Posted on 06/12/2011 10:31:53 AM PDT by SamAdams76
So here we are having another soggy, cold weekend up here in New England. Sure could use a little of that "global warming" up here! I mean, here it is, the middle of June, and it is 53 degrees at midday with a cold wind off the ocean. Beaches are empty and people are walking around shivering in their windbreakers sipping hot chocolate. I might even get the fireplace going tonight - that is, if I can find some wood dry enough to burn. Anyway, I'm making the best of it and as I'm about to pop my first beer of the day, I am going to sit down and do a little stream-of-consciousness rambling vanity here on the Free Republic which I will share with you all once I hit the POST button. So grab yourselves a glass of your favorite beverage and read on...if you dare. For I am just going to ramble with whatever pops into my mind and I'm not stopping until either the beer runs out or my bladder gets too full to continue on.
So presidential candidate Mitt Romney is now on the "climate change" bandwagon too. Let's see, man-made climate change, state-run health care, pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, pro-gun control, etc. Other than being able to produce a valid birth certificate and perhaps a higher golf handicap, is there any significant difference at all between Mitt Romney and the current occupant of our White House?
Getting a kick out of the media frenzy over the Sarah Palin emails that were released over this weekend. Not only were "journalists", with visions of being the next Bob Woodward, tripping over each Friday afternoon trying to get to the boxes and boxes of emails, but some newspapers were frantically hiring additional temporary staff to help them get through them. No doubt they had visions of filling their Sunday papers with all kinds of dirt on Sarah Palin with which they could force her to abort her possible presidential campaign - a prospect that has most of the mainstream media absolutely shivering with fear over. They remember how Ronald Reagan absolutely steamrollered over them in 1980 after spending months and months trying to dismiss Reagan as a blundering lightweight, a B-Movie actor so terrible that he was upstaged by a chimp (ha, ha, ha). That's dumb Ronald Reagan for you all.
However, despite the ridicule, all them stupid hicks from the heartland went ahead and voted for the man anyhow. The lesson learned here is that they did not go far enough to destroy the man. So mainstream media is bound and determined not to let some charismatic conservative figure get the better of them again. They now know they must absolutely marginalize and destroy any true conservative that shows any potential of getting the Republican nomination. This strategy will ensure that only RINOs get the nomination. You know, the kind of reaching-across-the-aisle RINOs that are either easy for the Democrats to beat in the general election, or at least middle-of-the-road enough that if they do win, it will not set back their socialist dreams all that much. It is true populist conservatives like Ronald Reagan and Sarah Palin that the Democrats, socialists and mainstream media truly fear.
So imagine the chagrin that the mainstream media are feeling this Sunday morning as they awake to the fact that the Sunday papers and talking head shows are not, after all, going to be chock-full of Palin blunders, errors and missteps made while she was governor of Alaska. After going into the weekend with such high hopes about the nuggets this email dump was sure to yield, they are pouting like school children who came up empty at the Easter Egg hunt. You can't imagine how frustrated the mainstream media is right about now. They have spent the past three years destroying Sarah Palin and dammit, she is refusing to cooperate with the plan. She is refusing to act destroyed! The 2012 presidential election season is upon us and that darn Sarah Palin continues to ride around the country on that bus, drawing crowds, and carrying on like the opinions of the mainstream media, Hollywood, the eastern liberal establishment and Beltway insiders doesn't matter all that much. Why the audacity of that woman!
Speaking of pit bulls, let's move on to the doggie version of pit bulls. Lots of threads concerning pit pulls on the Free Republic despite the banishing of a few for posting a little too zealously on the subject. Now pit bulls, as well as a few other dog breeds, are definitely more prone to attack humans then other breeds. For example, we don't see all that many Free Republic postings about collie attacks or maulings by golden retrievers. However, as a lifetime owner of dogs, I feel I know the ways of dogs, and any dog is capable of biting or attacking a human. The responsibility in these cases always lie with the dog owner. It is the dog owner who must train his/her dog accordingly so that attacks on humans are not likely to happen and more importantly it is the responsibility of the dog's owner to control the dog in all situations. So as a fan of dogs in general, it irritates me to see dogs getting the blame for human attack situations that occur. It's sort of a liberal mindset, kind of like blaming the availability of guns for crime instead of holding the people using guns in the commission of a crime responsible.
Manhole covers. I have always been fascinated by manhole covers. Next time you walk around your neighborhood, especially if your neighborhood has a sewer system, count the number of manhole covers. I think you will be amazed at how many there are. There must be quite a lot going on down there. In fact, in our major cities like New York, there are literally hundreds and hundreds of miles of tunnels down there. Rats as big as cats and who knows, even some humans living down there. When I was a kid, we lifted a manhole cover - took four of us because the darn things weigh about 150 pounds - and attempted to go down there to explore but the smells coming out of there quickly changed our minds. Now that we have so many obese people, I would imagine that there are a good number of rotund public works employees who would have trouble fitting their girth down a manhole. I suppose it would be really embarrassing if one of them got stuck halfway through and needed a crane or something to lift them out of it. Why are manhole covers always round? Well, this used to be a Microsoft interview question. For some reason, high tech companies like to ask their prospective employees strange questions in interviews - questions that have no real answer. Google and Apple do this too. I think I would be good at questions like this because I'm always thinking about arcane stuff like this and my answers will likely confound them more than their question was intended to confound me. It's hard to say whether making your interviewer scratch his head is good or bad relative to obtaining a job but every job interview I've ever been on - I was always offered the job.
Best parts of life are what I call the "in-between". I think people allow their lives to revolve too much around certain events in their life. Such as weddings, graduations, sporting events, attending a rock concert, etc. Either something special has to be going on or they are bored. For example, there was a family member who spent over a year planning out her wedding. Months and months of incessant planning, not to mention the thousands of dollars spent. All this for an event that only lasted several hours. As it turned out, it poured rain on the wedding day and she was utterly devastated. She couldn't even enjoy the day she spent so much time preparing for. Even though everything was planned to occur indoors anyhow, it was for some reason really important for her to have the wedding day be bright and sunny.
To me, it is the "in-between" that really comprises life. I think back to my happiest days and they were always regular days when nothing in particular was going on. For example, even though it was a nasty day yesterday (Saturday) weatherwise and the rain and cold kept me mostly indoors, it did not ruin my day. I went to the library, got a few good books to read and spent most of the day listening to some music while reading them. When the rains let up, I took my dog for a walk in the nearby woods and as it was too cold for the mosquitos to come out, it was a very enjoyable walk and I had the trails all to myself because nobody else decided to walk in the woods that day. Then I fired up the barbeque with hamburgers, hot peppers, corn on the cob, and even broccoli (wrap in tin foil with a slab of butter) and had a delicious meal with the wife. Then we watched a movie together on Netflix with a few glasses of beer. All in all, a fantastic day, even though others probably had a miserable day because they allowed the crappy weather to dampen their spirits and get them in a bad mood.
Take dating for example. Now my sons are old enough to start going out on dates but they are stuck in that "movie-and-a-dinner" formula that we have been doing for generations now. Personally, I always found those dates to be too boring and predictable - something that married people do (like my wife and I last night). When my wife and I were dating (all those years ago), we tried to break out of that mold and do things together that were spontaneous. Well, those turned out to be the most memorable dates. Like the time we decided to meet for breakfast on a Saturday morning and as the breakfast place was crowded and had too much of a wait, we ended up driving clear across the state to Albany, NY (from Boston). We ended up having a picnic lunch on a hill overlooking the Hudson river and found a seedy pool hall in downtown Albany where we shot some darts under the glares of the locals who were wondering who the hell we were. Eventually they warmed to us and joined us for a few games and we left on good terms. Then we decided to try and take back roads home, got lost and ended up in Vermont (this was way before GPS). Didn't get home until almost midnight on what was to be just a routine Saturday morning breakfast. Well, I guess that would qualify as a rather untraditional date! So now my younger son is catching on. He recently took his date to a bowling alley and even though she never bowled in her life, she had such a great time that she raved about it on Facebook for days. All I'm saying is break out of the same old mold and try something a little different. Besides, the movies coming out these days aren't that great anyhow.
Casual chain restaurants...I'm talking Applebees, Outback, Longhorns, Olive Garden, Ruby Tuesday, Chilis, etc. Is it just me or are they taking cost-cutting a little too far? They seem to be constantly understaffed causing a serious deterioration of service. I was never a big fan of these restaurants in the first place as I feel the portions are way too enormous (their appetizers are meals in themselves) and too loaded with added sugar and fat. But my wife loves them for just that reason - she feels she gets her money's worth and often brings back enough leftovers to have for lunch the next day. For me, it's not the portion size of the food (I'm not shy to order another dish if I'm still hungry) but the service. I like waitstaff that ask me if I want a refill on my drink before it is empty and I don't like to have to flag them down. If an appetizer is ordered, I like it brought about 15 minutes before the main course is served and not at the same time! I also hate it when they don't write my order down. It doesn't impress me at all when they try to remember my order from memory because more often than not, they end up getting it wrong. Not that I'm overly complicated in my ordering, but for example, I would rather have an extra vegetable instead of a salad and if I do have a salad, I prefer it with olive oil only and not with the vinegar and dressing they usually dump into it. They need to write that stuff down!
Anyway, I feel bad for the waitstaff working in these chain restaurants. They are often overworked and being asked to work way more tables than they should. I will try to convince my wife to go to mom-and-pop owned restaurants as much as possible.
So as I was walking the dog yesterday afternoon, the song "Ghost of Tom Joad" by Bruce Springsteen came up on my iPod. Now I detest the politics of Bruce Springsteen but his songs always have a way of pleasantly surprising me. Now I'm not talking about the half-dozen or so radio hits you hear ad nauseam on the radio, for example, if I hear "Born To Run" or "Cover Me" one more time, I'm going to throw up. No, I'm not talking about those but his deeper album tracks, from his lesser known albums like "Tunnel of Love", "Nebraska" or "The Rising." Songs like "Girls In Their Summer Clothes", "Valentine's Day", "Johnny 99", that you don't normally hear on the radio. I even love the track "Trapped" but never got to own it as it was featured on that godawful tribute album I refuse to buy (That USA for Africa album from 1985).
I guess it's fortunate that I don't apply a political litmus test to the music I listen to or I would not be able to listen to very much. I mean, I like Ted Nugent's politics but I don't really like his music all that much. So if I ever went on a hunting trip with him (which I'd love to do as I'm sure it would be a blast), I'd have to get his permission to play something more along the lines of Bob Dylan's "Blood On The Tracks" on the ride up there in his truck as opposed to, say, "Cat Scratch Fever", which just gives me a headache.
So unfortunately, my music library does not comport very well with my political leanings. In addition to pretty much everything Springsteen and Dylan have put out, I have scores of albums from artists like Neil Young, Jackson Browne, Tom Petty, Tom Waits, Lucinda Williams and even Willie Nelson. All of these artists are on the totally opposite political spectrum then myself but I do like the music that they create as I guess I'm partial to artists with gravelly voices that mostly write their own songs. I often wonder why there are so few conservatives in the movie or music recording business. I'm thinking that those that are conservative know that it will hurt their careers so they keep quiet about it.
I mentioned that one of my favorite Springsteen songs is "Girls In Their Summer Clothes" (a track from the album "Magic") but if there was a song called "Women in Their Flip Flops", I would probably not like that song too much. That is because I get very annoyed with women that wear their flip-flops in public.
Just what is it with women wearing flip-flops anyhow? As the school year winds down, I walk my dog by groups of teenage girls at the school bus stops, every single one of them in flip-flops. Doesn't matter if the temperature is 40 degrees or 70 degrees. They've been wearing them since the middle of March. Do girls have something against shoes all of a sudden? And how come the schools even allow this? Shouldn't students be required to wear shoes to school? As well, is it even comfortable walking around in flip-flops? Only time I ever wore flip flops was when I was in Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island - training depot rule said you had to wear them in the showers for hygenic reasons. Soon as I graduated, they went right in the trash because it was a pain in the neck trying to walk around in them.
And it's not just the girls wearing flip-flops either. When I go to the Dunkin Donuts in the morning, you have adult women in those flip flops too. Maybe some of the women Freepers out there can explain to me just what is the appeal with wearing flip-flops. OK, I can see them at the beach or maybe padding around the house, but surely they can't be very comfortable walking around outside in.
Well the garbage disposal under my sink crapped out this week. Always something around the house crapping out. If it's not the refrigerator (like what happened to me the week before), it's the hot water heater, or the toilet, or the kitchen sink, etc. Never realized how much the household depended on the garbage disposal until it stopped working. The sink immediately became a disgusting mess with potato and carrot peels piling up, egg shells clinging to the bottom of the sink and all sorts of other scrap food and food matter. Couldn't run the dishwasher either because it was tied in somehow.
Now I'm not exactly known for being a handyman around the house but I figured I could handle replacing a garbage disposal. After all, it just mounts to the bottom of the sink drain and has a couple hoses running into it (one from dishwasher and one heading to the septic system. But alas, it was not as easy as it seemed. Got the new disposal home and the instructions (those that were in English) confused the heck out of me. They rambled on about snap rings, flanges, plumber's putty, baffles, gaskets, discharge tubes, and such. But I never got to all of that anyhow because I couldn't even get the old disposal removed from the sink. It was all rusted out where it connected to the sink drain and I know that if I forced it, I would probably do damage to the sink or the plumbing in general. So I had to call a plumber and get charged about $300 because he ended up having to unclog the pipes to get everything working properly. If I could do my life over again, I would learn how to do my own construction, plumbing, electrical, and car repair. I would have saved myself tens of thousands of dollars over the years!
Well the Boston Bruins are in the Stanley Cup Finals and trail the series 3 games to 2, headed for Game 6 in Boston Monday night. I used to be a rabid hockey fan in the 1970s when the "Big Bad Bruins" were battling it out with other scrappy teams like the Philadelphia Flyers and the New York Rangers. In fact, I remember clearly the last Stanley Cup the Bruins won. It was 1972 and they beat the New York Rangers in the Finals with players like Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito still in their prime. I was only 10 years old that year and figured the Bruins would win several more in short order, after all, they also won the Cup two years prior and had a team that was still young and apparently unstoppable. A dynasty was in the making. Not sure why the Bruins never won another Cup since but one factor might have been that the Bruins partied just as hard, if not harder, then they played. My father used to run into the Bruins all the time in those days as he worked for the company that maintained their charter plane and he also used to hang out in one of the East Boston bars that they would often frequent. It was not unusual for half the team to pile into a bar after a home game and stay until well past "official" closing time. One time, Wayne Cashman was arrested and spent the night in jail. He used his one phone call to order take-out chinese food because he was hungry! The next day, his teammates had to figure out where he was and go bail him out so he could make practice. Even Phil Esposito himself said once that the team would have easily won six Stanley Cups if they had been a little more disciplined.
Hockey sort of fell off my radar starting in the 1980s as I felt the game was becoming boring due to the "neutral zone trap" many teams started to employ. For example, they'd get in the lead and then would attempt to sit on it the rest of the game by constantly slapping the puck around in the neutral zone - in other words, mostly defense and not much offense. However, the game seems to have opened up again as officials are calling obstruction penalties more often and offensive-minded teams are finding ways to break out of the trap, so I am once again becoming a fan of the sport. Will be interesting to see if the Bruins can force a game 7 back in Vancouver.
Getting back to Sarah Palin. I really hope she gets into this race because if she does, it will be hers to lose. The conventional wisdom that some seem to hold, that she is "damaged goods" due to the media's smear campaign against her, cannot be allowed to prevail. We simply cannot allow the media to determine who can and cannot run for public office. Imagine if we had given up on Ronald Reagan in 1980, simply because he was made fun of in SNL skits and the butt of some jokes on late-night TV?
Now as I have said before, I'm not one of those saying that Sarah Palin is as great as Ronald Reagan. However, I can confidently say that Sarah Palin is the greatest conservative candidate we have seen SINCE Ronald Reagan. And who knows, once she is given the opportunity to serve as president, perhaps she will demonstrate that she is as great as Reagan. After all, who in 1979 could have predicted just how revolutionary the Reagan presidency would have turned out to be?
What makes Sarah Palin as president so appealing to so many? I think it because many Americans are so sick and tired of the career politicians, you know the type, the ones that are already thinking of political power even when they are still in college. Every decision they make is based on whether or not it helps their political career. They even take positions they do not necessarily agree with if taking such a stand helps them politically.
Sarah Palin is not like that. She is what she is. Further, she spent most of her life just like the rest of us. Paying bills, raising a family, etc. I bet she even did her own laundry and groceries up until a few years ago. Yet the establishment media would have us believe that this makes her unqualified. As if it is written in the constitution that nobody can serve in public office unless they went to the right schools, obtained a law degree and never had to get their hands dirty.
As was just demonstrated by the weekend email dump, it is clear that the mainstream media have run out of bullets to use on Sarah. She is battle-tested, probably the most vetted potential presidential candidate in our history, and I strongly feel that she will be unstoppable once she "gets in it to win it."
So I am hoping that my next stream-of-consciousness vanity here on Free Republic will be talking about PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE Palin, as opposed to potential presidential candidate Palin.
Actually there are many flip flops out there that offer arch support. I have very high arches. The best ones suited for me are the "fancy" ones, which have arch support and a heel....and very pretty as well.
The only problem I have with flip flops is I have to wash my feet once I get home. They do tend to "let in the dirt" and I have to wash them as well.
My favorite pair (which were destroyed by my elder Kitty, before she died, peed on them). My fault. I should not have left them out of the closet.
Too fat to tie laces?
ducks back into hole./s
Lol. The more butch dykes I can offend, the better!
My sandals are all from a company in Mexico named “Flexi” — all their sandals have this long-lasting padding and they fit like they were designed for my feet.
But around the house, it is barefoot for me. I hate shoes (and shaving). And if I have to wear shoes (like going to the market), I avoid socks...
It might look interesting (I am sure that is the point) but they seem impractical — the point of sandals is taking them off and putting them on quickly.
IMHO of course...
Too funny. Around the house, I MUST have my socks and slippers on at all times. I CANNOT tolerate going barefoot!
No. Writing is one of the things I like to do in my spare time. As well as reading, music, hiking, and cooking. At some point, once I get out of the rat-race job I'm in, I'd like to create a website where I can publish a blog and maybe even publish a book or two. So writing these articles on Free Republic is helping me to see if I actually have a talent for this sort of thing.
>>Too funny. Around the house, I MUST have my socks and slippers on at all times. I CANNOT tolerate going barefoot!<<
Maybe it is whether or not we have carpets? At home and in my apt. on the road I have wall-to-wall.
I don’t wear flip flops.I find them to be very uncomfortable not to mention they are the cheapest of the cheap made shoes and people pay about 100X what thry are worth.I have a very high arch and flat shoes like those kill me.I’m probably the only woman in America who has no cell phone or flip flops. LOL
Well that's the best excuse I've heard yet! Most of my family is from Alabama and I go there often to visit (Marshall County - up on Sand Mountain). My parents use to send me there for entire summers when I was a child and I would go shoeless most of that time. I used to come back north and impress the hell out of my friends by walking across gravel and hot blacktop in my barefeet. Doesn't take long to toughen up the soles when you go around barefoot all the time.
I do have the fake wood flooring. But even in my other apts that had floor to floor carpet, I still had to wear my socks and slippers!
Even wearing my slippers without socks (when getting ready in the morning) I feel “niked”.
And apparently, such incidents are not even all that unique.
>>So writing these articles on Free Republic is helping me to see if I actually have a talent for this sort of thing.<<
I fly - A LOT. So one of my distractions is to not only watch and re-watch my favorite movies, but to hear the commentaries.
I mention that only because Ben Burtt, who has been Sound Editor, Executive Editor, etc. for all 6 Star Wars films said he makes mini-movies just to test himself and refine his skills. Actually, his comments are the most interesting on those films (except for some great nuggets from George Lucas).
So, SA76, I gather these musings are your mini-movies?
Your thoughts hang together and flow well. Good for you. We are all clearly enjoying ourselves commenting on this lovely Summer Sunday.
My mother got me socks like those. I tried them out once....never to wear again.
They’re just weird. I couldn’t imagine wearing a shoe like that!
>>Even wearing my slippers without socks (when getting ready in the morning) I feel “niked”.<<
Well, I always have to wear clothes and always close the door in the Apt. restroom. And, when I am on the road, I am solo. No one here but me today.
Ewwwwww. If anyone tried to lick my foot it would have automatically knocked out all “it’s” front teeth.
And if my foot couldn’t do the job, my end of palm would have! Self defense against a perv!
Great post about how Dr. Richard Feynman would answer the manhole question! He always loved bringing pretentious people down to size and I can picture him responding to these questions exactly how you presented it.
I am a big fan of tennis shoes. I have worn them as my main footwear since grade school. When I was in the Air Force, I bought umpire shoes (black leather tennis shoes) and shined them up...never got caught! LOL!!
My wife tried for a long time to get me to wear flip flops. I could never wear them long enough to get that needed callus between the big toe and second toe to be comfortable. I was always rubbing the skin off the sides of my toes.
I finally compromised and now wear sandles in the summer.
My getting ready in the morning routine consists of my bathrobe and slippers (without socks).
Although, I do have to “drop” half of my bathrobe, to waistline while doing my hair.
It gets hot under the blow dryer and flat iron!
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