Check this out.

Ok, I've never heard anyone say the war in Afghanistan is over. And fuck Pakistan! Who the hell would ever waste the lives of their young men trying to conquer those smelly retarded bastards? if you rag heads would stay on your side of the border there wouldn't be an issue. They're still livin' in the same mud huts that Alexander the Greats men pissed on. And the idea that they can never be defeated because they're spending all their time copying technology other people invented? Uh, right. Whatever. "Pure evil in my hand", when he's handling the Luger? What a pussy! You know something dude, without that Kalashnikov, you're not worth the powder it would take to cleanse the planet of your whole kind. Having said all that, I'll tell ya what. If there is ever peace in that part of the world, and they ever have tours up there to the tribal gun markets, my ass is on the fuckin' buss. That shit looks fun as hell.

Well, the Air show this weekend was fun...

But the rest of the weekend was a bust; no trip to Austin to eat at Papsito's, no weed pulling, no studying for the mini term class that begins Monday, no cleaning the house. I am SUCH a lazy fuck, it's pathetic! I think I'm getting desensitized to squalor, which CAN'T be good. And to top that, I think I've come down with a cold. Some student sitting up front coughed on me last week. Fuckers gave me Chicken Pox last year, remember? I need to start going to class in one of those oxygen bubbles. That'd be a sight, wouldn't it.

Dad and I did our regular Friday evening trip to the Chinese food place in Temple, and the food was great as usual. Then, we went out to the local Airport to check out the Friday night show at the annual Commemorative Air Force Air Show. This thing is always fun for dad and I, and sometimes sis. Dad gets to see lots of planes from his era, and a few that he flew at one time or another.

I found a good spot to plant the old dude close to the porta johns and close to the taxiway so he can see the action, and he managed to bump into another old Air Force couple to sit and watch the festivities with. I never got this guys name, but he'd been an F-105 pilot in 'Nam, from 69 to 70. They live down in Georgetown, at a retirement community called Sun City, and drove up to Temple Friday for the Air Show. Apparently this guy keeps a small plane in a hanger here. Both of them were very nice, and it was great to have them pay attention to dad, let him tell his stories, while I went around to check out the sights.

We arrived during a dramatic flying display by an F-16, and by the time we got dad situated it was doing a slow fly by with a P-47 from the Commemorative Air Force (click on any of these for a larger image).



After the fly by, the F-16 zoomed off back to it's base, and the P-47 landed and taxied right past us. It's a beauty. These guys with the Commemorative (formerly "Confederate") Air Force keep all these cool planes flying, and keep the history alive. We've been going to see these planes since the 1970s, when they were based down at Harlengen, near the Mexican border. After the P-47 landed, the other World War 2 era planes all taxied out and took off to begin the major fly by.


In the larger program on Saturday and Sunday, they do a reenactment of Pearl Harbor, the Doolittle Raid, and other things, using whatever planes they have on hand. The show includes two B-25s, like the one here on the left, and a Grumman Hellcat fighter, seen below here on the right. They set off huge explosions and have smoke streaming from the wings. It's cool as hell to watch.

The Commemorative (formerly Confederate) Air Force has a bunch of old T-6 trainers that were modified to look like Japanese planes for the movie "Tora,Tora, Tora". Now they fly them around to give today's generations a little look at what the folks in WW2 had to deal with. It's always a lot of fun to see them all flying together, and to see the explosions going off in time with the fly by.

My dad flew these planes, as trainers, and remembers them fondly. You've seen them in the movies, as well as the old TV show "Ba, Ba, Black Sheep". These things look so realistic, it always amazes me.


The plane dad and I always look forward to seeing is the one that he was trained to fly just before the end of the war. There's a black one based in Waco, painted to look like the planes that were used in Korea and Vietnam. It's an A-26 Invader, called the 'Spirit of Waco". I think it's the sleekest, coolest plane we produced in WW2, but I'm partial.



Here's a shot if it taxiing out to start its flight program.



Here's a great shot of it that I found on the web. I tried to take a shot like this with the digital camera, but I guess I still need practice.



Here's what I was able to get. Gives you a feel for how sleek the plane is. It's a refined version of the WW2 era B-26, which dad was also trained to fly, but the A-26 was much faster, easier to fly, and had the same payload capacity as a B-17. We used them till the early 1970s in Vietnam, to bomb the Ho Chi Min trail at night (hence the black paint). The Air force had renamed them B-26s by then, to some people's endless confusion. Most of them were sold off after the war, and they were rebuilt to be used as everything from passenger planes to fire fighters. In fact, if you want to see A-26s in action, check out the movie "Always", with Richard Dreyfuss. He flys one in the movie.



Here's the WW2 bomber version that dad flew. Note that the "Spirit of Waco" has the 8 .50s in the nose. That HAD to be fun to play with. Dad's had the Plexiglas nose like this one, for dropping bombs. He's got great stories about this plane, and the fun they had learning to fly it, low and fast and aggressive. They were crazy back then, learning to fly at the edge of the planes capabilities. He was in California, on his way to Kwajalain in the Marshall Islands when the Bomb was dropped. Otherwise he'd have flown this thing in the invasion of Japan in late 1945.

It seems like it all happened a thousand years ago, doesn't it? And yet there he sits, enjoying the hell out of himself, thinking about old times.

We've been going to these airshows to see this plane for over a decade. Dad wears the A-26B hat I found for him, and the guy who owns and flies the plane always looks for dad and chats him up. I'd love to get him a ride in it, but I'm afraid it might kill him. But then, what a way to go. The guy who owns the plane won't allow it though. Who wants that responsibility on their hands? Probably thinks we'd sue him.

After the WW2 show, the Vietnam era Cessna O-2 Super Skymasters taxied out and do their show. These things look like they'd be a lot of fun to fly. They have both a pusher and a puller prop, and they're highly maneuverable. The pilots fly over the crowd, reenacting the swaying back and forth flying motion that the Vietnam era pilots supposedly used to avoid getting shot down.

These planes were used as forward air controllers and as spotters, flying slow and low over the woods till they got shot at, and then they'd fire rockets to direct the helicopter gunships towards the enemy below. For everyone to survive, and for the troops on the ground to get the help they needed, the guys in these planes had to fly like maniacs, and everything had to be coordinated very closely. They saved many lives.

Along with the older planes, there were also modern things out there, and the services were doing their bit of recruiting, letting the next generation sit in the drivers seat of an Apache, Huey, or a Blackhawk.

The Air Force was there, with the F-16 flyover, and with a little motorized F-22 that they drove around, to the amazement of the big and little kids looking on. One thing that I was amazed to see, was a navy C-2 transport, parked next to an old C-47 from my dads era. I was shot off the deck of the USS Ranger in one of these after the gulf war ended in early 1991. It was hilarious to see one again.



You are sitting backwards in this thing when it is shot off the carrier, and you are suspended in your straps for a split second, till your body catches up to the speed of the plane. It was quite a ride ( I really need to get a scanner so I can post those pictures).

On Sunday afternoon, dad and I went out there again to see what we could see, and I was able to get a few good shots.



Here's a closeup of one of the B-25s taxiing out. Love the nose art on this one.



And here's the other one. This Blue one is a Marine Corpse plane called the "Devil Dog". Later, when both were back on the ground, I went by and took a few more closeups, and got a T-shirt.



For $2, you could climb up in the plane and check out the .50s. Thing is, the FHB ain't made for these small places. Not that I get nervous, but I get tired of bangin' my head and knees into things.



So I stood back and let the kiddies play, like I did when I was their age.



The A-26 was busted on Sunday. They had the cowling off one engine and couldn't get it started. That' was a bummer, but the rest of the planes still put on a great show.



The Hellcat always puts on a great show. These things are fast as hell, and shot down a lot of Japanese planes in WW2. At one point it began to sprinkle, and I ran back to see if dad was thinking to use his umbrella. Sure enough...



I found him sitting there, dry and happy as a clam, watching that A-26, waiting to see if it would ever take off. Notice the dry pavement under him, and that C-47 in the background. He flew that one in the Berlin Airlift, for about 6 weeks in '47 or '48.



The show ended Sunday with another F-16 fly over. This guy flew around for a while, and really showed off the capabilities of the plane. Reminds dad and I of the days when we'd be playing golf at Carswell AFB in Ft. Worth, across the runway from the plant where they build the F-16s, and every once and a while they'd take off and do a mini airshow for the onlookers. Now that plant builds the F-35, and I miss those impromptu air shows.

Anyway, It was a nice time for dad and I, and I hope you enjoy seeing the shots.

OK, this is maybe the coolest CG scene in any movie ever, so far.

I'm makin' that call. Suspend disbelief for a while and enjoy.

Yet another misical interlude.

My sister was born in the 50s, and grew to her teen years in Britain during the height of the era of the Beatles and Stones. She was consumed by the desire to experience the hype of the 1960s that we all saw on TV, but her fate was to arrive back in the states too late in the day. The hippie thing was mostly over by then, killed by commercialization, and Charlie Manson, and the realization that the problems of the world were probably too complicated to be solved by free love and LSD. She tried to act out the part though, and it didn't go over well with our dad, who'd grown up during the depression, seemingly on another planet from his children. They eventually had a huge shouting match, the biggest of many, over something stupid.

At the age of 20 or so, going to college and still living at home with the folks, she went and spent the weekend with her boyfriend in San Antonio. Dad hit the roof, and called her a whore for doing it, and she got back at him by leaving, hitting the road with that very same boyfriend, who turned out (of course) to be a complete asshole. Over the next five or six years, she lived through as much of the ugly, drug addled hard scrabble of that hippie life as a well raised princess could manage. She came home eventually, after acquiring a bit more wisdom, with a few cats and a lot of emotional scars, and tried to be a big shot and turn her little brother on to a lot of stupid things. About the only success she had was in introducing me to having a cat, and the music of people like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. What a gift that was.

Do yourself a favor some time and check out Mitchell's live album Miles Of Isles. In the mean time, enjoy this little slide show, showing someones family, and enjoy Mitchell's tune Circle Game.



It's Friday again, and the Seniors down in Florence are going on a trip to 6 Flags, so I get to sleep in an extra hour. It's Friday, so you know where dad and I are headed for dinner. There's also an Air Show this weekend in Temple, so I'll be takin' the pop to see some of the old planes he once got to fly. We both get a big kick out of that. Maybe I'll post pictures of it later. Mom's decided we all need to go to Austin Saturday and eat Mexican Food, so we'll be headin' to Papasoto's. Enjoy your weekend. Mines lookin' goo so far.

Just a little live fire training in Iraq.

First, go to the Brown Valley Kingdom and read an excellent post on the May Day protests. He lays it out better than I could ever do.

Now, dig this little video showing some serious training in Iraq. Something tells me these are private security guards, and NOT the regular army. It's piss your pants time, seriously.



A South African instructor, getting a guy ready for what it's like in actual combat. Man, I get stressed just watchin' it.

Another cool shot from the astronomy site, and yet another misical interlude.

purdy eh? click it for a larger view. Click here for more.

Y'all ever hear these guys? Here's a great little tune by a band that was huge in Britain in the late 80s and early 90s. The Stone Roses, doing Love Spreads. Also, check out the the weird assed, Chinese Cultural Revolution, Peoples Theatre propaganda video someone put up here, and crank yer speakers. The guitar here is relentless. Enjoy.



Most of you've probably heard this next one before. Tune is called Fools Gold. Killer beat. If you don't start tappin' yer foot and boogiein' unconsciously to this one, yer fuckin' dead. Enjoy.



What was up with the singer, prancing about and waiving the mic around like that? No lead singer panache AT ALL, like he's the anti Roger Daltry, or maybe the anti Morrisey, considering the time these came out.

Finally, here's one called I Wanna Be Adored. More of that spaced out waving the mic, and a great beat. See what I mean by him being the anti lead singer? Hilarious. "I don't have to sell my soul. He's already in me." Great lines, and a great beat. Really shows the influence of groups like The Smiths on British rock/pop in the late 80s and early 90s. Sort of a bridge between the Smiths and the Verve, and later Coldplay. Enjoy.

In memorium.

Click on this to learn more.

We're havin' a silent day in the bloggosphere, to remember the victims at Virginia Tech.

Remember them, and see to it that you are prepared, because all the silence and good will in the world won't stop a nut from doing what nuts do, and won't stop a gun hating government or administrator from doing what they do. Be prepared. Don't leave your gun in your car. Remember the 32, and refuse to be a victim.

The boys from Top Gear, experiencing some of the local flavor, or trying to get themselves killed in Alabama.

I think the objective here must have been to see how many stupid stereotypes they could validate.



Next, perhaps, they'll be driving old cars through Manchester with signs provoking the local soccer hooligans? Naaa, pointing out our faults will always win more ratings in the UK. I love em, but damn! I mean, it's one thing for Yankees to come down and act like this, but complete strangers? Rude, crude, and unattractive, as my daddy used to say.

One of the perks of being a service brat was getting to live in some cool places, and visit some other cool places from time to time.

My family was stationed in England in the summer of 1967, and lived there till the late summer of 1970. It was a return trip for everyone in the family but me. My folks had been stationed there in the early 1950s, and my older sister had been born there in '54. Things were pretty good for Americans in Europe back in those days if you were living on the economy. The exchange rate was VERY favorable (opposite of what it is now), so we could afford to go on trips every summer to the continent and see the sights. Pretty amazing situation for a sharecroppers kid and his family from Bell county Texas to find themselves in. Tall cotton.

Our first vacation, summer of '68, was about a week spent driving around Spain in a tour bus. The second, the summer of '69, was a trip to Germany and Austria. The last one, in the summer of 70, just before we packed up and headed back to the states, was a long, 10 day bus trip that took us from Munich, down through Austria to Naples, and then back up through Switzerland to Germany again. That one was a doozie, and I was lovin' it.

As a kid (ages 6 to 9 through those years), I soaked up all the history and culture of Europe, and it was easy to do. living in England would have been enough. Christ, the place oozed history. But it just got ratcheted up when we went to the continent. Hell, it seemed that everywhere we stopped in Spain there were castles and armor and big racks of swords to tempt my adolescent imagination. I used to run up to those racks and fondle the swords, thinking they were all real, imagining all the carnage they'd been involved in. it was bliss. I used to drive my folks CRAZY wanting one. I ended up with two new ones, crossed with a wooden plack. Basic tourist setup. Loved the hell out of it, and hung it over my bed for years. It's probably in my parents attic now.

The trip to Spain was the first major exposure I had to a different people and a different culture. I don't even think of the British as being different, even though they really are. Living there for three years made them folks, and I still feel a huge kinship with them. But the Spanish were different, speaking a different language and having a much more pronounced public religious life. We saw castles and ruins and LOTs of institutions of the Catholic church there, all dripping with history and drama. I remember seeing paintings by El Greco and Ribera, including this picture, which we saw at a museum in Toledo.



It's called The Bearded Woman, and purports to show a bearded woman breast-feeding a baby. I remember looking up at the full length painting, a lot larger than I was at the age of 6, with the tour guide grinning at me, and thinking "Eeew, that's not a woman. That's a old man with tits!" You know that had to fuck up the mind of an impressionable child. Probably screwed me up for life (nice rack, by the way).

Between this and all the other religious images, with the fully painted statues of Jesus bleeding on the cross, and crumpled down and bleeding from wounds off the cross, with blood dripping from his eyes and mouth and everywhere else, I stayed pretty freaked out much of the time we were there. I remember, both in Germany and Spain, being puzzled by the constant representations of Christ on the cross that we saw everywhere we went. Those blood soaked statues scared the hell out of me, effecting me the same way as a scary statue of Dracula in the wax museum in London. It occurred to me later that they were probably intended to do just that - literally scare the HELL out of the viewer. Provide important lessons and messages to a largely illiterate public (back in the old days).

The coolest thing I remember about Spain was the city of Segovia, with the Alcazar castle, the Romanesque cathedrals, and the huge Roman aqueduct.



I'll never forget our tour bus driving under the arches of that aqueduct, and parking outside a cafe where we ate lunch. The pictures we took turned out to be the classic tourist shot, repeated in most of the postcards from the time. The Romans fascinated me then, as now, so anything that was associated with them got my attention in a big way.

Spain was an allied country at that time, and a NATO ally of the United States, but Generalissimo Franco was still alive then, and there was a lot of violent crap going on in the world. I remember seeing the Spanish cops with the interesting, old fashioned hats, and I think I knew that something was up with them, but I was too young to pay close attention to any of that. I was too young, and too wrapped up in ancient violence to pay close attention to what was going on in my own time.

It was the peak of the war years, but I had no real clue that Vietnam was happening, although I knew something was up. I think my uncle Bob was there at the time (Colonel in the Army, Military Police), but my dads job in communications and his work with SAC largely shielded him from threat of being sent there. I found out much later that there had been a chance he could have been sent there when we moved back to the States in '70. He told me later that he'd had the choice of going to Hawaii or Missouri. I said "Hawaii? What the hell were you thinking?" He said that Hawaii was WAY too close to the war, and that it was not uncommon for men to be sent to 'Nam when their families were sent back to the states. I guess he was a bit concerned about it, understandably.

Most the stuff that was going on in my own world had to do with the IRA, blowing up pubs and fighting the British for control of Northern Ireland. I absorbed a lot of that stuff from the British media, and developed some pretty funny attitudes towards the Irish. I could tell you who the prime minister was, and who Bernadette Devlin was, and Ian Paisley, but the stuff in my own country was a mystery. I think maybe I had a vague awareness that a recent President had been from Texas, and that I was from Texas, but I didn't know what the hell that was. Not a clue. Too much movin' around, I guess.

The trip to Germany and Austria in '69 was also full of old castles and opulent palaces. We went to the Linderhof palace, where "Mad" King Ludwig of Bavaria had his famous Grotto, with the swan boat. Now THAT place was cool! We went to Ludwigs Neuschwanstein Castle, that Walt Disney had copied for Disneyland.



The visit to the castle was not without recrimination. There was a winding road going up to the castle from the town (you can kind of see the end of it here), and people were renting carriages and riding up, getting the full tourist experience. Dad would have none of it, so my mom, sister and I were forced to hoof it. God, did we bitch, particularly after every carriage passed us and we got to see people enjoying themselves in comfort. Our family vacations are famous for those sorts of moments. Cheap bastard. Spend a shit load of money on something in one moment and then pinch pennies in another.

Later on in the tour we went up to the peak of Zugspitze in the Bavarian alps (this time by cable car). It's the tallest Mountain in the Bavarian alps, with a beautiful big cross on the top. I was starting to get used to those crosses. Later I went swimming in the lake at the base of the mountain. Snow and sunny swimming on the same day? Good times. Germany was fun, but the best vacation was the last one.

Just before we left for home, mom, sis and I went on a 10 day bus tour from Munich to Naples and back. Dad had to work so it was just the three of us. Summer of 1970, and sis was about 15 then, and old enough to want to be involved in all the adult activities. One night in Germany, at the very start of the tour, some of the adults took the teenagers to a beer hall and got them all loaded. Mom and I stayed at the hotel that night, and I still remember when sis came back sick as a dog. Spent the rest of the night worshiping the porcelain alter. Mom was pissed, but not as much at sis as at the adults who let her daughter get loaded. Needless to say the bus was quiet the next day. The trip through the Alps was amazing. I'd never seen mountains like that before, and they really blew me away. The trip really took off for me though when we got down to Italy.

For about a week, for lunch and dinner every day, I had a huge plate of spaghetti. This was my favorite meal at the time. The standard thing is (to this day) that the meals on the tours offer you ether pasta or Veal for lunch or dinner. I ALWAYS chose pasta. The most beautiful places we saw were Florence, Pisa, and Venice. I'll never forget going to the Piazza della Signiora for the first time. I was reading lots of classic comics back then, and ironically was reading one during the tour about the Italian sculptor Cellini. The comic ended with his creation of the famous statue of Perseus with the head of Medusa. Next thing you know I'm standing in front of the real thing, thinking it's about the coolest thing I'd ever seen in my life.

I remember going to Venice, before the place was flooding, and seeing the gondolas. Beautiful. My favorite thing there was going and watching the glass blowing. Cool as hell. mom loaded up on LOTS of stuff there. That good exchange rate came in REALLY handy. When we got down to Rome, and I got to walk around the Forum, and the Colosseum, and the Catacombs, and the Vatican, and the Sistine Chapel, my socks were officially knocked off. The absolute coolest place though was Naples.

The bay of Naples was a choice vacation stop 2000 years ago, and it's still wonderful. What made it cool for me was a visit to Pompeii, a Roman city that had been buried by ash from a volcano in 79AD. The idea of walking the streets of a real Roman city, and looking at the remains of actual victims of the disaster, floored me. I was amazed by the Colosseum there, and imagined gladiatorial games going on as I stood there watching. A decade or so later, I learned that about a year after I'd been standing on that very spot, the band Pink Floyd had performed a concert there for a British TV special there. The recording of that concert was a hotly desired bootleg for years, and then in the late 1990s the band actually released an audio recording as a bonus to a re release of the album Ummagumma. Years later I found they'd released the DVD! More bliss, I wanna tell ya.

One of the best tunes from that live show was a version of the tune Echoes, from the album Meddle. Here's a video of that performance, in two parts (YouTube doesn't have a good version in one sitting, so you'll need to click on the second video as the first one ends), with a slow intro showing the Colosseum I'm talking about. It's worth a listen.



And it continues here, with an awesome base line.



Love the mix of everything here; the guitar screaming, the base hitting you, the keyboards in the background, and the drums, all combining for an amazing musical experience.

About a week after we got home from that last tour, delivery trucks arrived. Crates of goodies were disgorged onto the floor, and we got to relive the trip all over again. For years after that I'd tell people that I'd been to Rome, and the Idea didn't even seem to ring true in my own head. We moved from England to Missouri a while after the tour, and life moved on. I lived with the relics of these tours decorating my various rooms (in various places) for many years after. The green mountaineering hat from Germany with the pins, the banners, and the postcards tacked to the wall, and the full color tour books on my shelf, all leafed through and well worn. All that stuff is still around here somewhere, but it's mostly been replaced with more recent relics. Funny how the objects of youth fade in importance as time goes by, and yet stay in your heart.

I managed to get back to Pompeii as an adult, when I went out on my first teaching trip with the Navy in 1990. I'd just about given up on having a teaching career, and then I got a call from the folks here at Central Texas College. I took a job teaching History and Government on deployed Navy ships, and the college flew me to Naples, where the USS Thorn was at anchor. I taught a semester in four-and-a-half weeks, having class 6 days a week, and on Sunday I took my two roommates on a tour.

We walked the ruins of the city, and I looked specifically for one statue that I remembered vividly from the earlier trip. Finding it, reconnecting with that earlier time, and that little kid that I'd been all those years ago, proved to be an emotional experience. A lot of feelings washed over me, and I kept thinking back to the trip in 1970, and my folks, my sister, and what my life had been like back then. I'd grown up a lot in the intervening years, and I think standing there again symbolized that fact to me. I'd begun a new journey, towards a fun career, and a full life.

This time I was callin' the shots, and I also looked up another Roman city, Herculaneum. Herculaneum is a much smaller ruin, due to the fact that it's situated under the present city of Herculano. Thing is, the area that has been revealed is very plush, and while Pompeii is huge and hard to really see in one trip, Herculaneum is easy to see in one afternoon. I was a tour guidin' mutha that day. When we got back to the ship and I laid out in my rack, I couldn't help but think back to 1970 again. What a cool life I was having. I'd been able to travel all over Europe and America as a kid, and now the college was paying me to travel all over the world, doing a job that I loved.

We're all a lot older now, but those memories are still there. Dad is still a pain in the ass, but I've learned to get along with him, and we enjoy one another. We'll be hitting the Chinese food place again today, and probably hitting golf balls after. Mom's doing fine, and their house is still decorated with all the nick knacks she picked up along the journey. We all still have lots of crap that we've accumulated over the years. Sis still has issues, but she's working on them. Our life on the road turned us into a tight little unit, and we've found that we don't really like to stay anywhere too long. We all start getting nervous after about three years, thinking it's time to go.

Anyway, it's early, and I've got to go, so take care of yourself this weekend and I'll see ya on the other side. FHB.

Ok, here's a geeks wet dream it there ever was one.

Like me, you may need to get plastic sheeting and cover the keyboard, just in case. Enjoy.

Amazing.

Just saw this in the headlines. I thought everyone knew what Mexico did with it's poor. They encourage them to become Americans, don't they?

And here's some philosophy, to think about.

Driving to work this morning and heard a new one.

Cheryl Crow, a huge acolyte for the Bhagwan Gore Rashneesh's Global Warming scare offensive, is telling us all that we should limit our toilet paper use to one square at a time. Maybe two or three if it's an emergency. She wants to save trees. Sport a skid mark for the rain forest, is her impassioned plea. It occurs to me that these folks who've drunk the cool-aid (in the popular analogy), have a lot in common with an earlier group of believers.

Back in the 1830s and 40s, there was a new religious fervor spreading in America. In the textbooks we call it the Second Great Awakening. They'd printed the new testament in English in the 1600s, and German and everything else. When it was made available to the public, and when they were given enough time to read it and parse out the sexy bits (all the fire and brimstone), the great unwashed out there (and a lot of well meaning people) decided that the end of the world was nigh. Lots of folks came up with their own way of preparing for the end. Some sat in quiet contemplation, while others danced with snakes.

One guy, a farmer from New York state named William Miller, looked at his Bible very carefully. He read the ages of the various figures and came up with a date on which he claimed the second coming of Christ would occur. He publicized his date, and followers began to prepare for the end. They sold all their possessions, gathered in open places and waited for the rapture.

Of course, nothing happened. Miller went back to his Bible and announced to the nervous followers that he had made an error in his calculations. He set another date, and the followers once again prepared themselves for the second coming. Guess what happened? Nothing. Nichivo. Nada... is what happened. They picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and went about their business, deciding after all that God's will was too mysterious for mere humans to discern. They went on to become famous as flagellants during the great depression of the 1840s (1839 to 43), going from town to town, beating themselves bloody to atone for the sins of the world. They continue to prepare today. Some of the modern day descendants of Millerites are the 7Th Day Adventists.

The Branch Davidians, who held out for so long and then immolated themselves and their babies in the dramatic end of the Waco standoff, were a modern fundamentalist branch of the Adventists. All these different chords rang in my head today when I heard a radio commentator refer to Al Gore as the David Koresh of the environmental movement. It occurs to me that in the movement, whatever movement it is, for people to follow all the way they have to put blinders on, shutting off common sense, and "drink the cool-aid", all the way back.

Maybe we should update the first amendment to add pseudo religions like Global Warming to the list of faiths separated from public policy makers and the government purse by the "high wall of separation"? What do you think?

This guy is hilarious, and makes several great points. Enjoy.

This is hilariuous. You've probably seen it before. If not, Enjoy.

Here's some real wisdom.

Not contrived. Born of a life fully lived. Like some of the films and books we all grew up loving, written by people who had lived through real shit. Born of experience, from the generation that knew the Depression close up, that fought "The Good War" for freedom and justice, and then lived to see it all pissed away in the name of safety and propriety. Here's Bono reading Charles Bukowski's poem "roll the dice".



I wish I'd known some of these things back when it could have counted for something. "Youth is wasted on the young", some other wise ass said. I wish a lot of things a lot of the time. Dads got a saying about that though... Wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which hand fills up first. More old time wisdom. Says it all. I can't stop wishin' though. Too many regrets. Too many dreams about do-overs that I'll never get. I guess, if you ketch on, those thoughts are like lessons learned, so we don't pass things up if they come by again. Then again, sometimes you need a slap to the face to wake you up and get yer attention.

Dad and I had another good outing last Friday night, but ended up not hittin' golf balls after all. He was hungry and didn't want to go before we ate (or maybe he was sore from the last time), and we were both too bloated to do it after we ate, so we blew it off. I was wired and would have enjoyed the catharsis of hitting a bucket. I'd witnessed a bad car accident right in front of me in the minutes before getting to mom and dads place, and I was still pumped from the adrenaline hours later.

I was driving down a four lane, strait thoroughfare, from I-35 to 31st street on the south side of Temple. I'm chuggin' along in traffic, goin' about 50ish (in the flow and not really watchin' the speedometer) when I see an SUV in the oncoming lane hitting the brakes and making a violent lurch to the right, overcompensating to the left, hurling himself into our lane right in front of the SUV that's driving about three car lengths in front of me. Brakes are burnin' all over the place, including mine.

The people in front of me jerked over to the right to try to avoid hitting the car that had now turned back to the right, and was sliding sideways into us, just about to start a roll-over. If the folks in front of me had been a bit quicker they'd have missed the oncoming mess completely and the bastard would have rolled sideways over me, but it wasn't meant to be. They smashed bumpers, with the rear left hand bumper of the one hitting the right front bumper of the folks in front of me. I end up driving through a cloud of tiny plastic shards, like one of those films you see of a WW2 fighter plane flying through the exploding remains of an ammo train or a "Buzz Bomb".

They both limped off away to the left of the road, out of my way, and I slowly rolled by, thinking how lucky I'd been to avoid it all, and not to have been slammed into from behind as we all broke in a panic. Meanwhile, my life is flashing in front of my eyes, which is enough to bore most people to death, and I'm seeing images of this bastard rolling over me and fucking my nice little car all to hell. The one SUV is behind me somewhere, and the folks that had been in front of me are stopped on the other side of the road, their left front smashed and leaking fluids, and smoke filling the cab. I see immediately that they are moving, getting out of the car and that about a half dozen other cars are stopping to give assistance, so I waited a moment, thought about stopping, and then rolled on and counted my blessings. In a minute, as my head was clearing, I thought to call 911 and report it all. I probably should have stopped, but I hate to be in a situation like that when I feel like I'm one of a bunch of people trying to help, and feeling like I'm just in the way.

So, I was pumped with adrenaline there for a while and flinching behind the wheel the rest of the night. Nothing like seeing something like that right in front of you to wake you up and get your attention. After eating and visiting with the folks, I headed home, and as I'm driving west on that same road towards I-35, I note that the sky is darkening as I go. Turns out I'm driving into a friggin' wall cloud with lightning flashing all over. I'm thinkin', "what the hell else is gonna happen to me tonight?" As I head west on 190 I look up at the edge of the cloud and see these tendrils dipping down, and I think to myself "if these things start spinning I'm fucked". Lightning is flashing a few times about a quarter of a mile down the road, and it looks like it's actually hitting the road. Jesus!

I got home ok, and then it rained like crazy, and the folks from here up to Ft. Worth got rain, bad wind and hail, and we got about an inch and a half or rain. We were lucky and missed the bad stuff. I slept in Saturday, and blew the day piddling around the house and napping (NOT pulling weeds). Sunday I headed up to Gatesville and shot guns with a buddy. I tried to sight in that new Romanian .22 rifle. It turned out to be a huge pain in the ass, misfeeding about every other time for a while and not ejecting correctly, and then working fine for a while. Frustrating as hell. My buddy shot his old Russian SKS and an old AR-15 that looks like the rifle the guys in 'Nam used. We had a good time, and then I drove down 36 to eat dinner at mom and dads. Mom made beef stew and cornbread, to die for, and I worked on their garage door, which had been giving them trouble since someone fucked with it the day before. It was off the rail. Quick fix and it was running like new.

I floated the idea to dad about going to hit golf balls, but he declined again. Don't know what the deal is. He used to always go on and on when I didn't want to do it, but now he's reluctant. Well, he was probably just tired or something, or maybe the one time we did it was so depressing for him that he's changed his mind. So, on the way home I stopped at a driving range off 190 and hit a bucket by myself. I guess I've talked myself into wanting to do it, but now he doesn't. This is our relationship in a microcosm. Frustrating.

So now I'm watching American Choppers and relaxing before the week starts again. I hope all your weekends were a lot less dramatic, and that you all avoided the ridiculous weather, and that you enjoyed old Charlie's poem. Marquisdejolie turned me on to Bukowski in a few of his poetic rants. You should check him out some time. Anyway, I'm outta here. Later.

I think this has something for the whole family.

Ok, It's a friggin' CRIME to wreck an old TA like that. Criminal!

Gonna have dinner with dad again tonight, and now that the snow has melted we've added a new wrinkle to our normal Friday routine. Before we go to the Chinese food place, we go to the local driving range. He watches me as I hit a bucket of balls, and he hits a few and gives me little lessons and hints to help my swing. After that, having worked up and appetite (like that's necessary) we go hit the buffet line.

Dad was a huge golfer when I was growing up and he's wanted to get me to like the game ever since I can remember. He was taught to play in Germany right after WW2. He says this German POW showed him how to hit correctly in a large derelict opera hall. It was a rich mans game back then, and I think my dad, the son of a tenant framer, saw golf, and being an Army officer (eventually in the Air Force) as a path out of his old life. He became a shark on the golf course, and played all the time, as long as I can remember. He made me a cut down driver when I was very little, and still tells me and everyone else that I had a natural swing when I was a kid. I don't know. I never have felt comfortable in that swing. Can't feel it well enough to be able to feel like I know what I'm doing, if you know what I mean.

I was always more into archery as a kid. Used to watch all those old movies about medieval times, and always wanted to be Robin Hood, or the guy shooting arrows out of the arrow loops in the castle, or the guy in the formation at Agincourt, shooting arrows up into the air into the French army formations. When we moved to Missouri in 1970 I found other kids there who loved it too, and we'd shoot arrows into anything. That place was paradisaical. We'd stand at one end of the field that stretched out through and connected averyone's back yard and shoot arrows into the air, just to watch them fly and see how far they'd go. There was an old tree in the woods there that we'd shoot arrows into, rotted and missing half it's bark.

We got a huge amount of enjoyment out of walking down the trail, pretending to be surprised by a bear or something, and then shooting arrows into that old tree. They would always make a cool thud as they hit it. We'd cross over the creek and pull them out, and then go through the ritual again. We called it the elephant tree. I think I'd seen an illustration in National Geographic showing Alexander the Great defeating the Indian Army elephants by filling them with arrows. That Image is still in my head.

Never forget looking at my first issue of Bowhunter magazine, picked up at the local T.G.& Y., and seeing that there was a world out there where adults shot arrows, and it wasn't silly kids stuff, as my folks always seemed to think. We moved away from that house and into base housing before we moved back to Texas, and mom and dad told me that I couldn't have the bows and arrows on the base. It all had to be put away. Seems like they were always tryin' to get me to do that. They didn't value it, and saw it as kids stuff. Wanted me to give it up and grow up and play football or somethin'. I don't think the gear made it into the moving van. It was like closing a book on a huge part of my childhood.

Next time I picked up a bow was about five years later in San Antonio. I tried to shoot someone else's arrow into a neighbors tree only about 10 yards away, a shot that I would have easily been able to make earlier, and I missed it. Shocked the hell out of me. I guess I accepted that it was over then. There weren't any woods to play in there, and I'd lost whatever talent I'd had, but dad was still there wanting me to play golf with him. Maybe refusing was my way of getting back at him, or my way of differentiating myself from him. Same thing went with other sports too. He never could get me interested in anything, and I could never get them to take anything I loved seriously. You'd think I was switched at birth or something.

I finally relented and started playing golf back in the late 1980s while I was in graduate school and worked at the Colonial Country Club in Ft. Worth. Most of the other employees played, and they got to play the course once a year. I guess I picked up the interest vicariously, listening to them talk around the club, wanting to be included and play the club myself. Dad was beside himself. He made me a set of clubs and I started practicing and playing. Loved it, but never got too good at it. Then, when I got the job teaching on the ships, and was gone all the time, I never had a chance to practice. When I did play, I was always loosing balls and feeling like an idiot when I hit a lousy shot. Never seemed to take to it the way I did archery as a kid. Never became easy and effortless the way archery had. It sucks too, because it's no longer a rich mans game. Hell, everyone plays golf now.

Anyway, Dads old as hell now and can't hit the ball very far anymore. Depresses the hell out of him, but he's always asking me when we're gonna go hit some balls. For a long time I'd think to myself "How many times did you take me to shoot arrows, you old jackass? When did you ever show interest in anything I wanted to do?" But he's old as hell now, and it seems wrong to be petty about it, to hold the crap from the past against him. so I finally decided a few weeks ago to start taking him to the range, incorporating it into our Friday routine. Weather permitting, we'll go out there and I'll let him give me hints. I doubt that I'll learn anything, but he'll enjoy it, and that's what matters now.

I'm also supposed to go shooting (guns) this weekend in Gatesville, so I'll be able to sight in the new .22 rifle and maybe shoot Civil War muskets. I've evolved from arrows to bullets (another thing my dad's not into), but I still have archery in my blood. One of these days I'll post pictures of the sets I've built. It's a fun hobby now and then, when I'm not busy with other things. So, enjoy your Friday and take care of yourselves. Ya know I will.

For the difinitive word, In my opinion, on the Don Imus, Al Sharpton cat fight/melodrama...

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One of my cousins, who lives in Houston, went to the Ultimate Fighting Championships there recently, and guess who he ran into?

Son of a bitch! Ok, that's not really my cousin. Apparently when he had his picture taken, the camera operator was a bit nervous and the shot is blurred and a bit washed out with light. You can see it's him, but I figured this shot was better. Gotta love the shit eatin' grin on this guys face, what with his wife standin' right there on the other side of old Jenna. Nice rack on the wife, I must say. These are friends of his. This guys company has a floor suite, so they get access to a VIP area that occasionally has this sort of person flitting through. I remember when this kid was born, and now he's huggin' on a porn star. Love it.
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Ok, here's my cousin, after I worked on the shot a bit. I'm so proud.



I asked him, "She didn't have any trouble swallowin' anything while you were there, or anything?" "Of course not!" Loaded question?

I think the oldest diplomatic notion is "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". Lets hope it works.

Lets hope our new pacifist congress gives it a chance to work.

Another little musical interlude.

It's been said that the official end of the 1960s was documented for everyone to see in The Rolling Stones 1970 concert at Altamont Speedway. The tragic decision to hire the Hells Angels as security, and the death of a concert goer caught on film are just two highlights in the fascinating documentary of that concert, dubbed the west coasts Woodstock, "Gimme Shelter". Mick Jagger, never one to shrink from publicity, contracted to have a film made of their 1972 U.S. Tour, coinciding with the release of their album "Exile on Main Street".

Photographer Robert Frank, who'd taken some of the album photos, was chosen as director, and took a much artier approach to filming the Stones on stage and off. However, footage of drug consumption, (staged) orgies and a decidedly non-commercial title prevented "Cocksucker Blues" from getting an official theatrical release. Even so, it's long been widely available on video as a bootleg.

Immediately after a private screening of the film, Jagger is said to have turned to Frank and told him, "It's a fucking good film, Robert, but if it shows in America we'll never be allowed in the country again." Jagger may well have been afraid of the film's lurid and potentially incriminating images - the heroin use, Jagger masturbating, or even the extended sequence of questionably consensual group sex with a reluctant groupie at 30,000 feet (after all, this was rock and roll).

But what Mick may have found most disturbing was the bleak and accurate portrait of the obvious despair and loneliness of life on the road. Frank's obsession with pursuing truth destroyed the illusion of glamour for the world's most famous rock and roll band.The Stones took Frank to court to prevent the film's distribution. It became, legally, a question of who owned the film, the artist who created it or the patron who paid for it. A bizarre deal was struck allowing the film to be screened once a year, but only if the director was present for the screening.

Of course, now the film is available on DVD, and clips are appearing on YouTube and elsewhere. Here's a clip from that 72 tour. I think this may have been their peak, with the slide to geezerdom still way over the horizon. I saw them in Rome at a soccer stadium in the summer of 1990. Got up close, and enjoyed it, but they were only a shadow of the band they'd been in this early time. There's somethin' wrong with these guys still tryin' to shake their money maker at their age. Sordid.

Enjoy this snap shot.

And yea, I'm lookin' for that DVD. I'll tell ya if I find it.