It has been one LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG weekend here at Rancho Boracho. I barely finished a case of beer since Thursday, simply because getting up at 6 in the aye-emm and running around doing chores till 8 or 9 every night makes one less tempted to tipple. I still did get through a case, but mainly because it’s Keystone Light, a most excellent day beer.

We’ve had good weather, hot weather, with only a smattering of rain on Friday morning. Now it looks like we’ve got a big thunderboomer moving in, and that’s cool as can be. Practically all of my work is finished…just gotta fold some sheets. There’s all kinds of tertiary chores to be finished (like moving the new sack of ant killer to the barn so it doesn’t get rained on — that kind of crap), but generally, I’m pretty much done.

I sure hope everyone had a nice Memorial Day weekend, and that you took some time to remember those who have served our country, and, especially, given thanks for those who made the ultimate sacrifice, by giving their lives to ensure the freedoms we enjoy every day. I can say that I certainly appreciate it and I’m very thankful that I’m so lucky to have been born a durn American.

My own personal way of remembrance is to hang out a new American flag on the porch here at the ranch on Memorial Day Monday morning every year. I do it early, while the coffee’s perking, and I basically just sit and think for a few minutes, and contemplate. Not much, but it’s important to me. And really, what can you say or do, except offer up sincere thanks, and try to make a difference where and when you can? And that’s what I do.

Two and one-half days with nothing but spam in my email. I truly do hate the interweb.

u l t r a m i c r o s c o p i c

20 minutes spent pondering the existence of a stupid squirrel.

Being a hayseed, I reckon the observed “twitch” was the wind blowing, and the squirrel was already in squirrel heaven. Perhaps even with his own sailor suit, or maybe a squirrel trombone.

I…

oh never mind.

Can someone tell me how to make this stupid Firefox browser work? I like the tabs, but everything else about it sucks to high holy hell. Like my damn space bar doesn’t page down. That’s important, since I’ve only got two hands and one usually has a beer or a sandwich in it. And focus with the mouse doesn’t work. It’s a nice start, but it ain’t all that.

I hate learning new stuff, and I can’t wait for the day I use this damn laptop for target practice. Freed from the stupid interweb.

I’m bushed, and there’s no damn end in sight. Someone tell me again why I’m bothering with this bullshit.

This is the winner in the previously-unannounced contest* for Old Fogies that I’ve decided to title “Kids These Days Don’t Know How Good They Gots It…”

30 Mbps is certainly better than anything I can get today, but I’ll be a bit disappointed if this is all they’re going to offer.

30,000,000 bits per second flowing into you from a damn plug in the house with no need for a satellite dish the size of a barn, and you are a bit disappointed? Krikey…I started this online dealio at 300 stinkin’ lousy bits per second,and we were GD glad to get them, let me tell you. Go ahead and ask ME about disappointed, bub — I’m still waiting for my G–D— flying car and the one-pill/all-nourishment regimen I was promised. Sheesh.

Everybody over 40 repeat after me -
YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!

* Expect more of this kind of pointless crap…I seem to have hit a wall, which is pretty much the same wall I hit a year or two ago.

Here’s a good clue that you’re too damn old to be reading the Dallas Observer for music info:

[...] but the playlist isn’t so different from the KEGL of my youth, when the station ruled Top 40 radio with DJs like Kidd Kraddick at the helm. In the mid-’80s, every seventh-grader worth his Trapper Keeper knew that the Eagle was the station, [...]

Jeebus. I bought my daughter Trapper Keepers when they first hit the scene.

Of course, you can still pick up the Observer for the hooker massage therapist ads in the back, if you’re so inclined.

It’s a three-day weekend!!!1!!!!

Hang on — that means I’m busy as hell. Oh, well. I’m drinking anyway.

Tao of Poker

Poor Pauly…he was the first guy I thought of when I read this a couple days ago.

Thanks to everyone who sent me emails about one of my favorite bands breaking up. It’s true. Phish is breaking up after this summer tour. I will be attending 11 of their last 13 concerts. I wrote a rambling post to the Tao of Pauly called: Phish: The End of an Era.

That’s an all-caps FAN. There’s not a band in the world that I would go see eleven times in a row. Never, not now, not at any point in my life. The dear sweet Lord Jesus, Savoiur of us all, could be sitting in with Waylon Jennings, Buddy Holly, and Stevie Ray Vaughn, and I doubt I could raise the energy level enough to go much past show #3 or 4.

When eminently serious dudes like Pejman Yousefzedah, John Cole, and M. Scott Eiland start talking poker…well, that’s a movement, friend. Oh, the humanity!

You boys go check out the Poker Bloggers…good work out there on the game (within the game (within the game)). Start over there on the right by looking for the ♠ on my blogroll.

New evidence of a link between Iraq and al Qaeda?

Hey! Look over there! A circus parade! With monkies!

Thanks, Jay…

Kissinger Tells Of A Drunk Nixon - May 26, 2004

The call between Kissinger, Nixon’s secretary of state and national security adviser, and Brent Scowcroft came just days into the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and centered on Prime Minister Edward Heath’s desire to speak with Nixon about the Middle East. “Can we tell them no?,” Kissinger asked Scowcroft. “When I talked to the president, he was loaded.” Kissinger then told Scowcroft that Nixon “will be available tomorrow morning our time.”

I’m having a fun time imagining Tricky Dick with a snootful. I bet he was wicked funny. I wonder what kind of drink-along-sing-along songs he enjoyed. Firing up the Magnavox record player, putting some LPs on, trying to balance the nickel on the tone arm so it wouldn’t skip…maybe he had a Secret Service guy to do that for him, but I bet he was a hands-on guy.

I downloaded 172 emails this morning (over freakin’ dial-up, thankyouverymuch). 155 of them were Grade A spam, and thus removed from the Inbox by Cloudmark. Another 12 were Grade A spam that Cloudmark missed. There were a grand total of five of those 172 that were real emails (and one of those was practically spam, but I did buy a product from the company that sent it, and I just can’t seem to get off The List.)

There simply has to be a better way, people. I should probably just change my email addresses. All dang five of them.

Not just cranky, but tired and cranky.

Remember how impossible those days were? Little effer wouldn’t go take a nap, just sat around crying and yelling, all cranky. And tired.

That’s me. There’s absolutely nothing that could be done to make me feel any better.

Now, if you want to try — a pound of ribs, a big old wedge of iceberg covered in bleu cheese and crispy bacon bits (real bacon, damnit, and CRISPY), a twelver of Shiner, and a gallon of that raspberry-chocolate truffle ice cream just might be the ticket a good start. Just leave it on the front porch, holler the code word, and run.

By the way, am I really a reverse snob?

By the time you’ve absorbed his assurances that he’s jes a bumpkin who dunno nuthin about nuthin he’s already removed the shiv from your back and wiped the blade.

Others have levelled that charge at me, and I am always perplexed. If I am anything, I am a common man, and I basically just want everybody to get down off their horse, have a beer and a rib, and relax a little bit. Even Aaron, whose very dangerous blog scares the bejeesus out of me. I imagine him as that X-Man* who can pick up cars and tanks with his massive brain power and hold them stationary, while playing a hand or two of Omaha Hi-Lo (that he just learned), and re-coding Windows to work on a durn Mac just out of spite.

Really, anybody who finds my blade in their back has usually done it to themselves by dumping the clutch while they’re in reverse. Not much to be done about that, except maybe sheathing the machete, and where’s the fun in that, I ask you?

* This is the X-Men of my youth, about 30 years ago, and I’m not sure if I’m really right about the exact comic book. Anyway, he was bald and wore glasses. Might have been in a wheelchair. Pretty bad-ass mofo…never even sweated when the heat was on.

That is all. Over and out.

…to this nation’s enemies, among others.

So obviously everything Bush will say will be stupid/wrong; it’s all motivated by sordid political self-interest anyway. You citizens don’t need to watch it; there won’t be anything important in it anyhow. Just keep in mind that we’re losing in Iraq, that we shouldn’t have gone into Iraq in the first place, that everyone in the world hates America now, that America deserve to be hated, that we could have avoided all this if we’d just been more multilateral but that Bush refused to, that it’s all Bush’s fault, and that no one should even consider voting for Bush in November. (Whether Bush’s speech is in any way motivated by the election or not, the election is clearly the motivation behind this clear-headed, unbiased moderate article.)

That’s a small part of a small Den Beste article, about the media and how they’re running their business, and it kinda hit home, in an eensy kind of way.

Rather than clog up the interweb with it, I stuck all my ruminations under the MORE button…happy surfing.
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