Land of Oz

What the hell is wrong with you people?! Today as I was leaving my house there were two cute little kittens huddled on my back porch shivering in the cold. This is about the fourth litter of orphans that has been in my yard since I moved here about a year ago.

This is from the same kinds of neighborhoods where people get all upset over cats and dogs being squashed under hulking backwards baseball capped drivers of SUVs and blue haired drivers in their wallowing Buicks and Chryslers.

You get a pet - and you, not me, are responsible for it. Don't get mad at me when I call the cops over your mutt pooping on my peonies or your cat eating my canaries. Don't bitch at the driver who at one in the morning ran over your pure black kitty running across the road.

If you're going to let the critter out, get it fixed! Cats and rats and dogs and squirrels breed. It's about their only hobby other than peeing on my porch. Don't expect your precious little Percy to wander around at 10pm at night and be a priest - whoops, way wrong analogy - I meant some sexless, harmless character. Percy will be doing his or her damndest to make little Percys.

And by all this you think I'm a animal hater, you'd be closer to the mark if you think people hater. I'm working on getting my girlfriend to accept cats and hopefully, one of these days, I'll be able to enjoy my own inside fixed cats.

Why is it that if you're a Middle Western you're from the eastern quarter of the US but if you're a Middle Easterner, you're from another country all together?

If going to Europe is considered going overseas, is returning to the US going underseas?

Since a thermos bottle keeps hot stuff hot and cold stuff cold, is it keeping out the heat or the cold?

Where does all the rubber that gets worn off of tires go?

Why is it called Daylight Savings time, when nothing is saved, just shifted one hour?

A clock is most accurate when it's broke and stopped. It's the only timepiece that is exactly on time twice a day.

How long do you and your ancestors have live someplace to be considered a native? I was born in America but I'm not considered a native American.

If an Amerindian was born in Alaska in the 1940s are they still considered a native American - or a native American Terratorialistism something.

OK - it's Arnie the Governator. He's back! Hasta La vista baby. Let's see, any more cliches for now?

I've got to admit, he's typical California. He takes over a job with a massive debt and what does he do? He cuts revenues and wants to BORROW! Yep, we're $60 billion in debt, so let's get the credit cards out and borrow another $15 billion more! And while we are borrowing more, let's cut automobile license fees. After all, it's not like anyone wouldn't pay an extra few hundred to drive. This way, the money they save on licensing can go to buy a bigger engine or a spiffy set of wheels.

By the way, if you take California's 35 million and divide that into the $65 billion debt, you get about $1800 per person. And borrowing $15 billion will add another $500 buck to that total. That's of course if it's paid off now and there's no interest added. I would love to be the recipient of some of that interest - wouldn't you?

Go Arnie, go. Your kids will love their present.

Mo' Power

I'm living here in Michigan so the news is often filled to overflowing with automotive information. Lately there's been quite a bit of talk by columnists about horsepower and automobiles. Both that the big 3 are offering more of it and that what they do offer isn't enough.

Now, if I was a teenager again, I'd probably agree whole-heartedly. Back in the olden days, I had a Chevy Nova all jacked up with glasspacks and 3 on floor and the inevitable STP stickers in the back side windows. Did I mention the Amoco 8-track? My idea of a good time was seeing how much I could light up my tires and how low my quarter mile time was. However, the growing out of that didn't take long. My next car was a 1900CC Opel GT followed by a bunch of VWs and another small Chevy or two. BTW, I'm back with the VW New Beetle nowadays.

These days, I just can't see the attraction in all the big, massive, expensive, gas guzzling behemoths. SUVs and pickup trucks. Complaints that 300 horses just ain't enough. Now I'm not saying there shouldn't be any around. After all there are folks who do use their pickup to actually haul more than a stereo and whose four wheel drives are really and honestly driving in the muck and mud. But let's face it - they are definitely the minority.

I think most SUV owners would have a heart attack if someone splashed mud all over their new Escalade. And during my one short experience of owning a Chevy S-10, my friends were horrified when I dumped a bunch of lumber in the bed for fear that I'd ruin it. I bought a pickup to haul stuff not parade around at the mall. And just how often has Fred and Myrtle used the 300+ horses being bored to death under their hood.

Honestly, the 150hp in my turbocharged bug is more than I really need. However, I still get 30 mpg tooling around town or over the highway. There's more than enough room for me and three friends (if I had three friends that is). And when there aren't three extra in the car, I've been able to haul a 200 pound drill press, several bags of Sackrette cement and do it all with only stopping for gas every ten days or so.

Granted, if my neighbor buys a HUMVEE the polar caps probably won't melt tomorrow and we won't run out of gas next week -- but we will run out of gas. It seems pretty likely things are warming up. The air over many cities is a pretty tan instead of an ugly blue. And idiots with more credit than common sense roar by my bedroom window at 2am with stereos and exhaust blaring...

Detroit News and Detroit Free Press

Veterans Day

Now is the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It is supposed to signify an honoring of veterans and the end of a war. I read today a comment where someone said, "Today is supposed to be a memorial for the war to end all wars, and now we're in a war without end."

When we think of Veteran's Day, we usually picture the WW2 vets with their gray hair and canes and odd looking VFW and Legion caps, the Vietnam vets with their tiger stripe fatigues and long hair and Hanoi Jane singing the enemy's praise in the background. Take a minute to think about today's vets.

(and I'm not really making fun of Legionnaires and VFWers (I am a Legion member), just their hats - of which I don't own, and don't even know how to get one)

At last count, there have been 37 who have lost their lives just this month - and it's only the eleventh day. Along with the dead, are the wounded; there doesn't seem to be any accurate count of them. I've seen numbers ranging from 1700 to 5000. And they are called "casualties." That word casualty is just a double-speak term meant to make more the injured sound more palatable. We should be calling them for what they are: young kids who are amputees, blinded, disfigured, disabled, or just plain worn out. They get lumped under "non-combat" injuries. Did you know that means they are less likely to get care under the Veterans medical program once they are out of the military. And does losing an arm or a leg in a HUMVEE accident any less traumatic than losing it to a land mine? They're in the military, and to me it doesn't matter whether they get shot by an enemy soldier (whoever that is these days) in Iraq or run over by a Hyundai in Seoul, it's still a combat injury.

And is it really fair that someone who is disabled in the service and retires from the service has to pay back part of their pension if they are getting disabled pay? If you haven't heard yet, it's true. If a GI is making a $15,000 pension, and has 10% disability they lose 10% of their pension. However, if they retire from the US Postal service for example, and get a pension from the government, they won't have to pay back that 10%.

All these military bases that have closed over the past few years. Yes, there is a loss of civilian jobs and money going into the civilian community. And yes, we do have more military bases than we need. However one of the things that isn't mentioned is the impact these closing have on retired military. These folks, women and men, have put the best 15 - 30 years of their life into defending the country. One of the benefits many of them were expecting and planning on are now gone. Less bases mean less hospitals, clinics, commissaries and other facilities that helped make a military pension survivable. A vet is now considered to be getting good care as long as they don't have to wait more than 30 days for a doctor's appointment.

Veterans Day - don't forget them.
2fers: Veterans Affairs and DOD

Vietnam or Israel

Have you head the latest from Iraq? While there are many who seem to think we are falling into a Vietnam, it also seems that we may be falling into a new Israel -- and I don't know which is worse. How long have the Israelies and Palestinians been blowing each other up? And with what kind of progress on either side has been the result.

Today, the news from Iraq sounded just like the news from Israel. The Air Force goes in and bombs a bunch of suspected terrorist locations in retaliation for an attack. How many times has that headline been printed in Israel? And then the following week the Palestinians bomb some bus stop someplace in retaliation for the retaliation and back comes the Air Force. I think the only way this cycle is going to end is when both sides finally kill all of each other off. Soldiers, terrorists, bombers, shooters, school kids, mothers and babes in arms.

That area of the world, just like so many other areas of the world, only live to kill. I'm beginning to think the real abberation in the world is us here in the US. Maybe we got most of it out of our system during the War Between the States. Yeah, we've got our nut-cases like Timothy McVie and the unabomber, but very little is really organized. Yes, we have riots and other assorted outbreaks of violence, but it is nowhere near as unrelenting as other places in the world. Eastern Europe (of course, can't forget UK), Africa, South America, Asia, all seem to be one long low level (and sometimes high level) batch of killings.

Sometimes I think what this world needs is another 1 in 65 million year asteroid collision. Clean off the slate and start again. There's got to be some kind of life form out there that can live without killing each other.

disgusting and death laden 2fers: Death and Destruction and more