Swamp Musings

Last night's track map showed Ohfeelya (sorry!) was due to pass over my QTH so morning plans were made to pry one large broken limb left over from one of last year's 'canes out of a tree before it came down on the clothesline or the LP tank. Wouldn't have been much of a chore 20 years ago but all those insults to joints, bones, and the pieces that hold one together tend to be cumulative! Didn't get 'er done. I'm going to need a come-along or a stick of dynamite. These daze, dynamite is kinda hard to come by. Back in my youngunhood, one could go buy it at the local feed store as it was used to remove stumps from new fields. Well, the adults could anyway! We kids had to make do with cherry bombs and Silver Salutes (M-80s) and they really were not a particularly good idea. Did you know M-80s wedge just right in a roll of toilet paper? Soak the toilet paper and instant paper-mache'! Poor Jim G. held on to one a tad too long once and what I'd give to have a photo of the result! His hand wasn't much good for a few days and it didn't improve his hearing at all. Can't remember who it was that came up with the clever idea of dipping cherry bombs in LePage's paper cement and rolling them in BBs, probably Ed B., made fine frag grenades. No, by the grace of God, we all kept our eyes! There had to be some serious overtime for our guardian angels. When the county installed storm drains way out in the boonies where we lived, you can imagine where we went. Junctions were pill-boxes and the drain pipes were just big enough to crawl through and some were quite lengthy. A nightmare is when one would be 20 feet down one pipe and a kid had entered the previous "pill-box" from another pipe and rolled a cherry bomb up between your legs. We HAD agreed not to use Ed's frags for those missions. Always wondered what the adults thought with the random "whumphs" coming from all around and the smoke drifting out of the manholes and drains. "Did you have a nice day, son?" "Huh?"

I had a local oldies station on the outside speaker while attempting stuff this morning and I'm not too sure if I heard the news correctly. Bush has requested $50+ billion for Katrina? Don't know if that was just NO, probably the whole shootin' match. If it was just NO, that's over $100,000 for each man, woman, and child and if it is for the million and a half in the affected area, it's still over $30 K a shot. Are the expenditures really a billion a day as heard? One billion divided by one million, five-hundred thousand yields $666/day per head. I also thought I heard one of the race warlords calling for payments to the affected folk amounting to the megabuck or so each of the WTC people received. If so, shear lunacy.

Just reading my favorite bloggers, it looks like the libs and race warlords might have finally stepped into a big pile of it at last. I wonder if the LSM knows how much it is fuelling backlash and widening the breach that has been growing for the decades since LBJ's "Great Society" kept-critter bullshit? If you've never read any of Fred Reed's stuff, he's damn good. That link takes you to his home page and it won't hurt to check him out from the beginning. I first came across him back when I was using a 386, win 3.1, and had a (on good days) 5 kbps internet connection! His column today, A Dismal Reality, says a lot and the link at the end is one that's been on my list for a few days.

Time to go stir the bones for a while and bring up some equipment from the shop before it gets rainy. I'm finding several useful applications for the gadget that I "coma-fied" some of ya'll a few days ago with it re-designed as a tracker. The original application would cost me ~$3 K for parts alone to move to the next stage and this application will just be a bunch of happy skull-sweat and a couple of goodies from the junk box.

Some links before departing:

Liberals Surrounded by Corpses Whisper "I See Political Opportunity"
Frank J. is not very happy.

Slavery
Denny isn't pleased either.

More Katrina Thoughts
Steve H., I'm looking forward to more recipes as well.