an appeal from dlp to explain this article in the guardian. man, i just don't know. pr in the white house is nothing new, but this is definitely different. first, i would like to see a write-up about this from another source other than the guardian, which is the national enquirer of the british press. second, if anyone thinks that our image abroad is going to improve through better marketing, they don't have a firm grasp of the world scene. you will know them by their works.

here’s an editorial in the courier-journal discussing how americans grow more concerned over tragedy when it is localized and the people involved have names, faces and families with whom it is easy to relate. the hard work of true reform and saving large groups of people from personal destruction over the course of generations is, according to the column, too abstract and slow to garner much attention. as loathe as i am to admit it, i have to say that i agree with the paper on this point.


as you can probably imagine, this is where my agreement ends. the column goes on to discuss government oversight, social spending, yada yada yada. after i wiped the drool from my chin, i had an epiphany of sorts that, at least in my opinion, goes a long way toward making a clear distinction between conservatives and liberals. here we go:


whether you consider yourself liberal (and don’t throw any more catchphrases at me; if you’re liberal, own up to it, ok?) or conservative, there are a few things on which we can agree. first, the family, in whatever form you would like to imagine, is the cornerstone of any civilized society. second, families build communities and communities build a nation. having said that, many would make the point that families are not as strong as they once were and therefore we no longer have the sense of community that was once fostered in us as children. i don’t think i’m going out on a limb by saying this.


here is where the divergence takes place: how do we strengthen communities in the face of the dying family unit? the liberal elite would have you think that, since families are weaker, something must become stronger to take up the slack. enter (drum roll, please) the giant tit of government dependency, here to feed you all. the argument seems to be that, with enough government oversight, the whole damn village can be a family. will this foster dependence on the big tit? you bet, sonny; now you’re catching on. there’s elections to be won and taxes to collect.


conservatives, on the other hand, favor strengthening the family and letting society repair itself. this is my approach, but it has its own problems. first, government involvement in our lives has become so pervasive that we don’t even think about it anymore. thus, it can not be eliminated without a wholesale shift in societal thinking. shifts such as this take generations, whereas dependency can grow up almost overnight. second, and perhaps more importantly, some conservatives feel that government should have a role in strengthening families. doesn’t that defeat the purpose? it’s the liberal argument from another angle. ‘strengthening families’ can mean anything from lowering taxes (which i support) to legalizing same-sex marriage at the state level (which i don’t).


so what is the gov’t role here? first, enforce existing law concerning child support and education. passing more and more laws ‘for the children’ is just election-year politics. second, and some of you are going to love this, the states need to make it harder to get a divorce. you may disagree, but here’s the bottom line: when you and your spouse have children, you are no longer living for yourself. nothing positive can come from a divorce except in cases of abuse or abandonment. leaving because money’s tight, your spouse got fat, you’re tagging your secretary or whatever should not be grounds for divorce. if you were grown-up enough to do it in the first place, then you need to be grown-up enough to invest some time in conflict resolution.


wow...weren’t we talking about coal mines or something?

yet another washington post article about how g.w. is being treated with increasing skepticism by people 'in the know'---meaning the media elite. there's even a quote by bill kristol, alleged conservative, who said that 'some people don't feel that the president deserves ratings this high'. when, oh when, is the mainstream media going to drop the mask of being 'fair and balanced' and just admit that most of them are socialists with a political agenda? who are we kidding here?


today in 1588, the british navy whipped up on the 'invincible' spanish armada. i won't bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that spain wanted to invade england and england, with a smaller but faster and better-armed fleet, pulled every sneaky move in the then-very thin book of naval warfare strategy to beat the pants off the spainards. this began a british domination of the sea which extended into the early years of the twentieth century and marked the first accurate use of naval artillary instead of hand-to-hand fighting and boarding parties.

forgot to mention earlier that i went to play paintball yesterday with the usual suspects. everything was fine until the last round, when one of the guys on the opposing team hit me from about two feet. this is not really kosher, but i understand how easy it is to get worked up in the heat of 'battle' and the guy was young. as i drove home, the area where i was hit began to hurt quite a bit. when i got home, i discovered why: three of my wounds were open and bleeding. with some expert medical care from the wife, i lived through the night and am now feeling fine. i was even able to laugh about it on the radio show today (even though b.s. told thousands of people that he thought i was nuts).

today in 1967, the uss forrestal caught fire off the coast of vietnam. she burned for three days and changed forever the way the navy would teach firefighting to sailors. when i was in boot camp, part of our training was watching a documentary about the fire onboard the forrestal. during the fire, 134 crewman were killed and 62 more were injured and most of her aircraft were either destroyed or seriously damaged. she would go on to fight again with service during the persian gulf war. she was retired from service on september 11, 1993. besides catching on fire, the forrestal holds the distinction of being our nation's first 'super-carrier', so called because she was so much bigger than world war two-era carriers.

an article in the courier-journal talking about the TWO new bridges that are going to be built connecting louisville with southern indiana. any of you familiar with this area know that these bridges are very, very overdue. the east-end component of the the bridge should have been built thirty years ago. however, the east end of louisville is a very wealthy area and, you know, god forbid the great unwashed tread on their green lawns. louisville was the largest city in the southern united states until after world war two; that honor now belongs to atlanta. what held louisville back? financial elitism. one family (the binghams) controlled every media outlet in the city and made or destroyed generations of politicians. they left us with a second-rate city full of wannabe big-city guys craving a pro basketball team and good golf courses. now, that same snobbery has trounced on a solid bridge proposal for a generation. the fact is, if the bridge was going through the west end of louisville, it would already be there. of course, these people (all in their suvs) will now hide behind the environment and they will have no problem finding an environmental group to back them. sickening.

today in 1878, wyatt earp fatally wounded cowboy george hoy during an exchange of gunfire in dodge city, kansas. this was the first and only man that earp shot during his time as a lawman in dodge city, although legends would later make him out to be a wicked gunman. despite hollywood's rewriting of earp's life, he was not always on the right side of the law. after he and his brothers took care of business at the ok corral in tombstone, arizona, earp shot several men under circumstances that were less than legal. something about the earp family has always fascinated me--they roamed all over the west and every one of the sons lived as both lawmen and outlaws. the line between the two was much thinner then, i suppose. or maybe not.

didn't mention the fact that i found yet another guy from the navy. a.f. and i went through boot camp and part of 'a' school together. he is doing well in atlanta with this second wife (about to take the bar). he had a funny phrase in boot camp: 'f*ck folding'. we would have to spend a great deal of time every day folding our laundry in that perfect navy way, but a.f. got the idea that, if he wore the same clothes every day, everything would remain folded and on the shelf, thus saving him much time during the day. hey, it worked for him.

well, my manager showed up for work at 3:45 this morning, so i was unable to listen to all of the interview with the fission guy. what i heard told me that while the guy had a very basic understanding of nuclear power, he has made a hypothesis that will be impossible to prove during any of our lifetimes. at least he wasn't as bad as some of the crackpots who normally populate the art bell guest list.

art bell had a guest on last night talking about the possibility that the interior of the earth houses a giant natural fission nuclear reactor. as i am writing this (i can’t post at work), the man has not been on yet, so it will be interesting to see what he has to say. nuclear power is in my knowledge “wheelhouse”---your tax money paid for me to learn all about it, so i’ll post my thoughts in the morning after i get home.

richard roeper has a column in the chicago sun-times about ann coulter, author of the book ‘slander’, which i am reading as i try to finish ‘the great gatsby’ and shirer’s ‘rise and fall of the third reich’. he more or less calls her a liar and backs up his claims with some facts, which is refreshing for a liberal newspaper columnist. as i mentioned earlier, i will do my own review when i finish the book.

there’s column in thestar.com, a (the?) toronto newspaper. it’s one of those pieces that’s long on accusations and hearsay and short on facts. the writer only quotes hit pieces in putting together his theory that g.w. bush is just another rich boy who stole the presidency (john kennedy, please call your office). the one area of accusation that i know a great deal about is bush’s involvement in the texas rangers baseball team. he displays a glaring lack of understanding about how stadiums get built in the united states and there is no way in hell he has ever visited arlington, texas. calling arlington “one of the poshest suburbs in dallas” is like calling compton one of the most ‘crime-free’ area of los angeles. but the article, linked to fark.com, will be read and blindly believed by thousands of well-meaning people who should know better.

patrick stewart talking about the new star trek movie, which is supposed to be the last with the 'tng' cast. yes, i am a trekkie. not a going-to-the-convention-speaking-klingon trekkie, and i never followed any of the series after 'the next generation', but i love the concept. in a way, it shows human beings at their best, which i always found inspiring. ok, you can laugh now.

the mormons arrived in the salt lake valley today in 1847. i am not down on christian churches (fundamentalists worry me, but that's another discussion), but the mormon church has done a better job than most at rewriting its history, especially the life story of joseph smith, the church's founder. what amazes me is that high-ranking members of the mormon church have been accused of sexual abuse for years and years, but it barely makes a dent in the news. why? because the mormon church does not have the money that everyone thinks the catholic church has. the lawyers (bloodsuckers all) only go after the money; justice and restitution is a secondary issue.

it seems that joe lieberman, the snoreman who served as algore's running mate in 2000, is covering up for clinton treasury secretary robert rubin in this whole citigroup debacle. wait....a democrat not interested in the truth or serving the public good? shocking! i thought we had heard the last of this crap when that inbred coward from arkansas left the white house, but then i remembered that the dems still control the senate, so the games go on. what a joke.


speaking of criminals in the white house, lyndon johnson started his 'war on poverty' today in 1964. this led to a huge increase in spending on social programs in order to ensure that the dems would have a guaranteed voting block for the rest of time.

the following is a little list i came up with on Sept. 5, 2001. i have clarified some of the points since then, and i like to break it out and inflict it on the public every now and again.



Creed of an American Conservative



1. I am proud to be an American. The United States is the greatest nation the world has ever known. We have not only created a model for other nations to follow, but we have fought, many times, to ensure that the people of those other nations could know freedom. If you believe that European socialism is somehow more advanced or more "fair" than the Great American Experiment, you have a right to say so, but please move to Europe because we are sick of your whining.



2. I am proud of our history. I know that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves; I am not nominating them for sainthood. They were men of their age and had character flaws like all great Americans. What made them and others like them great were their ideas and their willingness to see those ideas to fulfillment at the risk of their lives and reputations. Writing them out of our children's history books in the hopes of diminishing their importance will not dim them in the eyes of those of us who know the truth. We are the nation we are today because of the decisions taken by those who came before us. Overall, they did a damn fine job.



3. I like guns. I am not a hunter or a marksman. I do not have a shotgun rack hanging in the rear window of my pickup. I like guns because they are a physical manifestation of our freedom. Like it or not, many people throughout the world owe their freedom to Americans with guns who knew how to use them. If you don't like guns, don't own one. Just be glad that you could if you wanted to.



4. There are no hyphenated Americans. If you are living here now, your forefathers came here from somewhere else. It doesn't matter how they got here: land bridge, sailing vessel, slave trader, steamer, plane or wading through a river. What does matter is that we are all here now and we are one nation, indivisible. If your parents or grandparents were treated badly, join the club: we were all discriminated against. You have two choices: move forward and embrace the opportunities laid out before you or hold your hand out for something you don't deserve.



5. America is not an economic superpower because of big government. High taxes and increases in social spending did nothing to make this country what it is. Prosperity did not come from Washington. American is economically strong because of the millions of tough, hard-working men and women who are out there every day greasing the wheels our economy. Government is almost always a hindrance to economic strength and stability.



6. My taxes are too high. I don't mind helping to pay for defense, highway programs and education. But don't tell me that I have an obligation to help foreign nations who never have a kind word for us or artists who aren't talented enough to make it on their own. I work too hard to be giving away as much as I am. Once again, if you think you have an obligation to pay "your fair share", please move to Europe, where confiscatory tax rates are the norm.



7. You do not have the right to be safe at the expense of my freedoms. If you need a law to tell you to wear a seatbelt, you shouldn't be riding in a car. If you don't want to wear a helmet when you ride your motorcycle, that should be none of my business. Do I think it's foolish? You bet. But it's your life and you may do as you please with it. And don't tell me that safety laws are "for the children". Parents are supposed to be responsible for their children's safety, not federal and state governments.



8. All nations are NOT equal. We do not have an obligation to make ourselves weaker economically or militarily because other nations feel inadequate. As stated above, we have set a path for the rest of the world to follow. We should not be punished, economically or militarily, for being successful. We defended the free world during the cold war and they should be damn glad that we were here to do it.



9. California (and especially Hollywood) is in no way representational of the rest of the nation. It is not a microcosm of our nation or an indicator of the way things should be. It is an aberration and should be treated as such. After all, should anyone take seriously a state which elected Gray Davis to the governor’s mansion?

finally had a phone conversation tonight with j.g., one of my roommates in nuclear power school. he is the same j.g. i remember: enthusiastic about life, friendly and deeply in love with his wife. he sent me a photo that he took on the day we graduated. for some reason, it has filled me with more sadness than i have felt in a long, long time.

the picture is of seven of us, including j.g. and myself, standing outside our barracks building. we are in our dress white uniforms, the sun is shining, and we are all laughing. i had turned twenty the week before and i could do no wrong. we had just graduated from the most difficult school in the military and were on our way to prototype training for some hands-on experience with a real reactor. the gulf war had ended three months before and the captain who gave our commencement address told us that the opening shots of the war had been fired from two submarines (one of them was, ironically, the uss louisville, a los angeles-class attack submarine) carrying cruise missles. i was among the best and brightest, serving in the greatest navy mankind had ever produced.

in six months, the bubble would burst. i flunked out of prototype training and spent the rest of my time in the navy doing degrading, demoralizing work. what i thought would be six years of service was only three. i left the navy feeling nothing but disdain and anger, mainly directed at myself for not making more of my opportunity. but when i look at myself on that bright day in orlando, i realize that i knew none of that. i was happy and proud and relieved and loving life in the navy. i was still innocent because i had never truly known failure in my life. i have never wanted to relive a day more.

bloomberg new story about tom ridge opening up the debate on whether our military would be used inside the u.s. in the event of an imminent terrorist attack. for the record this is TALK. but watch the news in the morning---every nutcase in and out of the beltway with a bad opinion of g.w. is going to be apoplectic, as if an armored division is moving down the street, shooting grandmothers.

i have been reading ann coulter's latest book, slander. very, very interesting reading. more on this later.

ny times article about civilian deaths in afghanistan due to the air campaign there. in the future, in order to keep everyone happy, all our wars will be fought with slingshots. afghanistan is quickly becoming another quagmire that is going to start killing young americans in large numbers. time to clean up and leave.

i was listening to whad'ya know? on npr (yes, i do listen to npr) and michael feldmen interviewed the guy who is in charge of groundskeeping at monticello, thomas jefferson's home in virginia. he was talking about a type of apple that jefferson used to grow that fell out of favor and all but disappeared. after years of inquiries, the staff at monticello found a man in rural virginia who claimed to still grow the same kind of apples. unfortunately, jefferson never described how the apple looked, so we will never know if the type now grown at monticello is really the same.

in jefferson's time, this type of apple (i don't remember the name) was so common that he probably never imagined anyone would need a physical description of it. this has me thinking: what will seem unusual two hundred years from now? photograpy, of course, will provide future generations with pictures of our lifestyles. there will be examples of cell phones, computers, vinyl records, autos, etc. in the museums. our art will survive (at least the visual arts---no one knows about the long-term survivability of digital media). but will polar icecaps seem weird? it is undeniable that the world is getting warmer; we can argue about causes some other time. will cultures homogenize? will the idea of things like southern cooking or latino music seem strange? will the concept of national identity still exist? here's my theory on that one: if, in the next two centuries, we find life on other planets (and i think we will), humans will begin to lose their sense of country and begin to see themselves and citizens of earth. you can argue whether or not this is a good thing (i have reservations because a one-world gov't could easily leave power in the hands of a corrupt few), but i believe it would be inevitable if we found e.t.'s home. well, enough weird thought for today.

an article in popluar science showcases a vw that gets 235 miles to the gallon. that's great if you can get over the fact that it looks like a shoe.

the ny daily news has an article about hillary clinton shouting down russ feingold in a meeting about campaign finance reform. what did you expect? i guess she was upset that no one from china was there writing six-figure checks. algore was in the corner sipping iced tea and looking for a bathroom.

neil armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon today in 1969. the last trip to the moon took place in 1972.

also today, in 1944, adolf hitler escaped a plot by some members of the german army to assasinate him. in the ensuing storm of arrests, phony trials and mock suicides, hitler loyalists killed nearly 5000 people believed to be involved with the plot. many of them were hung from piano wire and meat hooks. it always amazed me that a society which brought the world so much in the way of science, art and literature could also bring so much brutality.

kell and i went to dinner tonight with my brother- and sister-in-law. happy b-day, bro. 25 was the high point. from here on out, most of us just sit around and wait for death. enjoyed you and e’s company, as always.

most nights at work, i listen to the art bell show. the show is very weird, which is what attracts me to it. however, once a week or so, he will have some new-age junkie as a guest talking about our coming enlightenment as related to the mayan calendar (which ends in 2012....oooooohhhhhh). it those nights that i tune to our local sports talk station, which is a fox sports affiliate. i know nothing about any sports other than football and auto racing, so the noise coming out of my radio mostly serves as a mantra to work by. every four hours or so, another host takes over, but the mantra remains the same:

‘blah blah blah baseball strike blah blah blah allstar game blah blah blah alan iverson blah blah blah skirt chaser blah blah blah’---you get the idea.

tonight, the host (who calls himself ‘the brick’—go figure) was hosting the show from a celebrity golf tournament somewhere out west. he caught my attention when he introduced the captain of the 1980 american olympic hockey team and conducted a short interview. the guy is middle-aged now, but i remember him as a shaggy-haired college kid who threw his stick out into the crowd when they beat the soviet team.

some of you reading this do not remember the 1980 winter olympics. they were held in lake placid, new york, so most of the events were shown live in the u.s. at that time, the soviet hockey team was the best in the world, bar none. they were professionals in that their job was to play hockey. on paper, they were all soviet army officers, which made them appear, to me at least, all the more sinister. as you know, the u.s. team beat them (just barely), and went on to face and beat the finnish team to win the gold.

these days, we expect gold from our olympians; then, it was a much bigger deal because we did not send professional athletes. what made our hockey teams’ victory over the soviets all the more memorable was what else was going on the in world at the time: there were 52 americans being held hostage in iran, unemployment was nearly ten percent and the legacies of watergate and vietnam were still fresh in the national psyche. beating the soviet team was a huge sign that we were still good, still relevant and that better days were ahead.

or so it seemed to me at the time. i was nine in 1980 and just beginning to understand the world in which i lived. the home i grew up in was not one where football and baseball games were watched on tv while we scarfed down dinner on trays; instead, politics, current events and religion were discussed during dinner, which we ate sitting at a table at the same time every night. thus, i understood the precepts of communism long before i wore a football helmet or saw a hockey game. i possessed a world-view free of gray areas---we were the good guys, an example that should be emulated throughout the world. that belief had seen my parents through one world war and two ‘police actions’, so it was certainly good enough for me.

we now live in a world full of cynicism about our society (and, in particular, our gov’t.), and it is not without some merit. only a fool would place full faith and trust in our government; this century is replete with examples of abuses of power by our elected officials. i fall prey to cynicism often in my writings. however, the internet has given rise to the cynic as authority and publisher of Great Ideas. anyone with a computer and modem can unleash his ideas on the world; in many ways, this is the best thing to come about since the invention of the printing press in the 15th century. but, i believe, it contributes to the cult of the Great Thinker of Big Thoughts who, in reality, contributes nothing but opposition. it is easy to sit outside the ring and hurl stones at the boxers---it is another thing to fight in the realm of opposing ideas and risk exposing your thinking as half-baked or unworkable. it bothers me a great deal that many who criticize for fun and/or profit have never contributed to anything larger than their own advancement. the wonderful thing about our nation is that they have every right to do so. but they have never worn a uniform for their nation, heard a shot fired in anger, helped to immunize a village, built a bridge, worked in a soup kitchen or invented a better mousetrap. their voices, to quote t.s. eliot, are quiet and meaningless.

and so, for myself, i must do a better job of fostering ideas instead of debunking poor ones, for a good idea will stand on its own and overshadow it’s competitors. we are a nation of ideas, or at least we used to be. i pray we never become a nation made up of the cynical and the intellectually bankrupt.

spain ceded florida to the united states today in 1821. is it too late to give it back?

editorial on worldnetdaily about the feds' new TIPS program. i knew that our lives were going to change as a result of sept. 11, but this is going way too far. the fact is, a free society is going to have to face attack because of its freedom. the only way we would be safe from terrorism is to live in an orwellian world where our neighbors spy on us and we spy on them and the man is constantly looking over our shoulders. then the terrorists have won. we would do well to learn from the israelis, who are defiant in the face of constant threats, instead of crying about safety. get used to the fact that we no longer live in a cocoon of safety and that the world is full of dark and terrible things. but then, i guess as long as you have your suv and the kids have nikes, your freedom is a secondary issue.

dlp has a great link to a review at ars technia about the new honda civic hybrid. i have always had a soft place in my heart from civics (i've owned two of them), and this one is cool as hell. if we are ever going to end our dependence on foreign oil, anwr (regardless of how you feel about it) is not going to be enough; technology like this is going to have to become mainstream. i believe that hybrid vehicles are a stroke of genius.

the recent death of john entwistle has had me thinking a lot about the who. it’s kind of a weird topic for me to ponder, but much of my life has been touched by their music. my brother ken, who is seven years older than me, was an enormous fan and saw them during their world tour in ’82. he had a concert poster on the wall of his bedroom for years---it had the faces of the band members and the background was the union jack. of course, everyone remembers the tragedy that occurred in cincinnati in ’79 when several people were trampled to death before one of their concerts. i was eight at the time, but it was huge news here in louisville (we are only ninety miles or so from cincy) and there was an episode of ‘wkrp in cincinnati’ that focused on the event (i know that’s shallow, but i was eight and my world was television---it was the 70’s, for god’s sake).

but several years later (1985), roger daltrey released a solo album ‘under a raging moon’. the album’s title track got some airplay that summer/early fall, and i fell in love with it. it was one of my ‘summer songs’ on the river, and i taped it so i could hear it over and over again. what i didn’t know at the time, and wouldn’t know for some years, was that the song was about keith moon, the who’s drummer who had died in 1978. for me, it was full of angst and excitement and appealed to my fantasy life as hero-in-the-making.

the song crossed my mind last week for the first time in nearly a decade. i found a copy and listened to it for the first time again. it’s full of pain and regret, as if daltrey was blaming himself for not seeing that moon’s problems were killing him (he died of an overdose of a prescribed medication). suddenly, the song took on a completely different meaning as i looked at it through the eyes of someone who has lost friends and seen addiction first-hand. i know that sounds corny, but i’ve never had an epiphany like this brought on by music.


In the searchlights

You could see us as you circled round

Down below us you were screaming

I could hear the sound

I could see your arms reaching up to me

Like a demon, I could feel the madness

Running through the crowd

We were freedom

From the moment that we hit the ground

And the wild man, he laid the thunder down
.

Do you remember me, like I remember you

In a sea of hands you came shining through

In the mist of time I can see it now

All my life I will remember this (under a raging moon)

For this moment I was born for it (under a raging moon)

Under a raging moon, we were flying there

Under a raging moon, we saw Zion there

It ended all too soon, under a raging moon


We were out there

When they handed us the rebel's crown

All the headlines

All they tried to do was tear us down

But the wild man, he didn't fool around


Do you remember me, cause I remember you

Yeah you won my love, when the dream came true

When my blood ran high, I can hear it now

All my life I will remember it (under a raging moon)

For this moment I was born for it (under a raging moon)

Under a raging moon, we were flying boy

Under a raging moon, it's worth dying for

It ended all too soon, under a raging moon


Taking me back to better times

We never read the danger signs

Why are the young, why are the young so blind?

sorry no posting last night or sooner today, but i had to replace the hard drive on the home monster machine. the drive had been a 60gb ibm unit, which was very nice when i bought it. however, that paticular family of drives (gxp, i think) has an over-time failure rate that is way too high to be using without daily backups. i figured it would be cheaper in the long run to replace it, so i bought an 80gb maxtor. i like having the space and the faster transfer rate, but the drive is significantly louder than the ibm. i guess the boys in blue still do some things right.

jan michael vincent was born today in 1944. i only mention this because he starred in my favorite tv show of the mid-80's, airwolf. vincent played a vietnam vet helicopter pilot who had lost his brother, also in the army, during a mission. somehow, (i missed the first episode) he gets hired by the cia to steal this helicopter from the libyans, who had stolen it from the u.s. (i would be curious to know how they pulled of that little trick). vincent's character is successful, but, instead of returning the chopper, he hides it in the desert, holding it until the cia agrees to find his brother. some guy in a white suit from the cia agrees to look for his brother if vincent will agree to fly missions in the airwolf for the cia. he agrees, ernest borgnine shows up as the mechanic, and hilarity ensued. i only watched the first two seasons of the show, and then high school started, girls showed up, beer was discovered and....well, you get the picture. the show went on for an incredible four seasons, but i haven't seen an episode in about 15 years. if anyone knows if it's on anywhere, please let me know.

i received an e-mail today from risa, a girl i went to grade school with at sacred heart of jesus (could he have any other kind?) here in jeffersonville. she actually e-mailed the radio show because she saw my picture on the web site. she's married now, and i heard from s.s. that she's a devout christian. i don't know if this translates into a herd of children or not, but i guess i'll know more later.


when i was in sixth grade, i had an enormous crush on risa. she was blond and cute and very sexy to my puberty-rocked mind. she, having standards somewhere in the stratosphere, never really gave me the time of day. she was very nice about it; she just drew a line and i had to stay on the other side of it. she moved away before we graduated from eighth grade and, at the time, i was a little happy to see her go. it's hard to sit in class with someone you have poured your heart out to only to have your hopes dashed. this wasn't the last time this would happen to me, but it remains very clear in my heart. she did me a favor by showing me that the world does not always approve of my feelings or desires and that i need to be careful to whom i show them. it's one lesson i have never really taken to heart. i wear my emotions on my sleeve. i cry at movies and weddings (i barely got through my vows at our wedding) and i become less and less ashamed about it as time goes by. the tough guy who never sheds a tear is a sham---he is lying to himself and denying those he loves the chance to see him at his best. throughout history, the truly 'tough' men have not been afraid to show emotion. general patton used to cry during briefings when he thought of the heroism displayed by the men who served under him. when the third army, the one he commanded, liberated one of the concentration camps in germany at the end of the war, he only visited once because he could not contain himself from blubbering at the sight of the brutality. so at least i'm in good company.


i am thinking about putting a counter on this page, but i don't know whether i should or not. part of me is curious at to how many of you are reading this nonsense, but another part of me doesn't want to be disappointed. furthermore, if i found out that, say, 100 people a day were reading this, i might be more likely to pull my punches and i don't want to go down that road. anyway, if you read it and enjoy it (or you think i'm full of sh*t), drop me a line and let me know.


the live aid concert happened yesterday in 1985. for those of you old enough to remember, it seemed like a defining moment of the eighties. it was the summer after eighth grade for me and i was working on the river, so i had to listen to the whole thing on the radio. my wife, 80's diva that she is, got up early, early that morning to catch the beginning of the british show. trivia question: who played both sides of the ocean that day?

interesting piece from san diego about a fella who drove his car into the motel pool. it includes a slideshow.

if you read my post from last night, you will see where i talked about joe elliot's show on which he interviewed a woman about having affairs and being discrete about it. joe, who has been married for twelve years, said something to the effect of 'i'm one of those REALLY married guys'. at first i thought, 'hey pal, alot of us are REALLY married'. but then i got to thinking, i'm REALLY married, too. what, you ask, do i mean by this? just this: i'm comfortable being married, and i'm comfortable with the woman i married. there is no doubt it was the right thing for us to do. i never have those lingering doubts about what would have been or how my life would be different if kelli and i were not together. it sounds corny, but we match very well. i guess that's what joe meant. it's a very good place to be.

joe elliot has a female guest on who wrote a book about why having an affair can be so beneficial to your marriage. i am going to write a book explaining how oral sex makes you smarter.

today in 1957, the surgeon general first hinted that there may be a link between cigarette smoking and cancer. this seems incredible now, but it shows how little was (and still is) understood about cancer in general. my dad told me that, when he was in the navy off the coast of korea, they would occasionally pick up marines that had been holding a little island surrounded by north korea. he said that, as the marines filed aboard, they were handed cigarettes. no one asked 'do you smoke?' because EVERYONE smoked. you know, smoke 'em if you got 'em.

today in 1933, the first federal minimum wage was established. it was 40 cents an hour. wow, i've got that beat by 10 cents. livin' large, i tell ya.
news that gorbachev thinks g.w. bush and tony blair are a threat to world peace. isn't it time the world (and especially the british press) realized that he's an old communist and no longer relavant? he is no great reformer; he changed the hardliners' thinking in the soviet union because he had no choice. we could outspend them in any endeavour we chose to pursue and they were financially and morally bankrupt. sort of like worldcom.

civilization is now coming to an end

there's a very, very sick story on ernie's house of whoopass about some sick bastard in fort worth who set a dog on fire because the animal was cutting through his yard. thankfully, the guy is now in a world of trouble with the law. i have a better idea of what i would've done if i had witnessed this, but i'd better leave it alone.

there’s an article on shift.com talking about how so much of our history is stored on virtually disposable hard drives. the writer has a point: what will open a ms word document fifty years from now? i remember reading some time ago that nasa could no longer pull up the design blueprints for the saturn 5 rockets because the programming language used to create the applications hasn’t been in common use since the early 70’s. of course, with enough money and time, anything can be broken down to basic machine language and then recompiled. however, as the shift article points out, we will not always store things in binary code. will this century look like a dark age in five hundred years?

today in 1959, the johnny horton song ‘the battle of new orleans’ topped the charts. he later went on to record the song ‘sink the bismark’. it blows my mind that there was a time when songs about historical events got airplay. there have been recent examples likes ‘mrs. sullivan’ by caroline spine (about the sullivan brothers of world war two fame), but they are few and far between. i guess the kiddies don’t know about the battle of new orleans and they could give a sh-t about about the bismark.

i’ve been in a serious music rut lately. if any of you have any suggestions, please pass them along. i’ll listen to anything once; surprise me.

Suggestions for ex-navy people who miss "the good old days." (from navy chief petty office dave robertson, who got it from someone in the new zealand navy).
1. Sleep on the shelf in your closet.
2. Replace the closet door with a curtain.
3. Six hours after you go to sleep, have your wife whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes, and mumble "Sorry, wrong rack" or "Your watch!"
4. Renovate your bathroom. Build a wall across the middle of your bathtub and move the shower head down to chest level.
5. When you take showers, make sure you shut off the water while soaping.
6. Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and rock as hard as you can until you're nauseous.
7. Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it to "high".
8. Don't watch TV, except movies in the middle of the night. Also, have your family vote on which movie to watch, then show a different one.
9. (Mandatory for all ex-engineering types) Leave lawnmower running in your living room 2 hours a day for proper noise level.
10. Have the paperboy give you a haircut.
11. Once a week, blow compressed air up through your chimney, making sure the wind carries the soot across onto your neighbour's house. Laugh at him when he curses you.
12. Buy a trash compactor and only use it once a week. Store up garbage in the other side of your bathtub.
13. Wake up at midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on stale bread. (Optional: cold canned ravioli or soup.)
14. Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your food cabinets or refrigerator.
15. Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night.
When it goes off, jump out of bed and get dressed as fast as you can, then run out into your yard and break out the garden hose.
16. Once a month, take a very major appliance completely apart and then put it back together again.
17. Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for 5 or 6 hours before drinking.
18. Invite at least 285 people you don't really like to come and visit for a couple of months.
19. Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books.
20. Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of your front and back doors so that you either trip over the threshold or hit your head on the sill every time you pass through one of them.
21. Lockwire the lugnuts on your car.
22. When making cakes, prop up one side of the pan while it is baking.
Then spread icing really thick on one side to level off the top.
23. Every so often, throw your cat into the swimming pool, shout, "Man Overboard, ship recovery!", run into the kitchen and sweep all the pots/pans/dishes off of the counter onto the floor, then yell at your wife for not having the place "stowed for sea."
24. Put on the headphones from your stereo (don't plug them in). Go and stand in front of your stove. Say (to nobody in particular), "Stove manned and ready.' Stand there for at least 3 or 4 hours. Say (again to no one in particular) "Stove Secured". Roll up the headphones/cord and put them away.
For the Old Officer Of The Watch on the ridge.
25. Invite your grumpy old father (the captain in his chair) to sit in the lounge chair, while you put on the stereo headphones, tie a brick around you neck, stand at the window, and report to your old man every passing motor vehicle. For the submariners:
Do all of above with the lights out (except a red torch with flat batteries), heating on full bore, no shower for a week and a blocked toilet for the past 22 hours - oh and invite 67 strangers to share your (now dark)
lounge room.

i hesitate to tell this story out of my strong, strong fear of embarassment; however, after having s.s. tell me that a blog will save me thousands in therapy bills, i feel as if i have no choice. it doesn't hurt that it's pretty damn funny, too.

as some of you know, my 'ride', as it were, is a nissan pickup truck. please bear this fact in mind as i tell my tale. i was driving to work last night about 10:30pm, when, up in front of me on the gene snyder freeway, traffic was snarled badly. this is very unusual for that location at that time of night, so i knew it had to be a wreck of some type. a few seconds later, members of jefferson county's finest roared past me, confirming my suspicions. by this time, i had passed the last exit before the entanglement, so i had no choice but to come to a halt with the rest of the traffic. i set the parking brake, turned on 'loveline' (with dr. drew and adam carolla), and waited.

ten minutes turned to twenty and then to thirty. my mind wandered back to earlier in the evening when my wife and i had shared some conversation while i drank a giant mug of coffee, the stuff of all third-shift worker bees. it didn't take long for me to begin to ponder my bladder as it cried for immediate attention. i kept waiting for the traffice to move, but, as i found out later, three people had died less than one hundred yards in front of me, requiring an investigation and extensive cleanup. no luck on the move. to add insult, a heavy rain began to fall. the defroster on the truck has no effect at all, so i had to roll down both windows, introducing water to both me and the inside of the doors.

my urgency reached a fever pitch about twenty minutes later, almost an hour after i first stopped. i looked to my right, where there was a small line of trees hiding a neighborhood. i couldn't go there without exposing myself to someone watching jay or dave in their living room. to my left was the louisville ford truck assembly plant, lit up like a jailbreak. no luck there, either. i was about to risk arrest for public indency when i remembered the two empty, plastic oil containers behind the seat. i jumped out of the truck (getting even wetter in the process), and grabbed a quart bottle. relief was at hand.

it was not until this magic moment i realized a problem of logistics. there is no way to put this delicately, so i will suffice by saying that some biological parts were a little too large for some plastic openings. i have no idea if this is normal or not; i never wanted to know where i stood on such matters. it was then i realized that i would just have to aim and hope for the best. i took my best guess and opened the floodgates.

the world was golden for about ten seconds. it was then that the shudder hit. those of you who are male know that of which i speak: that little involuntary shake we all get while taking care of nature's call. it was just enough of a shake for a serious misalignment to occur, causing me to experience a feeling not felt since childhood: i peed on myself.

laugh if you must, but know that i had the presence of mind to realign everything in mere seconds. but the damage had been done. i was late for work, wet from rain, and even wetter from my own foolishness. thank god i work alone.

an excellent article in national review online by larry kudlow concerning corporate corruption. it’s refreshingly free of name-calling, assumptions, cynicism, snide insinuations about wealth coming from thievery and the other crap that we have to endure from the left anytime the flaws of capitalism come to the fore.

i forgot to mention my paintball experience on saturday. i went with d.d., one of the guys from the radio show. he is former army and really knows his stuff. i haven’t played since my dallas days, so i was pretty rusty. i had to rent my equipment, which is not a great thing, but the field had some pretty decent tippman stuff. the first three games were marred by gun problems, but a new gun and some lunch put me back in the groove. during the last game, d.d. and i worked together with me spotting for him from 6-7 yards behind his position in a ditch. we found that we make a pretty good team. i will definitely play again, but i need to invest in some equipment if it’s going to become a regular occurrence



as i mentioned earlier, there are people hot and heavy on g.w. bush about some stock sale that took place before he became governor. i have been thinking about this alot lately, but it’s becoming more and more in focus as time goes on: the left has no issues, so they must attack the man himself. if you read the columnists from the n.y. or l.a. times or even our own courier-journal, most of the claims against bush fall into two categories: he is stupid or he has only known privilege.


let me preface what i am about to say be reviewing what i have said here before: i am NOT a knee-jerk conservative. g.w. would not necessarily have been my choice to run in 2000, but i like him much more now than i did during the primaries. he is doing almost all of what he said he would do during the campaign; understandably, he has much more on his plate now than he planned for. but, overall, i believe he’s doing better than most could given the circumstances.


the issue of stupidity is not about intelligence at all---it’s about eloquence. g.w. is not an eloquent speaker. like his father before him, he stumbles over words and often bumbles answers. the truth is, we have come to expect our political leaders to be smooth, polished actors who are witty, prescient and always ready with a nice sound bite for the nightly news. anyone without these qualities is automatically out to lunch in the minds of the d.c. press corps, the eastern establishment and the hollywood elite. thus, no matter what he does and no matter how many times he takes ted kennedy to lunch, he will be considered a buffoon by those whose opinions somehow matter.


there is a good line from the movie ‘quiz show’ that kind of sums up my thinking on the issue of intelligence in american politics. charles van doren, the main character of the story, is called before congress to testify about the possibility that the quiz show he had been winning on was rigged. he visits his father for advice and his father laughs and says, “don’t worry about it. it’s not like it’s jefferson and lincoln and up there anymore.” when we look back at presidents whose accomplishments we can really touch without revisionism, there are only a handful who had real vision and genius. in the twentieth century, only theodore roosevelt and woodrow wilson could be considered brilliant. the rest in the last century were either great politicians (clinton, f.d.r., johnson,), excellent “people persons” (carter, reagan, kennedy), heroes from the past (eisenhower) or were simply the “next in line” for the nomination from their party (truman, ford). this doesn’t make any of them bad leaders or bad men; they just were not genuises. a very smart man will know his weaknesses and surround himself with great thinkers. bush has done this in spades: cheney, powell, rice and rumsfeld just to name a few.


the second charge thrown at the bush the man is that he grew up with and into wealth. is there anything new here? how many wealthy people serve in congress or in the state capitols? this is nothing but an attempt at the promotion of class warfare and i reject it out of hand.


there is this perception that, somehow, tom daschle and dick gephardt “care more” about the people of this nation than do anyone considered conservative. they hide behind a “progressive” label, afraid to even show their true stripes for fear of rejection from the voting public. “liberal” had become a dirty word with americans, and with good reason: that ideaology has no real answers except to raise taxes and stifle meaningful progress. thus, they must resort to name-calling and polarization.

bigamy in indiana? shocking.


so i had to dump my built-in nic (network interface card, for those of you who care) and go back to my old 3com card. everything is wonderful now and the new motherboard is nice, but i would like to have everything work for my money. just a thought.


speaking of getting screwed, the washington post is trying to make g.w. look like bill 'is what is is' clinton over some oil stock sale from ten years ago. does anyone remember how the democrats got all worked up because someone asked some questions about whitewater? where are they now? they love a good witch hunt as much as anyone and they can't stand the prez's high approval numbers. i don't agree with w on everything (especially the death penalty and that wasteful education bill), but he's a better choice than our pathological liar former vice-president algore.

putting new motherboard in pc...built-in nic really, really, sucks. more later.

from the people who brought you the bataan death march

ted williams died this past week. not being a baseball fan, i didn't know much about him until i started reading the summaries of his life. he was one of those larger than life people of whom only a handful exist in each generation. he flew as a fighter pilot in both world war two and korea. he was john glenn's wingman in korea and once landed a plane on fire with one working landing gear wheel at 225mph. serious coordination at work there. i heard an interesting quote about him, but i don't know who said it originally: 'ted williams was what john wayne wanted everyone to think he was'.


someone else died this week, but it didn't get much coverage. benjamin o. davis, jr., as a colonel in the army air force during world war two, led the tuskegee airmen, the first black pilots in american history. these guys had an incredible war record but only recently received the credit they are due. davis went on to become a three-star general in the air force and retired in 1970. president clinton made him a four-star general in the 1990's. if you ever get a chance, grab a copy of stephen ambrose's book 'wild blue', which is mainly about george mcgovern's experiences flying b-24s from italy during the war. one of the chapters talks about how one of the tuckegee airmen saved his flight of bombers by ferreting out a captured bomber, flown by germans, trying to masquerade as part of the flight. very observant guys.

so i have had several e-mail conversations with j.s., my short-time roommate from the navy. i am very glad to hear that he is doing well and living in columbia, s.c. he was one of the first people i knew who owned a pc for pleasure. he was also one of the few people from the navy who crossed my mind from time to time over the years. it is amazing how we remember events and people so differently. it makes one realize that we are all looking out our own window on the world, and that each window has a different view and different blind spots.


for some reason, blogger has not posted my friday afternoon stuff, so i will be posting this at the same time that stuff shows up....two days for the price of one!


one of the biggest coups in soviet propaganda history occured today in 1983. cute little samantha smith, an 11-year-old american school girl, wrote yuri andropov a letter asking him if he wanted 'peace with america'. andropov (a former kgb operative) answered her personally, saying that he did, indeed, want peace and invited her to come see his people's paradise to see for herself. what followed was a two-week tour of the soviet union. smith did get to speak to some 'average' citizens, who told her about the food shortages they had to endure. the rest of the tour was carefully guided and staged, but smith came away believing that she would rather 'live in my own country'. i, being 12 at the time, wanted to write andropov my own letter, but i wanted to talk about how the soviets were helping to kill little afghan children with explosive toys they dropped at night by helicopter. my father felt pretty sure that i would not receive a reply, so i gave up on it.

reuters news service is reporting of a highly secret plan for an invasion of iraq. first of all, how secret could it be if i'm reading about it on the drudge report? second, why don't we just go ahead and announce a date for the invasion? i like april 1st because the weather is almost always nice and everyone will think it's an april fools day thing.


wait: i have a better idea. why don't we just whack everyone who looks like saddam in iraq? there couldn't be more than 500 or so of those guys. i mean, where is he going to run to, france? he's one of those guys who has NO friends...even other arabs don't like him, with the possible exception of the families of some of the homicide bombers in palestine. i know there's a whole 'we don't assassinate people' cult of ideology out there, but who are we trying to kid? we whack people all the time. save the marines for some other third-world armpit.

i just found an old roommate from the navy. i fired off an e-mail to him before i looked at the photos section of his site. it is, without a doubt, him. this should be interesting. this made me think about how much in my life has changed since 1991-92, and then i realized that not much has changed at all: i live in the same town, i'm with the same girl, i still own a cat, i still fight my body fat every day and my vision still sucks.

i slept through the fireworks. can you believe that? third shift is killing me.

today is the 226th anniversary of the declaration of independence. those of you who grew up in the united states know the whole story, so i won't bore you by re-hashing it. i will however, tell you about an amazing coincidence that occurred fifty years after 1776.


as most of you know, the declaration was mainly written by thomas jefferson. his friend, john adams, left for france soon after july 4th to act as a diplomat for the struggling colonies. meanwhile, jefferson went back to virginia and became governor during the worst days of the revolution. after the war, adams served as washington's vice-president while jefferson served as secretary of state. after washington's two terms, adams and jefferson ran against each other. adams won and, by the tradtion of the day, jefferson became his vice-president. jefferson then went on to become president, often writing to his friend adams for advice.


on july 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the declaration, both men were on the verge of death. john adams' last words were 'thomas jefferson survives'. unbeknownest to him, jefferson had died several hours before. wow.

dlp has a nice link to the boombox museum on his blog. if you were alive in the mid-eighties, you saw the golden age of the ghetto blaster. it was one of those weird cultural things that seems a little odd now, but people used to walk around with these huge stereos on their shoulders. they were everywhere and crossed all societal boundries because you could get a cheap one (like mine) and be part of the fun.


amelia earhart disappeared over the pacific today in 1937. she has, posthumously, spurred many strange theories as to why/where/how. i read an interesting theory once that the japanese captured her and held her until her death. why they would do this was never explained. i guess the idea that she and her co-pilot may have gotten lost and crashed into the ocean or an uninhabited island is just too boring for some.


elvis presley recorded "hound dog" today in 1956. when the song was released, it became an immediate and huge hit. at that time, my grandfather, father and two uncles owned a gas station/dock/restraunt on the ohio river. they had an outdoor speaker hooked up to a local radio station that played all day while people tied up to buy gas, ice, etc. my grandfather, in his late 50's at the time, believed rock 'n roll was a very bad passing fad. one day, in the middle of a crowd of customers, he yelled loudly, "if they play that damn hound dog song again, that g-ddamned speaker's goin' in the river!" elvis died in 1977 at 42; grandpa made it to 95, still not fully understanding the impact of rock on our culture.


quote of the day: "start every day with a smile and get it over with" -w.c. fields

today is canadian independence day. they are the world leaders in being north of the united states.


july 1st seems to be a good day to start major offensives in wartime. during the civil war, the battle of gettysburg started. during world war one, the battle of the somme started. during world war two, the battle of el alamein began. the battle of the somme is probably the worst example of piss-poor leadership in the history of warfare. the british kept throwing young men into the battle even though they knew the gains would be minimal. four months later, 600,000 british and 650,000 germans had died. a whole generation of young men. for germany, it was the beginning of the end of their war effort, which is how the british later justified their actions.

what big guns, i mean gun you have.