Further Reflections

Well I can look forward to telling people they were asses. That should get me by for a while.
I think the odd thing is that we all, except for Mrs. Bebout, and maybe Aliasgrace get all corned, or have gotten all corned a lot.
What does this say about us? Perhaps we should study other social groups and their drinking habits to determine is we are too drunk or not.

I think drinking as self medication id done a lot. If it done on purpose is another question. Perhaps if you are drinking to ease your pains and you know that is why you are drinking, perhaps help should be sought.
I have mostly been of the opinion that I am alright. In fact I am fond of myself and think I have a keen grasp on things. I have drank after a stressful day, oh yes I have. But I am one to drink for the fun of it.
I think, and this may be an excuse, I am guzzler. I do sip anything. I will wait for coffee to cool down so I can gulp it back and move on to another cup. I do the same with food. I throw it back as soon as it hits the plate and don't stop until the plate is empty.
Perhaps I have issue with portion control and ingestion rate. I mean I am older now and am no longer unaffected by the after effects of a bender. To the point that I don't care for it at all.
This is quite an adventure I have started on. I hope it turns out well.
I think the hardest part of questioning my relationship with booze is that the alternative to drinking too much is not drinking at all, or least the AA says so. I don't think I want to not have a drink. I don't know how that works. It sounds horrible not to have drink at all ever.
Can't I learn moderation? Am I incapable of self control? I think the idea of saying I will never drink again and knowing that I would makes me not want to try not to. I don't want the stress of failing. If I never try not to, then I can't fail. It worked for smoking. I loved to smoke. I LOVED IT> But I hated hacking up lung burgers and all sorts of things enough so the I tried to not have a smoke, with the idea that if I really wanted one, I would have one. It has now been over 5 years without a puff.
But for me that has been easy. I still have thoughts and cravings, but nothing too severe. Smoking was a personal thing. I smoked alone. I smoked for myself and quit for myself.
I am still evolved with my social group without smoking. But how can you do this and not drink? Why would you want to? Is the alternative to moderation hanging out with the door-to-door Christians? I mean the culture of drinking is my culture. How can be me and not want to drink Guinness on St. Pat's? What fun is tailgating without cheap canned beer? How can I interact at work functions without vodka on the rocks?
So maybe the answer is I need to get shit in order and find a balance.

Applied to Rejection

I have been what some might call a drinker for more than half my life. I have been good and drunk countless times. For years and years, I would not attempt to drive drunk. And in recent years I have always felt guilty of doing it.
I have heard people say not to drive drunk. I could not figure out how to get drunk somewhere and make it home. It never occurred to me not to get drunk.
I am not one to drink alone, and I don't crave booze, and I have never been one to drink everyday. I have on occasion had a drink with dinner or one after work. Mostly though, once I start I have to finish in a drunken mess.
It is quite a thing to think about not drinking. Drinking is my social activity. It is what I do with my friends or at special occasions. The problem I have is that all too often it is what I do to excess.
I don't know if can say that I will not drink anymore ever. I have never really tried not to drink. I mean it is just something I do, like eating chipped chop ham or driving too fast or any numer of things that make up me. I am a drinker.
But when is booze applied to rejection so many times that I have know that I am not a good drinker. I am not responsible as a drinker.
So for right now maybe I get on the wagon( or off as the case may be, I can never keep which one is dry and which wet) until I can handle my shit. Maybe I can have tomato juice at parties and sit quietly in the corner. I mean "I was drunk" covers a lot of the asshole comments I have made. Minus some High Life I have nothing but me to blame for being rude.

Um, Excuse Me.

I used to repo home furnishings in the lower economic regions of Akron, OH. I used to bang on PJ doors on Saturday mornings at 7 AM and demand the return of people's washers and dryers and what not. I have removed computers and bedroom sets from homes of obvious gang activity. I did this and at no time did I ever feel scared for my life. I felt nervous and uncomfortable all the time, but that may have been because the work hurt my soul.
I say this in point of reference. I am not one to get skittish in odd and potentially dangerous situations. Until today.
I was evaluating a building on W 14th in the Tremont area. I have been to this site several times in the last few weeks and have noted the high number of homeless people wandering about. I am liberal Democrat but still don't care for beggars and the like. I make a pitied exception for the metal ill who have ended up on the streets, but in large I am not overly sympathetic to the drug addled homeless.
I had been working for about 3 hours this morning and had walked around the building a time or two. I had noted the collection of empty Wild Irish Rose bottles and the collection of cardboard and rags. I knew homeless people were about. As I turned the corner into the back lot of the building I had an awkward feeling that I was not alone. I looked around the corner of a dumpster and saw a shabby looking fellow having a poop. I don't know if he saw me and do not care. I turned on my heel and walked away, back toward the main street. I tried to compose myself and continued to work. I was focused on some damaged and displaced stone near the roofline of the building when out of nowhere another homeless man was right next to me asking how tall he was. I was undone. I was tongue tied and down right scared. I walked straight to my truck, got in, and left.
Looking back I was probably not in any danger. The sneaking guy, not the pooper, was a little old man with very rotted teeth. But who is to know what his intention was? I was oblivious to his presence before he was close enough to smell. I was freaked out. And then the idea that I could have stepped in man poop; it was just to damned much.

My Mother Thinks She's Funny

My Mother is sweet and kindly Grandma now. She is soft spoken and has been known to crochet a blanket or two. She drives a Buick for crying out loud. So imagine my shock when I read this....









THE NURSING HOME POLICE

Ethel was a bit of a demon in her wheelchair, and loved to charge around the nursing home, taking corners on one wheel and getting up to maximum speed on the long corridors. Because the poor woman was one sandwich short of a picnic, the other residents tolerated her, and some of them actually joined in.

One day Ethel was speeding up one corridor when a door opened and Kooky Clarence stepped out with his arm outstretched. "STOP!," he shouted in a firm voice. "Have you got a license for that thing?" Ethel fished around in her handbag and pulled out a Kit Kat wrapper and held it up to him. OK" he said, and away Ethel sped down the hall.

As she took the corner near the TV lounge on one wheel, Weird Harold popped out in front of her and shouted "STOP! Have you got proof of insurance?" Ethel dug into her handbag, pulled out a drink coaster and held it up to him. Harold nodded and said "Carry on, ma'am."

As Ethel neared the final corridor before the front door, Crazy Craig stepped out in front of her, stark naked, holding his "you-know- what" in his hand. Oh, good grief,” yelled Ethel, “Not the breathalyzer test again!"

Seriously?

I was sent a link to this story by a Repub co-worker. I don't know if it all fact, but it read like the truth to me.

Cheney's Canned Kill, and Other Hunting Excesses of the Bush Administration

By Wayne Pacelle
Vice President Dick Cheney went pheasant shooting in Pennsylvania in December 2003, but unlike most of his fellow hunters across America, he didn't have to spend hours or even days tramping the fields and hedgerows in hopes of bagging a brace of birds for the dinner table.
Upon his arrival at the exclusive Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier Township, gamekeepers released 500 pen-raised pheasants from nets for the benefit of him and his party. In a blaze of gunfire, the group—which included legendary Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach and U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), along with major fundraisers for Republican candidates—killed at least 417 of the birds. According to one gamekeeper who spoke to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Cheney was credited with shooting more than 70 of the pen-reared fowl.
After lunch, the group shot flocks of mallard ducks, also reared in pens and shot like so many live skeet. There's been no report on the number of mallards the hunting party killed, but it's likely that hundreds fell.
Rolling Rock is an exclusive private club for the wealthy with a world-class golf course and a closed membership list. It is also a "canned hunting" operation—a place where fee-paying hunters blast away at released animals, whether birds or mammals, who often have no reasonable chance to escape. Most are "no kill, no pay" operations where patrons only shells out funds for the animals they kill.
Bird-shooting operations offer pheasants, quail, partridges, and mallard ducks, often dizzying the birds and planting them in front of hunters or tossing them from towers toward waiting shotguns. There are, perhaps, more than 3,000 such operations in the United States, according to outdoor writer Ted Williams.
For canned hunts involving mammals, hunters can shoot animals native to given continents—everything from Addax to Zebra—within the confines of a fenced area, assuring the animals have no opportunity to escape. Time magazine estimates that 2,000 facilities offer native or exotic mammals for shooting within fenced enclosures.
The HSUS worked hard to expose Cheney's shooting spree, and we were fortunate in persuading The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Dallas Morning News, and other media outlets to cover the events of that day and our subsequent criticism.
Our criticism is simple to understand: Farm-raised pheasants are about as wary as urban pigeons and shooting them is nothing more than live target practice, especially when they are released from a hill in front of 10 gunners hidden below in blinds—as Cheney and his party were. Such hunting makes a mockery of basic principles of fair play and humane treatment, and the vice president should not associate himself with such conduct.
The private excesses of Cheney are bad enough, and worthy of The HSUS's rebuke. But it's the public policy excesses that are of even greater concern to me. Cheney's hunting trip strikes me as emblematic of the Bush Administration's callousness towards the earth's animals.
The administration's most outrageous proposal is its plan to allow trophy hunters to shoot endangered species in other countries and import the trophies and hides into the United States. The administration first floated the proposal a few months ago, with formal proposals subsequently published in the Federal Register, and President Bush is expected to make a final decision soon on the plan, which originated with his U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
For 30 years, the Endangered Species Act has provided critical protections for species near extinction in the United States. The act also protects species in foreign nations, by barring pet traders, circuses, trophy hunters, and others from importing live or dead endangered species. While we can't prevent the shooting or capture of endangered species overseas, we can prevent imports—thus eliminating the incentive for American hunters and others to shoot or trap the animals in the first place.
But with this plan the administration is seeking to punch gaping holes in the prohibitions, under the assumption that generating revenue through the sale of hunting licenses will aid on-the-ground conservation in foreign lands.
The plan is transparent on its face. It's not aimed to help species, but to aid special interests who want to profit from the exploitation of wildlife. No group is more centrally involved in this miserable plan than Safari Club International, the world's leading trophy hunting organization and an entity with close ties to the Bush Administration.
The 40,000 member organization of rich trophy collectors has doled out close to $600,000 in campaign contributions among GOP candidates in the past six years. President Bush appointed a former top lobbyist of the Safari Club to be the deputy director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—again, the very agency promoting the plan to allow the selling off of endangered species to private interests.
The HSUS is not a pro-hunting organization. That said, we view certain types of hunting as worse than others. It crosses any reasonable line to support the shooting of some of the rarest and most endangered animals in the world. And it is beyond the pale to advocate for or participate in the shooting of animals in canned hunts—for birds or mammals.
President Bush met with leaders of 19 hunting organizations on December 12. While we expect him to endorse certain forms of hunting, he should in no way countenance the shooting of endangered species or the hunting of captive or pen-reared animals. If that's where these hunting groups want to lead him, he needs to resist their entreaties. He needs to stand up to these special interest groups and draw a bright line between certain types of hunting conduct.
Americans don't support this nonsense, and the president shouldn't either.

The Dick and the Gun

Our VP shot someone. I posted part of this on Stephanie's blog and wanted to put it here too:

The GOP spin doctors have been trying to blame the guy who got shot. What with all their He didn't announce he was there bullshit.
When you're hunting you are supposed to be quiet. I think more likely he did announce he was there and the Dicker shot him for messing up hi quail hunting.
Then they tried to say the sun was behind him and the Dicker couldn't see him.
So if this is the case, and I am no hunter, it sounds to me like the Dicker had no idea where his buddy was when he shot. So you have to ask why did he shoot? He knew how many were in the party and he knew one was missing. As far as I can tell, with this information, the Dicker did not have a safe shooting situation. I think it shows indifference and negligence and that he should, at the very least be forbidden form every touching a firearm again as he has proven that he is not able to do properly.

In addition, he should be put out of the NRA as the worst example of effective gun and hunter safety training. I don't know Dick's position with the NRA and the gun lobby, but I guess as a fat cat Repub asshole he has to be deep in it. I guess so deep he thought he had to shoot his way out.

I mean he shot a guy. Bill shot an intern in the mouth and she was working the trigger and look at all the trouble he got in. I bet Dick walks away without so much as having to pay the hospital bills.
Maybe this is just sour grapes, but come on. He shot someone. IF shot someone I would be in jail, or at least investigated regardless of the extent of the damage.
And his defense, "the sun was in my eyes"? And we let this pass? Where is the the uproar? Why is it that the only people in the media involved in this story are just making jokes about it, like he did no more than throw up raw fish on the guy. HE SHOT SOMEONE!!! It was with a real gun and everything and the guy was wounded and had a heart attack. The idiot shot someone under suspicious circumstance. One OTOH most powerful people in the world shot someone and it is not being looked into because of his the sun was in my eye defense.

From my Mother

My Mom has long sent me emails from her contemporaries that she finds funny, Usually they have a conservative/Republican leaning and I have to send back how awful the email was and how she should not fall into the idea that defending civil rights, like the 10 commandments in Federal Court, or the One nation under God, is harming America.
She also voted for the real George Bush and Bob Dole.
However, she was able to see this other Bush for what he is and sent me this email.

After numerous rounds of "We don't even know if Osama is still alive", Osama himself decided to send George Bush a letter in his own handwriting to let him know he was still in the game. Bush opened the letter and it appeared to contain a single line of Coded message: 370H-SSV-0773H. Bush was baffled, so he E-mailed it to Condoleezza Rice. Condi and her aides had not a clue either, so they sent it to the FBI. No one could solve it at the FBI so it went to the CIA, then to NASA. Eventually they asked Britain's MI-6 for help.Within a minute MI-6 cabled the White House with this reply. "Tell the President he's holding the message upside down."

Whole Foods

I went to a seminar this week about “green building”. It was cosponsored by some natural/whole foods vegetarian restaurant. They had some whole grain muffins and organically grown fruit smoothies and coffee in the morning. Theses things were flavorless and reminded me of food I would send back.

For lunch the offered sandwiches and salads and cookies with fancy-dan drinks and sodas. And this is where things went all manner of wrong. First, as Mrs. Bebout says, “Sandwiches are for children.” Making matters worse, the three choices, veggie wrap, tofu-turkey, or mock tuna, failed to resemble any sandwich, and I have had my share, that anyone could possibly recognize as a sandwich. The veggie wraps went fast as they were not trying to be anything but veggies. The tofu-turkey was next on the lease repulsive list. It looked like layers of butter between tow rough cut cedar shakes. The mock tuna, well… honestly mock tuna? It was beans and mustard with mayo all glopped together with some sprouts on top.

The “restaurateur” introduced lunch by explaining that although he offered foods nobody really eats we should give it a try. By the way, I have found that is usually does not pay off to trust business owners who wear tie-dyed shirts.

As is said, the veggie wraps went quickly. They were gone within the first 2 minutes of lunch leaving platters full of tofu-turkey and mock tuna. I tried the tofu-turkey. It tasted like, well, like tofu disguised as smoked turkey covered in nondairy butter. (not to be confused with margarine) The dinner salad with organic dressing was alright. How can you screw up lettuce, tomato & carrot? The pasta salad reminded me of lawn clippings with the pound or so of all natural dill shaved all over the place. The Moroccan Rice with pine nuts and raisins was OK. The cookies had no sugar. I choose peanut butter. It was like the all natural kind from the grocery store, but without the peanut flavor.

Because I feeling adventurous; and because my final impression of the food was not yet sealed, I decided to try the mock tuna. It was like beans with mustard and mayo and not at all like tuna. Calling it mock tuna was a disservice to mock tuna everywhere. By the way the mayo was made without eggs. Mayo, as we know is made, in polite society from oil eggs and vinegar. What was used in place of eggs is a mystery to me.

Soon after lunch I noted odd occurrences in the seminar. In the space of 45 minutes, nearly every participant left the conference room one or two at a time. They all scurried with the tell tale pinch and look of shame that could only be on thing. Diarrhea.
I thought how lucky for me that I did not have to scuttle off to the men’s room with a case of the poods. I thought this for nearly 1 and ½ hours after lunch. Then I noted gurgling in my lowers. I felt flushed and sweaty. Then I was no longer the master of my own bowels. They had fallen victim to the mock tuna. It was a sad day in deed.

I am on a rip today

An additional comment from another blog that I wanted to be sure got out there in case the blog did not want to upset people that I don't care about upsetting.

Absence and distance can make the heart grow fonder, as is the case with Mr. Bacher, who we all miss and are happy to see when he comes about, if fate allows. But it also plays the role of a blessed division for those we are just as happy not to see, like you Jessica.

Get over Me?

These were comments I posted on James' Blog. I am agasp with the indifference young people display as our government runs rough shot over our civil rights and historic freedoms. I am agasp with our government's unwillingness to dissent and stand up for the people and the people's devil-may-care attitude about the whole thing.

It is even more that as we loose small things, like free travel between Canada and the US, we don't put a stop to it.

We were attacked because of our freedom and now we are saying if you don't attack us again we will give up our freedom. The terrorists have won.


I am not apposed to passports, and the cost is what it is. I am apposed to needing them to cross into Canada. For the longest time it was the longest friendliest border in the world.Furthermore, get over yourself.The US has in the recent past made every effort to increase the openness in our half of the world, granted with varied results. By now making new stringent requirements for individuals to pass from Mexico to the US to Canada, we are undermining, though not completely, any improvements made in our relationships at the cost of the US's manufacturing base.Get over yourself? In deed. It has nothing to with me as a person, but me as a citizen and an involved one, thank you very much, in the direction our nation is taking under this administration.Get over my self? If I was any less over myself I would not care about the federal government requiring a federal ID to pass through borders that were once open.It is not a matter of a me being whiney, and I don't care for your implication. I think people who see the quiet reduction in our freedoms and don't say foul should get, at the least, with themselves andthe stand up for themselves.