Creative Endeavors, The Home of BoxcarOkie.com

November 22, 2008

It’s Me Margaret …

Filed under: Oklahoma,Recent,Uncategorized — ldsrr91 @ 2:35 AM
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Here we go, another slow day here at the home, just sitting around waiting on Jeopardy to come on, od’ing on Vitamin E and they won’t let us go outside because the weather is bad.  Might as well write something, share a thought or two or as my wife would say …….. “What are you mumbling about?”

Today I discovered that Oklahoma City has installed some new technology at the intersections here and there around town.  If you sit there for a moment or two, after the light turns green, something activates the horn on the car directly behind you.

Pretty neat, what will they think of next.

As I said, not having a lot on my plate this day, I ventured into the “Estrogen Enriched Area” of Margaret & Helen’s today, they were talking about breast feeding in public.  I made a comment, and was again promptly shut down, I was this time summarily rebuked and chastened poste haste.  No sense of humor over there.  Just wait until we get something going on this page about overhauling the transmission of a ’56 Chevy, and they come over here, you watch and see what I tell them!

Yeashus!

Suddenly I am made painfully aware of how a mailman must feel, when walking down the street, minding his own business, a dog charges out of the house and tries to bite him.  Alas, I am the mailman of Margaret & Helen’s blogsite and didn’t even know it.  Accused of “shamelessly” trying to promote my lesser blogsite.  Yawn?  Every time I go there, someone bites my — and the Poor Monkey Never Learns.

The Barack Obama “love-hate fest” continues and Sixty Minutes the 40 year old news program had over 25.1 million viewers last week as everyone tuned in to see the new president elect and first lady to be.  I have to admit, it was kind of strange.  Witnessing the president-elect’s unorthodox verbal tick, which had Mr. Obama employing grammatically correct sentences virtually every time he opened his mouth.

But Mr. Obama’s decision to use complete sentences in his public pronouncements carries with it certain risks, since after the last eight years of old you-know-who, many Americans may find his odd speaking style jarring.

And a great many Americans tuned in to see.  A new record that hasn’t seen that many viewers since 1999.  It has so far been the top telecast prime time slot on television this year.  Bush is now so unpopular that they won’t even bother to shake his hand.

Like Frank Burns’ said on Mash …. It’s lonely at the top.

The undercurrents of the last election are still flowing deeply across the country.  Lot of angry sore losers wanting to move out of the country now and talk about where they want to go to get away from all of this can be found at a lot of Internet sites.

Personally if you feel that way, it is like Dubya (Bush) is fond of saying …. “Don’t Y’all let the door hit ya, where the good lawd split ya.” (Texan for See you later)  As Gregory Peck said, “It’s a Big Country” you could move to just about anywhere if you wanted to I suppose.

You can Live in California where…

  1. You make over $250,000 and you still can’t afford to buy a house.
  2. The fastest part of your commute is going down your driveway.
  3. You know how to eat an artichoke.
  4. You drive your rented Mercedes to your neighborhood block party.
  5. When someone asks you how far something is, you tell them how long it will take to get there rather than how many miles away it is.
  6. The 4 seasons are: Fire, Flood, Mud, and Drought … In leap years … Earthquake.

You can Live in New York City where…

1. You say ‘the city’ and expect everyone to know you mean Manhattan
2. You can get into a four-hour argument about how to get from Columbus Circle to Battery Park, but can’t find Wisconsin on a map.
3. You think Central Park is ‘nature’
4. You believe that being able to swear at people in their own language makes you multi-lingual
5. You’ve worn out a car horn.
6. You think eye contact is an act of aggression.

You can Live in Minnesota or Maine where..

  1. You only have four spices: salt, pepper, ketchup, and Tabasco
  2. Halloween costumes fit over parkas.
  3. You have more than one recipe for moose.
  4. Sexy lingerie is anything flannel with less than eight buttons.
  5. The four seasons are: winter, still winter, almost winter, and road construction.

You can Live in the Deep South where…

  1. You can rent a movie and buy bait in the same store.
  2. ‘y’all’ is singular and ‘all y’all’ is plural.
  3. Everyone has 2 first names: Billy Bob, Jimmy Bob, Mary Sue, Betty Jean, MARY BETH, etc.
  4. You believe that wrestling is real
  5. Your idea of gun control is to hold the weapon with both hands.
  6. And at the drive thru, you always say “super size the fries” for the little woman.

You can live in Colorado where…

  1. You carry your $3,000 mountain bike atop your $500 car.
  2. You tell your husband to pick up Granola on his way home and he stops at the day care center.
  3. A pass does not involve a football or dating.
  4. The top of your head is bald, but you still have a pony tail.
  5. A slow moving Bronco is John Elway

You can live in the Midwest where…

  1. You’ve never met any celebrities, but the mayor knows your name.
  2. Your idea of a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor or a combine.
  3. You have had to switch from ‘heat’ to ‘A/C’ on the same day.
  4. You end sentences with a preposition: ‘Where’s my coat at?’
  5. When asked how your trip was to any exotic place, you say, ‘It was different!’
  6. Where the biggest city you ever went to was WalMart.

You can live in Florida where…

  1. You eat dinner at 4:15 in the afternoon.
  2. All purchases include a coupon of some kind — even houses and cars.
  3. Everyone can recommend an excellent dermatologist.
  4. Road construction never ends anywhere in the state.
  5. Cars in front of you are often driven by headless people.

Or, you can live in Phoenix, Arizona where…..

  1. You are willing to park 3 blocks away because you found shade.
  2. You’ve experienced condensation on your butt from the hot water in the toilet bowl.
  3. You can drive for 4 hours in one direction and never leave town.
  4. You have over 100 recipes for Mexican food.
  5. You know that ‘dry heat’ is comparable to what hits you in the face when you open your oven door.
  6. The 4 seasons are: tolerable, hot, really hot, and ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!!

Personally we can’t afford to go just yet, we are still waiting on our “second economic stimulus check from the government” once we get that, we are outta here.

Wonder if Margaret & Helen would rent me a room?

000

Thanks to Trish in Louisiana.
“The cartoon courtesy of Center for American Progress” (online)


November 1, 2008

Mysteries of life

Filed under: politics,random,Recent,Uncategorized — ldsrr91 @ 8:51 AM
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A great many things in this life just do not make sense.  I was thinking about that this very morning and I thought I might share some of it with you.

Take those birds, Swallows, every year, they just keep coming on back to Capistrano or some other place out in California.  That is a mystery to me.

Or those horse’s that are born white and then they turn coal black when they reach maturity.

Recently Radio Girl turned me on to an interesting blog site that is entitled  “Margaret & Helen” and they are a mystery to me.

Are they really eighty years old as they claim and writing this blog with the help of their grandchildren or are they conning everyone into believing they are so.

Immensely popular they are a good read and a mystery to me, I shall follow them in the future with some skepticism.  But that is nothing new, I am suspicious of everyone and everything, just ask my birth mother she will tell you.  I enjoy their page.  It makes me ever mindful of the conversations and musings in the late afternoon that I shared with my grandparents who are now long gone. Get some time today, trot over there and give their read a glance over, some good stuff there.

Back to the mysteries of life.  The roots go down and the plant goes up, life, that is a mystery.  This guy, Joe The Plumber, as I understand it, he doesn’t have a license, so why do they say he is a plumber?  That is a mystery.  How can the cable company remember to send me a bill each month, but cannot remember the password on my site?  Here is another that just irks the ____ out of me, why does this sucker change fonts in the middle of an article, does it all the time!  WordPress.com surely a mystery if there ever was one.

“Pick a number between one and five.”  Got it?  Is it three?  Nine times out of ten, when you ask someone to do this, they will pick the number three.  Why?  Because they perceive the number three as the middle, another mystery of life.

A word of precaution here, this number thing only works with adults.  If you do it with your five year old grandson, give him the choice, ask him to pick the number, and then ask what the number is, he will most likely reply, ‘It’s MY number Grandpa, go get your own.” You have been warned.

More red cars are sold in America than any other color.  A red used car will sell for MORE money than other cars.  Red Is For Lovers

Women in red has always been a mystery to me.  A new psychological study has just been released about romantic attraction and it suggest that red attire makes men unwittingly more attracted to women. To study the effect of color on behavior, psychologists as the University of Rochester in New York conducted five experiments and analyzed mens responses to photographs of women in various situations.

They would in turn frame the photo’s in red or have the women wearing red in the photo’s as they were displayed. In every case, men rated the women in red frames or wearing red as considerably more attractive and sexually desirable than the same women with other colors.

So if you want to attract your man …… Put on that red dress baby, ‘cause we goin’ out tonight, put on that red dress baby, case some fool might wanna fight …

Sampson and Delilah were a mystery.  So was Cleopatra and Marc Anthony.  Two strong and robust men, brought down in their prime by a woman.  Which brings me to Sarah and McSame, a broadly satirical political comedy of sorts with an improbable plot, this truly is a mystery to me.

I can remember the first time I was given word of it and my measured response was … Are you kidding me, what were you thinking?

Wonder if Sarah was wearing red when Old man Mr. McSame took her down by the creek, under the stately Cotton Wood tree in Sedona Arizona, to ask for her hand in their unholy alliance in the mysterious world of politics.

I guess I will always wonder about that one for sure.

000


September 30, 2008

September Wrap

Filed under: Oklahoma,politics,random,Recent,Uncategorized — ldsrr91 @ 7:19 AM
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Take it to the Car Wash.

Seattle Washington is considering the banning of washing cars on the driveway. They say that all the pollution and run off (chemicals, brake dust) is harmful to the Puget Sound environment. I find this kind of hard to believe (must be my day to be a skeptic huh?). Our last visit to Seattle we went to the aquarium there, Seattle has a world class aquarium and we spent the day down on the bay.

One of the exhibits there was a sewer intake/outtake exhibit for the Puget Sound Region.

They had these huge concrete pipes in the museum about ten feet in diameter and a map of all their locations in the Puget Sound where they were, discharging effluent (treated sewage water) into the bay. You press a button and it displays on a board mockup of Puget Sound the locations of these outlet pipes. Some “44 of them.” So I would say the Salmon and other residents of the bay have more to worry about than car washes.

Here is some more sewage news, when the poo-poo hits the whirly-dirly (When “it” hits the fan Y’all) in Alabama they don’t have the change to pay for it.

Birmingham, Alabama, Jefferson County Commission President Bettye Fine Collins said the county will probably default on part of its $3.2 billion sewer debt but not file for bankruptcy. A so-called standstill agreement with sewer system creditors expires Tuesday. Once that happens, creditors can demand payments the county says it can’t afford. I mean how embarrassing is that? You owe $3.2 billion on your sewer bill.

My favorite door stop that can talk is on TV this morning.

Bush is coming on television sometime this morning, and I suppose he is going to play the “scare card” again. You ever notice how he does that? If we don’t take Osamma Been Forgotten, the Free World will be at risk. If we don’t go into Iraq and get Saddam, we will be at risk from all his nuclear weapons that did not exist. And now it is banking and Wall Street.

Perhaps Bush is using his version of new math?  Once again he will dig deep into his grab bag of political tricks and use the scare card.  Check your local listings or better yet, just check out, as we pointed out before, these people have a massive credibility issue.

Others do not agree with bailing out Wall Street and say it isn’t so.

Much of the country’s political and economic leadership has been running around raising the prospect of the Great Depression and a breakdown in the banking system (I actually had taken the latter seriously). These stories are absolutely not true. There is no plausible scenario under which the no bailout scenario gives us a Great Depression. There is a more plausible scenario (but highly unlikely) that the bailout will give us a Great Depression. There is no way that the failure to do a bailout will lead to more than a very brief failure of the financial system. We will not lose our modern system of payments. At this point I cannot identify a single good reason to do the bailout. Click here.

What is wrong with this picture?

Boston – The Justice Department said Massachusetts must provide Spanish-language ballots and materials to Puerto Rican voters in Worcester to settle allegations the state violated the Voting Rights Act. Federal officials said the state’s failure to provide the translated materials to Worcester residents in 2001 resulted in Puerto Rican voters not being able to access the polls or cast an informed ballot. State Sen. Dianne Wilkerson decided to seek a recount after her 228-vote loss to challenger Sonia Chang-Diaz in last week’s Democratic primary. Wilkerson, of Boston, is gathering signatures for a recount in five wards.

Juan is having problems down by the border.

Phoenix – The families of some illegal immigrants passing through the state are getting ransom demands from criminals claiming to have kidnapped their loved ones as they were sneaking into the country. What isn’t immediately clear to these families is that they’re targets of “virtual kidnapping.” The extortion scam has escalated to an average of one case being reported each week.

Your friends in the Oil and Gas Industry are in the news

Charleston – Royalty payments are awaiting state residents who had oil or gas leases with Dominion Resources. The energy company will pay $40 million to $50 million to 25,000 owners to resolve a lawsuit that alleged Dominion cheated them out of royalties. The dispute centered on whether gas drillers could deduct production costs before calculating royalty payments.

One honest man in Pennsylvania

Harrisburg – Pennsylvania‘s highest court said a judge can’t refuse an 11% pay raise. The high court upheld a lower court ruling that said Superior Court Judge Joan Orie Melvin cannot legally reject the salary, which went from $145,658 to $162,100 in September 2006, when the high court reinstated a pay hike that had been repealed.

Another Looney law in a long, long list of curious oddities in America.

  • New, New Jersey, forbids the sale of ice after 6 P.M. without a prescription.
  • South Foster, Rhode Island, any dentist who extracts the wrong tooth mush have a similar tooth pulled by the village Blacksmith.
  • And map that does not prominently display the city of Lima, Ohio, is illegal to sell in Lima, Ohio.
  • In Portland, Maine, it is illegal to tickle a girl under the chine with a feather duster.
  • In Seattle, Washington, it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon that exceeds six feet in length.

And if you think that is ridiculous or bad you ought to live in Oklahoma where it is illegal to: Read a comic book while operating a motor vehicle. Oklahoma will not tolerate anyone taking a bite out of another’s hamburger. Whaling is illegal. It is illegal to have the hind legs of farm animals in your boots.

The really sad part of all this, it is real, and not made up. Who writes this stuff?

People like this.

I am outta here … See you in October.

000

September 26, 2008

Water Woes

Filed under: Oklahoma,random,Recent,Uncategorized — ldsrr91 @ 4:58 AM
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All day I face, the barren waste, without the taste of water, cool, clear water. Old Dan and I, with throats burned dry, souls that cry for water, cool, clear water.” Did you know that “Dan” in that song was a donkey?

Yup, true.

The last time I ventured into these familiar waters (pardon the pun) I was called an “Eco Freak” by some knot-head that wanted to go round and round with me on the subject. Personally I prefer the term “Tree Hugger” it just seems to me, more personal and friendly.

The city is raising the rates on my water again. Not because I am using a lot of it, but because they are a city, and they KNOW that they can always milk the consumer for the life blood that he needs, and he will pay it.  You see, “You need water, and if you live in a city, you are going to pay for it.”

Some big challenges facing this country in the future, providing we make it thru this Wall Street debacle. One of them is going to be water. Fresh water is running out on a grand scale worldwide. The world is running out of potable water, which unfortunately, is a key ingredient to life as we know it. The last time I checked, the current numbers reflected less than 5% of the worlds water is now drinkable (potable) and that number is shrinking.

The latest data suggests we might be in big trouble, when it comes to water.

North America: The United States and Canada are the largest per capita consumers of freshwater, double that of our neighbors to the south in Mexico. Though supply has been abundant in the past, that may change. The High Plains Aquifer in the central United States that Mr. Pickens wants to deplete is expected to “decline dramatically.” Pollution, invasive species and under-priced water add to the stress of the region. In Canada, the demands put on water to harvest oil-sand petroleum is ruining the Frazier River Basin at an alarming rate.

South America: Due to fast population growth, the region’s major environmental problem of the next decade is expected to be a shortage of potable water.

Europe: Western Europe is pricing water at levels that allow for reinvestment and management of an adequate water supply. Easter Europe and the former Soviet Union, on the other hand, are still using more water per capita than Western Europe. In Eastern Europe, a business-as-usual scenario estimates water use will nearly double. Overall, water issues have more to do with quality and ecosystems than with quantity, which appears for the time being, sufficient.

But then again, Global Warming enters into the picture. A lot of people in Europe live below quickly melting glaciers, their primary water supply, when the glaciers have receded and are gone, then what?

Africa: More than half the population has no access to safe water, fewer today than in 1990. Almost half the population of the areas suffer from water-related diseases. In southern Africa, a business-as-usual scenario estimates water use will rise by half in just a few short years.

Asia: Nearly a third of the region has no access to safe water. Central Asia is already using 85% of available water, and South Asia nearly half that. Per capita availability of water has dropped by 70% in Central and Southern Asia since roughly 1950. In China the same applies, another business-as-usual scenario sees water consumption doubling in that country by 2025. Recently China has had to import huge quantities of rice, because acid rain has ruined the water in the surround country side and they are now growing crops in sterile soil.

Australia: Water usage increased by 25% in the mid ‘90’s, compared with the mid 80’s. At the same time, the water supply has been degraded, particularly in the Murray-Darling Basin in the southeast. A prolonged drought hasn’t helped matters at all.

You pick up any newspaper in this country and each day there is an item in there about the shortage of water or the possible contamination of an Aquifer that is used for public consumption. Water who most of believe is just plentiful and everywhere, is in fact, a precious resource (mostly non-renewable) and is being squandered.

Monroe Louisiana – Sixteen parishes in northern Louisiana depend on the Sparta Aquifer for drinking water, but one expert said the water is slowly deteriorating in quality because of drawdown. Ben McGee, a supervisory hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said the aquifer is tapped into at a rate of 70 million gallons a day by users from paper mills to residential homes.

Shapleigh MAINE – Voters in Shapleigh, in a setback for bottler Poland Spring, imposed a six-month moratorium on the testing or large-scale extraction of water. Residents voted 204-38 to adopt the moratorium, intended to give the town time to work on a regulatory ordinance.

Rockingham, North Carolina - Residents in three counties are concerned that pesticides used by peach farmers decades ago may be polluting well water. The Charlotte Observer reports that tests by health officials found 117 tainted wells in Montgomery, Richmond and Moore counties. For now, state officials are delivering drinking water weekly to affected homes.

Lubbock Texas – Billionaire T. Boone Pickens put plans on hold for a pipeline to send water from a Panhandle aquifer to cities downstate. A Pickens spokesman said the suspension of the Mesa Water pipeline has nothing to do with a Justice Department ruling in August that blocked changes to Texas law that helped create a water supply district. The district was dominated by employees of Pickens. He is all set to drain this aquifer (Ogallala) to supply Dallas with drinking water. He has however one big snag, “no one has asked him to provide them with water at this time.” Meanwhile, on the western fringe area’s of this water system they are starting to suck sand.

Slowly people are starting to realize that we have to do something to conserve this resource or we will perish. This week in Tucson Arizona, a dry and arid portion of the United States legislation was passed to conserve or re-use water. Homes built there after 2009 will be required to have wastewater systems that use drainage from sinks, showers and tubs to irrigate landscaping.

The ordinance adopted by the City Council requires new homes to have “gray-water” plumbing systems separate from piping that takes toilet waste to sewers. The new systems will cost about $500 per house.

It isn’t much, but at least it is a start.

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