Well it’s election day, aren’t you excited? I don’t think so because I don’t know anybody that is. I’ve listened to talk radio today, local news on both radio and TV, and everybody’s “shoveling it” hard and fast. The liberal stations are telling me that Obama is the man and he’s going to kick Romney’s ass. The conservative stations are saying that Romney is the man and he’s going to kick Obama’s ass. If I had my druthers I’d like to take them both out behind the woodshed and kick both their asses.
The last two years has been been unbearable with the constant stream of biased propaganda from everyone under the sun. First off, both candidates should all be arrested for felony Criminal Annoyance and sentenced to 20 years locked in a cell with each other. That just might be what “cruel and unusual” is all about.
I’m not getting too excited until later this evening when the only thing that really matters takes place. The vote count. Everyone’s reciting poll results which are just so much hogwash. The polls always seem to reflect the opinion of the pollster whether liberal or conservative. If as many people in this country are as tired of the constant polling as I am, they’ll lie to any pollster just to be ornery. I’ve been polled a number of times by telephone over the last few years and I absolutely lied through my teeth every damn time. The vote is a secret in this country and I’d like to keep the tradition alive. I’m not telling a soul who or what I’m voting for or against, it’s none of their damn business. It’s a freaking secret ballot.
If I have one more person talk to me like I’m a some idiot wrapped in a moron and try to explain to me why the way I want to vote is incorrect, I could be persuaded to violence. So if there’s anyone out there who’s reading this who enjoys making phone calls for candidates and visiting homes to irritate the residents, here’s a little bit of advice. Stay the hell away from my home and don’t think about calling me again. You’ve spent two years preaching to me and I’m “burned out”.
A few cups of coffee, an hour on the computer, and then back to the serious work of remodeling our spare room. I’m in the process of combining our master bedroom with an adjacent unused room and I’ve pretty much gutted the room to include removal of all the drywall from the walls and ceiling. I’ve pulled up and removed the carpeting and pads and removed the old electrical outlets and switches. Thank god it’s not a huge room but its still a lot of work and preparation.
Today I’m beginning to rewire some of the outlets and taking measurements for the laminate flooring. Small but important steps in the process. Next week Ill be reframing the closet and deciding how much of the wall to remove to make the new opening into our bedroom. Good old Lowe’s delivered the new drywall and studs last week and I’m almost ready to get serious about this project. I’m tempted to just call a contractor but my better half insists I do some of the heavy lifting. She’s just so frugal at times it makes me crazy.
I stayed up a little too late last night reading book number one of the Harry Potter series. I was surprised how closely the movie followed the story line but there were a few things in it that were edited out of the movie. Hagrid in the movie came across much differently than in the book. He was a big loveable hulk in the movie but was portrayed as something of a loser in the book. It’s those subtle little things that allows books to remain true to the authors original story. Hollywood has a way of editing stories in a lot of little ways that can sometimes change the entire story. I’ll stick to my books thank you very much. Unfortunately I got so caught up in the story I lost track of time and the next thing I know it was one o’clock. Obviously I need all the beauty sleep I can get so off to bed I went.
As I walked into the bathroom this morning the mirror was very unkind to me. I looked like “forty mile of bad road” and felt just about that good. I’m still tired as hell but I’m up and finally motivating.
My better-half is working today and has meetings scheduled well into the late afternoon. I can finish my tasks and still have time for a hour or two with my camera along the coast somewhere north of here.
Back to work. No more procrastinating
Are you as sick as I am with all this political nonsense? I decided to get out of the house for a few hours with my better-half to take a short hike through the woods, in a non-hunting area of course, to just enjoy the clean air and the sunny day. The area where we wanted to walk is approximately seven miles from our home and we took the round-about-way of getting there.
I decided just for the hell of it to count all of those annoying political signs that seem to pop up at every intersection and clutter the landscape during every election cycle. I stopped counting at three hundred but it was easily twice that.
I realize there are some rather loosely enforced rules about where those signs can be placed and how many can be placed there but that’s not really my point. It’s just another way for politicians of both parties to irritate the hell out of people. It’s bad enough that we have to listen to a barrage of advertisements on television but now they’re calling on my cell phone. I’m sure I’m not the only person in this country whose made an attempt to contact every no-contact list imaginable to stop these annoying intrusions. Whatever rules they’ve set up for this kind of political crap just aren’t being enforced. Why am I acting so surprised? Everyone knows the rules don’t apply to the political elites.
I’m not a big fan of things political and I’ve lost a great deal of respect for many of the people who insist on living that lifestyle. I can respect a blue-collar worker much more than a smooth talking, word parsing, political hack. These feelings aren’t restricted to any specific political party because the differences between the two have become so blurred in the last few years it’s all the same damn thing. I know it doesn’t do much good to bitch and complain but it certainly makes me feel a little better.
As I mentioned in an earlier posting this week, I was able to make a little progress on that sculpture I been working on. It felt good to zone out for a few hours and concentrate on something interesting instead of the normal everyday humdrum nonsense. It still won’t be ready for Christmas but at least I’m back working at it. I love working with unusual materials and this project has taken it further than I normally go. Trying to create or re-create a woman’s hairdo out of white caulking compound has been a true challenge. I know exactly how I wanted it done and how I wanted it to look but getting there has become quite a challenge. I’ll keep slaving away and hopefully see an end to this project sometime after the holidays. Maybe I’ll be forced to make it a Valentine’s Day gift.
I did little shopping earlier today at a local store that sells used CDs, books, and video games. I love reading and I’ve been wanting for the longest time to eventually read the entire Harry Potter book series. I got extremely lucky and was able to purchase the first six books of that series at a reasonable price. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish the book I’m currently reading and be able to get into the first book of Harry Potter sometime this evening. The books are always better than the movies, at least in my experience.
Today has been a relaxing and nice day. I accomplished more than I was anticipating which is always a pleasant surprise. I attempted to take a short walk earlier but good sense prevailed. I’ve never seen so many hunters in our area before. Cars are parked along the roads and the poor hunters must be having a terrible time of it. I haven’t heard a single gun shot all day which isn’t a good sign for them.
I’ve never been much of a hunter but I come from a family who celebrated deer hunting season like it was a religious holiday. In western Pennsylvania the schools are virtually empty on the first day of deer season and students aren’t even penalized for missing classes.
My father made his pilgrimage to the wilds of northern PA every year for a week of male bonding with his buddies, some good camp chili, a keg of beer, and if they were lucky a couple of deer corpses. I was invited once when I was a teenager but declined for ever after. I just never saw the point. From that day forward I was officially an outcast from all hunting discussions and related war stories at our family gatherings. Thank God my nephew Mike loved hunting and was able to join my father and the boys on their annual safari and I was forever off the hook.
I was reintroduced to the lifestyle of the hunter about five minutes after I arrived in Maine with my moving van. I stopped to gas up the U-Haul and when I walked into the gas station the first thing I saw were hundreds of photo’s tacked to the walls of customers with their deer kill. The owner saw me looking and I had to smile nicely and listen to his favorite deer killing saga with him directing me to the appropriate photo of him in his camo outfit.
This indoctrination continued nonstop for quite a few years until I finally gave up the fight. I still refuse to hunt but I can now talk about it up with best of them. My dad would have been so proud.
It’s about 10:30 am and I’m still on my third cup of coffee. I just sent my better-half on her way for a day of shopping with her daughter and new grandson. I don’t have to tell you how important “alone time” can be for a person’s overall mental health and I cherish every minute of mine. It’s just me and my shadow, my cat Stormy, sitting in my man-cave and trying to decide what we’ll be doing today.
It’s another dreary day but fortunately all of my outside work is almost completed and I’m ready to settle in for the winter. I think I’m in a minority but I’m hoping for lots of snow this year. Last year was a mild winter here in Maine and I missed not having that beautiful white snow-cover for the entire winter. On top of it all without proper snow-cover many of the plants in my herb garden won’t survive. Anyone who knows anything about herbs knows that many are almost impossible to kill and they’ll run rampant through your garden. But with a mild winter and not much snow-cover they won’t likely survive the winter here in Maine. Last Spring I was forced to replace many herbs transplanted from my late mother’s herb garden which had a great deal of sentimental value to me. Such is life, replant and move on.
Today I’ll be be returning to work on a small sculpture that I’ve been working on for almost a year. I seem to do a few things on it then stare at it for about a month and then do a few more things. I’m trying to picture in my mind the finished piece and where I want the project to go. It’s finally coming together for me as I hoped it would and as it usually does.
Not to give too much away but it’s a somewhat bizarre and outrageous sculpture of my better half’s bust. That’s a “head and shoulders” bust not a “boobs” bust. The hair will consist of twelve tubes of white caulking compound applied in a manner I’ve never tried before. Today I’ll have a few hours where I can properly focus on my project and maybe make a little headway. I really wanted to have it completed by Christmas but I just can’t rush it. It moves at it’s own speed and when it’s done, I’ll know.
More coffee to get started and if I’m a good boy, a brandy later in the day. Hoorah!
Did you ever have one of those days where no matter what you tried to do, it just had no pizazz. That’s today for me unfortunately. It’s gray, dreary, and just cold enough to force me into wearing my winter apparel. Then I walk outside, take about twenty steps and all of a sudden I’ve sweated through my shirt. Then off comes the jacket and once again I’m freezing my ass off. It’s simply a no win situation with the cold or flu lurking in my near future. My decision is to be as lazy as possible and not work up a sweat of any kind.
I love the fall but it does have certain drawbacks. They are called LEAVES. I love Mother Nature and I love living in a rural wooded area but OMG the effing leaves. For years I’ve raked those bastard leaves into piles large enough to hide my car behind. Then I get to rake them again onto a huge tarp and attempt to drag them into the nearby woods. Saying that raking leaves sucks just doesn’t cover it.
A few years ago I lived in an area where burning leaves wasn’t permitted and most people were required to bag them and set them at the curb. If I did that now it would cost me a freaking fortune for bags and a week to fill them and stack them along the road. The town would be obliged to bring their entire fleet of trucks to cart them away and then later try in their slick governmental way to make me pay a fee. It’s just one of the few things governments do really well. They love to interfere with your life whenever possible and then work extremely hard to take money from you.
I decided this year I would win the battle with Mother Nature by becoming mechanized. I made the grand purchase of a riding mower with a grass collector figuring it would also be a great leaf cleaner-upper. Wrong again. It turned out to be a hugely expensive, red, leaf blower. For every leaf it sucked up, it threw three hundred into the air where Mother Nature could redistribute them around the yard. After my fourth pass, becoming more pissed off with each pass, I parked that mother and went inside for a cup of coffee.
After a half hour of quiet meditation to lower my blood pressure, I had another cup of my terrible coffee, and also an epiphany. A leaf solution came to me out of the blue and as always it was perfectly simple. All I had to do was pray for a week of high winds and rain storms that would blow most of the leaves into my neighbors yard. Any that were left after that would be allowed to stay right where they are until Spring. Problem solved!
So I’m off to visit my better-half who is happily slaving away for “The Man”. I think I can convince her in my charming way to eat some Chinese food for lunch and if I’m lucky she’ll get to pay the tab too. Things are looking up and screw the freaking leaves.
My sincerest sympathies go out to all those folks in New York New Jersey and the surrounding areas who are suffering through the terrible flooding and destruction. I can’t begin to imagine how devastating and horrible that situation must be.
I expect the media to now turn it’s attention to the recovery efforts with all of the poignant stories they’ll report or create as need be. It’s critical that they don’t lose the ratings surge created by Sandy. They’ll milk the recovery for all it’s worth until we’re exhausted from their incessant preaching and dire predictions of the next “epic” event.
My best estimate for their switch to the next great catastrophe will be just after the Thanksgiving weekend. The History Channel will lead the charge with a constant barrage of bullshit programming on the end of the world as we know it on December 21, 2012. They’ll be forced into continuously reporting something exciting and scary because we all know you can’t get much ratings mileage out of the big countdown of shopping days left till Christmas.
Can 100,000 dead Mayans be wrong? The media is a fine tuned albeit liberal machine and should be reasonably successful in terrorizing a large portion of the population about the upcoming “end of days”. Ahhhh, it takes me back to December of 1999 when the dire predictions of Y2K were being pumped for all they were worth costing businesses billions of dollars in computer time and to what end. Nothing happened. Planes didn’t fall from the sky, thousands were not killed when traffic lights malfunctioned around the world. Just so much BS.
Could I be wrong? Maybe, but don’t bet on it. I’ve had enough of the media and their games and I hope you have too. I need a fresh cup of that horrible coffee I made this morning and a handful of Halloween candy leftover from last night. That’ll teach me.
Well, we survived the “Storm of the Century” and I thought I was home free and clear. I should have known better than to think I could sneak by for a week or so without something or someone irritating the hell out of me. With a great many people without power I thought I’d be safe from those annoying individuals calling or sending me emails about the upcoming election. Wrong again. The phone calls began as soon as the rain stopped and the power was back on; “Vote yes for gay marriage”, “Vote no for gay marriage”. The TV bombardment hasn’t stopped either and will continue until the election has come and gone.
Yesterday a stranger shows up at my door telling me that gay marriage is a threat to the foundation of this country and I must vote against it. I couldn’t believe my ears. What a lame ass argument to try and use on me, an actual informed and thinking American voter. This is just another attempt at propagandizing from the religious right and all of their special interest groups. Needless to say I sent her packing with a tidbit of my advice to help her along, “Get a freaking life”.
I’ve written on this subject before but I guess it bears repeating. To qualify myself, I’m independent, extremely conservative, and a well informed citizen. I can’t even begin to understand this whole gay marriage argument and the idiocy I’ve been hearing about it. Freedom apparently no longer applies to you in this county unless you belong to the right religious or political group. Certain groups are spending millions of dollars to argue a point properly made by the founding fathers and later confirmed by President Lincoln. Freedom you morons! Any color, any religion, any sexual preference, anything at all. We’re all FREE citizens with the same goddamn rights.
How did it happen that so many people have forgotten why and how this country came into being. Live and let live. Freedom for all, not just for those who agree with you. Shame on all of you who are fighting against others who are simply requesting that their freedom be honored.
Everyone in this country is in a huge “shit and sweat” over the Muslim’s and their outrageous religious beliefs. I see almost no difference in this gay marriage argument. It’s a group of organized religions attempting to force their beliefs on a portion of the population who isn’t interested. America was founded initially on a desire for religious freedom and also I might add to protect people from religious fanatics with an agenda. I hate to admit it but the biggest problem in this country isn’t the economy, it’s too many people trying to tell to many other’s how to live their lives. The government is relentless enough without help from a bunch of frightened religious types who are defending marriage with apparently no clue as to what a real marriage is.
There haven’t been many times I’ve found myself embarrassed to be an American, but this is one of them. Shame on all of you.
I refuse to be drawn into the hysteria that is Sandy. I’d prefer to spend this day in the kitchen where I’m creating another batch of my signature chili on this gray and rainy day. I’ve made about a gallon of it so I’ll be sharing with nearby family members who are currently hunkered down awaiting the storm. The house is quiet because my better-half is off to see the new grand child for a few hours and I plan to enjoy it.
I’m considering a ride down along the coast a little later this afternoon to possibly get a few interesting photo’s of the storm’s approach to Maine.
I love Mother Nature in all her scary ferociousness.
I spent more than a few minutes Monday and Tuesday doing my weekly food purchasing and what did I hear in almost every aisle in every store. "It’s the end of the world as we know it". "It’s a storm of epic biblical proportions". Run to the store, buy food, water, batteries, and then hunker down in your cellar and pray to God you’ll survive. WTF is going on.
I’m all for early warnings being issued to help people flee areas in serious danger but the fucking media started this drumbeat of impending doom when this damn storm was still in the mid-Atlantic. They need to jack up those ratings quickly so they decided to scare the shit out of every elderly person in a twelve state area and then just kept pouring it on. A little panic won’t kill many people but it will make the media a candidate for those big news awards and better pay.
They never seem to be held accountable for things like this or for all of the other scams they’ve perpetrated on the American people over the years. It’s impossible to hold anyone responsible when both the politicians and most of the media are in bed together.
This is the perfect way to end my day. I’d like to write more but my better-half is getting ready to close the hatch to the bomb shelter. Once she closes it I’ll be stuck out here where the big bad storm will get me.
Don’t get me wrong, this storm may be big, bad, and dangerous but the level of concern is way over the top except for a few critical areas. I’m just asking for responsible reporting in a timely fashion so people can be spared a catastrophe.
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