07 September 2006

Time To Reinvent the Wheel...AGAIN!

I don't know if anything ever came of that "new state motto" campaign of months ago, but I'd thought I'd get my tongue solidly in my cheek and do some serious thinking.
Not to mention, I could save the state a ton of cash....rather than let "them" waste my tax dollars forming committees out the ass, right?

So here goes...

The current state motto (1937) - The Crossroads of America
The current state slogan (1998-2006) - Enjoy Indiana

Here are MY suggestions:

INDIANA: Love it...or MOVE!
INDIANA: Not Your AVERAGE Crack State.
INDIANA: DEAL WITH IT!
INDIANA: America's Crossroads of NO and WHERE.
INDIANA: Home of Property Tax Increases.
INDIANA: Dysfunction is Our MIDDLE Name.
INDIANA: The Emerald Ash Borer Capital.
INDIANA: More Wal-Marts Per Person Than Anywhere Else.
INDIANA: Cocaine Distribution Hub of the Midwest..
INDIANA: We STILL Have Some Decent People Living Here!
INDIANA: Where Even Your Garden Gnome Is Armed.
INDIANA: The Boomcar Capital.
INDIANA: The Hearing Loss Capital.
INDIANA: Sure We're Stupid, Fat and On Welfare...So What?
INDIANA: Where crime DOES pay.
INDIANA: Back Homey Again.
INDIANA: The Pork Loin State.
INDIANA: The Atherosclerosis State.
INDIANA: (C)rap Music Capital of the Midwest.
INDIANA: Where Incoming Fire Has the Right-of-Way.
INDIANA: Sorry...We Don't DO Star Trek Conventions.
INDIANA: Pit Bull Breeding Capital.
INDIANA: Muffler??? We Don't NEED No Steenkin' Muffler!
INDIANA: Where ALL Illegal Aliens Like to Move.
INDIANA: Screw the Amish and Pass the Blunt!
INDIANA: We Have More Sales on Ammuntion Than YOU Do.
INDIANA: It's the Economy, Stupid!
INDIANA: The Right Choice...for the Wrong People.
INDIANA: Love it..or Die Trying.
INDIANA: Turn Down That Damn Music, Moron!
INDIANA: Diversities R Us.
INDIANA: Rental Capital of the Nation.
INDIANA: The "New" Detroit.
INDIANA: Se Habla Espanol?
INDIANA: You want a WHAT??? A JOB????
INDIANA: It Could Be Worse, But Not By Much.
INDIANA: Home to Frustrated Student Satirists.
INDIANA: We Be da B'Ball Capital.....WORD UP!
INDIANA: Where Kids Become Adults Quicker Than Anywhere Else.
INDIANA: We Wish We Knew What a Philly Cheesesteak Was.
INDIANA: We Make the Cast of "OZ" Look Timid.
INDIANA: Car Insurance? What the Hell is THAT?
INDIANA: Buckle up...Or Don't.
INDIANA: Where Most Homes Are Furnished by Rent-A-Center.
INDIANA: The BS state...Miles & Miles of Piles & Piles.
INDIANA: Where ADHD is a Way of Life.
INDIANA: You Got Any "shit"?
INDIANA: Amber Waves and Amber Alerts!
INDIANA: Where "Hoosier Daddy" Takes On a Whole New Meaning
INDIANA: Team Logo Capital of the Nation.
INDIANA: We Still Have Plenty of Banks to Rob!
INDIANA: Littering Capital of the World.
INDIANA: Tired of Life? Move HERE.
INDIANA: Where Everybody Knows Your Name (if you're a sex offender).
INDIANA: Yet ANOTHER Comcast Monopoly.
INDIANA: Whaaaaaazzzzuuuppp?
INDIANA: You Have GOT To Be Kidding...Right?
INDIANA: Meth, Pot, Crack...What's There NOT to Like?
INDIANA: Where Founding Fathers Turn in their Graves HOURLY!
INDIANA: You Want Disrespect..You Found It!
INDIANA: Where We DON'T Have Deposit Bottles!
INDIANA: It's NOT Just for Gangstas Anymore
INDIANA: Serious Violent Felon Crossroads of America
INDIANA: Bite Me!
INDIANA: It's STILL Nice Here (away from any major city).
INDIANA: Less Altitude...More Attitude.
INDIANA: Where Chicagoans Buy THEIR guns!
INDIANA: Our Horses are Smarter than Most Kids.
INDIANA: Where Every House is a Potential Urinal.
INDIANA: Home of the "500" (death row inmates)
INDIANA: More Militias Per Square Mile.
INDIANA: Home to the Cheapest Counterfeit Currency.
INDIANA: Where the 2 Largest Cities are the 2 Largest Problems.
INDIANA: Insomniacs Welcomed.
INDIANA: Come and Watch Us Do Something DUMB!
INDIANA: Home of Fewer Celebrities Than Rhode Island
INDIANA: Tony Stewart...'Nuff Said!
INDIANA: At Least We're Not a "Buckeye", Right?
INDIANA: Where We Dream Up a NEW Motto Every Other Year.
INDIANA: One plate...FIVE cars...Do the Math!
INDIANA: We Tossed Civility Out the Window YEARS Ago.
INDIANA: Nestled in the Crotch Of Chicago
INDIANA: Getting It UP Is Our First Concern
INDIANA: The Crackhouse State
INDIANA: Back Home Again...Same Jail Cell, Too!
INDIANA: Better Than Ever...In Your Dreams!
INDIANA: Where the Cops are ALWAYS on Speed-Dial.
INDIANA: The Armpit of the Midwest...and Proud of It.
INDIANA: Where We Call a Creek a River...Because We Can.
INDIANA: What's It To You?
INDIANA: Our Mountains Are Man-Made (landfills).
INDIANA: We Just OOZE Apathy.
INDIANA: It's Not Just For Idiots Anymore.
INDIANA: We Still Leave Christmas Decorations Up 'till May
INDIANA: Don't You Feel Worse Already?
INDIANA: The Methlab State
INDIANA: Where Your Parents Love to Retire...FROM!
INDIANA: Our gas costs more than YOURS.
INDIANA: It IS Better Anywhere Else..Trust Us.
INDIANA: Knowuhimsayin?

So there you are...a "few" ideas from someone that still cares...ROFLMAO!

06 September 2006

Things that make you Go "GRRrrrrrrrr"...

"However more complex they rethink the plumbing...the easier it is to stop up the drain"...Montgomery Scott

With that famous quote from "Scotty"...I just had bemoan my latest "excursion" into the wonderful world of .....AUTOMOTIVE REPAIR.....!

Seems I had a slight problem yesterday with my 23 year old car...after pulling it into the garage, I went to place it in PARK...

Imagine my astonishment, when I did NOT hear the familair "thunk" of the transmission going into gear. In fact, it didn't go into ANY gear...except neutral, as was witnessed by the lazy way the car "wanted" to roll backwards towards the garage door.
Assessing the situation, and finding out that nothing WITHIN the internal linkage was wrong, I looked under the car (no way was I going to get under the car with no parking gear). I found the remains of some circular bushing, grommet, whatever...and figured THIS must be the culprit. I was right...AGAIN!
After a $40 tow (had to flatbed the car after rolling it from the garage with no power) which wasn't a bad price, the service center called and gave the bad news...$76.50 total. That really wasn't that bad. What WAS bad was how the hell a damn $7 grommet can totally and quite effectively DISABLE a 2800 pound automobile!!!

Time was...when something "broke" on a car...it was a pretty BIG "broke"...as in the transmission fell the hell OUT...or the engine tossed a PISTON through the block...THAT kinda shit! The "good kinda broke" where you KNEW it was broke.
Ever since the mid 70s, and the subsequent advent of "computer-assisted" vehicles (ever notice how the word ASS is included in there?) repairs on cars no longer require a guy with a "motorhead" mentality, but rather a damn computer engineering degree from M.I.T. or some other MAJOR university.
And any car that has the "audacity" to shine a light on the dash telling ME that I need to "check the engine" is not on my "A" list! If I drive the car enough...I KNOW the sounds it SHOULD make...as well as the ones it SHOULD NOT make.
I have a problem with ANY car that wants me to take it in "for service" when I know DAMN WELL, all that car wants to do is collude with the service department and cost me more $$$ I don't have for something that doesn't even NEED service. The oil gets changed religiously, as does the tranny fluid (when warranted)....I have the car lubed at the right intervals. I rotate the tires when needed. Hell, I even do a "walk-around" to check ALL my lights, making sure they work, blink and do what they designed to do.

I often think about what me Dad used to say to me..."Son..they don't call them IDIOT LIGHTS for NO damn reason...any idiot that does what THEY say as opposed to what the CAR tells you is asking to be taken to the cleaners!"

Now...it makes a LOT more sense to me than when he first told me..all those years ago!

Happy Motoring!
Poverty...The Real AND The Perceived

When you see starving people in Africa, living in a civil war-torn environment, you can't help but feel bad for these folks. They didn't ask to be caught up in this. They don't want to be a part of it, and yet...there they are.
You drive through a part of a major city that has been labeled "blighted", and you see run down neighborhoods, barefoot children running all over, the homeless, the indigent, and the forgotten urban dwellers. And many times you don't feel anything approaching the sorrow you felt for those people overseas.

So...why exactly IS that the case?

America is supposed to be the "Land of Opportunity", or so it was claimed. But here these people are...not living in our inner cities, but barely surviving. What has gone so drastically WRONG that we have all these people in much the same "boat" as those in third world nations?
There ARE those that have truly fallen on what we used to call "hard times", due to illness, layoffs, or whatever the case. That is the minority of this inner city sub-class. They are the ones that have to look UP to see the bottom of the glass...forget about the "half-full, half-empty" analogy. Then there are those that CHOOSE to live in this manner. Squalor is OK with them, and they do well living in such environs.
Urban areas called ghettos (or slums) are replete with not only the down-trodden folks, but also those making their living OFF of those people. The drug dealers, prostitutes, thieves, burglars, and the like thrive in this type of setting. Many times, these people are brought up with a hatred of authority, a disdain for education, and a distrust of ANYONE not like themselves.
They are indoctrinated from a very young age that "whoever" is out to get you, be it the police, the white man, or even educators. The failure rate for inner city kids is much higher than that of those living in suburbia, or even rural areas. Crime rates are ALWAYS higher in urban areas than rural settings. Many claim that the density of the population is a contributing factor. And it is...but NOT to the degree we're led to believe. Crime will not always rise where there are large numbers of people (take Japan and China for example)...BUT...crime WILL ALWAYS rise where there is the impetus for it's growth. Crime will THRIVE where it is not only allowed, but encouraged...that's just common sense.
The highest crime rates in America occur in places where even the police are afraid to go. SO what does that make these inner urban areas then? Are they not unlike those third world nations mentioned above? Are we to conclude that poverty AND crime ALWAYS go hand-in-hand then? I would have to say NO.

Any person of conscience would say that when you're too busy worrying about your next meal, you don't have time to think about robbing someone. Notice I said CONSCIENCE. Many of my contemporaries grew up with little in the way of "things" such as the plethora of amenities we enjoy today. We read BOOKS, because maybe we DIDN'T have a TV (or it was on the fritz). And we didn't STEAL those books either...we got them from the LIBRARY. We ate a lot of home-made SOUPS, because our parents couldn't afford to feed us REAL MEALS 3 times a day, seven days a week. Our Moms MADE a lot of our clothes, because we couldn't AFFORD to go to a nice store and BUY whatever was "hot" this season.
And the ironic part of this is that our NEEDS were met. Forget about what we "wanted"....it wasn't going to happen. Today, it's ALL about what you HAVE...screw WHO you are. Poverty is defined (today) as being somewhere in the $14,000 a year income bracket (or lower). Yet I recall working for a downtown Philly publishing firm making $8,000 a year, working my tail off. And I wasn't considered "poverty level".
When a nice new "low-income" housing project is completed, and they start moving people into them, I start to cringe, for I know for certain that it will fall into disrepair in almost as short a time as it took to develop and build. Many noble ideas were implemented during the 70s, attempting to allow these people a CHANCE at better living, and after a brief time, every single one of these developments (or "projects" if you prefer) was TORN DOWN. That left these "poverty-level" people that "chance" to move into OUR neighborhoods...and to what end?

We see once nice neighborhoods become financially-burdensome "distressed" parts of our cities, and in some cases giving the appearance of a battlefield, spurring the flight to the suburbs. We see the few decent people (still in those areas) trying to live among these so-called "poor" people (who are living off the state, getting free food for ALL the kids they produce at will, while driving a new car with a killer sound system) and having a hard go of it. It's a known fact that people who have never "had" anything cherish what they DO have, and what they get...what they EARN. Conversely speaking, those that don't care about anyone or anything will take ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that comes their way, chew it up, and spit out the "rind". They simply have no concept of ownership, and don't wish to.
What we KNOW to be poverty and what we actually witness in our cities is as diverse as the people that make up this nation. If you want to see REAL poverty...go visit the Appalachian mountains...see what THEY call living. We wouldn't even call it that. When you see the ghetto dwellers with their gold toothed "grilles', their latest "thug-designer" clothing and footwear, their pneumatically-controlled "slum-sleds" with enough audio to drown out a police siren, ask yourself if THIS is what "poverty" means to YOU. Think about all those that CLAIM poverty, while bilking the taxpayers. Ponder the fact that people such as this are laughing up their FUBU'ed sleeves at you.

The answers and conclusions you come to might just surprise you.

05 September 2006

More famous people Dying.

Last week we heard about that great (IMHO) actor,Glenn Ford passing away, and on Labor Day, we hear about the sudden and tragic death of Steve Irwn, the Crocodile Hunter himself...Crikey!
Glenn Ford was near 90, while Steve Irwin wasn't even 40.
Mr. Ford was one of those "steady" actors...the kind that never seemd to have a bad performance, regardless of the picture he appeared in. Whether it was TORPEDO ALLEY (with Ernie Borgnine), 3:10 TO YUMA, A POCKETFUL OF MIRACLES (with Bette davis), or even THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE (with a really young Sidney Pottier and Jeff Morrow from COMBAT), he gave his all! One of my personal favorites was the movie based on the Ernest K Ghan book, "FATE IS THE HUNTER". If you can FIND it...give it a watch...it is really good.
Mr Irwin was another great performer, who taught all of us a little more about reptiles, the environment and preserving wildlife. His approach to any animal was captivating, and his knowledge alone was staggering. His boldness, without being foolhardy was something to watch. I for one will miss his style of showmanship and teaching.
Never since Marlin Perkins and WILD KINGDOM have I wanted to watch animals shows, as I did with Mr. Irwin. HIs contribution to wildlife and their preservation will be sorely missed. Now I suppose that since celebrities seem to "die in threes"...we can expect someone else to leave us very soon.

It just happens that way, and I have no explanation as to why.
Labor Day...For Better or Worse

To many, it was a LONG weekend..time to fire up the grill, check out ALL those SALES, and get hammered ONE last time before it's back to "the grind". To a lot fewer people, it was just simply a time to put one's feet up, relax, and think about what Labor Day means.
With all the problems we face today on a global scale, and with all the more problems each of us encounter daily in our own towns, cities and boroughs, from bad drivers to leaky roofs, we otfen fail to ponder the plight of the average guy or gal sweating their lives away, eeking out a meager living so they can *maybe* provide a better life for their offspring.
The people in the trenches that make America work...all the nameless cogs in the mighty "machine" whose job it is to do what they do, every day...monotonous as it might be, are the real unsung heroes. People who work for minimum wage, yet still do their best..the ones that protect us and come to our rescue when called..the men and women who provide needed services are the ones we should be thinking about. SO much of what goes on "behind the scenes" is what we take fro granted. Turn on the spiggot..water comes out. Turn on the TV...news, weather, sports and more comes out. Turn on the range, there's that blue flame (or red coil if it's electric). Feeling a bit warm? Just turn on the A/C to cool off....no one thinks about WHERE the power comes from, and even less about WHO is making this happen for all of us 24/7.

That working stiff...the common man (and woman)...the individuals who, by working in concert with others such as themselves, allow the rest of us to enjoy the amenitites we don't even cast a thought about. And we're not only referring to this current generation of working class, but the scores of generations preceding them who scouted, settled, and built America, timber by timber, brick by brick, and word by word...THEY are the ones we should be thinking about. So when I think of LABOR DAY....I just find a part of history that chronicles the achievements of these men and women...the ones that toiled, worked and labored their way into not only the annals of history, but into an untamed land, and an even more unknown future.

That makes this "day off" that much more noteworthy, and worthy of the recognition it rightly deserves. Labor Day is about PEOPLE...great people...people who I find more enlightening than a cookout or a shopping spree.
Of course you could always dedicate that cookout on rememberance TO them...
....in keeping with the spirit, right?

01 September 2006

Believe It....Or Not.

Just as Robert Leroy Ripley used to say....yes, folks, there ARE things that DO make me happy, in spite of my rants, raves, tirades, gripes, pisses and moans!

And those things that provide happiness for ME are diverse and many.

For Example:

Tastykakes, Pork Roll, and Scrapple (it's a Philly thing)
Montessini's Pizza (Sicilian...OH yeah) another Philly-ism
REAL hoagies (south philly sytle)
Pennypack Park (Philly) in it's hey-day
Military Ops that go exactly as planned!
GOOD police work
Sunsets...in ANY country
Seeing the ACLU get sued for a change
A drive to nowhere on a Sunday afternoon
Going to the pistol range and hitting the 10 ring
Having a COMMANDO CODY DVD set in 3D
Watching democrats talk out of both side of their mouth
Watching republicans trying to imitate the democrats
Watching Bill O'Reilly
Reading a good book...again.
My car (even after 23 years)
Wearing a nice suit and tie with polished shoes
Certain colognes
Warm Danish pastry
Being called "sir" when I'm not in the military
MY wife (as long as she doesn't cook OR sing)
Puppies and kittens ( c'mon now...who DOESN'T like 'em?)
A GOOD Scotch (Chivas anyone?)
A GOOD Bourbon (Old Grand Dad/Jim Beam)
Watching ANY episode of COPS
Hot soft pretzels from a Phlly vendor
Owning a 12 gauge pump shotgun with a flat black finish
The ability to size up a majority of people in 5 seconds
Seeing a perp get busted on my lawn at 2AM
Having a Vodka martini (shaken not stirred)
Owning a DVD player (next best thing to BETA video)
Besting most officers' scores at the shooting range
Hiking through the woods for the hell of it
Black Forest cake
Having people wonder what I "used" to do for a living
Gardening (great tomatoes, basil and dill)
Cooking (big meals on Sunday)
Doctor Who (1970-1980 era)
GOOD Japanese anime
Watching a classic B&W movie
German Buttercake (from Philly naturally)
Listening to classical music
Photography (with REAL film too)
The LONE RANGER (Clayton Moore)
That one squirrel that comes by daily for his "treats"
The feel of a nice, comfy chair
Viewing the full moon
Seeing people go out of their way to be stupid
Having butterflies & hummingbirds in the garden
Riding a horse
Playing with your dog outside
Buying something nice for your sweetheart
Buying something nice for yourself

And there's a bunch of other things I can't recall immediately...a lot of them are impulsive, like a good show on the History channel or a particular episode of Stargate SG-1 or Star Trek... a James Bond movie (Connery or Brosnan), or even some old episodes of I SPY with Bill Cosby & Bob Culp. Hell, I even like classic rock from time to time (music to wash a car by).
And conversely, there are AS MANY (if not MORE) things that cheese me off. Most of them are PEOPLE, or to put it more precisely...their ACTIONS...or even their INACTIONS.

But hey...I'm still a "work in progress"...just like everyone else. The difference is I just try to be a little bit more TODAY than what I was yesterday.