Cleanliness is next to Godliness

This may make more sense to guys, but I think everyone can appreciate it.

It is a known fact that a healthy person's urine is sterile. That means all the little germies that your body has ingested have been killed by your immune system and their corpses are jettisoned in your urine. It is perfectly "clean" and will not make you sick. It is even safe to drink for most people, though I would not advocate that outside of absolute survival. Hell, the Vikings and other advanced early civilizations used urine for a plethora of medicinal purposes, so why are we so afraid?

Regardless, urine is not dangerous... At least not your own to yourself.

So, it makes no sense to me that we are raised from the time we leave pampers to wash our hands AFTER we urinate. No one has ever cautioned us to wash before we handle our business. Seems that we run a greater risk of getting sick handling ourselves with grubby paws than we do of dribbling a little piss onto clean ones.

So next time you handle Nuclear Waste or are scrubbing your siding with bleach, be sure to wash after you touch yourself, we wouldn't want you to get sick!

Heaven in a dirty Honda

Yesterday, muc in a tradition with me, I aquired a new vehicle. It is hardly new, but it is new to me. I got a 1989 Honda Accord, for $500. I think this is a good deal ,especially since it have a thriving colony on algae growing on it that they threw in for free.

The car had been sitting for a couple years, so I was spectical when I went to test drive it. I put the battery in and in three cranks the car was running and purring through the back yard enroute to it's test drive.

I drove it around the block and overlooking the understandingly nearly flat tire, I was impressed by how well the car ran. So I decided to get it.

Why do I need this car? Have you seen gas prices lately? I am drivng a truck that if I drive like a gramdma might get 15.5 mpg. This this, once cleaned up, should get around 30 mpg. It being a Honda, it should last me at least until I pawn it off on my oldest daughter for her first car, in 6 years. A quick word about this... I have always heard about how great Japanese cars were, and how they are built to run and last forever. I thought that was pooh until I started this one up after 2 years of dormancy. Believe me, I have had alot of experience with retired cars, and this is the first one this has ever done this. If it runs as dependably as it started, I may convert.

Anyway, this was a conditional purchase. Specifically, I was told to not say a word about "pimping" it out. Maybe she was looking at a diffrent car than the one I bought. I could make a day-glo jumpsuit for this car with a furry hat to boot and it still wouldn't be pimped. As long as I start passing gas pumps, I don't care.

So, as I enter into the ownership of my 29th vehicle, I can already feel heavy pockets with saved gas money.

Paper Champions

Ever wonder about people? Of course, we all do, but there is one certain kind of person that I really wonder about alot. The Paper Champion.

I think the term originated in the boxing world. When a true champion retires, his title often is awarded to the winner of a boxing match between two fighters that the regulatory body picks, deserving or not. Thus, the paper champion.

Everyday life has it's paper champions too. People who have reached a station in life by circumstance or accident, but they really do not deserve it and more importantly, they have not earned it.

Why biggest point of curiosity comes in wondering if they realize this and if they feel guilty for not relinquishing there post. There is an inherent pride in earning every inch of every mile that you gain, even if you don't gain much. Could there possibly be the same pride in being on top without earning it?

I look at some people put in positions of authority and I can tell they are lost. They are neither proud of their station nor the road they took to get there. So, why don't they back down?

I know it is against human nature to give something back once you have taken possession. However, what ever happened to humility? Being humble is not a bad thing.

Given an opportunity to do something and accepting even though you know you are going to fail is not a sign of strength, or of stature. To me it shows your ignorance.

Course, that is just me.

Lucky Travel

As I went to pick my Mom up at the airport this occured to me...

I have made 3 trips for the company in the last 7 years. I went to England in 1998, Oakland in 2003, and Montreal in 2004.

I know it sounds like those are pretty cool places to go, and they were, too much so. In all three cases I went in the dead of winter. January, January, and December respectively.

What, Oakland's not cold? Have you been there? I froze my butt off.

I am not one to complain, but couldn't I go somewhere warm for a change. We have equipment in Houston, we have stuff in LA, I could go there. It is always warm there. Or I could go to the places I have been in the summer.

I might get to go to Brisbane.... in July.... which is winter! Just my luck

Living Will

In the wake of the Terry Salvo (I know I misspelled the name) I thought I would add my opinion on the matter.

In this particular case, it is a multi-faceted response.

It is a given that the patient will never recover, she will be much like she is for the remainder of her natural life. Her husband has moved on, finding a new girlfriend and having children with her. He maintains the marriage only to continue insurance coverage, or so I am told. He, and he alone, is the one pushing for the feeding tube to be removed, thus ending her life.

Seems to be a conflict of interest there. If I was the judge, I would avoid the legal rhetoric and grant the man an annulment. The parents would no doubt agree to sign away any claim she had to half of their property to regain custodianship. Besides, she would not have any claim if she were to pass, I am sure it would all go to him anyway.

That being said, the parents can pay for medical bills. The husband can carry on with his life and the issue is closed.... Or is it. Further adding to the mystery is his intent to immediately have her cremated after her death. The medical team and parents would like an autopsy to determine a definite cause for her condition and to possibly help others. They would like for something positive to come from her injury. The husband will have none of it. Again, begging the question, why is he still in control of the situation?

Ok, my feelings on this are mixed. If this cat can get the courts to allow the doctor to essentially kill his wife, why isn't assisted suicide legal? Terminally ill patients who either want to died with dignity or avoid the pain and humility of dying should be allowed the same privledge shouldn't they? Are the courts saying that a person who, except the feeding tube, is in great physical shape with no other equipment keeping her alive but is a nusiance to her custodian has a right to die and those you are suffering don't?

I have no problem with assisted suicide. Given the circumstances, I think a terminally ill person should have the option to pass, in comfort, at there will. In nature, animals that are old and tired, or injured too badly to recover remove themselves from the tribe or pack and find a safe place to expire. They will themselves to pass. You see it will elephants, dogs, horses, and all forms of primates. They chose the time. Are we so different? Should we not have the same rights as Fido?

The slice of heaven that is a properly prepared bagel

When we were kids, my mom would buy the good Lender's bagel for my sister and I. She would also buy the good Philly cream cheese, always in the block. She would also make fantastic onion dip with the cheese, but that's another show...

As my sister and I would prepare our bagels, she would undoubtedly complain about my gluttony. To be precise, she would complain about the amount of cream cheese I would trowel onto my bagel.

You see, we are bread people and she would argue the properness of a light coating, just enough to flavor the bread. That the spirit of the bread was best served with a modest application. And that if I didn't knock it off, there wouldn't be enough left to finish the bag of bagels. I gleefully ignored her and pasted by bagel with enough cream cheese to give me a milk mustache.

It is amazing how things like that shape you. Just know, I pulled two bagels from the frige behind my desk. I pulled out my tub of cream cheese and coated my bagels with the lucious lactose delight. I placed them in front of them and glared at them in culinary anticipation. Just as I was about to chomp my first bite, I had an uncontrollable compulsion to put on more cream cheese.

So I did.... who am I to fight 25 years of gluttony?

Let sleeping Rosannas lie

I can not tell you how furious I am with Gene Wilder. Last night on the Insider I saw an interview with him. In this interview he discussed his wife Gilda's bulemia and alcoholism. What I find really offensive about this is that he waited for over a decade to come forward with this, and for what? What purpose did it serve to tarnish her memory? I don't believe for a minute it was "to serve as an example". An example to who? The people young enough to need an example for bulemia don't know who she is and alcoholics serve themselves.

I was a big Wilder fan, but after this I hope the oompa-loompas carry him away.

Hell's gates are guarded by car salesmen

Henry Ford was an innovater. He pioneered the asembly line, the interchangable part, and the standard work week we know today. But he was also an evil man, who through greed and his devious idea, signaled the end of the financial well-being of the country.

Yes, it is true, The Ford Motor Company was the first to allow customers to purchase vehicles on credit. The evilness of this action affects all of us.

What does a car really need to do for you. Get you from point a to point be, right? What does a house really need to do for you? Provide you shelter right? Than how come it is that you can live in a house for thirty years, often not changing a thing, but after 3 years in a car you are itching to trade it off. This I find really odd as the one that would stand the best chance of being profitable if sold, the house, is the one you don't sell. And the car, which is unquestionably a bad investment no matter what you buy, we continue to trade and sell, making the next one an even worse investment.

What? You don't think a new car is a bad investment? If you buy a new car the first year to two year you pay on it you pay primarily interest. By the time you start paying on the principle, you are actually paying for the depreciation. After to pay for that, you pay on the principle. By then, no doubt, you have already traded it.

What other purchase are you willing to spend that much money on, with no hope of even getting half of your money back, will paying even more to keep it up and insure it?

Which leads me to why car salesmen guard the gates of hell... because they are the only people who can convince you that you got a good deal by being there.

In response to commonly confused words

TRIVIAL PURSUIT!

signs of aging

My eldest child turned 10 Sunday.... double digits!!! Soon it will be high school, driving.... and boys.... @%$&!!!!

Not to be too long winded, but for all of my children, I have witnessed there entire life. How amazing! Every step, every mile stone, every bump, bruise and scrape, I have been there. It's almost overwhelming.

I just wish I could do better!

"I have seen the light"

Last week, I had a bit of an epiphany.

To be honest, I felt a bit like Elwood in the back of the church, slow to see it, but once I did it seemed so obvious.

My sister moved out of the house about as soon after her eighteenth birthday as her checkbook would allow. She was working and going to school, generally making it on her own, for this I respected her.

After she finished up school, she had a number of jobs that I considered good ones, but left them to pursue the theater. First as a stage manager, and now as an actor.

I have to admit, this move baffled me. There is little or no money in this, and I felt that you must do things in life that will advance you financially. One must be comfortable after all.

But recently, I have seen this in a new light. Lord knows I have made decisions in life that would warrant debate, but the one thing I have done is work my ass off to pay the bills. Sometimes less successful than others. What I hadn't done is find the joy.

As I watch my sister seize a new life in a new place, I can't help but gush with pride. She is striking out for both of us. Quitely, she is leading the life we both would like to live. A life where the pursuit of a dream, and living that dream greets the dawn with a welcome embrace and an excitement that we can only envy. The close of a day comes with anticipation of the next and satisfaction of the days work.

I was watching a movie once, and in that movie a character was counselling a friend of his son. He asked him what he was going to do with his life, to which he listed a laundry list of professions. The father watched and nodded, and at the conclusion of the list he leaned over and softly said this. To truly be happy, satisfied with life, find something you would do for free and then figure out how to get paid for it.

Well done, Kel

Dance like nobody is watching

Yeah, they only don't look if you can dance well. If you dance like a fool... They watch.

Let's talk about the lottery for a second. This is a governmental tax gold mine.

You pay sales tax when you buy the ticket, it is rolled into the price like the gas taxes.

The store pays sales tax on the ticket they sold you. If you win, you pay income taxes. You pay income tax on the interest the winnings accrue, and sales tax again when you spend it.

This just in... Bush's new tax plan comes with lotto ticket rebates.....

Let's talk about Bush for a second.... The best thing Bush will do in his presidency is witness the inauguration of our next president. What a putz.

I was watching SportsCenter yesterday, trying to bone up for the NCCA ya' know, and I saw that the press was making a big deal about some basketball team from Wisconsin that had won a berth in the tournament and was celebrating with one of those champagne celebrations. Here is the twist, the press is in an uproar because most of the players were under 21.... Hello! So they sprayed the bubbly before going home and heading to the kegger....

Coming of age... again.

As my 29th birthday approaches, I have noticed alot of things changing with me. While I admit some of these things are physical, probably due to the extra 4 stones I carry around with me and athletic abuse. Most of the changes however, are on the inside.

This time of year is normally my favorite. March Madness (kel, you can get in our bracket if you want), blooming flowers, and the especially beginning of softball season. But this year, the prospect of playing softball has not been so exciting.

With my full hen house, I felt torn about playing last year. This year, the urge to play can be compared with a run to the vending machine, you feel the urge, but know once you get there it won't be worth the effort. And the wife will give you hell for going.

I have alot of other interests at this point. I would love to have a garden, my yard needs me almost full time, and I have taken up... well am taking up stop motion animation. So, the question is, will I play softball or not?

I am the enternal jock. I love to play the sports, even the ones I am not good at. Have I really come to the point in my life where I can be that guy next door. You know the one... The one that looks like he could play but never does and you suspect that his wife has locked him out of the house because he is never inside. Reggie! Or are the competitve fires still burning too brightly to hang up the cleats?

Maybe I need a diffrent outlet....

I thought about competitve gardening, but there doesn't seem to be much interest.

"FAITH-BASED INITIATIVE"

This, no doubt, will go down in history with "I am not a crook" and "I had no sexual relations with that woman."What a load of crap... I would like to give this years award for best euphemist catch phrase to the Bush administrations propaganda department.... Apparently, you can be close minded, prejudiced and ignorant and it is ok, as long as you have a catchy name for it... Like no child left behind, but that is another posting.
The latest in this category of moral legislation is the attempted ban on gay couple adoption. You may be against it, but before you jump to conclusions, goggle your local states adoption web-site. Just in state run orphanages and foster homes, there are hundreds of thousands of children that need good loving homes. Ask yourself, if these child got to chose, I mean personally chose between living a life in an institution with no one to care for them that doesn't get paid to or a life of freedom in a loving home with two moms or two dads, which would they pick.
Look at the bigger picture... He is trying to ban gay marriage, trying to block them having children, and more or less taking every natural right that they have. What's next, pink triangles on their lapels?
It seems quite odd that in this age of social equality and enlightenment, our country had the ignorance to re-elect such a backwards fool. Before to long, we will have destroyed the rights of gays, ruined social security, wiped out an entire generation of young men, and crippled our ability to educate our children.... Which demographic does that leave untouched???? Oh, yeah, HIS!

adverb vs. adjective

School House Rocks!....well, it rocks!

Almost 20 years after I was supposed to learn the difference between an adverb and an adjective, a two minute cartoon thought me more than I knew from a classroom.

Why was that?

I gave it some serious thought and came up with the following reasons:

1. I must have been in the cloak room that day, or week... or year. I too went to catholic school for a while and my desk seemed to prefer the view in the closet. My teachers, happy to oblige an aging desks wishes, were happy to make sure it spent most of its time there. I, evidently, was just along for the ride.

2. I have a cleared train of thought as an adult. Ok, maybe a more fair translation is that I give a crap now.

3. My teacher, much like me after actually learning the difference, realized that it was even more crap that you differentiate the two.

The english language has been around in some form for over a thousand years. At some point in time, someone had to sit down and classify each kind word. Noun, verb, and so on. Then they come to descriptive words. They didn't break down nouns into objects that move and objects that don't. They didn't break verbs down into movements that animals do and those they don't, but for some reason they decided to break down the descriptions of those things into several families. Madness! And I am sure that the bunch that first named all these things received some sort of medal from the king or queen at the time for contributions to society.

You don't have to know the proper name of a word to use it properly... I doubt the grammar convention had happened before Chaucer put quill to parchment, so why bother bogging our kids down with pointless classifications that truly have no use after 4th period english?

Extreme Makeover Home Edition

While I appreciate that fact that they try to select families that need the help, I am torn about last nights show.

Nevermind the fact that ABC decided to air this show instead of the two vastly superior shows that follow it, DH and BL. That aside, I am not sure that the family chosen really deserved the makeover as much as past families.

The family had seven kids, one single birth and a set of sextuplets. Here is my problem with them. They managed to have a child without the aid of fertility treatments. However, while trying to have a second child they did get the treatments and ended up with 7 kids in two pregnancies. Should this act of greed really merit reward?

If they had 7 single birth children, would anyone pity them or would they say they should have known better?

To me, there is no difference. They chose to use fertility drugs and with that, they should also chose to shoulder the responsibility for that choice.

But do they? No, they get a free house and a college fund for all 7 kids.

Late last year, they did a show with a family of four. Mom and Dad are deaf, the oldest son is perfect, and the little brother is autistic. Mom can't work because she has to take care of little brother, Dad has hit the glass ceiling due to his lack of hearing and lack of job skills, thus struggling to support the family. And big brother is the glue that holds the family together. The only one in the family who can verbally speak to little brother and the only one who can hear him. This is a family that was worthy of ABC's help.

Give the help to Cancer survivors, Widows and Widowers, the disabled and the orphaned, but let's just let the irresponsible procreaters fend for themselves.

Uncle Sam... Walton

Two posts on my first day, I must be an over-acheiver.

Ever wonder what Sam Walton's first store had in it? From what I understand, it was a hardware store in Benton Arkansas. I would expect that Sam was in his 20's when he opened it, maybe younger if he took it over from his father of uncle or something. That would put the store opening or changing hands in or around the depression.

Can you imagine walking into a hardware store, in nowhere Arkansas, during the depression. Worn wood floors. Tins of lard and jars of peaches. That sweet-musty smell you can only find in vintage hardware stores now. Images of the shop keeper in Oh' Brother flashed in my head. "We don't carry Dapper Dan. I can order it for you, have it for ya' in two weeks."

"Pardon, where is your saddle soap?"
"Down that aisle, there, just past the sweet oil."

What is even more strange, is that the multi-national, multi-billion dollar retailer grew from selling nails, utter balm, castor oil and palmaid to dirt farmers and share croppers in Arkansas.

Think about that next time you balance your checkbook.

The diffrence between qualified and capable

Let us not confuse the diffrence between someone who is qualified to do a job and someone who is capable of doing a job.
You can be one, or the other, or both, but they mean vastly diffrent things.
A qualified person is someone who simply meets a list of predetermined requirements for the job.
A capable person is someone who can actually do the job.
In my experience, I would rather have someone that is capable and not qualified doing the job than I would someone who is qualified and not capable. Ideally, you would have both.

Strangely enough, you can easily become qualified if you are capable for long enough, however if you are not capable that will rarely change no matter how long you are qualified.

This also ties into the diffrence between skilled labor and unskilled labor. A skilled laborer is often someone who is qualified, which does not mean that they are capable of performing the trade that they are qualified to perform. An unskilled laborer is not necessarily capable, but is never qualified. You can become skilled if you are unskilled long enough, but only if you are capable. You never go from being skilled to unskilled, no matter how uncapable you are.