Can't seem to get off that dead horse thing.....

"Ride a painted pony, let the spinning wheel spin..."

Recently, one of our children (I ain’t gonna say which one but he knows who he is) queried us about our future plans regarding green bananas ’n suchlike…well, t’be truthful, his question wuz more about the suchlike than it wuz  green bananas…he wudn’t p’tick’ly worried about Millyrose since she’s something of a gadabout who lunches frequently with a host of friends ’n therefore has what he considers t’be something of a support system…Nah!  He’s a good boy (at least in the minds of old people) who evidently has too much time on his hands ’n worried about his dear OLD Papa who spends ‘way too much time with that corrupting influence, FOX NEWS and, as a result, become a ranting curmudgeon who spends his days either in front of the teevee overdosing on Bill O’Reilly ’n Sean Hannity or on his seemingly only friend, his computer, where he searches endlessly for someone with which to argue politics ’n, or, the meaning of life…

I’m not sure if his worry is about what’s gonna happen to Dear Old Dad in his dotage, or what’s gonna happen to himself if Dear Old Dad turns into a blubbering, balding infant of advanced years, dependent on someone else to change his depends for him…

It’s a serious worry for adult children in this country who are facing life caring for dependent parents who need t’be strapped into bed at night ’n into their wheelchairs in the morning, pushed into various ’n sundry corners where they c’n drool their final days away…

I don’t mean to make light of what is becoming a serious problem for the younger generation…they say people are living longer these days ’n Altzheimers is a real worry for the children of the afflicted…not so much of a worry for those afflicted becuz they tend to forget they have a problem (or children, for that matter)…

Still, I heard t’other day that Doctors are confident that they will solve the problem in a few years…not yet sure if they’re gonna find a cure for Altzheimers or go along with Ezekiel Emanuel ’n start killing people off when they reach the biblical age of three score ’n ten…or maybe he said three score ’n fifteen…it’s too late for me since I’ve already passed Old Zeke’s deadline a few years ago…

I’d prob’ly worry about that but I’m already afflicted with Oldtimers ’n the attention deficit thing that caused my teachers to label me as a Daydreamer when I wuz a child has kicked into gear again ’n I don’t worry too much about much of anything anymore…

’Course, I don’t buy a lot of green bananas either….

Ahhhhh,,,the good ole daze.....

Once’t upon a time in America...

People like to talk about the ‘good ole days’….a young friend of mine opined that it must’ve been great back in the ‘fifties with all those great muscle cars ’n the cheap gas…he guessed nobody cared about mileage back then….I almost kind’a hated to burst his bubble but I bit the bullet ’n told him…”Yeah, ’n you c’ud buy those big block Fords for only two or three thousand dollars…once you saved enough money from your 35 cent an hour job to make a down payment…’n when people made $.35 cents an hour, gasoline sold for 

$.35 cents a gallon. Boy, we had a good time then.”

Humans like to fantasize about living ‘back in historical times’ without thinking that all of us actually live in historical times…or at least it’ll be historical times when our great grandchildren read about them in school…(if they even still have school then)...

Jobs were hard to come by when I wuz in high school, ’n they didn’t pay $.35 cents an hour for teenagers…Jobs wudn’t all that easy for adults but kids didn’t have a lot of choices…there wudn’t very many ‘real’ jobs ’n there wuz a lot of competition for the ones that were out there…a kid needed an edge if he or she could get one…sometimes, just knowing the right person wuz enuff of an edge…sometimes not…it wudn’t all that easy to get a job delivering the daily paper, or bagging groceries…

One summer job that wuz pretty much open to all the boys that grew up around South Shore, Ky, wuz cutting flowers on Hardin Farms…today, they call that kind of a job, ‘stoop labor’…’back then, it paid about $.20 cents an hour…they were 10 to 12 hours a day, hot ’n dusty…hard work…but you c’d buy soft drinks from the farmer, price deducted from your wages…it wuz a hard way to go ’n the lesson wuz that you didn’t want to do this kind of work any longer than wuz absolutely necessary…but there wudn’t any wage disparity…every kid started at the same pay level…at the bottom.  What they call t’day, minimum wage.  At least, we didn’t have to serve an internship!

Internships, I’m told, are racially biased in favor of rich, white kids.  They’re the only ones who c’n afford to work for nothing….sounds reasonable t'me but what the hell do I know....

The talk is about minority kids and wage disparity 'n how it's all rooted in racism...I don't know about you but I’m really tired of all this racial BS 'n so far as wage disparity is concerned….black kids don’t get paid less than latino kids and neither of them get paid less than white kids for doing the same job…and even tho’ some statistics show asian kids as super-achievers compared to everyone else, the asian kids don’t get paid more either…minimum wage jobs pay minimum wages…(Hint: that’s why they’re called minimum wage)…everybody that works at a minimum wage job gets paid (gasp) minimum wage.

That ain’t to say there isn’t cultural differences that affect the rate at which some kids get hired ’n others don’t.  Business’ that hire young people to represent them, ie; counter people, etcetera ain’t inclined to hire young men who are showing ‘way too much undergarment or young men sporting gang tattoo’s whether or not they belong to a gang.  I see a lot of highschoolers emulating thug dress, flashing made-up gang signs, girls with red, blue ’n green hair ’n heavy makeup…skirts ’n shorts that are too short, too tight, exposing too much skin, too much bling, too many bangles, baubles ’n beads and piercings in public places…

Just doing their own thing, wearing the uniform of the day much as their parents ’n grandparents did back in the dinosaur days…

Funny how the rules that applied for job-hunters in the golden olden days of yore still apply today.  Present a neat appearance, use your best manners.  Speak respectfully ’n look at people when you’re being interviewed.  Neatness counts.  Showing respect for your elders counts.  A willingness to begin at the bottom of the heap also counts.  People who expect to start at the top almost never get the chance to go anywhere.

Sort’a like a long trip on a dead horse...  

Sometimes a body just has to rant.....

“You  cain’t ride a dead horse!” Anon…

For all of you people (y’all, where I come from) who looked upon your history classes as ‘just so much boring shit’ please let me remind you that, never in all the recorded history, well all of our recorded history, whatever that may be worth…if that ain’t enuff, why you, as they use’ta say in those oh so innocent days of the mid-20th century, c’n just go ’n piss up a short rope…anyway, we ain’t been able to find, not one instance, never, never, never an instance of a socialist government that hasn’t failed…they don’t work…put that in your friggin’ pipe ’n smoke it instead of your damn weed…or, since it’s now the 21st century, vape it for all I care…

Now, in your pipedream fantasies, in your socialist-governed society, you (’n I’m talkin’ here about...well, you know who you are) are fond of talking about ‘basic human rights’….like food, clothing, housing, medical care, including dental, education, free wi-fi, food stamps (oh, I guess that’d be covered under the food category) ’n maybe free drivers licenses for people who sneak into our country illegally (illegal immigrants) ’n abortions for them as want or need suchlike, all of which don’t appear anywhere in our Constitution…even Ruth Bader Ginsburg who evidently believes in faith-based science will admit that, altho’ she has stated that our Constitution should be re-written but then, I think she probably believes in evolution which ain’t in our Constitution either…kind’a funny how liberal progressives or progressive liberals all profess to believe implicitly in evolution but don’t want to hear anything at all about that other Darwinian theory called ‘Survival of the fittest’….

Meanwhile, back in what us brash Americans use'ta call The Old World, there's a little country called  Germany,(it wuz in all the newspapers once upon a time) It's an almost-not quite-socialist/capitalistic country that has been moving more ’n more to the capitalist side which tends to anger some of the brave gimme-gimme bottom-feeders who are now demonstrating in the streets, a la the sucky Wall st occupiers, burning cars ’n breaking windows on the chance that their welfare checks might be cut…’n of course, that same class (less) group has been crying for some time now because their elected leaders, afraid of going bankrupt 'n losing their own jobs, are refusing to pick up the public tab any longer…Heckfire, (paraphrasing my old man)…even the golden isles of

Greece, the fabled birthplace of democracy ’n now a bankrupt nation,  is threatening to sue Germany over WWII wherein the 3rd Reich trampled all over their basic human rights…anyway, I doubt any of the welfare crybabies remember WWII…sort’a like the poor-me blacks in this country that want reparations for the servitude of their forefathers back before the Emancipation Proclamation…of course, they fail to take into account that because so much of ‘white’ America died during that uncivil War between the States that our gov’t opened the floodgates of immigration…so much so that the majority of Americans today are descended from peoples not here in those bad old days of slavery ’n Indian wars 'n never had the chance to own a slave or kill an Indian…

And speaking of our aboriginal Americans who keep insisting they are ’Sovreign powers’…Yeah, Binky, as long as the US Gov’t allows them t’be ‘Sovreign’…kind’a takes the bottom out of their argument, but what the heck...

Like the rain that falls on the just ’n unjust alike, our Constitution protects the wise ’n the foolish alike without regard for race, color or creed….or something like that.

“Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.”  G. Satayana

It’s hard on a body being born into a marathon world when in your heart, you just know you were s'pozed t'be a sprinter...

About twenty or so years ago, I sat down to take a little rest, fell asleep, and that durn tortoise passed me by ’n I ain’t seen hide nor hair of him since…I call him (or it) a tortoise because of that old story about The Tortoise 'n the Hare but t'be honest, when I was a boy in Beattyville, there wuz snapping turtles 'n there was Terrapins which we pronounced Tarpons, don't ask me why...I think a tortoise is pretty much the same thing as a terrapin 'n they all look like turtles 'n that's the way of it 'n that's just how things are...

Anyhow, coping with DST on top of ever’thing else c’n be bothersome…

I generally drink a beer around 5 o’clock ever’ evening, usually a dos Equis but lately, Tecate…so t’day, at 3:40 in the afternoon, I find m’self sipping on a Tecate…promises t’be a loooooong summer, what with the lack of rain ’n snow…wish’t there was some way of transporting some of that snow that fell upon friends ’n relatives back in the States out here to Californy….

Anyhow, taking my cue from my two dogs who have mastered the science of living in the moment, and seeing as how the sun is shining bright ’n the temp is somewhere in the ‘70s, I b’leeve I’ll take my Tecate to the  porch ’n relax without thinking about the weather ‘cuz there ain’t a durn thing I c’n do about it anyway….

Realizing that I ain't posted anything in a while, I hope ever'one will bear with me...we had some bothersome things going on in our little world (as I expect everybody does from time to time) 'n I just got lazy...

You know, thinking back to the days when I had to get up 'n go to work every day, I don't know how in the world I coped with it...there don't seem to be enough hours in the day, what with breakfast 'n lunch 'n dinner 'n walkin'  the dogs 'n watchin' the weeds grow in the south forty....