Author Archives: Shadowtwin

Government proposes new SUV fuel standards

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I found this article on Yahoo today. My first thought was, “so it only takes the at the pump pricing to average $2.50 nationally before even Bush decides he, being an Oil Man, is really raping the American people.” But then I read the rest of the article. Of course since I found it on Yahoo it is most likely an edited version of some AP post. With that in mind, I am gonna comment on a few of the high(?) points of the article.

The proposal would require the auto industry to raise standards for most vehicles other than cars beginning in 2008. All automakers would have to comply with the new system by 2011.


Okay, so the problem has been building for all of time. It really began to show its teeth in the oil shock in 1979(?), now we are finally going to do something about it, after all this time! But, not right away. It will start in three years, then it will be a requirement in six years. Way to nip it in the bud fully grown, out of control disaster phase, then, wait another six years to go ahead and do anything about it.

But the plan would not apply to the largest SUVs, such as the Hummer H2…


Oh, so they don’t want to curb the fuel usage of the largest SUVS, they just want to make the small cars more economic with their fuel. What in the FUCK is that all about? Okay not really the small cars, just light trucks and other such, pretty much anything between an actual car and really big SUV’s are the ones that are covered. So light cars, since they have pretty decent requirements anyway, aren’t really covered. Huge SUV’s, since they don’t know the meaning of the phrase “fuel economy” are also not covered. It is only covering mid-sized trucks, which should have to have some sort of standard, but why not cover the really huge ones that consume the majority of the fuel? You know, the ones that the Bush administration gave people tax breaks for buying, the ones that only get 10-12 miles per gallon? Those ones are exempt, why?

Oh yeah.

“At a time when Americans are paying record prices for gas, the Bush administration has sided with its cronies in the auto industry and rejected real solutions,” said Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club’s global warming program.


This is a war on terror after all. How is it possible that becoming less dependent on foreign oil could possibly help America? That’s right! There is no way. It is our dependence on foreign oil that puts us into, and keeps us in, such quagmires as the situation in Iraq. That is obviously helping to change the world view of the U.S., we are now viewed as liberators (of the oil of whatever country we decide to invade next). And could it possibly be just a coincidence that the year slated for the beginning of Bush’s grand good passable new fuel standards happens to be the year that he leaves office?

Of course auto manufacturers are not at all set back by this, well, maybe a little bit

American automakers have cited a disadvantage against foreign competitors because sales of large SUVs, a major source of profits in recent years, must be offset by the sale of smaller models to comply with fuel economy standards.


So, they are at a disadvantage because they are selling huge, ugly, gas-guzzling cars, while other companies are selling small, sleek, cute, fuel-efficient cars? Why don’t they just go ahead and build some small, sleek, cute, fuel-efficient cars of their own? Oh, I got it. They can’t make ten thousand dollars per sale on cars that only cost ten thousand to the consumer.

Then there’s this:

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group representing nine automakers, said the “higher fuel economy standards will be a challenge, even with all of the new fuel-efficient technologies that are offered for sale today.”


These fuel-efficient technologies include such things as solar power, fuel cells, hydrogen (which most people are afraid of since a dirigible filled with the gas once fell from the sky), not to mention various patented technologies that vaporize gasoline before it reaches your engine (some engines in the 1970’s, running with v-8’s and carburetors were able to achieve more than 60mpg using that technology, and that was a simple consumer add on).

Do they really expect us to believe that they can’t do it? My guess is that, given the current administration, they won’t do it. I think the reason the fuel standards are supposed to come into play the year Bush leaves office is solely to make it look like he did something decent during his eight years. If Bush wasn’t an Oil Man, he would probably try to make standards to help curb fuel usage for generations to come, since he is an Oil Man, he offered a bill that slightly changes fuel standards, which will only come into play once he leaves office. He will leave office with very full pockets, but also as the least admired president of all time.

Mark my words.

A great year for music

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I was sitting at home yesterday listening to 98 kupd when a couple of songs came on back to back that made me wonder what year it was. The songs were Ozzy’s Road to Nowhere, followed immediately by Metallica’s Enter Sandman. It was like it was the early 90’s all over again.

This got me to thinking about how many songs from that year are still in regular rotation on regular hard rock stations. I am defining that year as being from August of 1991 to July of 1992, a period that saw the release of Metallica’s Black Album, Ozzy’s No More Tears album, and Megadeth’s Countdown to Extinction album. The fact that I just called all of those albums probably dates me a bit, eh? If Pantera had waited a year to release Cowboys from Hell, I think I could really declare this as the best 12 months for music in all of history, of course I like this type of music so YMMV.

Here it is thirteen years after the release of the most recent album mentioned above and each of them still has at least a couple of songs in rotation on the radio. There is no other year that I can think of that has had similar results. It really boggles my mind. It should also be noted that Nirvana’s Nevermind was also released during this same period. So that makes four albums from that year that are still in rotation on rock stations. And this is not a classic rock station, these songs are sandwiched in between all the latest hard rock, though I am hard pressed to remember the names of any of the songs or bands, seems the new stuff doesn’t stick with me like the old stuff does.

Sadly, even if it weren’t for Nirvana’s explosion onto the scene in the early 90’s it seems that the glory days of the other bands was coming to a close anyway. While the albums that Metallica, Megadeth and Ozzy released that year were all excellent, they were also a great departure from the roots of the respective artists. While it was quite obvious with Metallica and Megadeth, Ozzy’s departure was more in terms of his lyrics. No longer so angry and angst filled, now proclaiming “I don’t want to change the world”. Though the song Mr. Tinkertrain was still pretty damn creepy, if you really listen to it.

For fans of Metallica and Megadeth the years after this were pretty devastating. Punctuated by lackluster release after horrible, lackluster release. Metallica’s music began to suck so bad that they assumed the reason for the decline in their sales must be due to piracy, but the fact is that the stuff that was being traded over Napster wasn’t any of their new stuff. Kids just didn’t want to pay 18 bucks for a cd that was released fifteen years ago and had only eight songs on it. I haven’t bought a Metallica cd (they don’t make albums anymore I guess) since they released Load, which is one of the most aptly titled releases ever, so long as you ad of Shit to the title.

Megadeth hasn’t fared much better. While I am pretty sure that I bought all of the cd’s that they released, I doubt that any of them had any staying time in the cd rotation. In fact I really can’t remember the names of any songs after Countdown as I think about it. Well there was Train of Consequences and A Tout Le Monde which were both on the Youthanasia cd, I think. But there were several other cds released. One was called Risk which I know I own, one called The World Needs a Hero which again, I know I own, Cryptic Writings own it too, Rude Awakening yup, collecting dust along with the rest of them. With the exception of Cryptic Writings which was a single on that cd, and Insomnia from the Rude Awakening cd, I don’t remember a single song from any of those four releases. Pretty sad really.

Megadeth did release a cd in 2004 that didn’t suck, it was called The System Has Failed which, of course, I own. It took the music back to the meat and potatoes of what Megadeth once was. The song Back in the Day is a riff tastic tear down memory lane as much for the listener as the band. Many of the other songs also have really pounding guitar and drums but, as I read the lyrics, it seems that Mustaine must have found God, which is a bit disappointing. I always loved the line from Reckoning Day that said, “I like the way that you stand in line And beg salvation from the empty skies.” Not much belief at that point, eh?

I don’t think I will ever hear another cd that hits me the way that Metallica’s …And Justice for All, or Megadeth’s Rust in Peace did, that era is long gone. While my all time favorite Megadeth song remains Holy Wars…The Punishment Due, and my all time Favorite Metallica song would have to be One which were released on the cds listed in this paragraph, it took streamlining their song writing to gain mainstream access and superior staying power.

Also, I don’t feel quite so old when the songs that kids are listening to today happen to be the same songs that I was listening to as a kid. Though I might not have the hair or physique to bang my head like I did back in the day, it is still a pretty comforting thought.

Blogs and blogging

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I have never considered my website a blog. I don’t really know why, though I suspect that it has something to do with the fact that everyone blogs and I didn’t want to be just like everyone else. I supose that the truth is that my page is more of a blog than most of the blogs that I actually read. Blog is defined as a “web log”, which I assume is more like a diary or journal than most of the stuff that I read.

I read several political blogs, a couple of sex blogs (not with pictures, just odd stories and practices), all of them are just fluff though. These blogs like to define themselves as a part of the Blogosphere, which I will define as a bunch of people who don’t have a single thought of their own, yet create web sites that do nothing more than respond to other web sites. That is more like a pseudo cult in my eyes. The imagined ‘blogosphere’ will be different for any person who sees it, since he/she will only be looking at the sites that they like to read. One more step and they will be drinking tainted Kool-Aid while talking about Jonestown.

The most fascinating blogs have nothing to do with current events, at least in my eyes. Not to mention that they meet the criteria to be a blog, with actual personal experiences and stuff on them. That would be as opposed to the political ‘blogosphere’ that takes something that someone may or may not have said, puts each site’s own spin on it, then makes new posts to reply to posts that they have found elsewhere on the internet. Don’t get me wrong, I love to read my liberal political blogs, I have certain thoughts and ideals and those blogs confirm them. But they are not blogs. They are actual facts that have been spun to the point that I like to accept them, not the truth, but the truth with a bit of commentary and cherry-picked facts…So, Wabloids, perhaps… You know, Web Tabloids, but I know that it is spun just so for me. Not an actual “web log” by any stretch of the imagination.

I have found that I am a voyeur of sorts, not in the looking for naked chicks way, more in the reading little tid-bits from other people’s lives way. Isn’t it reassuring to know that God’s master plan involves suckitude for lots of people other than yourself? I think it is, and I can read about it on any of the myriad blogs that I happen across. Real life, in text, complete with emotion and hardship, that is what I read the blogs for. Real Life being the key.

I suppose it is time to admit that I am really blogging, but until the political, sexual, and otherwise underhanded, blog sites admit that they are not really blogs, I will be a bit reluctant.

What we really need to happen is for the political blogs to adopt a new name, “Plogs” (political blogs) is the first that springs to mind. “Recycling a possible fact for several months for the purpose of retaining readership” is my second stab at it. How about, “We spin, you read.”?

Bleh.

Bloggers of the world unite, talk about mundane shit, that is what we do. Stay away from the spiral that starts when you get into political discussion, that is what we shouldn’t do. I enjoy reading about lives much more than reading recycled political discussions for the eleventeenth time, maybe that is just me…

Cheap Hotels Inexpensive Hotels

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I am frequently asked why I visit Las Vegas every year for vacation. The answer is always Cheap rooms. Where else in the world can you go and get an average of $33 bucks a night for a five night stay? The rooms are cheap, and there is entertainment galore.

Of course one can only walk down the strip so many times before getting horribly bored, not to mention that the security check stations to cross the Hoover Dam take nearly as long as the drive itself, so we are going to a different destination this year. Laughlin. Laughlin is sort of like Vegas light. You get the casinos, you get the gambling, you get the cheap rooms, but you don’t have to drive across the Hoover dam. I hope they have the buffets. The buffets alone are worth the price of admission. Where else in the world can you eat fifty shrimp as part of a 6 dollar buffet? Time will tell though.

Marvel at my cheapness. I could have had the same room for only 27 dollars per night had I booked it a day before, but still, 33 per night is good considering that the Sunday night is 85 dollars and the rest are $19. You only wish you had the ‘cheap ass’ chops to pull that off, and get your wife to agree to it. The fact that the hotel has a Krispy Kreme, a Dreyer’s Ice Cream shop, a Subway and a pizza joint might have helped her to agree though.

Laughlin is certainly the way to go, as far as the cheapest vacation ever, but there are other places to go that can compensate for the price of the hotel room. For instance, Millie told me, after a stay in Taiwan, that it only cost her a few dollars per month to live in a rat infested apartment there, I assume that most of the apartments there are rat infested though, so I think that was a tremendous value. Millie went on to lose a lot of weight while in Taiwan, but that could have been due to increased exercise, right? When Millie made it back to Florence (AZ), my wife really wanted to give her a cookie, Millie looked so pale that we feared she might be the dead walking among us. Turns out that she loved the anorexic look that she got while she had the tapeworm so much that she started to exercise regularly, my fears were misplaced.

You know, there is a reason why Buddha only got fat once he found enlightenment. That reason is simple: Poor people can’t afford the flashy rooms in Las Vegas, the 19 dollar per night accommodations in Laughlin are much more in line. I bet Buddha hit Laughlin a few times along the way to becoming the ultimate peasant, he has the gut to show it. Thankfully we don’t have mythological entities doing the commercials for travel, we get William Shatner…..How is that thankful?

Stupid junk mail!

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With email taking over the vast majority of delivering useless junk mail, it is always refreshing to find one in the actual post office, printed on real paper, that makes you laugh.

DONNIE BURGESS:

Your property at PO Box 166 may be eligible for special programs from Government Sponsored Institutions. Your census tract is currently being targeted by our Equal Lending Assessment Center for loans from major depository institutions without the usual restrictions on credit history, income or employer status.

If you are the legal owner of the above property, you may benefit from programs created by Federal Agencies. If you are not the legal owner, please forward this notice to them or return to sender.

But seriously, this is obviously a computer generated form, complete with unique offer number, mine happens to be LQY6-0665-524, which I am sure is the same as everyone else’s. The question that I have is don’t they have the ability to screen out po box addresses when they generate this kind of crap?

Also I wonder how important it really is that I forward this to the legal owner of the property PO Box 166, you know the post office. I hope they are aware of this tremendous financial opportunity already, ’cause I think I am just gonna go ahead and toss mine in the trash.

There is a little thing at the very bottom of the page, written in a font size that is significantly smaller than the rest of the letter, it says “This product or service has not been approved or endorsed by any government agency and this offer is not being made by any agency of the government.”

Has it really come full circle so fast? Is it once again more profitable to send out junk mail through the post office since no one reads junk email? If so I sure do hope the trend continues. I know exactly who I am supposed to get real mail from and that is about all I ever open, with the occasional credit card offer (sort of like playing the lotto there, just trying to see if I can beat the best offer for balance transfers. If you take the time to do it, and have relatively good credit, you can transfer balances every year or so and never pay a penny of interest on your credit card debt. While making your credit better. The world is odd indeed). With email I do open some that appear to be from real people, though never if there is an attachment, just because my various web pages over the years have led a lot of strangers to email me. I have pretty serious doubts that anyone would send me an actual letter though, and the computer generated addresses on envelopes are really easy to pick out when there are four occurrences of the letter ‘e’ on it, there is no way to make them all identical if you are writing it by hand and, unless you happen to be a lot more patient than me, you may write the letter on the PC, but the envelope gets made out by hand simply because it is faster than changing your printer setting for envelopes, finding where to put the envelope, printing it out upside down first, before finally getting it right. Only to realize that you missed one digit in the zip code, thus starting the process over. Four envelopes, and twenty minutes later, you have accomplished what could have been done in 5 seconds with a pen. The marvels of technology.

Random childhood musings

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Yesterday while I was at work, and for reasons that I can’t remember, I ended up talking to the cashier about a portion of my childhood. It started with the story about how I stole a bag of chips from the local IGA store, then went a bit deeper into why I did it. If you have actually read through the archives on the left side of the screen you have probably seen the story already, if not, in a nutshell, I was really hungry, and hungry for tortilla chips in particular. For unknown reasons I went further into my childhood than I have ever spoken of to anyone other than my mother, yet I found that it made for an almost unbelievable story so I will type it here.

Before I get into it, however, I must mention that my Mother actually reads this page, while my Father is dead and can not defend himself. I remember things the way I remember them and if my memory is horribly flawed I am pretty sure that Mom will let me know. Of course Mom might not be the most objective person, since she is one of the two factions at war, but I will do my best to tell it like I remember it. While the mind does seem to dull with age, it is amazing how vivid these memories from 20+ years ago really are.

First up will be a couple of fractional, at best, memories that I have of the impending divorce. I have a scar on my right wrist that is slightly over an inch long, I got that while in Arizona visiting an uncle. I don’t really know why we were in Arizona, but I do know that Dad was not there with us (I have not actually tried to fact check this one with Mom, but that was at a point when Dad was pretty drunk and abusive nearly every day). My wrist got cut when I was trying to fuck with a cat on my uncle’s couch. Unfortunately, the uncle had a solid mirror coffee table that had jagged edges on the side nearest the couch. When the cat finally swiped at me, and I jerked my arm away, I hit the coffee table and split my wrist wide open. It was really bad. While I don’t remember the verbatim dialogue that followed, I do remember exactly what I said to my mother the instant after it happened, “Mom, I need to go to the Hospital.”. In the fuzzy part of the memory, I think she may have actually scolded me for interrupting while the grown ups were talking. I know for sure that she really thought that I needed to get to the hospital immediately once I shoved the wound in front of her face.

Funny thing about scar tissue is that it stays the same forever, while the normal skin continues to grow. As I look at that scar right now I can still see the 8 suture marks around the scar, yet they are now a good quarter of an inch from it and spaced apart even further. Now it looks like it was a nick, when it happened it pretty much looked like my wrist wrist may fall off, or I would lose the use of my thumb. It all worked out for the best though, I still have full use of all of my digits, not to mention a story to tell (and that one went over HUGE at show and tell back in the day. Yet, as I have found over the years, chicks don’t really dig scars.).

The car ride to the hospital was a bit unnerving. I didn’t know how this would be taken care of. I posited my theory that they had bodies laying around that they could take spare parts out of to fix the patients. Mom told me that this was not the case and that I would have to be sewed back together with a needle, at that point I am pretty sure that I told her that I was fine, didn’t need to go to the hospital or anything, but we ended up there anyway. The funniest part of the car ride, as I look back on it, is that my uncle stopped to ask a cop for directions to the nearest hospital, his exact quote to the cop was, “My partner hurt his arm, we need to get him to a hospital! (that sticks out in my mind only because he called me partner, not nephew, not sister’s child, not bastard son of 100 men, no, he chose partner)” That doesn’t seem funny, but as I look back on it with adult eyes that is probably the first time in his life that he had spoken to a cop without being in handcuffs, possibly the last as well.

I got stitched right up once we got to the hospital, it didn’t hurt at all. There was a small tinge of pain when the doctor shot the (insert name here)cane into the wound to numb it, but after that it was smooth sailing. When the stitches came out, however, wow, boy howdy, that shit hurt. The suture removal was performed by the same uncle that took me to the hospital, but with no pain killer, and it really hurt. Or at least I thought it did, but what was I six? Plus they gave me a candy for every one that they pulled out, I bet I was amped that night.

The next fuzzy memory I can’t really date, I remember the events but I can’t possibly place the time. It was at my uncle Steve’s house, Steve moved so frequently that I also can’t remember exactly which house it was in. Dad was horribly drunk, yet wanted to drive home. He asked the three of us kids “Who wants to go home with Dad?” He was horribly wasted at the time, and Highway 42 in Oregon has claimed more lifes than air travel, but we all wanted to go home with him, thankfully, Mom nixed that idea and we had to stay in that old, stinky house. Again, with adult eyes I am able to look at that experience and realize that Mom really did have our best interests at heart. Not to mention a broken finger, since dad had thrown her down the stairs outside the house. One of the images that is so burnt into my memory that I am sure I will never forget it is the image of Dad squatted next to the wood stove when we all got home the next day. I don’t think he ever actually knew what happened that night.

I have two other fuzzy memories on this subject that seem to blur together. One involves a horrible pounding against the house as Dad tried, while horribly drunk, to back his truck out of the driveway (which was steeply sloped towards the house). It happened over and over again for a long time. The other was a pounding sound that was (as my Mom later described) Dad beating her head against the floor (interesting aside on that one is that I thought she was lying, while I was six, there is no way to beat someone’s head against the floor while they are standing up. It took a bit of living to realize that he had her pinned to the floor to make that possible). After at least one of the said fuzzy memories, Dad was passed out in the yard. Mom told me that he tried to do a Hand-Spring but forgot to put his hands down, I dunno, that seems like a pretty flimsy alibi.

All of my fuzzy memories aside, that was the situation that my Mother was in, and it certainly was far worse than my memory. The divorce was a good thing for all parties involved. Well, all parties except for Mom and the kids.

When the divorce finally went down, Mom just sort of gave up all material possessions for the custody of the children. Unfortunately the child support laws back then were not quite what they are today. She was getting about 100 bucks a month to support three children. That doesn’t even cover the cost of food, but we got food stamps, so that helped. She was dirt poor… She was dirt poor, but she did her best and I think that we all (her children) turned out pretty good.

Living accommodations along the way could have been better…

The first house that I lived in with my mother, post divorce, was on Curry road. It was not so much a house, more like enough plywood leaned together to make what passes for shelter. There was no indoor plumbing, well, there was a sink, there was a shower, but I am pretty sure that the water from those just drained directly onto the ground below. The toilet, I will never forget the toilet, was on the outside of the house, and some twenty yards away. Some may call that an outhouse, I called it my salvation. When you really have to shit, right now, snow be damned, you are gonna foot your way out to the little box in the pasture to make it happen. How many people who are alive today can remember taking a dump in an outhouse?

Over the next several years, it seemed that we were trying to keep one step ahead of the building inspector. We moved into Hartz Cabins, a facility that was condemned only a few months after we moved in. A few misfires later, we ended up in a house on Shoestring road, Just outside of Riddle, Oregon. We were there for some time, a few years I think. (there may have been a couple of houses in Arizona between the latest listed points, I dunno, the mind seems to alter the facts after all these years).

We never had much, and what we did have we were thankful for. Mom did her best with what she had, which was very little. Dad could have stepped in to offer some compensation, maybe even did (I dunno), but Mom went it alone and raised us alone. That must take a great deal of resolve to accomplish. Three children raised with no help from the father (virtually). Kudos to mom.

I have been less than honest with my Mother for all of the years since. While I loved her “indian bread” (deep-fried flat bread), I was not so keen on her actual bread. The bread tasted kind of doughy, with the additional taste of yeast…Not all that tasty, yet, when soaked in butter, that was good stuff. I did my best to keep up the charade, but, as she told me recently, I lost a lot of credibility.

When we all lived in that tiny little dive (the one without indoor plumbing), we each had a birthday. The gift to each of us was a really itchy green blanket (donated by the local military reserve) and ten dollars in food stamps to spend however we wanted. I don’t remember exactly what I spent mine on, but I would guess it was probably on sugared cereal.

Fast forward a couple of years, perhaps rewind. In my memory this event was long after the military blanket, yet before I moved back to live with dad. There was a Christmas that happened. We lived in a slightly better dive than the last one (this one had an eagle claw bathtub), and we each got cards from Dad. Each card contained a ten dollar bill. While I don’t remember what the rest of the money was spent on, I do remember that I spent a couple of bucks on Christmas wrapping paper. Gods be damned! There might not be a gift under the tree (which is not entirely true, we did get gifts just not many of the flashy, store bought ones that we so craved), but what little we had to exchange was going to have the “have yourself a merry little Christmas” logo on it.

I don’t remember all these experiences as being bad per se, I don’t have another childhood to compare them to. Each one of these experiences helped to make me who I am today. If it weren’t for having to camp out by Cow Creek eating nothing but barley soup for a few days I might not appreciate everything that I have now as much as I do. If I hadn’t seen how badly it hurt my Mother when Dad beat her (and I don’t mean physically, I mean the transformation from the vibrant, beautiful woman she was in her senior photo to the shell of the woman she had become when she finally had the resolve to walk out on him), I might not have such tremendous respect for women, I might even be abusive to them myself, who knows?

Your childhood is something that you really had no control over, as such there can’t be any regret. Just as every scar on my body reminds me of a particular place or event, every memory that I have of my youth reminds me of conscious decisions that I made. While it may seem hard to believe that I made a vow, at the ripe old age of six, to never hit a woman, I did. That is a vow that I am quite happy to say I have never broken (well, once in the fourth grade, but that bitch was holding me on the ground and literally pulling my hair out. And once in my junior year of High School, but again I was provoked; I called a certain girl a slut, based only on the fact that she had had sex with at least three guys at a party the night before, her younger sister took offense to me calling her sister a slut, walked up and kicked me square in the nuts. I fell to the ground immediately. When I got back up I saw her laughing with her friends, I walked up to her and gave her a right that bloodied her nose and put her to the ground, she had it coming.), although I did accidentally break Angie Dixon’s leg in the fifth grade while playing soccer, sorry Angie.

But this post is all about the bread so I guess I better get to the point. Mom told me recently that she knew that I didn’t like her homemade bread as much as I let on. The way that she knew was that on one occasion where I was able to spend food stamps however I chose, I bought a loaf of bread. She never told me that she knew that I didn’t like it all that well until very recently, I think that she was just glad that I was making my brothers look like a couple of little whiners. Older brothers don’t like to be made to look like babies you see.

The truth is that I could probably list a couple dozen things that I really didn’t like to eat but ate and pretended that I liked. That was all we had and with my brothers bitching about it already what good would it have done? I will list just a couple though, for sentimental value. Barley, while when combined with hops, fermented and aged, is certainly my favorite drink, yet Barley soup is just plain disgusting (I don’t even know if I was able to disguise my disgust at this soup when I was young). Potato pancakes weren’t all that bad, but they weren’t all that good either. I didn’t have to pretend much with those though, since my brothers both seemed to like them. Corned Beef Hash, now this one is complex as I actually do like it sort of. This was a dish that we often had pre-divorce, but even at the time I didn’t really like all of it. I loved the taste that the potatoes had after cooking with the corned beef for so long, but the meat itself was so salty that I had to pick it out and give it to one of my brothers. Chicken is quite similar, I don’t mind the taste of chicken but I hate the skin, simply won’t eat it, of course since my brothers would fight for the skin I didn’t want it was all good.

On the up side, there were a lot of dishes that our finances forced on us that I really liked. Ramen noodles for instance. Those things were damn tasty, a child can make them (though why mom let me do that, considering the horrible burn scars on my chest and neck is beyond me), and after you eat the noodles you have a cup of warm broth to drink. An entire meal for a child for, well you can get them 10 for a buck now (on sale) so probably 15 or 20 for a buck then, so like 5 to 7 cents. Then there were the potatoes. Those things were practically free back then so we had a lot of them. I love mashed potatoes, not so much the pancakes they turn into the next day, but mashed potatoes is one of the things that is on my plate at every buffet. There is a certain way to make them though. The ones that are made out of dehydrated flakes simply aren’t edible. Even if you use real potatoes, if you mix them with a power mixer they have the consistency of an orange Julius, also not edible. They must be mashed with an old fashioned masher, they must have only pepper as seasoning no salt! Salt can be added by the consumer but not taken away. Finally they really should be made with real butter. I have had to use margarine to make them for Thanksgiving the last few years and they still taste pretty good, but butter is certainly the best way to go.

To finish this off with the thought that started it, the real reason that I wanted the store bought bread had nothing to do with the taste of the home made bread. The thing about the home made bread is that you have to slice it yourself and that makes for some pretty awkward looking sandwiches. Sometimes, no matter how down to earth you try to be (for a small child) you just want to have a sandwich that looks the same as the ones that all the other kids are eating. Is that so wrong?

Open question about physiology

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Over the last week or so I have been performing a different duty than normal while at work. Mostly involving standing around a lot while tending to the cash register. What I don’t understand is why this makes my legs and lower back hurt so bad. And hurt it does.

Why is it that I can stand on my feet for six, eight, or even ten hours at a time, while throwing heavy boxes (60-80lbs.) around with no ill effects, yet when I am forced to stand and work in a smaller area it just kills me? I know that I usually walk at least a couple of miles per day, under normal circumstances, and I do throw a lot of heavy shit around. So do my back and legs ache from lack of stress/impact? That seems completely opposite to the way it should happen.

Seriously, is it the lack of motion that makes my joints hurt or what? Is it kind of like starting your car on a cold morning; no lubrication of moving parts for a few minutes? All the stop and go moving adds up? I simply don’t understand why I can carry heavy stuff around for eight hours or longer, yet, when I have to stand still for minutes at a time, over the same length of time, it hurts my back.

I need to dispose of this body and try to develop an exoskeleton. I will probably keep this body until I have the exoskeleton working though…

Bring on the juice!

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My job gives me the wonderful opportunity to not have to repeat the same mundane tasks on a daily basis. No endless screwing on of toothpaste caps for me. What it also gives me is the opportunity to fuck with things that I would rather not, such as electricity.

I have a pretty good basic knowledge of electricity, which I actually learned in high school in the improperly named Introduction to Technology class. Of course since the only computers we had in my high school were in the library, and only there as a replacement to the card indexes with no other purpose whatsoever, I guess basic electricity really was technology in their eyes. That aside, I loathe electricity. It is wonderful when it is working as expected, but when I have to actually start wiggling wires I get a tad bit nervous. This is compounded when I have to do it where I work.

To say that the wiring in the building I work in is old would be like saying that Hitler was merely a bit quirky. Many of the electrical panels in the building are at least forty years old, complete with the old screw in fuses. The disconnect boxes on the outside of the building are likely every bit as old and scary as hell. Not to mention that, as I think about it, there are at least five separate breaker boxes in the building (two of which have been replaced within the last ten years, two which at least have breakers, and one that still has screw in fuses). As far as power cut off boxes, there are at least (wait while I try to count from memory) 14 of those. Most of those are for specific refrigeration units, while there are a couple that are there for no damn reason at all. The 14 number was counting only the ones that are active as well, there are at least another half dozen that are hanging on the walls but not connected to anything. It is old, it is complex, yet it works just fine for the most part. I will leave it at that for now.

Yesterday, I noticed that the fans in the dairy walk-in were not working so I went to investigate. Here I must note that there is another light outside of the walk-in that runs on the same circuit as the fans, that light was still working. I assumed that this meant that there was something wrong with the compressor for the dairy walk-in itself, when I got outside to the compressor I saw that the compressor for the wall freezer was working just fine, since it is on the same, huge, 100 amp circuit as the dairy compressor I was confident that my initial guess was correct. I pulled the fuse block from the dairy walk-in’s compressor (it is a block about three by four inches that holds three fuses. The fuses look like miniature shotgun shells but with copper on both ends) and tested the fuses, they were all fine. So up the line I went.

The next set of fuses that needed testing were the massive 100 amp ones that I so fear. They also look like shotgun shells, but they are about three inches long with an additional inch of a copper blade sticking out of each end. It is not that I fear the fuses really, but that one of them will not blow out unless the amperage across it has reached 100 amps. If the amperage across the fuse reached 100 then that means that there could be a serious short in the electrical system. Since less than one amp can be fatal I am really scared of touching 100 amp fuses. I think that fear is pretty justified.

In any electrical installation the line (power) always comes into the top of a box, while the load (the place the power is going to) always goes out the bottom, always, in every instance. I didn’t trust that in this particular case, so I traced the wires myself before trying to test the fuses. It was, astonishingly (to me anyway), actually wired correctly. I threw the lever down on the box to test the fuses (this is, I assume, why they have standardized it so. There must be a standard way to run the power into and out of the box, if the power goes in through the top it is possible to test the fuses without having to remove them. Time saving as well as standardizing, good all around). I tested the left fuse, then the right, both of which were fine (I only tested the left and right first since in a home application, like a dryer, the left and right will each be power while the middle will be ground). Then it went really bad.

Just a quick aside. I had taken the rubber mallet outside with me when I went to check those fuses. The reason why is that when you flip the switch back up the blades do not contact with the power supply very well, this has led to many a blown fuse on that system. The way that I circumvent that problem is to turn off both of the compressors, turn the switch back on, then tap the blades into place with the rubber mallet. This time, thankfully, I had used the rubber mallet to also hold the cover (it opens up) on the box open. I say thankfully since I normally just use my head to hold it up since it only takes a couple of seconds.

I touched my continuity tester to the top of the center fuse, then the bottom. I then immediately dropped to the ground with what used to be a continuity tester in my hands, and a horrible, unstoppable, muscle jerking thing going on. I really got a jolt out of that one. That was the worst shock I have ever felt in my life. I have been shocked by your standard electrical outlet many times, to me that feels more like a tickle than a shock, but this one, boy howdy, I thought I not only bought the farm outright, but possibly also a considerable amount of acreage around it. Funny thing is that it doesn’t really hurt exactly, it is more like you are just wasted of any physical energy, as if you had just done a decathlon a few times in a row. This one took me a good thirty minutes to settle down from, at least to the point that I was able to think and act coherently again. Certainly not recommends for entertainment purposes.

The reason that I got shocked (which completely destroyed the continuity tester, as I may have mentioned) is that when I threw the switch off on that box I didn’t even look to see if all of the blades were removed from power. It turns out that the center blade stayed connected because the arm that pulls that one away from the power was actually broken off. I tried to test a 100 amp fuse with a continuity tester, while it had power. I wonder how many people have ever done that and lived. Yet, I still had to test that fuse somehow.

It was at exactly this moment that I decided the store was going to pony up the ten bucks for a fuse puller. The fuse puller is just like a big set of pliers that is made all out of plastic. That in hand, I pulled the center fuse and took it to the hardware store to have it tested (since my tester was beyond repair) and found that it was also good. If that fuse had been bad, I think I might not be alive right now. That fuse runs to the compressors which are solidly grounded with copper, I only took a portion of the voltage (since the fuse was good, and the copper was a better ground than me. Love those rubber soles), and, more importantly, the amperage. If it would have been only me completing that circuit I would likely only be able to blog in a posthumous fashion.

Another aside. If you ever try to steal power from the warehouse next door, keep in mind that there is something (which I had never heard of previously) that is called a wild leg. It is used exclusively in industrial applications. I am not sure exactly what its purpose is, but it makes it so that the wires that carry power run at 120v, 120v, and 208v. None of the three are a ground or common wire. If you pick the wrong wire (while trying to steal power) and get the 208v one, you will likely destroy every electronic device in your whole house. Keep it in mind.

The problem with the walk-in was eventually resolved, quite simply, but I am gonna leave that for another post, as this one has gone a bit long already.

Are people really that fucking darn stupid?

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Okay, people are sheep, the bible tells us that. Even if you aren’t into the whole religion thing, just look at the way that we all flocked to buy the latest Harry Potter book. Yes, we are all into following trends, usually without actually taking the time to think about it: Would the latest Harry Potter book have failed to exist if you weren’t there to buy it at midnight on the day it was released? Did you then go home and read the whole book before morning? -mind you that if you did you have a completely different sort of disorder which is equally as bad.- I’m just saying people are sheep; once the herd is pointed in a particular direction, they go that way regardless of obstruction (remember the ‘tickle me Elmo’ doll?).

That was a really horrible parallel to use for the point I am going to try to make, but it was the first thing that came to mind. I am just saying that people follow. Would we have millions of people driving ugly, dangerous, gas-guzzling SUV’s were it not for the for the pack mentality?

The tangent that I am going to spin off on today is in regards to car commercials. Not the insane, often impossible, images that you see on the television, but the ads (promotions) themselves. The new best offer of all time is employee pricing. I have been thinking about this for a couple of months, while listening to the advertising, knowing that it is complete bullshit, but, it keeps going and going. Now every dealership is offering the “employee pricing” to anyone that walks onto the lot.

I have never been in the auto business so all I have to offer is common sense, but sense of any sort is more logical than the latest dealer fad(fraud).

The fad several years ago was to offer you 5,000 dollars for any trade, which seems like a good deal, what they didn’t tell you was that the offer was only on cars that the dealer designated. You ended up paying far more than the MSRP on any other car, even after they took the 5,000 dollars off for your trade in. Good deal? No. Good marketing? Well, it worked. Should it be legal to market so falsely? I don’t think so, yet, they were able to get away with it by marketing a car at one price, then follow that statement with the phrase “exclusive of that offer”.

The current fad/fraud in the auto business is the ’employee pricing’. It started off with Chevy (I think, at least that was the first ad that I heard it on) and it has snowballed since then. Major props to Isuzu, who is still making fun of the employee pricing. Everyone else in the auto business is trying to offer the same ’employee pricing’ deal to every mark on the lot. And people are still falling for it.

I don’t know how much simpler it could be to know that this is outright fraud; look at the MSRP (Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price) to the layman, of the auto that you see advertised on the television, go to the dealership to see the same vehicle, then notice how the MSRP seemed to go up by several thousand dollars while you were on your way. I guess the seatbelts must cost a lot of money? No fear though, they can get the auto down to only slightly higher than the MSRP once you have your ’employee discount’. Wow, pay more than normal now that I am an employee? I am on it! Wouldn’t common sense tell you that employees would pay the same, or possibly less, than the general public?

That must be a really humorous exchange down at the GM factory:

GM Exec: “You’re late.”

Employee: “My bicycle had a flat tire.”

GM EXEC: “You’re in luck, you can use our Employee Pricing to buy a new car.”

Employee: “But, I can’t afford to buy a new car.”

GM EXEC: “You should have thought about that before you slept in.”

Employee: “I have a wife and children.”

GM EXEC: “Don’t worry, they will get employee pricing too.”

Employee: “My children are too young to work, and my wife has to watch them during the day.”

GM EXEC: “Why not buy her a car? She could run errands while watching the children.”

Employee: “I can’t afford a car on the wages you pay me! You want more than 10,000 American dollars for a new car, you pay me 1.5 American dollars per day!”

GM EXEC: “I understand your position…You don’t want to spread the good name of the General Motors Company to others”.

Employee: “Kill me, just kill me now. Perhaps my wife and son could then live off of my death benefits.”

GM EXEC: “Sorry, you do not work within the contiguous 48 states, no benefits for you!”

Employee: “will you go ahead and kill me anyway… My son is starving, my wife is pregnant, if I come home without a paycheck I would be better off dead.”

GM EXEC: “You’ve forced my hand, I will offer you employee pricing on your next GM automobile purchase.”

Employee: “You don’t pay me enough to buy an automobile! My son has died of malnutrition, my wife had a miscarriage and died. Thank you, Sir, for destroying my life!”

GM EXEC: “I see that you are upset…”

Employee: (whips out a gun) “Taste hot lead, asshole! Employee pricing my ass! Die you son of a bitch, die!”

GM EXEC’S Supervisor: “I wonder where that assault rifle came from… Calling number 3482, I need a new ambassador…..”

Bush’s master plan

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Is it wrong to enjoy the fake news about Bush’s agenda more than the real news? Maybe. I will say that the fake news is far more realistic. Take this weeks top story from The Onion.

Bush Vows To Eliminate U.S. Dependence On Oil By 4920


Well at least there is a definite time frame there, something you would be hard pressed to get the Bush administration to assign to any of their current plans. Hell if the United States was led by Bush, or someone with similar goals, that might be far too optimistic of a goal. There would likely be more money going into deep space exploration to search for other planets with fossil fuels (which through some loophole would become the property of Bush’s successors) than to trying to harness all of the limitless sources of power that we already have, Solar and Hydrogen power for example.

The Onion frequently hits pretty close to home with its stories. This one is a bit too outrageous to fit into that context, but it is only barely satire. Bush is at the helm of the country, steering it with the confidence of a great and knowledgeable leader. Unfortunately he doesn’t seem to realize that he is not a great and knowledgeable leader, and those around him only add to his confidence. My only hope is that his eight years of rule will not have soured the entire world to the U.S., and that, with more responsible leadership, the next generation of Americans will have a country to be loyal to, not a crater left by the simultaneous nuclear (nukular) bombings aimed here by every other country on earth. One can always hope.

There was one quote in that fake news article that made me write this post, one which I think is more truth than fiction;

The proclamation comes on the heels of Bush’s plans to pay off the national debt by the early 6300s, and win the war on terror by 7450.


Perhaps a bit too optimistic, considering the current administration, but certainly an achievable goal!