Trix are for kids.. Beef is for man.

Living in an area limited to only a few radio stations I've found myself listening to NPR from time to time since Paris' Hiton's voice which is played 5 time and hour on the Top 40 station causes thoughts of murder and the Billy Cyrus station takes me more towards suicide.

NPR, known for their hanging S editorialists, does seem to take on a somewhat objective view of the news however beneath it lies a lefty undercurrent in my mind. The content can range from extremely good to a bit too folksy. Good would be Click and Clack. Bad would be "The Polka Hour" and "Vegetable Talk". Driving home from the opposite direction of downeast the other day which happens to be up the coast a news segment was airing describing a new label being placed on meat at the market when applicable.

This is the label "Animal Compassionate".

Driving on a country road I'm usually oblivious to anything being said on the radio except for the news when I am listening but this thought jumped into my zombie-driver mind and hit the pump on the neuro-excitement chemical gland..

"Please tell me I didn't hear that. Please tell me they are not going to try and label meat and poultry as 'animal compassionate'. Please tell me I didn't just hear this". Reality set in and I was in fact conscious and not in some liberal dream.

Mine was never the romantic variety but even I know that applying the word compassionate to a situation before something is mercilessly slaughtered is probably a stretch. Perhaps we say, "Sorry" before we run the sharp blade across the carotid artery of the livestock to let it bleed out which is the preferred method to remove as much blood as possible. Is there a priest there doing that hand trifecta and blessing the animal before it goes from a 1,500 pound majestic beast to a foam plated, saran wrapped, Animal Compasionate-labeled, body part identified soon to be sitting on a shelf in your local IGA (or several markets across the state) then to be bought, barbeqed and devoured item within the next three days.

I'm missing the compassion here.. So I listened a bit more to the hanging, lisping 's' news person. "Animal Compassionate" is used to describe livestock that meets several conditions on the farm. The first is no castration of sheep. I don't eat lamb so I really don't care too much about this one. However next time I'm chopping wood in my wool LL Bean trying to fit in Maine sweater I'm pretty sure I won't care if the animal that provided the wool had two balls or not.

The other requirement for 'animal compassionate' beef is that the cow are prodded only when necessary. This one blew my mind. I know several farmers and I'm pretty sure they don’t run around prodding livestock for the thrill. Watching a large animals nostrils flare up from a bit of pain might be the sport of a few sicko 'grew-up-raising-cows-and-now-I-hate all things farm' guys but I'm also pretty sure they are the exception to the norm.

After all, batteries are expensive.

Let me ask this.. How many sensitive carnivores are there in the world?...

It's pretty evident that I don't fall into this category since I'm the guy sticking the stethoscope into the pot of boiling water before we drop the lobsters in. I'm interested in things.

So it's pretty clear I'm not going to pay double for 'animal compassionate' meat. Nor am I going to pay the extra whatever percentage for food labeled with other winners such as "free farmed", "certified humane", "cage free" or "free range".

Man has been eating meat since Adam clobbered a pig on the head with a rock and had man's first luau. That's where the apple came from by the way. Eve stuffed it in the pigs mouth for decoration but dumb man missed the soft touch.

That’s just how it goes..

But then again I may be wrong. Perhaps the karma of the after life is dictated by how we’ve treated animals and not other humans during our existence n this life. Perhaps I'll be the one left standing in a cage allowed no movement for an eternity while a sheep cuts of the twins and a cow prods me.

Until then, I plan of enjoying a nice veal picatta this evening served with a salad comprised of lettuce and other vegetables that were ripped out of the ground by their roots served with a nice glass of wine produced from defenseless grapes that were crushed through a press.

But before I do so, I'll tip my glass and say thanks..

700 miles of stupidity

Stories surrounding the wise man Solomon are always of the variety that get me excited about the potential in humans. There is one story in particular is based on two women coming to the wise sage claiming to be the mother of the same child. In a day when lesbian adoption (why could I not have fallen into that category) was not prevalent Solomon declared that the child would be torn in half and the two women would split the child. One woman wailed and the other showed the same indifference as Jeffrey Skilling during opening arguments. Solomon declared the wailer the mother and was no doubt correct.

Where is this type of wisdom today.. Particularly in our elected government? Where? Politics and wisdom go together about as well as capitalism and environmentalism. They really don’t seem to be able to exist on the same playing field. There seems to be some sort of natural law that prevents the two from occupying the decision-making part of the mind at the same time..

The latest case in point in this politically run country of ours was the signing of bill yesterday mandating a 700 mile wall between us and Mexico..

I read this on a website that used to take pride in providing news to people but has become another FOX type entertainment whore.. You know the one I’m talking about.. CNN.com

There it was, “Bush signs bill to build 700 mile fence”. I thought to myself, “Is this April 1 and some clever editor is slipping in a prankster article”..No… “Perhaps a hacker has re-written several bogus articles and slipped them onto the CNN.com website. That would be neat”.. No..

Please dear God let this be a mistake. Please let me have read “Bush laughs at bill to build 700 mile fence” which would still be a scary thought since that would mean it made it though the house and senate at that point. Perhaps it read “5 year old boy draws cartoon of 700 mile fence between Mexico and America with little stick children playing on it”. Because if a fence were built it should be used for this purpose and this purpose alone..

Building this is so terribly wrong on so many reasons. This plan has all the creativity of the plotline of an ABC after-school special.

The list of why the wall is bad is as long as Martha Stewart’s grocery list the day after she was released.

The concept that we should be evolving into a world where we tear walls down and not build them should be the first thing that pops into every American’s mind regarding this wall.. Every major conflict on this planet right now is based on people taking steps to further divide themselves from others. Strengthening one’s faction by building a fence adds to the separation of people. It scares the hell out of me when we need to look to Germany (with a Pink Floyd twist) for guidance. “Tear down the wall”.

And if this ‘evolving notion’ escapes people then the stupidity of the fence can easily be based on one very simple notion. One very simple concept that every human and animal on earth will understand. The fence won’t work. We are not talking about building some impenetrable wall here. We are not talking about borrowing the Great Wall plans from the Chinese and erecting something that can be seen by satellites (and I’m talking about the 1975 Kremlin spy satellites but the modern day CIA paparazzi variety). This is exactly as it is called.. A fence.

Here’s where our politically driven leaders should do perform a small trial. Build a 100 foot section of the fence and put it in a room with 5 people. Give them all the resources available to Mexico (natural and mand-made). Give them 100 years of desperation and poverty. Give them hunger and take away their hope. Now tell them to come up with a way to get the other side of the fence where relative prosperity exists. I guarantee you that within 10 nano-seconds they will have more options than American consumers do in how they ingest fat, I mean cholesterol, I mean TFA’s (I still don’t get it). The proposd fence is short. They can go over it. The fence will have all the robustness of an American designed-Korea reverse engineered-Chinese built toy. They’ll go through it. These folks have been building tunnels with the same efficiency as xxxxxxxxx. They’ll go under it.. And last time I checked, the border was over 1000 miles long.. Math may be tricky friends but even I know that 700 is less than 1000. They’ll go around it.

The irony that the fence is going to be built primarily by the people that we are trying to keep out smells about as good as my catalytic converter after chargi up a steep grad on a hot day towing a heavy boat. Imagine the articles when Halliburton (who I’m sure will get the contract) gets caught with illegal aliens, excuse me, non-documented foreign nationals working on the Fisher Price designed fence.

This small hurdle to get to America is going to wind up representing everything that we should be trying to evolve away from. There will be an elite few that get grossly rich from it’s construction since the down payment has already been set at $1.2 billion dollars. There will be a middle class of Chinese-built-equipment operators that used to make a decent wage but no longer since their wage has been diluted for 15 years by this mess. The cost over-runs will be immense. The time-lines will be laughable and missed by years.

Is the pouring of Mexican’s into America an issue. Absolutely. Do we need to solve this dilemma? Absolutely. Are there options? Absolutely. The last good idea I had was about four years ago yet I sit here and in 5 miutes have four or five ways to solve the problem. They may suck. But if I can come up with bad options in five minutes then there is hope.

Passing and signing this bill through our republican government 10 days before elections is such an amazingly transparent pander to an economically scared America that it would embarrass our forefathers.

What would Geroge Washington do in this case? Or Lincoln? Or Benjamin Franklin? Let’s try and find a Solomon-like voice in this manner. Whether it be from the men of this country’s past, spiritual leaders with vision or university students brimming with idealism and creativity. This is a problem that will stem from the glorious parts of the mind that bring us creativity and original thought. Not the part of the mind that gets people elected. Please keep the politicians out of it.

The Clubhouse

There is a place somewhere within 30 miles of the Whitehouse known simply as the clubhouse. This is a place where Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Mike Brown and the other member of the “George Bush puppeteer club” hang out.

The clubhouse is the subterranean type with walls that 6 foot thick concrete for the obvious reason that stopping nuclear proliferation has been about as successful as the war on drugs and that in time any group with a million bucks and Khans protégé’s phone number will be able to make a significant contribution to the American experience in the form of a ½ kiloton nuclear bomb. The ceilings are the same height as the walls are thick at 6 feet which still gives ample headroom to its vertically challenged members.

The door to the clubhouse is made out of granite and there is a sign that reads, “No Girls allowed (that mean’s you Candy Rice)” who I’m sure they refer to as that “Hot and leggy savage”.

The floors are hardwood and the place smells of Cuban cigars since these guys obviously have the means. In fact, when they want a cigar they hit a button on a panel and a green light flashes at the Cohiba or Monte Cristo factory (depending on what button was pressed) prompting an underpaid Cuban woman to drop the next cigar rolled on her table into one of those vacuum tubes they have at the bank where it then placed into a pipe that shuttles it’s precious cargo to Dick or Don or Mike in a matter of minutes. I regress, it probably only takes a couple of seconds since I’m sure Halliburton, when constructing this piping system, used the same contractor that built atom accelerators for smashing atoms since they are Dawn’s (Rumsfeld) buds and could reap the benefits of another juicy pentagon contract.…

The only thing that saved us was that Smalldick (Cheney) doesn’t have the same penchant for his cigars as Clinton and didn’t require humidification in the piping system so his cigar which was pre-moistened by the Cuban woman didn’t dry out and deprive him of that particular taste.

Because of this my friends, this project, relative to what the democrats would have built in their project actually resulted in a cost savings to the American people. Thanks guys..

Back to the clubhouse. Looking around the main play room there are a variety of toys and gadgets. There is the requisite XBOX which is in fact turned on with the ‘Bomb Iraq’ game in the console. However, this particular game is a bit different than most since it is tied directly to the war machine in Pentagon.

Propped up on a chair in the corner is a life size puppet doll of George Bush that has one of those Howdy Doody mouths. This way the fellas can have practice sessions with the prez and rehearse how they are going to guide him to do whatever they want. They tire of this quickly since non-curious George is a simple mind and they figure things out in about 37 seconds. However, these guys are no dummies, so to make the most of their expensive puppet they had a material developed that stays warm and moist for 50 years. The material is based on a nuclear derivative as all things should be in the minds of these clubhouse players. This material was used to line the inside of the three inch deep puppets mouth (plenty of room) providing each of them another 24 seconds of pleasure.

By the way, this too is considered a cost savings to the American people since the same puppet is being used for multiple purposes.

Moving about the room we see two large dartboards. One has several different sized slices with names of several weapons used by our war machine and underneath the weapon name is the name of the manufacturer with the name of Dawn’s CEO good buddy next to that. There is small sign above the board that reveals to all that this is Dawn’s board and for his use only.

This board is used to determine which weapons we will use in our ‘peacekeeping’ efforts. What’s interesting is that out of the 27 slices on the dartboard two of the slices take up almost 93% of the pie with the other slivers completing the ring. Somewhere in there you remember that the names of the companies in the two big slices are the same two companies that Dawn sat on the board of directors for. This triggers an alarm in your mind. But that’s ok, because he’s cut all ties to these companies so the thought of collusion is not a valid one.

The other dartboard has the name of potential targets in Iraq and Afghanistan. Above this boards a sign reads, “Dick’s boards and for his use only”. The interesting things here is that every target on the board happens to be a target that would require US rebuilding efforts and strangely enough can only be rebuilt by one of two companies in the word. Haliburton being one of them. But that’s ok. Smalldick no longer has any ties to Halliburton so once again, the thought of collusion is not a valid one..

There is also a small study in the club house. On it’s shelves are several books.. Most are comic books. The big boy section has a few winners such as, “War for Dummies”, “The Road Less Traveled through my Fat Bank Account”, “Offshore Banking”, “How to Hypnotize the Small Mind”, “I’m OK, You’re OK as Long as you Never Ask a Question”, “How to Prune the The Legislative Branch” and first edition hardbook copies of every Hardy Boys Mysteries ever written since this is the kind of intellectual stimulation that will keep the steel-trap minds of these mental juggernauts sharp as a tack.

The impressive ‘The Art of War’ is also on the shelf but after closer inspection one can see that all the pages have been removed and replaced with “10 years of Oui”.

The most read book is of course Non-Curious George.

In the corner of the study, Brownie (as George refers to him. However, we’ll refer to him as Batter since things obviously weren’t baked all the way) is on a computer playing a game which appears to be a variety of SIMS. You’re relieved to know that it isn’t the SIMS variety where one tries to get laid (Chernoff kept that one for himself) but is titled “SIMS: Disaster Planning”. This has hope. Unfortunately Batter never made it past the first two scenarios to where an actual disaster ever takes place and could be simulated since scenario one was devoted to proper attire. He finally solved it by leaving it up to his secretary. By that time it was too late.

Next to the computer station is a plate full of chicken wings with it’s orange spicy sauce dripping off the plate onto the small table. But that’s no small table. That three and a half foot structure is actually the 47,343 page $245 million FEMA disaster plan. It still has that ‘never been read’ look to it. But how can you expect it to have been read when it is supporting such a precious cargo.

Dawn, Batter and Smalldick to you I say enjoy your time in the clubhouse. Smoke your cigars, read your comic books and skeleton fuck the prez puppet doll for all your worth. I have no ill feelings towards you since I’m sure your actions are simply the result of narcisstic parents that didn’t coddle you enough as children. It’s not your fault. It’s too late for any of you guys to go down in history as anything other than “Part of the worst leadership regime to serve the US” so relax. The pressure is off. There’s no need to ‘do’ anything anymore. So don’t.

No really, please don’t ‘do’ anything else. Just sit there and be good little boys.

Put your LNG tankers away children

When I was a child one of my favorite distractions was one of those games where the object is to maneuver a little steel ball through a three dimensional maze from a start point to an end point by twisting two little knobs on the sides of a wooden box that tilted a small table in two axis that allowed one to maneuver the ball around a series of holes. There were about 30 holes in total. Fall into any of the holes, you lose as the little steel ball would plummet 4 inches to the bottom of the box and make a slow, audible 'roll of shame' to an exit point where one could grab the ball and suffer through another episode. I believe the game was called 'Labyrinth' or some other clever name that the good folks at Parker Brothers or Milton Bradley thought of. Bottom line - Ball in hole was bad.

A few years later I began to enjoy basketball. At 13, my 6'1" 'growth spurt' riddled body may have been awkward and slow and had about as much grace as Rosanne but was a definitely a presence in the paint. I liked the game. The sport was simple. Take the ball and put it in the basket. Bottom line - Ball in hole was good.

What Pythagoras induced tangent am I off on now?

Looking at these two activities and their natural states of the game without any intervention one can see that in the game of Labyrinth, the natural state was for the ball to fall into the hole. In basketball, the natural order is for the ball not to be in the hole. One requires effort and skill to avoid the hole and... Enough, you get the point..

In our own little backyard called Passamaquoddy Bay there are a few groups of folks that are determined to build an LNG terminal to help bring this 'viable energy source' to the Northeast.

Of all the crazed and stupid things I've seen in my life this is about the most ridiculous plan I've ever come across. I mean ever. This one has all the foresight of a 17 year old pubescent teenage boy grabbing the Kleenex box or gym sock at the same time he went to his room after mommy and daddy left with his 'he's a bad influence' uncles copy of 'Big Jugs' magazine 'borrowed' from the back of unc's Lance camper.

I think about this and I get excited. I literally get an emotional charge inside from how stupid this plan is. I feel embarrassed for the guy that came up with this idea.

Let me explain why.

First off our little backyard is one of the few coastal areas that are still somewhat intact from a natural standpoint. There are eagles and whales and all the other Greenpeace propaganda goodies. Mother Nature hasn't packed her bags here yet. "OK, it's green. What else ya got", you may ask.

The body of water is part of the Bay of Fundy. Being geographically ignorant I couldn't have pointed the Bay of Fundy out to you on a map to save my life until I moved here. In fact, I thought it was overseas somewhere. However, the one thing I did know about the Bay of Fundy was that it had huge tides. I knew this because I read about it in the Guinness Book of World Records (when it had records that were meaningful; thing like world's tallest man, world's fattest woman and largest tree opposed to today’s variety which includes a record for the jag-off that can shove the most ping pong balls in various orifices of his body). Back then, if it was in Guinness, it meant something. I also knew that where there were big tides there were big currents. The tides on the Bay of Fundy are so large that there is actually a waterfall that forms when the current comes IN to the bay going uphill. The current is so strong that there is a whirlpool on one of the points of land. Not the type of whirlpool that you'd see on those 1492 maps in your Prentice-Hall high school history book with an 8 tentacled sea monster coming out of it. But it definitely looks like someone hit the lever and all things bad are on their way out. Bottom line.. Huge tides with 10-12 knot currents in some areas.

This bay is also comprised of several rocky points, small islands and is quite pinched. It is not what one would call an open body of water. The bay opens up onto the North Atlantic Ocean. I hear North Atlantic and I think, "That's where people die". Every movie I've watched that had scenes in the North Atlantic included death since the weather can be so tempestuous (which is a word I've never used before). Not that one should base his weather disaster information on such quality cinematic pieces as "The Perfect Storm" but if George "Save Darfur" Clooney can't make it then who the hell can. Seriously, this area is known for storms that produce 70 mile an hour winds (with 35 mile per hour winds being typical 4 months of the year), chowder thick fog (mine is the watery variety of pea soup) with a proclivity to change at a moments notice along the same lines as a college coed once you try and steal that extra base. From I'm gonna get some to a firm backhand is on par with cold with a mild breeze to an ass-kickin' Nor’easter.

So hopefully you get the picture.. This ain't Lake Tahoe on a sunny summer day.

Let's talk about the LNG tankers they want to bring in here. Big is a relative term so I'll simply describe them and you can make up your own mind as to how big or small they are. Let's start with a comparison. The size of the LNG tanker proposed to sail into “Pinchedamaquoddy Bay” is the same size as an aircraft carrier. Not one of those WWII carriers that prop driven Corsairs would call home but the Goose and Maverick variety needed to land F-14's. Over 1,000 feet long. Almost a quarter of a mile. In fact, when you try and find the length of one of these ships (because length always matters) it is difficult since the size of ship is listed in both gross tons (250 thousand ton - 200 million pounds) and cubic meters (160,000 cubic meters). They contain enough steel to build over 10,000 automobiles. Look, they are big ships. Enough comparison giving. You've all seen a big ship. Big fuckin' ship. Yes, big might be a relative term but since a ship is what people use as big to compare other things to we'll just let this be a given.

Remember when Tommy Franks would give his CNN war briefing. Remember that map he would have of the Persian Gulf that would be propped up on the Aaron Bothers purchased easel as if after the presentation he was going to work on a nice piece. Remember how they would have a couple Colorform ships that would be pressed onto the map in the Persian Gulf and you'd think somewhere in your still soft part of your mind, "Yeah, but this isn't to scale". Picture that map in your mind and how the ship almost filled the Persian Gulf. That same map could be used here only that the scale would be correct!

The ship is designed to keep its cargo liquefied. LNG in its natural form is a gas. However, to transport it efficiently one needs to liquefy it. To accomplish this, the 'viable energy option' is brought under enormous pressure and then must be maintained on the ship at -163 degrees Celsius. Even at the less impressive 'Celsius' scale the number is fantastic. This equates to around -300 degrees Fahrenheit and is approaching a mythical physical state called absolute freezing.

The more I write about this the crazier it gets. I start putting all of this together and it's like a Hollywood movie. I recall that quality film "Very, Very Bad Things" where several Hollywood writers sat in a room and kept trying to outdo each other and pile more extraordinarily bad shit onto the same situation which wound up with a gifted woman gone white trash wife taking care of her paraplegic husband while two rabid children run about the WalMart-toy filled yard foaming at the mouth..

Hollywood would have a hard time piling this much bad shit into an LNG scenario.

OK.. Huge ship. Tiny bay. Explosive cargo kept in an unnatural state at almost absolute freezing. Bitch slapping weather. You get the point.

Bringing ships into this bay is the equivalent of playing Labyrinth where the natural state of the ball is to fall into the hole. The natural state. If man's intervention were to go awry things go to the natural state. The natural state in this case would be a gizillion ton tanker filled with highly explosive cargo careening off of sharp rocky points in a closed off body of water surrounded by one of natures last bastions containing several species that are close to making their final exit off of planet earth.

The tugs will be good and their captains able. We all know how consistently accurate weather forecasting is. We can throw whatever bits of technology at this thing we want but the fact remains that things will always strive to go towards the natural order. The most technologically sophisticated jetliners are never intended to fall from the sky. However, if you're subscribing to the same cable channels I am you know differently. They go towards their natural order on a regular basis. That is how things are..

If LNG is indeed a viable energy option then the natural order for the environment for the terminal needs to be more like the game of basketball where it takes skill to get the ball into the hole rather than skill to keep the ball out of the hole. Where if 'all things man' fall apart the tanker is simply left to drift off into the middle of the ocean or worst case scenario ease up onto a soft sandbar. Transfer it offshore, transfer it on a vacant stretch of coast in an uninhabited and desolate area. If these areas don't exit then it wasn't meant to be. Don't force something where it doesn't belong. It never turns out right in the long run. NEVER. NEVER.

I can write for hours on this topic but will keep it to the ridiculous sub-heading of "Big Ship, Little Tempestuous Bay" (I got to use the word again). We'll save other topics such as 'How Long can a pier Be', 'How to Become a Thermodynamics Physicist with a Pulp Mill Background', 'Screw Canada', 'Indian Reservations are for Casinos, not LNG Terminals' and 'I'll Stick My Pipe where I want" for another day.

The idea of my kids picking up the good book of Guinness in 15 years and reading about the world's largest non-nuclear explosion and how it occurred in our backyard which is now one large piece of heat fused mass is a troubling one.

So to you Dean Girdis and Brian Smith, go grab your basketball, a six pack of beer, find a court with a hoop and I'll throw in a new nylon net so you can get some satisfaction from that nice swishy sound. Hell, I'll even throw in a couple Big Jugs magazines. But you're big boys now so don't forget your tissue..

Too Many Options

Getting out of the car at the gas station yesterday morning on the way to Portland for the interview was almost a joy since gas was at an all recent-memory low of $2.11/gallon.. That is $2.11 per gallon of 'regular 87 octane' fuel. I looked to see what the price of the good stuff was and was startled to realize that there was no 89 octane or the more expensive 91 octane.. Then it hit me, does the 91 octane do something magical to one's car?? Would it add horsepower to my 1989 Ford Bronco? What would the effect of the extra 10 cents per gallon have been on my 302 cubic inch, naturally aspirated engine that was made when Reagan was still president (it's amazing how much better my Bronco has fared than ex-presidents over the years). I am curious so I turned to the electronic mind reader in Google to provide me with some answers..

Answer.. "The octane rating of gasoline tells you how much the fuel can be compressed before it spontaneously ignites"..

OK.. That actually makes sense with the folks at "HowStuffWorks.com" doing another fine job of translating chemical techno speak into something this simple mind can understand. It also clears up what the meaning of 'knocking' is since most advertisements talk to a higher octane fuel helping a car get rid of knocking. I've never heard my engine knock. Not once. Not when Reagan was president, nor Clinton or when either of that fantastic father-son duo resided in the White house. Not once. So let's give the knocking promotion a rest. If you want to promote anti-knocking it's probably going to best to market it to the 1960's Camarao and Sting-Ray websites since apparently it is only the older US iron that has this problem.

So in fact, the higher octane fuel is only for the higher compression engines in the world which include the foreign import sports car. I get it..

It can "potentially lead to an increase in performance for older cars" according to our friends at "makehardshiteasytounderstandformorons.com". Not exactly the kind of hype giving me that "must have now" sensation along the lines of bovine America sending their $39.95 Dr. Agatston to become a member of the South Beach Diet club..

So I see the need for the 91 octane. The Mercedes guy and the Porsche guy need the good stuff. I get it. It makes sense. It also makes sense why it was not available at the Route 9 Citgo where a Porshe citing is about as rare as Mark Foley saying 'no' to the troup 44 scout leader appointment.

Then I asked myself the question about the other other stuff. The 'poor man's high octane fuel'. You know what I'm talking about here.. The 89 octane. Where in God's name does this come into play. If I'm a 49 year old attorney with a small dick and a and a life calvary consisitng of a red Porshe I'm not going to be too concerned about the extra 5 cents per gallon to get me from the 89 octane to the 91. If you've made the decision to go from 87 to 89 octane for whatever reason there is no reason not to step it up another notch. This would be akin to (damn the bluejays are blue here) the 425 pounder in South Carolina stopping at the large fry when the Supersize is only 13 cents more. It ain't gonna happen. Not until the carotted artery starts feeling like the esophogus with adams aple sized chunks of cholesterol standing fast on the arterial walls. I digress..

Bottom line. Get rid of the 89 octane. Get rid of the pump. Get rid of all of the 89 octane fuel tanks in the world. Stop it and stop it know. It makes no sense. It takes up more space and does nothing but confuse my small mind with one more options that I don't need.

On that topic, sitting at my mom's last night eating a Hershey's 'getting worse by the year' bar, I decided a glass of milk would complement the confection forgetting my intolernace of lactose would lead to a 2am surprise wake up call.. When alone I'm cool with this since my bed is of the dutch oven variety. Into the fridge my meat puppet goes to latch onto the 1/2 gallon HDPE plastic container of homogenized cow fluid to discover that the milk is one and one half percent fat. One and ONE HALF Percent Fat. Come on. Leave my milk options out of it. Hit me with a gizillion options on Cable to cram into my mind. Bombard me with 2,500 shades of white paint swatches at Home Depot that are practically indiscernable. But leave my milk the fuck alone.

It started with Milk and Non-fat milk. I get that.

Then lowfat milk. I sort of get that too..

Buttermilk. Still have no idea what this means.

'Lactose-Free milk'. I get that too although I'll never buy it. Why deprive myself of one of life's little miracles.

More recently it appers that low-fat milk has been replaced with 2% milk and the 1% milk is some sort of guilt compromise. But 1.5% milk. It has no place. It has no place. It's just another fucking option that has no place.

Pretty soon the milk racks at the market are going to be replaced with a contraption similar to the one a the paint department at Home Depot where I pick a milk and some tongue studded inaudible teenager is going to concoct (funny word) a special blend of milk (from either Holsteins or Jersey's) with varying percentages of lactose, fat and I'm sure a number of articficial flavorings including but not limited to vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, milk shake(whatever the fuck that is) and whatever else might possibly appeal to the 'we are marketing voodoo doll puppets' sensibilities of america in the mind of the aspiring corporate milk marketing guy. Only when there are more options of milk then rear entry films will corporate America's desire to fill that special niche be satisfied.

Gimme a cup of milk, a cookie a tank full of ethyl which I'll pay for with cash instead of 'credit or debit' and I'll be on my way.

The Interview

Today I am the fortunate owner of a daily planner that has the word "Interview @ 2pm with Sandy" scrawled onto the middle of the page with today's date.. Mercifully this is the case since my state of employment here in rural Maine has been less than fortuitous in terms of making the ends meet.

After hanging the phone up with Sandy's assistant and scheduling the interview there is a small moment of victory that washes through. The phone get hung up with confidence and the title "King" is yours for one fempto-second util you realize that you havn't accomplished a thing and that the party is just about to begin. This party isn't some drunken Roman orgy with naked men and women (and little boys from what I've heard) careening their naaked bodies off each other while swilling wine and puking in the vomitorium. This is more of the corporate picnic where you self-limit yourself to one beer so things don't 'get out of hand' as you try and do your first backbend at age 40 and wind up in the potatoe salad.. Or is that German potatoe salad..

This party includes games such as resume preparation on the 'good' paper since the only stuff you have in the quiver under your HP 312C '$60 per cartride which is more than than the printer' printer is the half filled ream that you snuck out of the office. Another fun game is the personal appearance game.. Ohhh Boyyy.. Time to get a shirt without stains that doesn't scallop on the buttons and try and cram 6 months of fitness into four days. To try and see if I can get the last belt hole on the island chain to have to work a bit less in containing the belt pin. It's nice to take off the belt and see a small circle where the pin wnet instead of an elongated oval that is clearly an idicationn that the last helping of Dinty Moore Beef stew was probably a bit on the over-achieving side. And then there is the haircut game. Which is really becoming more of an upper body trim.. This includes receding hairline, ear hair, a shave (which now includes the cheeks), neck hair and that awkward neck craning, touch the back of your head to you shoulder blades maneuver while you gaze into the mirror to see if mother nature has blessed you with a couple long wild-ones in your nose.

Resume-check. Hair-check. Clothing-check. Personal appearance-not too bad.

Okay, we'll see how it goes..

T

Bomb Canada..

Here we are again in this thing called life. The sun is rising America and I'm one of the first to know. I'm one of the first in the country to know that some sort of interstellar Armegeddon didn't occur last night while America slept off the remains of yesterday.

How am I one of the first to know? What could possibly be that gives me access to this partcularly useful information? Do I have a direct tie in with mother nature? Am I a visionarry of some sort? Absolutely not..

Our small rural abode is about as far east as one can go in this country of our. Ours is in Maine. Not just Maine, but in an area we like to refer to as Maine-ada. In fact, I am currently looking at Canada (just lifted my head to look up at it to keep my integrity intact).

Secretly, I wouldn't really be too concerned if we bombed the shit out of our little northern friend. Why you may ask? Is it becuase I dislike Canadians? No. Is it becuase their Mounties have those fucked up little pants like their carrying a load in each leg? No.

Quite simply becuase I have a front row seat. I'd like the initiave to start right here on Passamaquoddy Bay with the USS Ronald Reagan steaming up the bay with it's twin gizillion horse nuclear powered engines pushing that 200 billion pound turd at 30 knots while F-14's and whatever the latest billion dollar plane is that we need thousands of take of the deck burning another trillion dollars of jet fuel at a rate faster than Houston went through her men in her amazing, shall we say, Indie film. I want the sky to be filled with F-14's going Mach whatever while other, faster naval ships swarm around the bay as well. Destroyers. I want destroyers. I want to see the Missourri brought out of decommission (which I think would simply be referred to as recomissioned) and brought into the bay with it's guns firing off so that the boat lists everytime the massive howitzers (or whatever the hell you call them) are fired. I want to see smoke on the other side of the bay. I want to see little mushroom clouds. The noise. Can you imagine it. The ringing in my ears for days as acoustic shock waves make their way across tha bay and find their way into my eardrum tickling whatever bit of the inner ear there is that makes ears ring the next day (I've lived with this body for over 40 years, you'd thing I'd know the names of some of it's parts).

Yes, bomb Canada. I want to see my tax dollar at work over here. I want the show in my front yard. Nothing nuclear of course. Unless it is small and the wind is blowing in the right direction.

We are a mighty nation with the most powerful armed forces ever built able to do watever we want in the world when we want. We need an ared forced this big. We need the 495 ships, 2,750 helicopters, 3,750 planes, 25,950 missiles, 2,475 tanks and the everything else that makes up the US Armed forces. We need these. It is important that we can blow anything up at any point in time when we want to. Let's blow the shit out of Canada.

Since Google is about the most amazing bit of technology I've ever seen in it's ability to read my mind I typed in US Defense budget. There we're only 15,100,000 hits (seriously, try it). First off think about the words, Defense Budget. I don't know why but 'Offense Budget' seems a helluva lot more accurate. You fill in whatever word seem to make you happy here. I'll go with 'offense budget' since mine is the simple variety.

Just about 1/2 of every tax dollar kicked into the kitty by Americans goes towards fueling this massive and hungry military machine. That would be just about 500 billion dollars. Interestingly enough almost 1/2 of the 500 million ($250,000 million for the liberal arts majors) is paid out as benefits to veterans. Another significant percentage is a fucntion of paying off debt associated with funding the war machine. And there are hundred of other categories as well. The other that jumped out at me was a $35 billion dollar a year hit that goes towards fnding brain surgeries for the affected...

Now this might seem odd to you but the fact that any budget needs to include a line item for 'brain surgeries' for the participants in the organiztion is surely an indication that the people creating the budget and leading the organization are much more in need of the medical procedure than the poor 18 year old inner city kid that actually believes in what he is doing since the propoganda neophytes that came to his high school and waved GI bill pamplets in front of his underpriveledged face giving him a sense of hope for the future while they've acutally built in a fudge factor to carve on some of his injured lobes before he receives his first GI bill check..... Well you get the point.. Somewhere I took a wrong turn grammatically as that must be a run-on sentence but all the words needed to be in there. Sister Myna, please forgive me. I'll throw in a hail-mary at some point.

They really should let the GI Bill pamplet be a bit more indicative of the truth. "Serve your country AND get a college education" should be replaced with "Roll the dice, keep your lobes intact and then, if you can overcome whatever psychological syndrome associated with seeing people blown up into bite size pieces we'll then send you enough money to attend four years of your state college which you could have paid for with a government loan in the first place and don't really need to pay off anyways."

Almost 3,000 killed in Irag. Not sure if I'd rather be in that statistic or part of the 35 billion dollar a year brain surgery statistic.

Maybe I was wrong about blowing up Canada.

Well why the hell not..

Ever since I can remember I've had these vague streams of consciousness and thought it would be fun to share them or at least write them down as some sort of therapy. I never have mostly becuase there hasn't been an easy, or should I say, consistent means to record these little trivial bits. Yes, I must be too lazy to create a folder in Windows and then use Word.

But now, with this blog technology (God I feel like I've become a whore) all that is precious to the still soft part of my mind can be recorded and in my own narsistic mind shared and read by the world..

Why is it that I am able to create a different sort of prose when there is even the slightest glimmer and hope that someone might read it.. Whay do I all of a sudden feel like I am a talented writer when Fred from Oklahoma or Ellen from San Fransisco might possibly, accidentally stumble onto my internal ramblings...

This feels like enough for now.. So I'll stop..