I Did Not Cry

Saddam is officially dead and I did not cry.

In new far more important, today is my grandson William's fourth birthday. We'll be going to a small party later so there will be pictures in the next few days.

Until then, happy New Year.

Thinking About Global Warming.

I took Eddie out to pee, and to fire the other barrel. To do so I had to put on my thermal underwear, my sweats, a jacket, a watch cap and a jacket and gloves. Could be worse, I could be in North Dakota or Wisconsin or some awful place where they allow snow. (Why don't the legislatures up there pass a law?)It got me to thinking about the global warming zealots (the same bunch that was convinced we were all gonna die in the new ice age) talking about how we are all gonna die because it's going to get three degrees hotter.

Here is what I don't understand, we are all going to die because the ice will melt and the seas will rise a whole foot or so. Just how much of Holland is below sea level? When did the Dutch build those dikes? Long before my time, right? Except for New Orleans, aren't the rest of us smart enough to put up some dikes? Are we not as smart as the Dutch of a couple hundred years back?

I have a lot of trouble adjusting to Algore telling us we are all going to die because it will get a few degrees warmer. We have people living everywhere from Yuma, Arizona to Anchorage, Alaska, we seem to be a pretty resilient bunch. Perhaps Algore will die over a few degrees, the rest of us will move a hundred miles north. Except, of course, in Australia. They'll go south. It warmed up at the end of the Dark Ages and our ancestors survived. I'm told that if it warms up some, the growing seasons will be longer and there will be more to eat. Of course, looking at Algore lately, maybe that is the problem. Nobody will be hurt by the heat, Algore is just worried that he'll explode.

I figure my grandchildren are pretty smart kids. If it gets too hot for them to live in Texas, Arizona and North Carolina, where they are now, they can move to Siberia and wear tank tops in January. The way the Ruskies are dying off, they might as well. There will certainly be enough room.

And another thing, in between all of us dying from the coming ice age to all of us dying from the big hot spell, were we not all supposed to die from Nuclear Winter? How's about we figure out how many nukes we'd need for a Nuclear Springtime? We could drop the first one on Tehran and just work our way down a list until we have perfect weather. One on Khartoum would stop the genocide in Darfur, a nice small one on the Aswan High Dam in Egypt would let the rest of Islam know what it means when they talk about throwing Israel into the sea.

We could start a little pool, how many nukes would it take to make for good weather and would that be enough to calm Islamic Rage Boy down a notch or three or will we have to rebuild the Napalm refineries. We can Napalm 'till there is global warming, nuke until it cools off and just repeat until the surivivors of Islam decide to play nice with the rest of the world.

There, I've solved the two big problems of the world, all from staying home today so as to not bring this cold to the grandkids. With a little luck the cold will be over by William's birthday party. If I don't get over the cold by then, somebody give me another big problem to solve.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all.

Vicious Killer Attack Pugs

Linda Lou got herself a new camera, an itty-bitty HP Photosmart M527. We are still learning to use it but here are a couple of doggie pictures. I am still not real happy with a camera with no little window to look through, especially on moving targets like children, dogs and suchlike. Oh well, our old camera has the little window so it lives hanging from my guncart so I'm not endangering the new one at a Cowboy Action Match. Not that anyone would shoot it, but Linda Lou worries about me dropping it.

Our old camera is a Toshiba PDR-M61. As far as I can tell, photo quality is the same, although I may need new bifocals. The big difference is that we can't carry the old one around in a shirt pocket. Of course I never carry it that way and Linda Lou doesn't have very many shirts with pockets.

I suppose there is some sort of scientifical reason than these electronic cameras wait when you push the button to take the picture, usually until the dog has moved so we see nothing but the dog's butt. Or maybe the camera makers are Malthusian types and just want my blood pressure way up there.

Odds And Ends

There isn't much going on down here in the Poorfarm. We had our Cowboy Action Shooting Club's Christmas dinner and get together on Saturday night. As always, Mexican Food. I will not comment about a bunch of middle-aged and older men, and their wives, in a closed room eating frijoles, we've all seen that understated masterpiece, Blazing Saddles.

We, as usual, got our share of strange looks, even in Texas people look at you funny for wearing the old-style cowboy clothers. Or maybe it was the frijoles.

It looks like I'm going to have to pay a visit to the Fabled Tequila Mines Of Cuervo. I was drinking a cherry limeade from Sonic the other day and somehow Eddie the Pug Puppy got 'hold of a lime slice. I have never seen a dog that loves lime slices before, Eddie may be the first. I tested Ming the Merciless with a lime slice, she wrinkled her nose and backed away which is more like it. Oh well, if we load him up with Margeritas we'll have a lot more peace and quiet. With my luck he'd be a fighting drunk.

Linda Lou's minivan is in the shop so we're driving a rental. A Dodge Caliber. It's okay, just another small car except to one thing. You can wear a hat inside. Most of the little moterised roller skates these day you just can't wear a real hat, there isn't room. Even the bigger cars you can't get in and out while wearing a hat. I am beminded of Walter Chrysler who, when the longer and lower craze first started said "I build cars to drive, not to p--- over."

When we bought the minivan we were also looking at a Jeep Grand Cherokee, I then drove one while the minivan was getting some kind of service, we upgraded the rental that time. I could not get in and out without taking off my hat, the roofline was too low. The new Grand Cherokee may have this fixed, the guy from the rental company was driving one for the pickup at the dealership, and, at least on the passenger side of the front, it worked for me. I didn't use to care about wearin' a hat. Right up until I didn't have enough hair left to keep my head from sunburning.

Well, that's all I have, it isn't much.

What Did They Study?

Oaky, let me get this straight. The Iraq Study Group studied Iraq by going once to the Green Zone and only Chuck Robb got out of that particular place and went to an FOB.

Meanwhile they had no testimony from a single Lance Corporal in The Corps or a Staff Sgt. in the Army, nor any Colonals running Regiments or Brigades.

After all this study they want us to involve Iran nand Syria in the solution to the problem when probably half, or more, of the fighters and weapons killing our troops come from Iran and Syria.

Did this crowd study LSD?

Name For A Dave Barry Rock Band?

Britney Spears' crotch seems to be leading the news today. Linda Lou and I are a little over 120 years old, combined and we've both gone our whole lives without either of our crotches being featured on the Drudge Report or Michelle Malkin.

Of course, I don't get out much, is Britney Spears' Crotch the name of a new rock band?

Linda Lou's Kansas Farm Woman Cinnamon Rolls

Blogfaddah Harvey wanted this recipe. Don't nobody blame me if his, or hers, belly drags on the ground. These things are a once per year recipe.

Two tsp sugar, one half cup lukewarm water, one package yeast. any cook knows the drill, dissolve sugar in water, add yeast, dissolve. Let stand ten minutes.
Scald one and one half cups milk, add one half cup sugar and one half tsp salt. Cool.
Add two beaten eggs, , three cups all purpose flour, yeast mixture and three more cups flour.
Knead a little. (May need to add a little more flour)
Cover and let rise for twenty minutes.
Knead on lightly floured board until dough springs back when punched with finger.
Let rise until doubled, about an hour.
Roll out and spread with eight ounces of soft margarine or butter.
Add three cups brown sugar and eight tsp cinnamon.
Roll in long roll, cut in one inch slices. Twirl the slices into rolls. Place in nine by twelve by two inch cake pan.
Let rise until doubled.
Bake at 350 degrees F for twenty to twenty five minutes.
Flip out of pan.

Eat.

A Recipe For Army Wife, Toddler Mom

My pal Army Wife, Toddler Mom is asking for baked goods recipes, cookies, and suchlike.

We have a standby here that we try to never be without. It's her Grandma Hagen's Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. Linda Lou eats six of these cookies a day as a meal and has lost a WHOLE LOT of weight on this diet. Oddly this started before she retired and her diet consisted of six oatmeal raisin cookies and a Sonic double cheeseburger and tater tots each workday. I make no guarantee that anyone else will lose weight on this diet but it worked for her.

At any rate here is the recipe...Grandma Hagen's Oatmeal Raisin Cookies:

Two sticks margarine, the cheap stuff
Two Eggs
One cup sugar
Two cups flour (all purpose, not self rising)
One tsp baking soda
One tsp Cinnamon
One half tsp allspice
one half tsp nutmeg
Pinch salt (new salt, not an old salt like Harvey)
Two Cups quick oats
One cup cooked raisins (note cook raisins in a small pan with water. Bring to a rolling boil, turn off heat)
five tsp raisin juice. (Raisin juice is the the water the raisins boiled in.)

Soften margarine. Linda Lou puts the margarine on top of the stove, in the back where the over vent is. She has it unwrapped, in the mixer bowl. This is first, she does everything else while the oven preheats.

Blend in sugar and eggs.

Blend or sift flour, soda, spices and salt.

Add flour, oatmeal, raisins and juice.

Mix until the dough forms a ball. (If you don't have a mixer use a stout spoon, this dough is thick. Until we got a mixer I had one arm like Popeye)

Spoon onto lightly greased cookie sheet. (Linda Lou squirts the cookie sheet all over with Pam and then wipes the excess off with a clean paper towel.)

Bake at 350F for ten to twelve minutes.

Did I mention that Linda Lou lost a lot of weight eating six of these cookies a day?

Anvil Al Memorial Birthday Shoot

Saturday was another cowboy action shoot and also it was Anvil Al's Birthday. His wife and a couple of confederates cooked up a mountain of brisket and beans, potato salad and sundries to celebrate.

I think Anvil Al ought to have a birthday on the second Sunday and last Saturday of every month. I have no pictures of the actual eating, this is after all, a G rated Blog. Had y'all been there you would know why we have those bandannas around our necks.

The shooting was going along nicely, right up until I "missed the bucket", again. The residual damage from the stroke I had made the ring and little fingers of my right hand numb and weak. Those are the fingers I use most when reholstering a shootin' iron. Ooops! I was going along in my first clean stage of the shoot and then, all of a sudden there was a six shooter on the floor of the Sportin' House. Fortunately I only seem to drop the iron when reholstering so it's only a stage disqualification. Had the gun been loaded it would have been a match DQ.

Anyway I was my usual slow but semi-accurate self, shooting black powder and putting up clouds of gun smoke, the barbecue beans, later, added more smoke.

The smoothing out of my shotgun chambers helps a lot, without that stage DQ I would have been in the middle, someplace, insead of next to the last. It doesn't matter all that much where I place, I'm never going to be a champ at this. The champs have better nerves and reflexes than I do. Cowboy action is just plain fun, no matter where I place and the shooting is okay practice. So what if my main defense revolver is a double action? Shooting is shooting. Since most bad guys never practice, even at my worst I'm better than they are. Cowboy action has certainly helped my shotgun shooting, my buckshot loads don't kick near as much as those black powder cowboy action loads.

Anyhow, the weather was near-perfect, cool and cloudy in the morning, clear and warmer by the time the shoot was over. I like shooting black powder when it is cloudy and humid, it makes more smoke. It's harder to shoot fast, though, not only does the smoke hide the targets but the flame and sparks from the gun going' off is distracting. Instead of swinging to the next target and searching for the front sight I'm watching the flames.

Oh well, good company, good food and a pretty nice day.

The Return Of The Prodigal Puppy

Linda Lou and I were sleeping the sleep of the just, the sleep of only those with a good conscience when the phone rang. It was the vet's offices telling me that someone had found Eddie. Well, we dressed fast and headed out.and, sure enough, there he was, at a "resort" and marina about three miles off. Maybe a mile and a half as the crow flies, not being a crow I'm not positive. At any rate we drove among the house trailers and the feller that found him was outside with him. Eddie was glad to see us.

As soon as I opened the car door, Eddie jumped in. We both got a ton of puppy kisses and Ming The Merciless, peas be unto her, barked hysterically at Larry. Eddie is fine, skinny as a rail and covered in ticks. He's been eating his little head off and has had a bath with flea and tick soap.

It's too bad he wasn't found yesterday, he would have enjoyed the cooking of the turkey breast. He got a hunk of turkey today, though. I have decided to leave his food dish down all the time until Monday and let him get filled up good and then go back to the housebreaking routine.

You might guess that Linda Lou is really happy.

Who Knew She Is Muslim?

I am not sure what adjustments we are going to have to make in our household routine but we just discovered that Ming The Merciless is a Muslim dog. I guess I will have to write to "Ask_The_Ayatollah.com" or "Query_The_Q'ran".org" or somesuch to figure out what to do.

At any rate her Muslim background may explain why she bites my fingers when I give her a treat, she's so small that's the best she can do with her Jihad.

One might wonder how we discovered that Ming is Muslim, let me explain...
I was eating dinner and shaking rather more than usual and dropped some peas. Ming snatched them up before they had a chance to bounce or roll, ate every one and begged for more. This prooves she is Muslim, because..............

Peas Be Unto Her.

High Finance

I just saw on Drudge that Google stock is up to $500.00 a share. Now I don't understand much about finance, I barely understand lunch money. I am curious, though. I use Firefox and it has Google connections. It's free. I have a G-mail account. It's free. I regularly Google stuff on line when I want to figure out the answer to(mostly) unimportant questions. It's free. Okay, there are a few little ads that I never look at.

So, here is my question... Here is a business giving away it's product and services and each individual share is worth FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS! What does a shareholder get? How in the world does a company that gives it's service away make a profit to the stockholders?

I don't understand, am I an idiot or do folks with disposable income just enjoy throwing it away?

Didn't we just go through this same thing at the end of the Clinton Administration with the bursting of the Great Dot Com Bubble?

Update: in comments my Pal, Teresa, who is pretty smart even if she's some kind of Yankee, says that Google makes bazillions of bucks from advertisors. Okay, I believe it but then I must ask, who reads the ads? I read some at first but quit because when they're ads claiming to have what I'm looking for I always managed to find it cheaper. So, I never read the ads.

Granted I might be just a little unusual but I'm certainly not unique. I don't know for sure but somebody, the advertisors or the stockholders will eventually get sc, um, oh well, I just hope they're all getting kissed.

New Blog!

Well, my pal Army Wife, Toddler Mom has a new kid, a blog-daughter. It's a good thing AWTM lives in Arkansas because this virtual daughter is already in her twenties.
Anyhow you can find KD over at her blog, The Life Of The Wife.

While we wait for his return we might all take turns worrying and praying so that KD can maybe take a two minute break every once in a while.

Duke Of Trousers

A while back I was looking over the classified ads on the SASS Wire, the cowboy action bulletin board, and noticed that a Pard was selling some Horsefly pants. No, not pants for a horsefly, that is just the brand name. The guy who made these is retired now but was quite well known for the quality of his work.

Anyhow, the guns and holsters are only a small part of the expense involved in the sport of Cowboy Action Shooting, the "right" clothes are real expensive. That shirt I have on in that picture is forty-bucks and not even perma press.

So, when I saw four pairs of these pants for ten bucks a pair I sprained a finger typing "I'll take 'em" and posting it. Now, a minor difficulty is that I didn't NEED four pairs of button fly, no belt loop, three pocket pants, iron every time you walk past pants. There are those who are really into the costume part of the sport, I'm really just there for the noise and stinky black powder smoke but, for a few days I was the Pants King of Lake Tawokonie. As luck would have it, though, another Pard, out California way wanted to buy those pants, too. So I sold him two pair and instead of the Pants King I am merely the Trouser Duke.

If anyone cares this is the first pair of green trousers I've had since back when I wore Uncle's Suit.

Eddie Didn't Come Home

Well, we've lost another puppie. I took Eddie out to pee the other night and then Ming came out and they went off to sniff around. Eddie didn't come home and searching proved useless.

Owl? Coyote? Mean people? Who knows. Foo.

Veteran's Day

Eighty-eight years ago the lights came on in Europe after four years of Hell on Earth. No one knew then that it was the beginning of the end of Europe's dominance of the globe.

Just as Decoration Day morphed into Memorial Day, Armistice Day turned into Veteran's Day. A day to remember not just the heroes, the Chesty Pullers and Silent Lew Walts, the Manila John Basilones and the Audie Murphys, but the other guys like me, and now gals, who put on Uncle's suit and did what they were told in unglamorous jobs.

I don't often think about my time in the Service, life is in the way. Every once in a while, though, I think back. I don't remember the lack of sleep and the bad food, I don't think of the hours of boredom or the moments of terror.

Instead I remember that once I stood with heroes.

Two Anniversaries.

Two anniversaries today. Two hundred and thirty-one years ago the Continental Congress created two battalions of Marines.

Fast forward a little bit and my then-fiance, Linda Lou wanted us to marry on a day I couldn't forget. So, November tenth. Semper Fi, twice.

Pictures

By popular demand, puppy photos! Don't nobody dare tell me that Quality Weenie isn't popular.

In other news the Donks seem to have got some new law on the books. It seems to be against the rules to stand in the driveway of the polling place with a gun and a sign "No Donks!" Foo. I never have any fun.

Anybody know how Frank J is doing with his ASP Baton?

Vote

Just a note on this laptop...vote. I know a lot of conservatives are disgruntled, I have my problems with the bunch running the show in DC. I'm still going to pull the straight Republican Ticket.

Of course, it is easier for me, there are very few RINOs running here in Texas. Still, even a RINO will prevent a Speaker Pelosi. A RINO will help prevent a Donk taking our tax cuts away and, most importantly, will keep up the fight against Islamic terrorism. Nor should we forget judges.

It is somewhat easier for me, too, because I knew all along that Dubya is not, and has not been, a classic conservative. I knew that from the time I met him when he was first running for Governor of Texas. That was during my big political career when I was a Republican Precinct Chairman.

So, vote. Hold your nose if you must, just vote. Don't forget, the polls are supposed to be crowded this year so we Rupublicans vote Tuesday and the Donks vote Wednesday.