was actually warm enough to walk outside without a coat, or at least a heavy coat. The sun is shining more these last couple weeks too and it is a lift to the spirits to see it and to feel it on the face, bright and warming.

I look forward to the days when I can walk outside without my coat or shoes. I want to sit on the back porch and listen to the frogs in the woods and look at the stars without losing the feeling in my fingers and nose! I want to be able to pull my motorcycle out of the garage and go for a ride. I am even willing to swat some skeeters as long as the weather is warm while I do it! Spring is nice because the nights are cool and I can build a fire from the fallen limbs I pick up from the yard. Spring sucks because there seems to be mud everywhere! Spring is cool because the flowers are coming up. Spring sucks because the damn rabbits are eating my tulip tops!! Spring is cool because things start turning green. Spring is cool because it smells so sweet in the air, but it sucks because I live in farm country and this is when they clean out the slurry pits. PeEEE U!!!

It doesn't really matter how I feel about the weather, it will change when it's ready and not one second before. Oh well, Life goes on I suppose, like it or not!

rudely anonymous

What ever happened to manners? I mean it's bad enough that people are growing more and more rude as we get ourselves lost in our iPods and cell phones and we forget that we are in public. I say "we" not because I am particularly rude myself, but to encompass the entire population, because happy or not you have certainly been rude in your life, whether on purpose or by accident. Sometimes it is because we are returning the rudeness tossed at us, and sometimes it is situational build up and we just bubble over. But then there are the people who walk into a place and don't see anyone that they recognize and so they immediately make themselves the royalty in the room. Everything they do is for their own benefit or amusement. They lack manners in any form, whether it is the use of the most basic please or thank you, or even the current standard that passes for manners the quick look and slight smile, to indicate that someone else actually exists. These are the same people who treat waiters and clerks with disdain and expect exemplary service no matter what, and when they don't get it they make the employee's life miserable.

These are the people who will cut into line and grab parking spaces that you are obviously waiting for. It really shouldn't be illegal to vandalize their cars or kick them in the shins for butting in line. I have never understood this type of rude behavior, and it is too bad that society tolerates it as well, by making it illegal to teach them a lesson. A few trips to the dentist to get their teeth replaced or their jaw wired shut until it heals and they would start to understand that they are not the center of the universe. Lynching should be reserved only for those with the highest rescindivism rates. After the 4th trip to the ER for rudeness related injuries they should immediately be hanged as it shows that they have no ability to learn the rules of polite society.

There is still another class of idiot out there that has really gotten under my skin lately, this is the chatroom attention seeker. The idiot that hides in his/her anonymity and simply annoys people for the fun of annoying people. They have nothing intelligent to add to a conversation, so rather than simply reading and maybe learning something or maybe looking in other rooms where there may be a subject of interest to them, they sit and type repetitive lines waiting for somebody to respond to their idiocy. Then they attack and begin calling names and arguing with any point that is made. They make it nearly impossible to ignore them, and sadly each time you mention them they take it as attention and are encouraged to continue the lousy behavior. So what happens is that when new people come into the room they don't realize that this person is being ignored and they engage the idiot and there we go again with the rude dude attitude.

What really drives me nuts about these freaks is that half the time they are no more than kids, or in the really worst cases, young adults with time to kill and nobody to to grab them by the the throat and smack their head into the monitor! So what is the motivation for this behavior? Is it a lack of attention at home or the feeling of empowerment that they get from pissing off a bunch of anonymous strangers? What would happen if we could get the information on these idiots and have Vinny and Vito show up at their door and break a few fingers. Does it seem like I have some hostility pent up about this lack of manners? You're right I do! I was raised to be polite, not only to my friends and family, but even more so to strangers, because this is how you are perceived by the world and being rude makes you a less effective communicator. Rudeness begets rudeness and soon communication is gone and all that is left is hostile accusation.

I am reminded of something written by Heinlein in the character of Lazarus Long, "I am of the opinion that most human male children should be raised in barrels and fed through the bung. When they are 18 a decision must be made, whether to let them out or drive in the bung plug." I love that idea, because there are many a 21 year old whom I would love to stuff into a barrel and drive in the bung plug. He also said, "Manners are the grease in the gears of society. They make things run smoothly and are just as important in public as they are at home." I know that quote isn't perfect, but I can't find my book at the moment and get it perfect, but that 's the gist of it!

Do I have a solution? Nope. Do I think things will change? Probably, but sadly they will probably get worse before they get better. I think that it might be like alcoholism, where we collectively need to hit rock bottom and maybe even bounce a few times before we begin to climb out of the hole. My guess is that the current generation may find out that living with idiots like themselves is pretty crappy, and then they may begin to teach manners to their children. Yeah right!! ROFLMAO!! What's gonna happen is that eventually somebody is going to walk a mall with a sawed off shotgun and start blowing away line budgers and iPod zombies.

When the SWAT team surrounds the mall and orders him to surrender he tells them to say "Please". At the trial the jury finds him not guilty and instead awards him a multi-million dollar settlement for wrongful arrest and sends him to congress with a mandate to make rudeness illegal. The minimum fines for public rudeness are what may currently be considered cruel and unusual punishment. The escalation of the the fine for subsequent offenses move in three short steps to execution. The "3 strikes" law will make the world a much better place. There will also be no legal consequences for anyone severely beating a rude person in public as long as there are at least 3 witnesses to the rude behavior. The trials will be quick and public, the nearest 12 people will be rounded up and be the jury. The first 2 police officers will be the lawyers and one more civilian will serve as the judge. As long as the beating is found justified that is no repercussions, and the beaten rude dude, will be remanded to the authorities and given his proper sentence. ( the trial of the beater will serve as beatee's verdict as well ) I'm sure that this is just a pipe dream, but oh, wouldn't it be nice!

So thank you for reading and have a great day.

When things change....

When things change they never seem to change in the right ways. The administration in the state capitol changes, and the ideas are not new. The administration in Washington changes and the ideas are not new. The way to get things done is approached in a different way, but the ideas remain the same. I have sat back watching this mess of the financial markets and I know that there is nothing that I can actually do about it, but I do have something to say about it.

We the people of the American Taxpaying public have had to sit and watch as our tax dollars are squandered on every government SNAFU that comes along. Meanwhile the things that matter are going unfunded or under-funded. Education, Infrastructure, and research. The economy is free-market until there is a tilt in the market and suddenly the government is bailing out some business that has made bad market calls and lousy business deals, because, "the Market Needs them." Well if the market needs them so badly why are they not surviving on their own rather than the Government bailing their dumb asses out? My biggest complaint in this arena is the Automakers.

Why is it that the UAW will sit back and refuse to deal with the companies? The Legislature actually had the brains and the balls to step up and tell them that they would let the auto industry go bankrupt and thereby nullify the Union contracts, but then in steps President Knucklehead with OUR TAX DOLLARS and say that the manufacturers can have some assistance! What the fuck is wrong with this picture? It is the great ponderous Union contracts that have skewed our economy for so long in the first place. I don't have exact numbers, but I have seen some that have been bandied around in recent weeks, and it blows my mind when I see them. A worker whose gross pay and benefits package works out to somewhere between $48 and $73 dollars per hour? ( and you wonder why a new car costs so much?) Who is worth that? Maybe a diamond miner, but certainly not some bonehead who stands in one place putting a screw in a hole all day long. This is a small section of our population who has lived high on the hog for over 60 years. They have been the highest paid blue-collar employees in the USA for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid it was my dream to get a job working in an auto factory so I could get that high pay for doing next to nothing all day long. Paid vacations, and health care, sick days, and personal days and easy work. Man it was a dream!! Who needed college to put a bolt in a hole? They spent their money in every industry, from the clothing industry to the RV industry, buying anything and everything from the necessities of life to all the best toys that the world had to offer. Electronics, and fishing boats, motorcycles and ATVs. It didn't matter the cost because they had money to burn! Then the manufacturers started to see the light...

They realized that they could get cheaper labor in foreign markets. Guess what? Suddenly money was an object!! When you make top dollar at your job, and you get laid off, then you make top dollar on Unemployment. The catch is that Unemployment is a limited supply. And where does it come from? Taxes. Who pays taxes? People who are working! The more money you make the more taxes you pay, ( up to a point then the model skews the other way! ) so these high paid workers who were contributing to the tax base are now taking from it and at the highest rate possible. Their bills are piling up, ( high bills based on the pay that they were bringing home) and the debt continues to accrue. So the high pay cost them their jobs, but the remaining workers continued to make the big bucks, and when the time came they negotiated for even more money. So then more people got laid off to pay for the bigger contracts. Enter automation. Now there are machines that can do the work that men used to do, and at a faster and more accurate pace. So now there are less people contributing to the tax base. It's a cycle that has been repeated over and over in the ups and downs of our economy for the last 4o years at least.

Less people making the big buck is less people able to spend the money on the big ticket items. So that means the people that sell and manufacture the big ticket items are laid off. Now what? So they couldn't afford the crap they were selling in the first place, but the could afford the mid level items, and now they can't. So that's another level of people who are out of work. All because of these huge salaries that the UAW was making. It's trickle down theory in action the way that it really works.

People with BIG money don't spend it like blue-collar people do. Trickle down Economics only works from the Upper middle class on down. The true High income brackets save money, that's why they are rich. They hide money in off shore banks so that they don't have to pay to taxes on it. They buy specially made things and have collections of cars and homes. They socialize in their own circles and never need medicaid or unemployment. They have no understanding of what life is for regular people. They are the movers and the shakers of the business and government worlds. They don't see how skewed the economic situation is because they live in a different world. So they make deals and bail each other out, when they see a chance to blow some taxpayer money they take it.

$700 BILLION for a bailout of the financial institutions, and now more going to the automakers. Why throw good money after bad? Hey Mr. President, you really want to help America? Split that money up between the taxpayers. EVENLY! I have read various figures but even at the low end of the spectrum it works out to $27,000 for every taxpaying American. That is an economic Stimulus package! That measly $600 we got last year was a joke. It barely covered a couple tanks of gas!! ( especially when it peaked out at nearly $5 a gallon. !!)

a beginning...

Everyone has to start somewhere and I guess I'll start here. I have been commenting and posting on various blogs and websites for a long time and I figure it's finally time to start writing my own pages. How often I will get to it, and how interesting it is will be is up to someone else to decide, but I will be writing what is on my mind and I will not be able to always be gentle or politically correct, In fact I vow to not be politically correct, because that's one of the things in this country that peeves me more than anything else. I don't take offense at somebody referring to me and my family as indian, rather than Native American. If you do take offense at being called an Indian when you have family that lives on a reservation anywhere in the North American continent, then you're a PUTZ! get over yourself before they start playing cowboys and indians again! Little Bighorn was a FLUKE! Even now we are far out numbered, but if you want to know an interesting fact, most Mexicans now have more native blood that Spanish in their heritage and that means that they belong here far more rightly that any of you silly white people. Now that being said I am somewhat of a white person since my Momma is "second generation Euro-mutt" ( I really love that term! )

I really don't know what direction I wish to take this thing, but I hope that a few people will eventually read it and maybe try and tick me off to see what I will spout about!! Things I hate, Kid Rock, any educated person who talks like they are from the ghetto, Knuckleheads in general, Stupid trends, people who are proud of their ignorance. Bigotry. Stupid drivers. Oil companies who charge us instantly when the price of crude goes up, but take forever to lower the price when it goes down!! Liars who KNOWINGLY lie. Someone who spouts off without full information then realizes they were misinformed and changes the story, is not a liar, just too eager to spread rumors.

Give me Liberty Or give me death!! Patrick Henry, sure knew how to turn a phrase.

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