Monday, September 30, 2013

Some people would call this a Monday Mashup...

...but I don't want to copy. Normally I would go back and find out what number I left off on doing "Bits and Pieces" or the latest catch all I used, but I'm being lazy. So call it want you want, just don't call it late for dinner! (Ba-dum-DUM!)

How about we start with some Saturday exploring from me and Scrappy? We decided to look around the woods up against the river north of the soccer fields that day, and we found...

this cute little guy...

...along one of the several inlets into the woods.

There used to be just a couple of trails back here. Now it is honeycombed with places kids are going to party. Parents, see me after class for exact locations...

Here's another...

Yet another inlet...

Another of Scrappy's great choices of "ways to get out..."

We also discovered that they are prepping to put up a new fence where the ground is falling away... since the old one fell away...

AND someone finally drug the foot bridge back to it's proper spot, after almost seven months of being about 100 yards downstream...

Because, why get it when it's easy, when you can drag it through 100 yards of THAT?

Okay, next on the list, Laurie improved on my pizza design a bit yesterday. She put the biscuits on top of a cheese-stuffed meat loaf! Sorry no pictures, it didn't last long enough.

Next, how many of you have been getting that annoying "Do you want to run analytics.js from a.sitemeter.com?" when you peruse the blogosphere? From what I can learn, it is another heavy-handed attempt by Google to annoy me off of IE and onto Chrome. Let me explain this to you again, Google, just like I had to explain to Windows about Bing. I WILL NOT BE FORCED. If you would have just given me an advertisement with "how easy it is to use" and "look at the benefits", maybe I would have switched. But no, you're all, "This site won't run properly on "older browsers" ", or, "This video won't play on this browser", or the always lovely "you are using an outdated version of IE" (not true!) Just like when they kept trying to change my default search engine to Bing. I may switch to Bing, just to piss you off. So keep it coming, you idiots. I bet I can stay on IE longer than you can keep putting that box up. Or you could be decent and treat me like a person instead of a sheep too stupid to go to the water trough.

On a similar subject, let's see what's in the old junk file (other than randomly selected replies BY ME to comments on MY OWN BLOG...

Here's contestant #1:

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I have bookmarkеd itt in my google bookmаrκs.

Нi thеre, sіmply changed into alert to yοur ωeblog thru Gοogle, аnd loсateԁ that it's
truly іnformativе. Ӏ am going to be careful for
bгussels. I ωіll appreciate should yοu contіnuе this
in futurе. Νumerоus folkѕ саn
be benеfitеd οut of your writing. Cheerѕ!

Fеel free to visіt my ωeb sіtе loans
First, what font is that that gives you the little short "k"s and the backwards "s" for the random "r"?
Second, Is this two different (and nonsensical) comments joined together, or do you start every new paragraph with "Hi there"?
Third, are you going to be careful for "Brussels" the city, or "Brussels" the sprouts?

Because the sprouts are evil and I can well understand being careful for them.
Fourth, "simply changed into alert..." Are you like a super hero? The Mighty Alert? Did you have to step into a phone booth?
Finally, I shan't be visiting your site, "loans". If I want to be scalped (like to the tune of paying $900 over six months for $200 cash), I'll go to the Indians (i.e. Western Sky). At least they have an excuse for wanting to scalp the white man.

What's that? I should say "native American" rather than "Indian"? Tough sh!t. At least I capitalized.

Next contestant started with this headline:

New Message From Chase Online(SM) Bank Account Temporarily Suspended

Which would be a problem if we HAD an account with Chase...

Dear (they put in our e-mail here)

We have detected that a Bill Payment was sent from your Checking Account in the amount of $ 500.00 to Tron LLC. We suspect that you did not authorized this payment.
In order to confirm or cancel the payment, you need to access your Online Account and confirm some details.

To help speed up this process, please access the following link so we can complete the verification.

Confirm Account Details And Safeguard My Account

First, why would Chase send an e-mail message with the e-mail, no name, nothing. Gotta be smart here, people. Unless you use your e-mail address for your bank account user ID, in which case the rest of this won't make sense either.
Second, I suspect you are Tron LLC, hoping to get me to send you that $500.00. Am I close?
Third, you or one of your close friends, perhaps among the Syrian refugees in Ghana, have sent this at least three times in a seven day span last week. Perhaps you should get together and work on your timing.

Finally, and I know you've ALL been waiting for this, I never got back to my EuroHockey thing I was going to do, so I'm going to do this. Every once in a while, I'll take my favorite teams in each league and put together a standings board. Since they use several scoring systems, I decided to just go with a) an OT win or loss is a "tie"; b) a tie counts as half a win; and c) ranked by the resulting winning percentage. And here is the first such ranking:

SonderjyskE (Denmark) and Val Pusteria (Italy), 3-0-0, 1.000.
Grizzly Adams Wolfsburg (Germany), 5-0-1, .917.
Sanok, Poland, 3-0-1, .875.
Rouen, France, 2-0-1, .833.
Valerenga, Norway, 3-1-1, .700.
Rekord VSV, Austria, 4-2-1, .643.
Sheffield, UK, 2-1-1, .625.
JYP Jyvaskyla, Finland, 3-2-1, .583.
Ocelari Trinec, Czech, 3-3-1, .500.
Farjestads, Sweden, 2-2-2, .500.
Geneva Servette, Switzerland, 2-3-2, .429.
Lida, Belarus, 3-5-1, .388.
Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, KHL, 2-5-3, .350 (OUCH!).
Martin, Slovakia, 2-4-0, .333.
Tohoku Free Blades, Asia League, 1-4-0, .200.

Which comes out to a lovely 43-32-16, which is a lot better than I thought it would be.

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Sunday Message

Today's message is another experiential one. If you remember last week, we had the looming specter of changing the belt on my cutter at work, and how far behind that would put us, plus the lady at (our big customer) who was sick and NOBODY else could do her job, etc. So I knew right off this would be a frustrating week, and so my prayers appropriately ( I thought) focused on keeping my cool, showing Christ as all fell apart around us.

And boy, did it.

Every single day this week was a parade of people half-assing (pardon the unavoidable term) their jobs, creating a scenario of constant confusion. Whether it was the computer system, the support people at corporate, or even our own people (leading me to tell someone, "I know where (our engineer) went for lunch. He's in the middle of a two-car funeral messing it up, too."), something was constantly going wrong. But God was faithful. The worse things got, the more he helped me through them. But do you see the flaw in the logic yet? I didn't until this morning. That's when I asked, "What about Friday? Didn't I pray that same prayer then?" And when the answer was, "I don't know," a LOT was explained.

Forget about the "mega-rush" that I couldn't cut because it wasn't on our computer system, or that it took an hour to get an e-mail response from another plant (next time zone) to get the marker (what the computer knows how to cut by), or that when it came, it only had half the parts on it. Forget the three times (yes, three) that I myself ruined panels by forgetting to turn the vacuum on. Forget that in trying to correct one mistake, corporate made an even bigger one which resulted in me not having any of Tuesday's work to do (which I should have had DONE by that point) till nearly lunch time. What happened right AFTER lunch finished me off.

Does this sound like a Bible lesson? Bear with me.

First, the printer that does my package labels decided to start eating labels. Not a big deal (since I caught it right away) to free the offending label. But this machine WILL NOT reset once you've opened the lid. You have to go back behind it and turn it off, then back on, before it knows the lid is shut. There is not button on the front that will convince it, and I've tried them all. But this time, I had to shut it off not once, not twice, but three times to convince it that all was fell. That killed ten minutes of valuable time.

Then, the cutter's cutting wheel decided to jam. Easy enough to fix, but once fixed, you need to home the machine. And when I would home it, it wanted reset. And once I'd reset it, it wanted homed again. This was a cycle that cost me another ten minutes to break. Then came the topper. The problems with the company server went over the top, and corporate told us to shut them down "for five or ten minutes for maintenance".

At this point, the bosses mini-panicked, and told me that I would now probably have to work Saturday. Not because we had work coming out of our ears, but because everybody around us had failed us so miserably.

Do you see where we're going yet? Hang on.

I told my top boss that I could keep running the cutter w/o printing or issuing paperwork until the system came up. If I stayed over an hour, I could probably get enough done to satisfy things. He said, give it a try. This was approximately 40 minutes to quitting time, and before I had the first thing done, the system was back up.

Then I flew like a madman, getting as much done as I could, and proud of how I was doing. But just before 2:30, the other boss came over, a skeptical look on her face. "I don't think you're going to have enough done..." She said. I saw my Saturday slipping away. "I REFUSE TO GIVE UP, " said I, and went on.

Here is where the cork popped. I had a long one sided talk with God that involved a lot of whining and complaining, and saying Job was right all along. What is the point of being faithful if it only gets more crap piled on top of you?

And I knew certain facts about such an eruption. First, it was petty, pointless, and stupid. Second, it was an argument I was never gonna win. Third, the tension release would give me a short-term release, followed by feeling guilty and stupid, because I'd just done what Satan wanted. And finally, because I'd done what Satan wanted, something would shortly happen to make me feel two inches tall.

On queue, my top boss came out and said, "well, (the lady who does canopies) has five or six back there. I think Debbie will be in Saturday, so she can cut some if she needs more. If you can get six or seven covers (I was cutting the fifth one at the time), we should be okay."

GRRRRRRRRRR.

So it's Sunday morning, and I know there's a lesson to be learned from all this. I put it in God's hands- "If you have a message in this, reveal it through my hands." And here's where God told me the flaw in my logic.

You see, every time we have a problem, we focus our prayers on the problem. Low on cash, Pray to God, and nine times out of ten, something else will happen to make the hole deeper. Pray for good weather for an event? Expect increasing chances of rain/snow/heat/cold as the event approaches. It isn't a coincidence that our car had a problem right on top of Scrappy and I's tooth removals to make a tight situation impossible. Nor should it have been surprising that as I prayed for patience and calm to get through this week, that problems would multiply.

Why? Because Satan adds to whatever problems you are focused on. Money woes? He'll set up more. Sickness? Watch and see. Because YOUR praying about a problem brings God's help, but doesn't PRECLUDE Satan making it worse.

The message, I was told, is don't focus the prayers on the problem. Focus on GOD. Because Satan can't do a thing about God. The flaw in the logic is thinking that Satan can't find a way around a topic-specific prayer. He can, and does, because if he can get us to say, (as I did), what good does it do to have faith if it just adds to sorrows? But if you come to God and put in His hands the WHOLE deal, rather than just that which (you think) you cannot deal with, Satan has nothing to focus on. Your focus can add to Satan's focus- or it could remove it.

Somebody please remind me of this tomorrow morning?

Friday, September 27, 2013

Chefs Chris and Scrappy

A lot of my FaceBook friends like to dish out what they call "food porn". Now, me, I never thought much about it. Laurie and I eat on the "fend for thyself" plan, and there's a good reason for that, which I am about to show you. (Also, I have just a smidge of political commentary while it cooks, so you don't go into too much shock over this drastic change in modus operandi).

The basic concept (indeed the basic concept of about 90% of what I eat) is either, "you can never have enough cheese", or, "you can turn anything into a pizza". And today we do it with Buttermilk Biscuits.

Here we have our typical store brand roll of biscuits. (yes, there ARE supposed to be ten... I always have one before cooking to "test the batch.")

Next, we go to the Big Three: onion powder in bunches, Italian seasoning in puffs, and garlic powder carefully and sparingly.

Now the sauce, or should I say sauces; Prego traditional for the red fans, Ragu roasted garlic parmesan for the whites.

First the Prego (because it's Laurie's and I don't wanna get any white stuff in her jar, so to speak)...

Then I mix in the Ragu, to make pink sauce.

Assistant chef Scrappy watches. He's in charge of spillage.

Next comes onion (because outside of cheese, it's about all we have to top a pizza with around here). Don't you love the little onion keeper?

As you can see, it's not a lot of onion... I love onions, but they tear up my mouth something fierce.

Say cheese! (Can you tell this is an "I worked late and haven't got cleaned up yet" deal?)

And because it's with me everywhere- and gives it a little lasagna taste- cottage cheese!

And here is our assistant, checking the cheese quality.

Then we add mountains of soon-to-be-melted mozzarella, and it's into the oven with you. We'll check back in a few minutes. But now...

I had the wonderful fortune after a crappy day with a helping of OT to hear our President bloviating on the way home. I want to share a few thoughts on the speech.

First, he mentioned wanting to help the "great Iranian people reach their amazing potential." Dude, the only potential that nation is interested in is:

a) Using the nukes they "don't have" to incinerate Israel;

b) Doing like wise, in bits and pieces, to the country YOU LIVE IN, homey;

and c) then doing it to all their "Muslim brothers" who don't see Allah quite the way they do.

That's what you want to help?

Second; his opinion that getting Assad to turn over his chemical weapons to UN inspectors for destruction will be "a great victory for the international community". Just like the great victories the international community had at Troppau 1820, Berlin 1878, Versailles 1918, and Munich 1938. Point being: the UN gets rid of Assad's chemical weapons, he kills just as many by conventional means, his opponents do likewise, But the international community can slap itself on the back that it "did something important" without actually getting involved.

Third: "The deficit has been reduced at the fastest rate in the last 60 years. During my administration alone, the deficit has been cut in half." (And no, I didn't wreck the car when I heard that; traffic was slow.) I would have to ask several questions before swallowing this statement.

a) Which deficit are we talking about? In your bank account?

b) When you consider that the deficit has done nothing but climb in the last sixty years, it wouldn't take much to exceed any time period's specific rate.

c) What do you pay per month to live in this dream world you are in?

Fourth: "But the republicans in Congress are listening to the Tea Party..." Ask a tea partier whether they think that's true. Ask specifically about that weasel John McCain. You might want to have him remove his nose from your butthole before you do (apologies to the easily offended).

Fifth: Even though the deficit is plummeting according to you, you say that the Congress needs to raise the debt ceiling. "The debt ceiling has nothing to do with the deficit. It is merely authorizing the Treasury to pay the obligations that Congress has already authorized."

So, that's like saying, "Putting more money on your credit card isn't adding to your debt; it's merely paying for things that the card said you could buy." Congress spending the money causes the deficit. Giving them more money to spend makes it get bigger. But one has nothing to do with the other. Can someone help me here, is this Keynesian economics?

Okay, the pizza should be done now. Let's take a look.

Hmm, not bad. In theory, because this is made of unattached biscuits, this should be a self-slicing pizza- what better invention could there be?

How was it, you ask? Well, if you could live for weeks trapped in an Olive Garden restaurant like Scrappy and I, it was excellent. If you need more than cheese and sauce and cheese and cheese to make a meal, your mileage may vary.

Time Machine week 87

It's September 27, 1971. And unless you were born, died, were married, or read about the Attica riot (which I told you about last week) in your new Time Magazine, nothing really happened. Or if it did, they're keeping it a secret from Google. The closest thing to a point of interest I found happened at Harvard...

Harvard-Radcliffe Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) pickets outside a class taught by Professor of Psychology Richard J. Herrnstein. An article he wrote for the Atlantic Monthly justifies unemployment as the result of an inherited lack of mental ability, their leaflets charge. The protesters enter the lecture hall but do not disrupt his talk.

I find this amusing since not only was the SDS a "new left" activist group, but Professor Hernstein was another "discover-humanity- through-working -on -animals" type who even worked with BF Skinner in the Harvard "pigeon lab" (I'm not sure I even wanna know what went on there!). I guess he forgot to explain in his article "The Man's" culpability in giving the unemployed their mental handicaps.

Oh, this reminds me. Remember last week when I made the joke BF Skinner, the other guy? The story here is that when we were in high school my school, BF Goodrich attacked the confusing of themselves with Goodyear by an ad campaign, "BE Goodrich- the other guys". And at the same time me and a friend were in Psych class together, studying BF Skinner- who then became "the other guy." Ba-dum-DUM!

Anyway, it's not time for the dinner bell (sorry, Skinner), but for Time Machine. In amongst all the other things going on, will find the connection between Al "Show And Tell" Wilson and Toto (the band, not the dog); figure out just what "eefing" is, and who does it; and more Autumn Madness and Stars Of The Fifty States. Put down the picket sign and you can come aboard!

What do you mean, "I'm the WRONG Skinner?"

Well, one section that gets a bit smaller this week is the #1s around the country and world. A growing consensus seems to be centering on Rod Stewart and Maggie May; all of Chicago and Detroit, as well as Los Angeles, now have Rod at the top. Minneapolis stays with Uncle Albert; Pittsburgh crowns The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. The AC, R&B, and Country charts don't change (The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Stick Up, and The Year Clayton Delaney Died, respectively). And the only foreign shift is Ireland taking up the Tams' Hey Girl Don't Bother Me to fit in with the UK. See? Short.

14 songs debut on the Cashbox hot 100 this week, and I'll point out 4 of 'em. Two of our foreign #1s chart this week- Sweet's Coco at 98 and Dawn's What Are You Doing Sunday (which the Tams knocked out this week in Ireland) at #81. Also, the Delaney and Bonnie version of a song most of us know better by Dave Mason, Only You Know And I Know, comes in at 69, and Cat Stevens' Peace Train hits the tracks at 63. Oh, this would be a good time to mention (so it doesn't clutter things up later) that both the big climber and big dropper this week are in the top 40.

Let us peruse, then, the songs that celebrate Birthdays. Turning thirty this week, we have Billy Joel's Uptown Girl, Pat Benatar's Love Is A Battlefield, and one I knew a lot better on the country stations- Anne Murray with A Little Good News. Hitting 35 are Foreigner's Double Vision, Pablo Cruise's Don't Wanna Live Without It, and a couple that may have missed the more pop-chart oriented of youse back then- Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers with Listen To Her Heart, and this number from the Moody Blues' Justin Hayward:

Turning 40, we have Jim Croce's I Got A Name, The Carpenters with Top Of The World, Deep Purple's Woman From Tokyo, Charlie Rich's The Most Beautiful Girl In The World, and Hey, DiscConnected!!!!- Todd Rundgren's Hello It's Me.

Turning 45 we have Cream's White Room, along with this gem from Donovan:

Turning 50 this week, we have Leslie Gore's She's A Fool- and something else that caught my eye. Within a few spots of each other a pair of unusually-named songs debuted. The one, by Joe Perkins, was called Little Eefin' Annie; the other, by a group called the Ardells, was called Eefinanny. Naturally, I assumed a connection (brilliant, Sherlock) and decided to look into the matter. It seems that a hundred years or so ago, a vocal style began in the Appalachians called eefing. Or, more properly, eefin'. Basically it's like beatboxing gone bluegrass, and was somewhat popular in the area for years. Perkins enlisted the aid of a veteran eefer named Jimmy Riddle on his tune- the only chart hit for either of them. The Ardells were a bit harder to track down. Three different bands had this name in the early sixties- and one of them was fronted by a soon-to-be-famous young man named Steve Miller! But the eefin' Ardells were from Pennsylvania, Chester to be precise, and their tune was actually written by another soon-to-be-famous named Jerry Reed. Give a listen Joe Perkins' tune, with Jimmy Riddle eefin' away...

Finally (if you're still with me after that), turning fifty-five this week...

Blow out the candles....

Let's get on with Autumn Madness! This week, I neglected to get Laurie's votes (yeah, yeah, I know), but we do have our regular two panelists. However, they are SPLIT on all but our first contestants:

Little Star, The Elegants, vs Love Is Blue, Paul Mariat (2-0 for the instrumental): This is maybe the easiest choice I've had yet. Love Is Blue moves on.

Barry Manilow, Mandy, vs We've Only Just Begun, the Carpenters: And then we have my HARDEST choice. The wistful lines, "so much of life ahead..." I wish I had ever felt that way. Karen and Richard in the mild upset.

No Time, the Guess Who, vs The Voice, Moody Blues: This is like the 100-foot-tall giant vs the 50-foot-tall-giant. Guess Who wins? Yes, Guess Who wins.

Listen To What The Man Says, Wings, vs Total Eclipse Of The Heart, Bonnie Tyler: Based on Bonnie's picture last week, her 8 weeks on my chart, and the big four storyline that went on 30 years ago this week, one of our esteemed panelists is CERTAIN that Bonnie will go on. But, he neglects some very salient points. 1. I put pictures of LOTS of female singers on Time Machine. With the exception of Merilee Rush, they mean nothing. 2. There is an incredible drop down for yours truly from 70s to 80s- and not every eighties song can hold up against one from the earlier eras. And 3. I like Bonnie Tyler. I LOVE Linda McCartney. Wings move on.

The winnahs...

These four songs move on to the sweet sixteen round in two weeks from beautiful downtown Los Angeles! Next week, we have one more set of songs trying to punch their ticket to the sweet 16... stay tuned for details.

With the big movers still ahead, that brings us to the 45 at 45. This week, the #45 45 in 1968 was Al Wilson's The Snake. Known best for Show And Tell a few years later, The Snake was produced by Johnny Rivers for Al's debut album, Searching For The Dolphins. This lp also included covers of Johnny's Summer Rain and Poor Side Of Town, along with covers of This Guy's In Love With You and By The Time I Get To Phoenix. The backing group had some familiar names as well, for example, Hal Blaine and Larry Knechtel. And the whole thing was arranged by Marty Paich- father of Toto founder David Paich. The Snake would peak at #27 on Billboard.

Six songs hit their top 40 debuts this week, a couple of them familiar from my guess which song made the top 40 contests from a few weeks back. One of those is the Dells' The Love We Had (Stays On My Mind), and it moves 7 to #40. At 39 after a 19-notch jump are the Fifth Dimension, covering the Association's Never My Love. The Raiders' last sizable hit, Birds Of A Feather, gets the nod as our big mover this week, a 20-spot advance to 37. Rufus Thomas, an R&B vet who's best known for his daughter Carla (Gee Whiz), climbs 10 to 32 with The Breakdown (pt. 1). Another former guess who's in the top 40 contestant moves from 43 to 31- Denise LaSalle with Trapped By A Thing Called Love. And finally, climbing 17 to land all the way up at 24- the Persuaders with the haunting Thin Line Between Love And Hate.

Time for Stars of the fifty states!

Once again, we salute the highest charting star (or what passes for one) in each of the US of A's states. This week:

Kansas: Joe Walsh, with 7 top 100s and 4 top 40s- none of which, apparently, included my favorite, from the movie The Warriors... In The City!

Kentucky: Jackie DeShannon, with her 16 hot 100s and 2 top tens, is what the world needs now.

Louisiana: Fats Domino, with a whopping 66 Hot 100s and 11 top tens. More than just, "I found my thrill..."

Maine: I found no evidence of anybody born in Maine charting in the 60s-70s era. The best I could do is a pair of stars who've come to call Maine their home: Paul Stookey, whose The Wedding Song is at #22 this week; and Don McLean.

Maryland: Mama Cass is Baltimore born (as was Paul Stookey). She had 6 Hot hundred solos plus another 14 with the Mamas and the Papas, plus the hit Dream A Little Dream Of Me, which technically you could call either way. Between solo and TMATP, she was in the top ten 6 times.

Two songs enter the top ten, two fall out. One of them was the week's biggest dropper, Take Me Home Country Roads (a 17 spot fall 8 to 25); the other was Won't Get Fooled Again (9 to 12).

Next week, the regional wrap up will send four of these songs to their sweet sixteen date in the Motor City:

867-5309/Jenny, Tommy Tutone, vs My Little Town, Simon and Garfunkel;

Theme From A Summer Place, Percy Faith, vs Surfer Girl, the Beach Boys (OUCH.);

The Fleetwoods, Mr. Blue, vs Love Child, the Supremes;

and Time (Clock Of The Heart), Culture Club, vs Merilee Rush, Angel Of The Morning.

and in two weeks, the SWEET SIXTEEN!

And now, on with the top ten:

The Partridge Family inch up a notch to 10 with Woke Up In Love This Morning.

Former top dog Aretha Franklin slips from 5 to 9 with Spanish Harlem.

The Carpenters hammer back into the top ten, climbing 4 to #8 with Superstar.

Rare Earth holds at 7 with I Just Want To Celebrate.

The Undisputed Truth drop from the top spot to #6 with Smiling Faces Sometimes.

Joan Baez holds at 4 with The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.

Not surprisingly, Maggie May carries Rod Stewart from 10 to 3 this week.

Donny Osmond moves up one spot to #2 with Go Away Little Girl. (He should be saying, go away, Rod Stewart!)

And this week's brand new #1 top dog....

... that's right, them again; Paul and Linda with Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey!!!!!!!
That wraps it up for another week! See you next time.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

And now... MWN

Martin World News, back to it's playful best!

ITEM: You might say that life in Venezuela post-Hugo Chavez has went to the outhouse...

The Venezuelan government has taken over a toilet paper factory to avoid any scarcity of the product.

The National Guard has taken control of the plant, and officers will monitor production and distribution.

Earlier this year officials ordered millions of toilet rolls to be imported to counter a chronic shortage.

Last week President Nicolas Maduro created a special committee to tackle the problem, which the government blames on unscrupulous traders.

"Hey, buddy... c'mere... shhhh, hey I got a deal for ya..." (Opens trench coat, reveals packs of Charmin.)

ITEM: I was just thinking of doing this to Obama...

Egyptian arrested for naming donkey after general

Published September 21, 2013

Associated Press

CAIRO – A farmer in southern Egypt was arrested Saturday after putting the military chief's name and an army-style cap on his donkey, and eight people were detained elsewhere in the country for spraying anti-military graffiti.
The arrests point to a long-standing taboo in Egypt against criticizing the country's powerful military, an offense magnified amid the ongoing crackdown on supporters of the country's ousted President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood.
The farmer, Omar Abul-Magd, was arrested late Friday in Qena province for allegedly insulting Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi when he rode the donkey through town, reported the state MENA news agency.

Might have been pushing it a bit with the ride... I doubt Omar was the attraction that say, Lady Godiva was....

Great Allah, Omar! Can't you let Abdul ride "the general" for a while? I'm getting shorter!

ITEM: I would be remiss without congratulating Samuel L. Jackson for taking the Pesident to task in Playboy the other day...

“First of all, we know (his deliberate dropping of “g’s” off the ends of words to seemingly sound like Joe Average) ain’t because of his blackness, so I say stop trying to ‘relate.’ Be a leader. Be f**king presidential... Look, I grew up in a society where I could say ‘It ain’t’ or ‘What it be’ to my friends. But when I’m out presenting myself to the world as me, who graduated from college, who had family what cared about me, who has a well-read background, I f**king conjugate.”

“On Twitter someone will write, ‘Your an idiot,’ and I’ll go, ‘No, you’re an idiot,’ and all my Twitterphiles will go, ‘Hey, Sam Jackson, he’s the grammar police.’ I’ll take that. Somebody needs to be. I mean, we have newscasters who don’t even know how to conjugate verbs, something Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow never had problems with. How the f**k did we become a society where mediocrity is acceptable.”

And then, sounding a lot like yours truly...

The famed actor also staunchly defended director Quentin Tarantino’s controversial use of the “N” word in last year’s hit “Django Unchained.”

“These 20-somethings can’t turn around and tell me the word n**ger is f**ked-up in ‘Django’ yet still listen to Jay Z or whoever else say ‘n**ger, n**ger, n**ger’ throughout the music they listen to,” he told the men’s magazine. “You can’t have it one way and not the other. Saying Tarantino said ‘n**ger’ too many times is like complaining they said ‘kike’ too many times in a movie about Nazis.”

"... And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers by not conjugating. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you by blowing yo' Uncle Tom ass off!"

Okay then, let's go for a walk around in the woods (since we had to avoid the IPFW Cross Country Training Squad and Glee Club yet again...)

So somebody tries to lead us into the high ground...

This was neat in a bizarre way...

This is me, having too short of arms to show you me swinging from the natural swing...

...and it was kinda low, too.

Somebody lost a leg bone..

Cute little fungoids

Now, Scrappy wants us to cross the great wall of stickers to get to the chunk of woods we rarely ever go to. Which means first I gotta get past this..

And when you first get there, the ground is a real glass-bottle-and -pottery graveyard. Eventually, we fight our way to and through the edge of the woodlet, across the back yard of the assisted-living community, and back into more familiar territory.