Friday, January 30, 2009

Donate platelets soon

Today, GA and I donated platelets down at MD Anderson.
I love to do that, because for some strange reason, I am always able to donate a double product, which means I'm sort of like two donors at once.
If you don't live in Houston, I bet you could still find someplace in your area that would accept your platelets, and you have plenty of extra.
Here's how it works. You sit through an interview answering yes or no to a list of questions, such as "Have you eaten guacamole with anyone in the past eight years who looked like he might have a blood disease?" Well, not exactly like that, but you get the picture.
Then they will stick you to check your blood for iron content and so forth.
Then, assuming your blood is fashionable enough, they lead you to a nice, comfy chair, where a sexy blond fluffs your pillow, and prepares this machine, and then she sticks a needle in your arm. The needle is smaller than the usual blood donor needle, by the way. And if you prefer a redhead, they'll get one for you. Ladies, you can do this too - they'll bring you a guy who looks like your favorite movie star.
Then you sit quietly reading a book for an hour and a half while the machine takes your blood, removes the platelets, then puts it back, over and over. Nothing to it.
When you're done, most places give you a free T shirt, and you go home. And you have just saved several lives, or at least helped save them. If you're at MD Anderson, the platelets go the very next day into the veins of a cancer patient, who would otherwise be in very bad shape, and probably die.
And that night, you sleep very very well, providing you don't think too hard about the sexy blond who stuck you.

Let Us Prey

from FortBendNow.Com

"A group of about 30 black vultures has been roosting along the Brazos River in Richmond for the past several nights. Early this week they've been observed circling the courthouse, an action about which readers probably should reach their own conclusions."

Saturday, January 24, 2009

taquitos



Now that's good eatin' I tell ya.

Friday, January 23, 2009

Essential vinyl

The first time I was truly amazed at the way my musical tastes have changed as I got older was when I heard Fried Hocky Boogie by Canned Heat more than two decades after its release. When Napster and Kazaa came on the scene so that we could share our digital music files, I looked for music that I had owned on vinyl back in the day, and there I saw that classic by Canned Heat. It took a while to download, but I finally got it down and I loaded it into Media Player and...

Oh, my aching ears. It sounded so good back then, but hearing it through the filter of history, I couldn't believe it was so bad. Especially the lead guitar, whoever he was - awful!

Rent the Woodstock DVD, and compare Canned Heat to the stellar work of Ten Years After, with Alvin Lee's lightning fingers.

I also find that the Doors don't sound nearly as good as they did back then. The difference isn't nearly so stark as with Canned Heat, but I was thinking about essential albums while on my walk the other day, and I realized that if you buy Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine and something with all the singles they released, you have pretty much everything they did that was listenable. And I long since realized that Jim Morrison's lyrics, which seemed so deep back then, were pure crap. You're never really sure what the blazes he meant by any of it.

Yeah, I know that John Lennon wrote two books that were virtually meaningless, as well as I Am the Walrus, but I'm pretty sure he meant them to be nonsense. Jim Morrison was trying to be profound.

So I'm going to list my Essential vinyl albums here. I make the choices based on the quality of the entire album. Not just stuff that happens to have a monster hit - the whole thing has to have quality from the time the needle hits the groove. And quality of lyrics counts. They're in alphabetical order, to spare me from having to rank them.


  • The Alan Parsons Project: Turn of a Friendly Card
  • Art Garfunkel: Angel Clare
  • Badfinger: Magic Christian Music
  • The Beatles: Abbey Road, White Album (actually named The Beatles)
  • Bee Gees: Cucumber Castle
  • Cat Stevens: Tea for the Tillerman
  • CCR: Bayou Country
  • Eagles: On the Border, Hotel California
  • Fleetwood Mac: Rumours
  • Jethro Tull: Aqualung
  • Jimi Hendrix: Are You Experienced
  • Kansas: Left Overture
  • Kim Hill: (self-titled)
  • Larry Norman: Only Visiting this Planet
  • Led Zeppelin I (II almost made it)
  • Linda Ronstadt: Living in the USA
  • Paul McCartney and Wings: Band on the Run
  • Paul Simon: Graceland
  • Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon
  • Second Chapter of Acts (with Annie Herring): In the Volume of the Book
  • Simon and Garfunkel: Bookends, Bridge Over Troubled Water
  • The Who: Tommy, Who's Next
  • ZZ Top's First Album (they actually named it that - think positive, I guess)
  • Zombies: Odyssey and Oracle (briefly renamed Time of the Seasons)

You may disagree about some of my choices, and you may be appalled that I failed to include your picks. Feel free to add a comment adding your own if you want. But don't attack mine - my opinions are my opinions, just like my underwear is my underwear.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Obama: the hope (seriously) he brings me

Yesterday, I posted the negative view of what could happen with this new president. Today, I would like to address the positive side.

You'll notice I didn't capitalize the word "hope" - that's because I mean it in the literal sense, not in the political slogan sense.

I believe that racism - traditional, institutional racism - has been vanquished in America. This happened long ago, and I saw the evidence of it. Yes, we still have the vestiges, prejudice born of ignorance and stupidity. But we will always have those people, just as we will always have rude people, dishonest people, selfish people, hateful people. But that is just racial prejudice, it is no longer an "-ism." The paradigm shifted long ago.

But humans are motivated by fear. This goes for all of us. I think that much of prejudice is born of fear - I remember most expressions of racism had to do with what people of other races might do to us if they had the chance. That is gone. We still fear crime, but it isn't tied to skin color anymore. We might find ourselves afraid because of what someone is wearing, or how they speak, and so forth - but it is very hard to imagine being afraid of a black man or woman who is dressed nicely and speaks politely, and the same goes for all other races.

But that fear goes both ways. Hundreds of years of very real mistreatment by the white race, including slavery, unequal opportunity in work and housing, and violence. How easy can it be to just forget all without some real evidence that America has changed?

This election of a black man has the potential for providing that evidence. If white America cast enough votes for a black man to elect him, then that says something very clear about prejudice. You simply don't vote for someone if you fear him because of his skin color.

Now, I still have my reservations about whether he will keep his oath of office. This is because beginning with Franklin D. Roosevelt, no president has acted to preserve or protect the Constitution, as required by his solemn oath. And with Obama's tendency to socialism, I don't have much hope that he will change that tradition of ignoring the obvious meaning of that document except when it serves the party's goals. But you never know. Perhaps God will inspire him to do just that and restore America to its roots.

And that's the meaning of "hope," after all.

Monday, January 19, 2009

The Obauguration

I am already sick of this new administration, and The One™ hasn't even been sworn in yet.

Is it really necessary for NBC to run stories about the inauguration with inspiring music on the soundtrack? How many times are we going to be told that this signifies the end of racism in America? How many times are we going to be told, in so many subtle ways, that everything is different now, that Obama will change everything, turn this country around, bla bla bla?

Turn what around? The economy? Here's the deal with the economy.

For decades, I can remember economists and commentators warning us that we had to go back to being financially responsible in this country. You can't keep buying on credit, they said, on a national basis anymore than you can in a household. Sooner or later you have to start paying it all back, and longer you put it off, the more it's going to hurt.

After a decade or so of these warnings, which I had heard since a tow headed boy in the 50's, they began warning that we were putting off the payback for our children to deal with - that we were spending our children's future. That would be me they were talking about.

Eventually my generation grew up and took over. And we did the same thing. There were still voices among us, still giving that warning, just as there were with the WW2 generation. Soon they were warning that we were postponing the problem for our children to deal with, and that it was going to be much worse the longer we put off re-payment.

And it has continued until this day. Congress after Congress, president after president of both corrupt parties, spending to keep in office, and letting the Fed print more paper money each time the economy slows down. Let me explain that. It does work to print more money and spend it when the economy slows down. It works just like an injection of amphetamines. But you're supposed to then remove the drugs once the economy kicks in - you allow it to slow back down, rather than let it keep roaring. So the economy has been growing in spurts and leaps, much like the blob in those old horror movies.

And the debt has been growing, too - it's kind of a double whammy, with increased debt and dollars worth less and less. And the generations after mine, generation x or y or whatever Time magazine has been calling them, has been hoping - no, assuming - that they can simply pass the bill on down to their children, just as we passed it down to them.

Well, that monster of a credit card bill is now due. The bill, with a row of zeroes that won't even fit on the page, has been delivered to us all, now, now, now - not next decade, but now. And the Bush administration has been kiting checks, printing more money, borrowing money from China, and generally looking for revenue under the seat cushions.

Now comes Obama, The One™. He, peace be upon him, is going to Change things. We have Hope. With a soundtrack of love and racial equality and little bunny rabbits, he is going to turn this country around. What is he going to do to accomplish that?

Well, he hasn't really given us a lot of details, and the press, the Guardian of our Liberty and our Right to Know, hasn't really asked. In fact, they have ridiculed anyone who has tried to ask in order to make sure he got elected, and they have failed in their duty, but then they have been failing in that duty for a very long time. In the few proposals he has hinted at, and in his campaign rhetoric, it appears to be a simple matter of Income Redistribution, spreading the wealth, "asking" the rich to pay their "fair share" whatever that may be - or else.

But there is a problem with that - a big one. Oh, I know it has been working for the last forty years, but remember that the bill is now due - the Big One. The credit card company from hell is now demanding at least the minimum payment, which I assure you is a hefty amount. The Bush administration has been balancing on the high wire for some time. Let's sit down at the kitchen table with the family and see what our options are.

Raise taxes? We could do that, but the result will be an immediate crashing of the economy, or what's left of it. You may hear the talk about the rich paying more taxes, but the numbers won't support it. There aren't enough rich people out there, so you would have to tax them at nearly 100% to make any difference at all. No, the big bucks from the few won't do it - the numbers only add up when you raise taxes on the many, meaning you and me, the families, the working class. But when they do that, we have to spend less. And that in turn hurts the big corporations, and they have to lay people off, and there you go.

By the way, the real reason for all these bailouts? Those are because the two parties owe favors to the big corporations, and they intend to get theirs before it all falls down for the rest of us. There is no other reason for doing what they have done.

So... borrow more money from other countries? No can do. That barrel has been completely tapped. It's empty and dry, throw it in the alley behind the bar.

Print even more money? He might try that. But every nation that has done that has found itself experiencing hyper-inflation, that curious economic state where you take your grocery money to the store in a wheelbarrow, and try to spend it before it loses its value again. They've done all of that they can afford to do, too.

Stop spending? Obama isn't going to do that if he can help it. But maybe he can't help it. When the credit card company won't raise the ceiling anymore, can't raise it anymore, and when you can't even pay the minimum balance, and nobody will issue you another card.... it's over. You have to stop spending like a drunken fool, and then you have to make payments and get nothing fun in return - just like real people.

He could do what Ron Paul tried to get us to do last year: pull in the military and stop being the world's policeman. Obama will almost certainly have to do that, and if so, we will stop interfering with the internal affairs of other nations simply because we no longer can. Don't be shocked - this is precisely how we won the cold war. The Soviet Union could no longer afford to spend money on its military excursions, and they pulled the troops home. We may have to do the same, and this is very likely what Mr. Obama will do, if only because military spending is such a huge part of our budget. Budget? As if we have been following a "budget."

But in any case, The One will not be able to fulfill all those promises, because the money is gone, and the credit is gone, and the eBay closet is empty. The Bush administration spent it all. I guess they misunderestimated him again, ha ha.

He will either bring the military home and close those foreign bases all over Europe and Asia... or he will institute military rule, and abandon the pretense that we are self governed. If he does the latter, it will be appropriate that he has been compared to Lincoln so often during his campaign, only it won't just be the South that is crushed this time.

I hope he chooses the former. If he does, he may yet have something to brag about after he retires a gray haired old man in eight years.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Staying the Course




I'm still actually using the BodySolid™ machine in our exercise room. Yeah, you thought we would pay big bucks for it, spend a week putting it together, and then use it for a coat rack, didn't you? Nope, I worked out on it this morning for 30 minutes.

Some days I just walk for 80 minutes, especially now that I discovered I can walk atop the levee just outside our back gate, even though it isn't officially a walking trail, and even though the levee has a little sign way on the west end telling us to stay off it unless we are authorized. The maintenance guys drive on the darn thing, so I think I can walk on it without damaging it. Incidentally, I plan to run for village rep next election. I want to push them to extend the trail down to our neighborhood, and I bet they put the trail right on top of the very same levee that we aren't allowed to walk on without authorization. Maybe someday I will drive my Chevy to the levee, and see if it is dry. But I digress.

Other days I do both. I walk for my 70 minutes, and then spend a little time doing light stuff on the BodySolid™ machine since I'm a sweaty mess anyway.



So this morning, I'm working out on the machine thing, and listening to another Stephen King short story on my current audio book, which happens to be his latest collection, on sale now at your favorite bookstore. Today's story is A Very Tight Place, which started out nicely enough, but then - no, I'd better not tell you. It might ruin the story for you. Let's just say it involves being trapped in a porta potty.


And the situation is described in graphic detail. This poor guy has to find a way to escape his little private privy prison somehow. Will it involve climbing through the obvious escape route?




Read it yourself to find out.

And somehow I think Rate A Bathroom should link to this article, but I suppose that might be silly.
 
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