November c'n be a tiring month...

I’m tired of politics…tired of things political…tired of ‘poor little me’ whiners who think people look down on them becuz they’re on welfare (sadly, a lot of them deserve being looked down upon)…tired of the damn immigration argument ’n I’m really tired of the phrase, “We’re a nation of immigrants”…it’s trite and it’s dumb ’n it applies to everyone all around the world becuz we’ve always been a race of wanderers, hunter-gatherers who have survived for millenia becuz we’re better at it than the other animals (at least, we think we are~ants ’n roaches ’n sharks might argue with us)…

I’m also really tired of all the damn Black Friday/Black Thursday/Black whatever the hell day of your choice retailers who are driving all the joy out of every recognized holiday that our petty government can come up with….I’m a little tired of ending some of my sentences with prepositions…that’s why some long ago newspaper scribe invented three-dot journalism to cope with…with which to cope…

I’m tired of professional sports, ‘roided entitled behemoths whose brains seem to have shrunk with their testes to the size of peas…as far as professional basketball is concerned, they should double the size of the court since they have darn near doubled the height of those outlandish specimens who ‘play’ the game…I use the word ‘play’ advisedly becuz that word should apply only to  childrens games, not the mockery that has developed over the years…

I’m tired of the endles ‘climate change’ arguments…of course, climate changes…it has always changed, always will so long as we humans inhabit this blue sphere…’n we ain’t gonna make it behave the way ‘we’ want it to, no matter what…My Gawd!  What monstrous egos some of us have, to imagine that we can control Mother Nature…I think Al Goracle ’n his adherents must never have heard about ‘pissing into the wind’…

Oh yeah, I’m tired of the Muslims too…or Moslems, or Islamists or whatever they want to call themselves…it’s easy to get tired of religious nutjobs, ‘specially if they practice a religion different than your own…I didn’t use to mind them so much before the ‘in your face’ attitude that has developed in recent years…same thing with the gays ’n lesbians ’n those muddled folk who call themselves ‘transgendered’…I personally don’t give a tinkers dam what tune these people dance to so long as they don’t dance (or prance ’n yes, that’s a bit of a cheap shot) on my toes…

I think government should get the hell out of marriage…marriage is a religious institution anyway ’n our gov’t ain’t supposed to mess with it…’course, gov’t don’t really care about marriage, it’s all about the money so far as they’re concerned…

Ah well, tidings of the season, my friends (if I have any such thing left, that is)…at least, my dogs still love me…I think…maybe it’s the treats...

How to become a Scrooge in November....

I’ll tell you sumthin…maybe it’s the latent curmudgeon in me but the day after Thanksgiving is too durn early to start shifting furniture around to make room for a much too soon Xmas tree…

Heck!  I ain’t even got the new Xmas lights strung around the porch/veranda in progress yet…the new lights are new versions of the olde-fashioned, over-sized Xmas tree lights of yesteryear…they’re spozed to be cheaper to operate (yeah, like big bizness really gives a darn how much it costs real people to use their products)…also, s’pozed to be cooler…ain’t no use to wrap ‘em around my citrus trees, they don’t give off enuff heat…speaking of heat, if you have some of those ‘green-lite’ bulbs suggested by SMUD…be careful ’n keep an eye on them becuz I’ve had two of ‘em catch fire…

you’re supposed to re-cycle them in a hazardous container if they quit working but they don’t tell you what to do when they catch fire…what happens to the darn mercury then…or whatever it is they use…

Anyway, yest’day was a big fam’ly day, lots of food ’n drink ’n She who must be obeyed got up early ’n stayed up late ’n now…THE DAY AFTER THANKSGIVING…she wants me to move furniture, dig out the Xmas tree ’n all the darn trimmin’s, re-construct the durn thing becuz she…”is getting old ’n wants to celebrate Christmas as long as possible.”

I’m thinkin’ I might be burned out on Christmas this year before it ackshully gets started…

I guess if I c’n say Bah! ’n Humbug! ’n really mean it, I c’n, at long last, qualify for my boy scout curmudgeon badge…

Delbert Fultz would  be so proud of me…..

Another turkey day.....

HAPPY TURKEY DAY

Well, by gosh, by golly ’n all the other euphimistic things we tend to say when we don’t want to be accused of ackshully swearing…anyhow, it’s Thanksgiving Day again…if you stick around long enough, they keep on coming…

It’s a beautiful, sunny day here in Ol Fair Oaks…me ’n da boyz walked/strolled/ambled down the street (or up if you prefer) but we stayed on Crestline (more or less)…passed the time of day with a couple neighbors, chased a few chickens, da boyz got stared down by JonnyCat (he lives just up the street ’n he’s a killer~mostly red squirrels) but he ain’t afraid of Rusty or Willy…(he also stares down Rover the pit bull but that’s another story)…

Listening, at the moment, to Johnny Cash walking the line…b’leeve that dates back to ’52 or ’53….

Anyway, turkey is in the oven, onion soup on the stove, pies already on the table…only think missing is/are the kids… (Dave is celebrating T’sgiving in Dubai ’n Gina went to Sea Ranch) ’n I’m listening to ‘50s rock ’n roll on Sirius…

HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO EVER’ONE….

...of this 'n that 'n other things...

“There’s been a change in the weather…”

Well, not so drastic a change as they’re having back in the states…(fyi: that’s the way early Californio’s referred to the country east of the Sierra)...

The cold front that’s moving down ’n creating misery back there has brought us here in norCal slightly below temperatures for November…s’pozed to be in the high ‘60s today, sun is hiding behind the cloud cover…at least here in the valley…for all I know it could be shining brightly on the sierra…I could prob’ly find out if I’d turn on the local news…I’m just not that interested at the moment…

So o o o…it don’t really matter to Willy whether I’m innarested in going for a walk or not, when he has his mind made up, then a walk it must be…

Rusty, on that proverbial other hand, has entered a dotage (in dog years anyway) older’n mine ’n he don’t seem to care whether he does or he don’t…

spends most of his time sleeping ‘cept when he decides that he wants to go outside ’n then…’n then, I open the door for him ’n he wanders off in pursuit of whatever might be on his poodle mind…

I don’t know if you have a Habitat for Humanity Re-Store near you or not but it’s a great place to go treasure hunting…if you’ve a taste for that sort of thing….

Don’t seem to matter a helluva lot whether Obama’s stays home or travels, those little bumps in his road just keep coming…Now, it’s Gruber in the spotlight telling the world that the American voters are stupid for believing the Obamacare scam…

It’s what we’ve been saying all along…the Obama administration basically lies about everything because to them, everything is political…they lied about keeping your doctor, they lied about the death panels, they lied about fast ’n furious, they lied about Benghazi (wasn’t any real reason for lying about Benghazi but they did anyway)…They lied about the IRS…Hell, Obama his own self in that superbowl interview stated emphatically that there was ‘not a smidgen of corruption.’…

Didn’t stop there and it hasn’t stopped since…just keeps on going on…more dependable than a Timex, Obama’s lies just keep on keeping on….

Y’know, I didn’t like Obama, didn’t vote for him, basically thought he was just too inexperienced BUT, after he was elected, I thought his Presidency would be a good thing for this country by putting the final nails in the coffin of race discrimination…BOY HOWDY!  Wuz I ever wrong….

After the death of Lincoln, we had a true racist President in Andrew Johnson…He hated Negroes, Indians, Jews, Catholics…well, basically anyone who wasn’t a gen-ooo-wine Protestant American with British ancestry…’n he created the atmosphere of Jim Crow that persisted through the first half of the 20th Century…

Integration was difficult…I know…I lived through it…

The military was first to really integrate, beginning during WWII under the Roosevelt administration…prob’ly wudn’t FDR’s idea, however…we c’n thank Eleanor Roosevelt for that…and that was a good thing, a positive move that was long overdue…

Anyhow, by the time I got in the military in the mid-50’s, integration was a fait accompli…there was still some personal resentments but they were minor and containable…after the military, I attended Morehead State College and it was factually integrated…I say factually because the black students were pretty much segregated on campus, as were the Asian students…but, we made headway and when I came to California, it was even more integrated…if anything, the most segregated group in California were those of Mexican descent and that was rapidly ending…young people tend to fall in love ’n get married pretty much regardless of race and when your extended family consists of black, latino,  pacific islander, asian, etcetera ad infinitum, you just got to give up basing your opinion of others on the color of their skin….

We were doing pretty good, race-wise, and the civil rights blow-up in the ’60’s was a good thing…

But, something happened after that ’n it seemed like every time there was a relatively minor situation, there were race-hustlers ’n media to blow it all out of proportion…

I’m tired of ‘Divide ’n conquer’ politics…I’m tired of ‘special groups’…like Rodney King, I’m just wondering why we can’t just all get along????

I don’t normally ask for comments but this time, if you’ve a mind to ’n it ain’t too much trouble?????

MUNDAZE.....

EXCITEMENT last evening on Crestline as a small fire in the rabbitwarren apartments acros’t the street brought two large fire trucks, three smaller fire trucks ’n the emergency responder (also Co. Fire) plus a little later in the evening, an SUV bringing a fire supervison, I suppose, to bring a total of seven county fire vehicles (I’m told there was another one that responed on the back side, that being Fair Oaks Blvd, but I can’t confirm that)…

The resident (name withheld for no p’tick’lar reason) stated that she had just returned home, noticed smoke coming from her bathroom…

Someone, not sure who, called 911 ’n they responded in force…

I have no idea of the cost of this little adventure but seven fire vehicles plus manpower must add up to thousands, maybe tens of thousands…

Well, thank God ’n the little people, no one wuz hurt, the neighbors got to gather in the street (no booze passed around howsomever)…

I saw a little debris, detritus, garbage, whatever, on the street this morning when da boyz ’n I went for our daily S&P tour ’n I suspect the resident prob’ly spent the nite elsewhere but, of course, that’s just speculation…

Speaking of speculation, all (maybe not all but most of ‘em) the talking heads on television just keep speculating on the absurdity of the last election ’n what The Big O is gonna do ’n how the republicans are gonna respond ’n what it all means…sort of~he’ll say this ’n I’ll say that then he’ll do that whil’st I’ll respond with this ’n then he’ll do whatever ’n I’ll do the opposite ’n we’ll just see who wins in this very expensive game of musical chairs….

And that’s my p’litical comment for the day…

I’ve been working my way thru Bill O’Reilly’s “Killing Patton”…It is not a page-turner, no matter what you might have heard…It is, however, pretty darn interesting for a history book ’n requires, as practically all history books do, a slow ’n careful reading…otherwise, you might miss something ’n have to go back…(much like history books ‘way back in those long-ago school daze)…

Too bad you can’t pick up these books at your local library but they’re only available if you buy ‘em or if you have a friend that bought one...

There is a difference between moon 'n mooning.....

By the light…

…of the silvery moon…

Spent the day in Santa Rosa, left there a few minutes after 5:00p…never a good time to play in traffic, but…

Anyway, it was darkening when we turned onto Hwy 12 in Santa Rosa for the trip home….we saw the moon rise before we got out of the city limits, full, round ’n brightly silver…

Bumper to bumper traffic all the way thru Sonoma where I took a shortcut ’n got out of it for awhile…well, about ten minutes or so, then back on #12 where, mercifully, we managed to maintain a decent speed all the way thru Napa to the turn for Jamison Canyon….

Jamison Canyon use’ta take 20 to 30 minutes but they cleaned it up this past year, straightened out the curves, widened the highway ’n turned it into a 6 or 7 minute drive….until last nite…

Well, it was the first time I’ve negotiated the canyon at rush hour…bumper to bumper, stop ’n go…wow!  Took us all of 22 minutes or so but it felt like an hour….

After Jamison Canyon, highway 80 wuz a breeze, found the diamond lane ’n maintained 75mph all the way to Fair Oaks…well, most of the time…

And that big old silver moon leading the way, the entire way….

Got me thinking, reminiscing actually…

Novembers in Kentucky are ‘way cooler than Novembers in norCal…

And we lived in a small house in Beattyville, next to the railroad track, across the road from John Stephenson ’n across the alley from Ben Craycraft…

Anyhow, I remember how big ’n bright that full November moon wuz in Beattyville…bright enough, they use’ta say that you could ‘read a newspaper’…

if, perchance, you wanted to read a newspaper by the light of the moon…

Back then, given the plumbing of the day, if you had to use the bathroom in the night, it wudn’t a matter of a trip down the hall but a stumbling, humbling trip out to the far corner of our yard to the outhouse…

That meant some kind of shoes ’n a coat to throw over your shoulders ’n a shivering….well, I’m sure you get the idea….

Problem wuz, at least for us boys, that if all you had to do wuz what wuz euphemistically called in those long-ago day, #1…well, it wuz a long trip when you c’ud just as easy hang a right to the corner of the house where you had some little protection from that cold November wind ’n you c’ud stare up at that big ol moon that you c’ud read a newspaper by if you’da had a newspaper at that time of nite…

Autumn daze.....

Clear, cool, sunny with a hint of Autumn in the air…

Seasons almost never do dramatic changes here in the heart of NorCal…

Da boyz could hardly wait for our daily S&P tour t’day…barely got out of the driveway before they crossed leashes running in opposite directions, a tactic that comes naturally in dogs (I think) ’n doesn’t have t’be learned…

Once upon a time, I tried walking four dogs down our little street…but only once…all four were small, Willy ’n Rusty ’n two weiner dogs whose names I c’n never recall….one is brown with some black ’n t’other is black w’some brown…

Anyway, the four of them t’gether wuz ‘way, ‘way too much for this old man…don’t think I could ever take up dogwalking as a profession…

Took one a’them facebook quizzes…about what Calif city I should ought to live in….said San Francisco…’n I got to admit that San Fran is one ‘a my fav’rit cities in all the whole world…just not San Francisco of t’day…it’s still a pretty location for a city ’n still has pretty much the same population density that it’s always had…three quarters of a million, but that’s becuz that’s all the room they got down there…and one of the biggest problems with The City by the Bay is in getting there…I mean, it’s located in ’The Bay Area’  and that’s just a horrible collection of places, too damn numerous to list, with too many one percenters and too many wannabe’s…

And The Peninsula…omg, a truly loveable place but so full of people that you can hardly move around…BUT, once upon a time, San Francisco and the peninsula was a truly magical place…IF A BODY C’UD JUST GO BACK IN TIME…And you wudn’t have to go back to goldrush dayz or anything like that altho’ it’ud be tempting…I mean, The Gay 90’s on The Barbary Coast…Wow!  

Nah!  I’m thinking sometime after the earthquake of ’06 after it’d been re-built…maybe the ’20’s ’n the ’30’s….y’know, Dashiel Hammets San Francisco…

Ahhh well, makes a nice fantasy on a lazy day….I use’ta go down there in the ’60’s…but that wuz then ’n this is now ’n I don’t really want to visit my youth…not sure I c’ud get thru it a 2nd time, b’leeve getting thru it once wuz largely a matter of luck…

“I like that old time rock ’n roll, like to reminisce about the days of old…”