Calling It Early

It's now official: Brett Favre will not be back to play football. I think what ever hope the Vikings had of capturing the division again are considerably faded now.

I'm predicting The Packers will struggle this year as they did last year. Opening day will be crucial for them, as it will be for The Bears, in predicting how the rest of their season plays out.

The Lions will win a game, but won't be much better than last year. They've put a lot of hope in Matt Stafford, but it will take more than that to rebuild a team.

The Bears now have Jay Cutler, a real proven Quarterback. Though I haven't drunk the Cutler kool-aid yet, I remain hopeful that there is somebody who can receive for him.
Hester has good hands, but still, I'm wary.

Taking a big chance, but I'll call the division this way:
1.Bears
2.Packers
3.Vikings
4.Lions

I reserve the right to make make changes to this posting as the season progresses.

You Want Fish N Chips With That?

How Was My Weekend?

I decided to buckle down this last week before I return to the mill. I've been spending most of my recovery painting the house, one room at a time, utilizing a very relaxed work ethic I've come close to perfecting. I think I now know what retirement is like, and I like it very much.

Yeah, I've been off for eleven months already. Time just kinda drags when you spend so much of it drooling on your pillow and beating off infections, but the last four have really zoomed right by.

My latest project: The Upstairs Bath.

When we bought the house, everything inside was solid eggshell white.
This room was no different. Devoid of color and style.
Drab.


After a solid coat of primer, I chose Behr "Ultra Pure White" for the top half. Very hard to work with, requiring about five coats to get the solid, pure white effect.

For the bottom, I used "Code Red", which utilized the same base.
Also, a bitch and half to work with. This one took about four coats to achieve the deep, solid color I was looking for.

Added a chair rail to bring it up to the 'next level'.


Advice: go ahead and invest the money for a power miter saw. Since it was a small job, I just picked up a miter box, and cut by hand. If I knew then what I know now...
But hey, I never done this before. I'm still learning.



Overall, I'm a little proud of it. And most importantly, The Wife is happy,too.
Now, I just gotta do something about that linoleum floor. And I'll probably "Pure Ultra White" that door, too.

I'd rather be in Oklahoma.

Stupid Black Man

As a much younger man, harassment from cops was a way of life. For years, rarely a week went by, sometimes hardly a night would pass, when I wasn't questioned, searched, frisked, or rough handed by some dude carrying a badge (and a gun, a stick, pepper spray, cuffs, and a real heavy flashlight that hurt when it struck).

Of course, usually I wasn't doing anything deserving of such affection. Well, not at that moment anyway. But it was suspicion enough just to be young and nearby (or just the slowest runner).
And statistics will bear out: drunken white boys out at 3am are not likely going to choir practice.

Like I said, it was just an accepted part of life, whether I liked it or not.
Not all encounters went smoothly. And I wasn't always respectful. I know, some may find that hard to believe.
And while sometimes, it was just a cop being an asshole, other times, I was just being an asshole toward the cop. And it wasn't unusual for an otherwise smooth encounter to go wrong based upon the latter.

Eventually, I learned a few tricks to life: Don't draw attention to yourself. Don't be where they are. If they show up anyway, leave before they know you're there.
And when ordered to put your hands up, it's less painful to just fucking do it.

You see, not all cops are assholes. And not all dudes out late are causing trouble. A pattern develops that if you are wise, you'll notice a thing or two: the sweeter one behaves toward the cop, the lot gentler he is toward you.
If you are belligerent, you will be treated, rightly so, as a belligerent. Duh.
It's really not that hard to figure out.(Unless, apparently, you are a black Harvard professor)

And if you are in a situation where there is no reason to find yourself in trouble, just co-operate. State your case and answer the cop's questions.
The cop has a hard job as it is. Making it difficult by punishing him for whatever 'cop profiling' is going through your educated-beyond-your-ability-to-reason mind will make your day just that much rougher. This is in addition to already proving yourself the fool.

And trust me on this: a cop would rather not arrest anybody. It increases his work load, reports have to be filed, and adds to his frustration (which may come out on the next 'innocent' suspect.)

Strutting and threatening, playing the Angry Negro when it's not warranted just makes it more difficult to take you seriously, on top of showing yourself to be the Ass you really are. Not to mention adding to the reputation that black men have earned of being combative, unruly and criminal. (Police profiling is based upon statistics, you stupid dipshit.)

I've had my experiences. Some out there might not think I'm very smart, and a Harvard professor would likely agree.
But there is something called wisdom, which I take it is not a prerequisite to qualify as a professor at Harvard.

Rediscovering An Old Friend

An addicting former hang out, and I'm having a relapse.
Link

What Is Wrong With Sarah

--Sarah, from all that I can gather, hails from the more recent generation of what passes for conservatism now days. It's actually more in line with the sixties democratic party, and is not all that conservative.
And I'm not so sure she's ever contemplated the differences, or has had any reason to.
Think about it: when a Carter appointee, and speech writer for Walter Mondale, has become one of the leading voices of 'conservatism' without having changed his thinking, what does that tell you?
It tells me that, given the option, she would be pursuing the same big government idealism that has already failed the GOP, and shows no signs of relenting.

--Succeeding in Alaska doesn't necessarily prime one for success at the national policy level. By default, Alaska is culturally, geographically and economically isolated from the remainder of the nation.
Resulting in a political culture that by nature has a tendency to not be in tune with what the rest of us are up to, or faced with.
And is why nobody knew her, or about her, prior to McCain dragging her out of the darkness of the midnight sun.

--In order to govern effectively, a President with a solid ideological core doesn't need to know that much. But he would need to know, and have relationships with, the operators, insiders, and skullduggers who know how to make shit happen at the federal level.
And I've seen no evidence that she has these connections.
Despite that she does have the reasonable intelligence to succeed in life, and the skills to run a state such as her own, going national is a another game entirely, played with a wider array of rules on a more treacherous battlefield.

She's gotten a taste of that treachery in just the past eleven months, and found herself wholly unprepared, if not radically blindsided.
These attacks on her, and her family, could have been stopped in the first week if she was feared. But without an army of thugs and plumbers(no, not the 'Joe' kind), there was nothing preventing anybody from crossing that line, or being punished for doing so.

--Relative to the previous point, she's politically naive. There's a damn good reason seasoned politicians do not use Yahoo Mail

--She's not cut from the same cloth as those who usually tend to seek national office. She just may have entered politics with altruistic motives. A worthy attribute, to be sure, but one that is incompatible and counterproductive in the real world of the national stage, where the stakes are higher, the morality greyer, and there are built in contingency plans for every situation.
Evidence: her pregnant teen daughter, and the white trash loser she was dating. Nothing wrong here, from a real world, morality sense. But, when was the last time a prominent political family had one? Do you think they are all virginal before marriage? or, maybe it's just that the sheen on the family crest takes precedence over allowing embarrassing situations to come to light?

Personally, I think anybody who presents Sarah Palin as a viable alternative for a presidential candidate are deluding themselves. At this point, she's too bush league to succeed, and even if she was to actually become president, we would see a political disaster that would make Jimmy Carter look like Ronald Reagan.

As for those who just like her on a personal level and the positive things she represents, continuing to encourage her beyond her abilities will only do her further harm.