Demand more bread and better circuses!

Here we are in the middle of the collapse of the American empire and I have to say I'm highly disappointed in the caliber of circuses being provided.

All we're getting is a bunch of bloggers on the right and left (as if there was such a thing) shooting snarky comments back and forth during commercial spots in the Michael Jackson funeral coverage. Or we get the Sarah Palin drama or that guy who had the babe in Argentina.
Are we that friggin' stupid that we fall for this shit? Do we care? I don't think so. I think our imaginations have just been dumbed down by the constant years of listening to political bullshit.
Meanwhile the masters at Goldman Sachs laugh at us and send their minions in the government to vacuum up any left-over dollars they may have missed on the last go round.

I say if they plan to bring it down around our ears, they should at least pony up for a good show!
Get a clue, rich dudes. Look to the Roman Empire. Those guys knew how to put on a good show.
They had food orgies and people fighting wild animals and each other...to the death! Come on, anyplace that has a vomitorium has to be party central.

So what do we get? Some pathetic Court TV trial to send Bernie Maddoff up the river while all the real crooks pose for the camera in the background. They could have at least injected a little drama and action into it.
I would have rounded up all his "victims" (oh boo hoo, the bad man lied to me) and sent them into a big room with Bernie. Then I would have turned out the lights and let them all bitch-slap each other for being such dumb-asses, while filming it all with night vision cameras.
Then I would have opened all his properties to the homeless that live closest to each, turned them loose and filmed that too. Let's see some major breakage and pillaging a la Katrina. Let's see some people down at street level getting some! Let me see a guy who hasn't had a bath in 6 months jump into some silk sheets!

Here's another idea. We can take all the newly empty shopping malls and turn them into arenas.
(ooohh look...jobs!) The multi-story malls would work the best.
The upper levels would have a few beer stations, food courts and clear viewing areas of the bottom floor.
Down at the bottom level, we herd in a troupe of homeless people. Maybe start with the guys that hold signs on corners, they're really irritating. Then turn the lions loose on them.
Talk about a show! The lumpenproles who still have a job would go nuts. Nacho sales would go through the roof.
We could even have special nights...Illegal Alien Night or Home Grown Domestic Terrorist Night.
If they work it right, every minority group could be whittled down one by one. Then it would be childs-play for their goons to round up the few survivors and send them to the work farms.

It seems the masters are an unimaginative bunch though. If they played it right we could all have fun in the apocalypse.

Write your representative now. Demand more bread and better circuses!

The world's laziest blogger...

...That's what my brother Tom calls me, and I have to say, guilty as charged!

But in my defense I have to say, I'm retired! I don't gotta do nothing.

The sky is falling...

As anyone who doesn't live in a Himalayan Cave knows, the economy is circling the drain. Everyone is blaming everyone else for the problems. I can hear Oliver Hardy now, "Well, another fine mess you got us into Stanley!"

The collapse of our society could be a real consequence, no longer a mad idea relegated to the sci-fi movies.

If I have to spend all my time poking through a smoking pile of garbage with a stick while wearing animal skins, that's gonna cut into my 'searching for pie' time. Matter of fact, there could come a time when pie no longer exists. This is bad.

I guess when it comes down to it, there will probably be only 2 choices: live in a walled village with a bunch of unarmed peaceniks, dressed in robes and sandals, or...join a Mad Max type biker gang! I think if there's any chance of getting pie, the biker gang will be more likely to find it.

Guess I better get to working on my leather, fur and spiked collar!

The birthday boy shoutout

Happy birthday to my foster father, Henry Hale. He's passed on now but was a great influence on me while growing up. It was pretty amazing that we shared the same birth day.

And here's to Bob Marley. We were born on the same day, same year. Cool runnings man.

Some others today: Ronald Reagan ( the old guy on Tales from Death Valley), Eva Braun, Rip Torn, Francois Truffaut, Tom Brokaw, Fabian and Rick Astley (Of Rickroll fame.)

Happy birthday, all y'all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu_moia-oVI

The birthday boy...

It's absolutely astounding. I've made it to 64.

I still think like a 15 year old, but when I go to leap out of my seat, I find it's much like pulling myself up a steep mountain face accompanied by much moaning and groaning. Getting old ain't pretty.

Aside from the aches and pains, life ain't half-bad. I don't have to go to work, I get to do what ever the hell I want, I can eat pretty much anything and I can still ride my motorcycle.
Plus I live in a beautiful area and have 2 good dogs. Can't complain.

Think I better go shower up and get dressed. Susan is getting a haircut and will be back soon. We're going out to breakfast which is one of my favorite indulgences. Waffles! Syrup! Yum...

Frankenputer

Here's a sad story oft repeated...

The day before I was going to back up all my photos and data, my computer's motherboard burned up. It was 6 years old, which is about 120 years in computer-years, so I guess I should have been expecting it.

"It seemed so healthy and happy just the day before." said Derek Dork as he weepingly surveyed the smoking ruins.

I called around to the local shops to ask about parts and was greeted with derisive laughter and phones being slammed back on-hook. The computer guy here in town was a little more kind. He's Japanese and polite. He simply said, "You ah escrewed", with a grin.

It seems computer technology jumped light years ahead while I was happily playing "Redneck Rampage" on my out-dated box.

However, on my last trip to California, my generous brother-in-law gave me his old server tower. He and my sister had made the quantum leap to shiny, beautiful, brand new wonderful MACs and the old XP box was just a toe stubber.

I brought it home, cleaned it up and loaded all my shooter games on it. That only took a couple of days of interminable downloads and upgrades from Microsoft's website.

I used the old server to search the net for a vintage motherboard that would use the new $40 RAM chip I bought just before the crash. Damned if I was gonna throw it out before I got my 40 bucks worth of use out of it!

Eureka! Ebay is awash with old crap and I found a brand new, in the box, ancient motherboard that would take my Pentium 4 processor and the RAM. Just plug it in, right?

Guess what? All this old stuff comes WITHOUT manuals or installation CDs.

I managed to find a manual online that was pretty close. Some of the connectors on the board didn't match the pictures in the manual, but luckily the guy that sold me the board was very helpful. I sent him close up pictures of the areas in question and he was able to help me out.

Great invention, the digital camera.

Feeling like Dr. Frankenstein, I got the motherboard in, transplanted the brain and gave it the juice.

"Full power, Igor."

"Yes, master."

Zapppp!

"It's alive! It's alive!"

Having got past the smoke test I turned in. I fell into a fitful sleep and for some reason, dreamed of crowds with pitchforks and torches banging on my front door.

The next morning I started up the monster and it wouldn't boot. Something to do with the hard drive. I didn't want to format it as it has pictures and files we want to keep. How to retrieve them, I'll figure out later.

Then I turned on the old server. The fans were screeching like an old fart who has just seen the monthly report on his 401K and it wouldn't boot up either.
The more I tried, the worse it got. Crap!

I then remembered the old server had 2 (count 'em, 2) hard drives. I took one of the drives and stuck it in the old box, formatted it and installed my 2002 copy of XP and once again..."It lives!"

I spent hours at Microsoft's site, downloading service packs, upgrades, fixes, and on and on and on...

I also did dozens of searches through computer help boards looking for vintage drivers.

Man, there's a lot of geeks out there! I was comforted to find I wasn't quite at the bottom of the pool. Close, but not bottom.

But I'm getting some mileage out of that new-antique $40 RAM chip, by gum!

So now I have a new goal. To keep Frankenputer running as long as possible.

I just hope it doesn't follow the classic tale where it turns on it's creator and throws him from the parapet.

...more follows...

Moving along...

When last we saw our intrepid hero, he was struggling to clean out his garage...a task akin to cleaning out the Augean Stables.

I have to say, I had it all spiffed up in there for about 2 weeks, then the piles started reappearing. Oh well.

The months have sped by and various things have happened.

One happy note, my brother and his wife moved here from Georgia. We spent Christmas together, the first time since the 70s, I think!

He's still getting their apartment squared away so we'll do some fun stuff later. He's retired too.

The weather here is pretty soggy, so I've been sticking close to home. Some days we get hail, snow (doesn't stick), rain and sunshine all in the space of an hour or so.

It's that time of year when migrating whales pass our coast, heading north. We've been out to the point a couple of times but haven't spotted any yet.

Town is pretty much empty and quiet this time of year with everybody holed up in their dens. That includes me.

I subscribe to Netflix and found they have "Instant Movies" that you can watch on the computer. I've been searching their vaults and along with the good stuff they have a teriffic collection of B-movies, zombie movies, biker trash and bad horror flicks. I'm in heaven!

I bought some cheap speakers with a port for headphones and I can watch all this crap without bothering my sleeping wife. I'll let you know when I catch a particularly good one.



more to follow...