Video Flapdoodle: Red Asphalt III

If you attended those Driver's Ed classes in high school back in the 1970s, you know what those scare flicks were all about.

We'd watch the raw videos shot at the scenes of horrendous car wrecks, and then try not to wretch in front of our classmates. Well, some would try not to wretch.

Some would bury their faces in their hands. Some would retreat to the nearest trash can for a robust puking event. Some others, mostly girls, would wince and sob and whatnot. And at the conclusion of said films, most of the kids wobbling away swore to Allah that they would never, ever operate a motor vehicle.

But there were those of us that would laugh, whistle, applaud and then get put in our places by the thoroughly annoyed, always menacing teachers.

But teach, the dude had a freakin' pipe stickin' right through the center of his chest and he wasn't even dead yet. Awesome!

Needless to say, we were supposed to be scared straight. Nobody told us we were not supposed to be wildly entertained.

Personally, being on welfare at the time and trapped in public housing, I figured that none of this would ever pertain to me simply because the thought of one day owning a vehicle was akin to science fiction. It was kind of like this: Hand-me-downs, rummage sales, oatmeal, hoddogs, powdered milk, government surplus cheese and a new Buick. Pick the one that doesn't fit.

Anyway, if drinking and driving or texting and driving seems to float your ill-fated boat, take a gander at this...

Ah, brings back many fond memories.

Later

Little Lorraine

Whatever you do, don't tell this guy--Tom Woods--that he sounds like a former Wilkes-Barre city councilman who shall go nameless for the purposes of this exercise.

I once did. And he was none too pleased about it..

Anyway, Tom Woods is the man. All these years later, and he's still relevant.

Relevance, something so fleeting, most of us cannot even comprehend the concept.

G'nite

3 bucks

A bargain...

Intemperate musings

I knew this was coming.

And if you pay even scant attention to all things Scranton, you knew it was coming, too.

Scranton to lay off 13 police officers, eight firefighters

Yet, the on-air talent at WILK spares no opportunity to unmercifully bash Wilkes-Barre and it’s leadership.

The long-distressed city, with the illusive mayor, the inept council and the estimated $350-400 million in outstanding debts gets a pass day-in and day-out.

It’s perplexing, I tell you.

Get this, I am now a card-carrying member of Google+.

I’ve spent perhaps an hour goofing around with it. But even with such a limited tour of the available facilities, it’s blatantly obvious to me that without some significant upgrades Facebook is destined to follow MySpace into the dustbin of electronic irrelevance.

I’m just saying.

Only in Wilkes-Barre

Only in Wilkes-Barre do the residents and the self-aggrandizing, half-wit activists react negatively and viscerally to the construction of high-profile projects. Name a project that has been completed during the recent past, and then think back to all of the hootin’ and hollerin’ that went on during the construction phases of the various projects.

Currently, we have the residents of Coal Street supposedly being blindsided by the reduced availability of parking when the monstrous project is completed next year.

I dunno, maybe I read too much, but I knew what the project entailed. And I don’t live or park anywhere near Coal Street. Yet, I’m to believe that no one that resides along that huge tract of land had a clue. I’m not sure I’m buying that spiel.

Either way, the project has to be modified so as to accommodate the parking needs of the nearby residents. In retail, nobody opens a small business without enough available parking to be had. And in a residential setting, not a soul would purchase a home if they had to trek a thousand yards to “their” parking spot. Something needs to happen there.

Oh, and it reaffirms my faith in something or other to see that the people who turned Luzerne County into the corruption center of the known universe now want to make with the good citizen bit.

Disgraced Clerk of Courts Lashes Out on WBRE

What’s next? Former judges awaiting sentencing showing up at city council meetings and filibustering about the towing contracts past and present?

Spare me!

"From each according to their ability, to each according to their need."

Is it just me, or does that carved-in-stone Communist mantra (cleverly reworded) seem to be the biggest single argument against austerity moves or a balanced budget amendment?

Sure seems like it to me.

Do we really want to live in a country bankrupted by the faulty premise that the Fedrule Govmint owns the product of your labor and can do with it what it damn well pleases?

Seriously! Nothing can be cut, nothing can be scaled back except NASA and the military? That is as big a prevarication as it is complete sophistry of thought.

And new revenue streams? Cut me a freaking break!

Whenever a career politician of any stripe starts going on about needing new revenue streams, what they are telling you is that they can not or will not manage or govern effectively or efficiently. They are the Andrea True's of the flailing system...More, More, More! 

What they are saying is that they haphazardly tapped out all of the credit cards and they want new ones. Only, they want the newer ones to have no credit limits.

If it’s time for the last of the remaining folks with the abilities to ‘eat their peas,’ then it’s also time that those growing hordes with the needs do likewise. As in, with one bold stroke of the overpriced pen, an across-the-board spending cut.

Try this on for size…

We have empty LCTA buses whizzing along in virtually every direction. Meanwhile, we have even more Federally-provided “assisted ride” vans filled to the brim with passengers needing to go here, there and everywhere.

In effect, the Feds are subsidizing the undoing of the heavily subsidized public transportation programs.

And don't give me any rotgut about the needs of the handicapped. Fact is, the LCTA buses are much more accessible to the handicapped than are the smallish assisted needs vans.

Must be me, right?

Later

P.S.--I relent. I’ll take the pink tie over the molested ice cream cone.

“I did not have sex with that Dilly Bar.”

Job Czar: China, here we come!

Just in case you missed it, General Electric is set to invest $2 billion in China as it transfers it's health division out of Wisconsin and directly to China to tap into "emerging markets."

General Electric's Chief Executive, Jeffrey Immelt, is Oblahblah's go-to Czar for...ready? Job creation!

You know, that General Electric! The GE that earned $14.2 billion in profits (not sales) last year, but paid no income taxes on that handsome profit.

No! No, I'm not making this up.

And Immelt is the very same jobs creation czar who recently criticized his fellow entrepreneurs for blaming the government for the weak economy and barked that those business folk should start hiring.

Now, to the shell-shocked lefties who cannot bring themselves to admit that Oblahblah is absolutely clueless, instead sticking with the well-worn "I'm disappointed" malarkey, here's the scoop: you elected a flailing charlatan who is in far over his swollen head.

 

So all of Oblahblah economic adviser's fresh from academia have jumped the listing ship. And now Mr. GE goes and makes him look like a horse's ass. We "turned the corner" quite a ways back. We were not impressed by last year's jobless "Summer of Recovery." So what's this? The Summer of Oblahblah's Austere Discontent?

 

And now Oblahblah cannot face a teleprompter without railing against corporate tax loopholes. Meanwhile, his job czar, who's outfit knows the tax loopholes as well as any corporation, chose to invest a couple of billion in another country. Go figure.

 

According to the CBO, in 2006, the debt ceiling was $8.2 trillion. Today, it stands at 14.4 trillion. And very soon it will be increased to only Allah knows what. And with that said, the pretend president demands new revenue streams to be squandered away as he wishes.

 

If no patriot from the Democrat Party steps forward and mounts a primary challenge to the clueless wonder, then our future as a solvent, sovereign nation lies with a Republican challenger.

 

We've got one last chance.

 

Later

Are you ready for some...

Anybody getting sick of this debt ceiling debacle yet? I know I am.

Earlier today a customer told me that what this country needs is a balanced budget amendment. Can't say I disagree. Although, in Oblahblah's case, a budget would be a start. Any effing budget would make for a great starting point.

Hmm. How to save money?

Pull out Afghanistan and Iraq. Yemen, too.

14 aircraft carriers? For what? How about if we go with ten. Perhaps eight and mothball the rest.

By executive fiat, eliminate the Department of Education. Met many young people lately? Doesn't seem to be much education going on.

Welfare reform. Here's the new criteria: Two arms, two legs, two eyes and a slightly functioning brain? Nope! Go dig a ditch. Flip a burger. Flip a ditch. Just get out.

Social Security reform. Now let me get this straight, you're disabled because you cannot stay sober longer than an hour an a half? Nope! Go live under a bridge.

How about redundancies? EPA, DEP, DER, did I forget any? It's like Luzerne County. See any overlap whereas the Emergency Management Agency and the Flood Protection Authority are concerned?

Ah, who gives a flying funk anyway? Certainly not those hucksters we elected. For them, it's all about appearances and their reelection triangulating.

As for me, it's time for some NFL football. The Blue Wall, the New York Football Giants. Thank goodness these folks understood the true meaning of compromise.

And with that comes some CBS Sports-hosted Fantasy Football. Only this year, I am the commissioner of the league. I've got franchise players to tabulate, keeper players to designate and a looming draft day to prepare for. Better than sex. Sez me.

And so, the Pogrom Sonics are back!

Screw Washington D.C.!!!

Later

Skrapits made me do it: Part II

Thanks entirely to Citizen’s Voice reporter Elizabeth Skrapits, I have been looking high and low on a very limited basis for all memorable things associated with Sandy Beach (Harveys Lake) back before the advent of most of which gives us fleeting joy these days.

X-box? Internet? High-falootin’ 6-G phones? Sure, that’s exciting and all. But for me, none of that will ever rival the wonderment that was being a youth caught in the right place, at the right time and with the right elders.

All of this needless circumlocution is a follow-up to this previous post of mine…

Skrapits made me do it

Don’t blame me. Blame her. She’s the one who insists on making people such as myself remember what once was, and what can never be again. Anyway, as part of that previous posting, I wrote the following…

Ben and his wife Barbara were tight with my grandparents. To this day, I don't know how or why, but they were and that resulted in Ben being like another grandfather to me.

That would be Ben Rood, the guy who once owned everything opposite Sandy Beach at Harveys Lake. Anyway, here’s what Elizabeth managed to force me to eke out of my many memories of those fun-filled days.

Ben (my other grandfather) and his wife Barbara had a daughter named after her mother. And Barbara (the daughter) had a husband, or a fiancee or a boyfriend (I cannot remember which), Ray, that had just returned stateside from the jungles of Vietnam. I’m not entirely sure of the time frame, but it had to be during the summer of 1969, possibly 1970.

As a little kid raised on both the black-and-white movies in which Americans valiantly fought off the invading Japanese hordes, and later news blurbs from the front lines of Vietnam, I was excitedly gushing at the thought of meeting one of which I considered to be America’s unsung heroes.

Ray, our returning Vet, was engaging, he was appreciative of my enthusiasm and still, he was somewhat forlorn. I could see it. I could sense that he was happy, but not really at peace. In retrospect, it’s obvious to me that he put in his 365 days, he was happy to be back and that he would never wear the uniform of any country again. He was done.

And as a result, he showered me with riches from his suitcases. Medals. Service bars. Military garb. And military-issued trinkets that stayed with me until the tumultuous divorce in 1971.

I never saw Ray after that day. And I never forgot being in what I considered to be his long shadow.

Enter Ben Rood, my “other grandfather.”

I figure Ben knew I was absolutely captivated by the medals, the service bars and all of that which were given to me by a returning veteran. And I was. It was then that I decided that I had to one day insert myself into those jungles and have at them, and I was telling as much to anyone who would hear me. Something, in fact, that distracted me all through my high school days. My mindset was, good grades are cool and all, but what’s the point when all that I really needed going forward was a true aim.

Anyway, I can only speculate that Ben wanted to short-circuit those thoughts of rushing off wild-eyed and adrenaline-fueled to some remote part of the globe still undiscovered by most Americans.

So he presented me with yet another “medal,” a hat pin, as he told it, that his grandfather had worn during the height of the Civil War. I cannot recall any of the many details he told me that day, except for the fact that the hat pin was worn by his grandfather during the Civil War, and that not many of the boys and men that marched off to that bloody war ever saw their homes again.

And with that, the first tinge of doubt settled in. As in, do I really want to go off to some faraway mosquito-ruled land and dodge tracer rounds? Why, sure I do! Uh, maybe. Er, maybe not so much. Okay, culinary studies at L.C.C.C. will do very nicely, grandma.

I know Ben Rood had a brother named Vernon. I do not recall his father’s name, nor do I remember the name of the man--his grandfather--who’s Civil War hat pin I am still in possession of.

Yet, somehow, oddly enough, I will never forget Ben Rood’s grandfather.

In conclusion, Skrapits made me do it.

Later

Zach Attack: 8-years-old

So I survived the Great Heat Storm of 2011, only to find myself sitting in direct sunlight at a folding table in my son's back yard yesterday. Sitting with a well-guarded twelve-pack, I was.

We came together to celebrate Zach's arrival at the eighth anniversary of his birth.



Raise 'em right, no?

As you can discern from the cake, Zach is being raised to eschew those overpaid, overrated mercenaries from Philthydumpia. In addition to the most wonderful of cakes, he also received an Atlanta Braves ball cap. And he couldn't have been happier being that he is being prepped to burst onto the Little League scene in 2012, much like his father and his aunt did back in the day.  

I know, I know. Spare me the emails. I know we're supposed to limit his athletic pursuits to the fast-imploding world's lame game of choice...soccer. But, we can afford more than one ball and a grassy knoll, so save that sleep-inducing soccer gibberish for the emaciated kids in Somalia.

In fact, not only can we afford more than one ball, my biggest present to Zach was a scaled-down basketball hoop. Actually, I envision not only Zach becoming quite adept at basketball, but both of his cantankerous brothers, too. Say what you want about the many Cours that have been inflicted upon the world by none other than me, but not a single one of us is lacking in any way for any God-given physical abilities.

You want to take us on at wiffleball?

Yeah! That's what I thought, champ!



Jeremy has the soft touch

Again, I survived the Great Heat Storm of 2011, only to find myself eating more heat all day long on my day off. Thing is, I'd eat most anything if it would guarantee the happiness of my grandchildren.

Later

Tales from the left

Etch 'em on stone tablets...

Abortion: If the right-wing crazies would sign-off on the abortion of the great majority of pregnancies, then they wouldn’t have to starve near as many children. Population control, yo?

Homosexuality: AIDS research aside, the hateful right refuses to admit that homosexuality is natural, healthy and preferable. Population control, get it?

National defense: Despite what the evil Neocons will tell you, the continual procurement of expensive weapons platforms are limiting the development of bigger and better entitlement programs for the able-bodied.

Stimulus II, III, IV & V: There is no quicker way of revitalizing our moribund economy than by funneling trillions of make-believe dollars to faithful Democrat core groups such as collective-bargaining units.

Faith: A strong belief in God and a definitive set of rules causes those hayseeds on the right to be too judgmental. Therefore, the 'eradication of church by state' must be enforced at every turn.

Family values: Since parents are incapable of parenting, the State shall usurp all parental responsibilities from here forth.

Regulations: According a 3rd Circuit judge, the Constitution of the United States of Amerika clearly reads that your right to freedom can be nullified in the name of behavior modification.

Green economy: If the Republicans weren’t in bed with Big Oil, we’d all be building moonlight-powered thingamabobs by now.

Free speech/political correctness: Note: It isn’t what it is, it is what we say it is as decreed by us, the easily-led.

Smoking: It is not unfair to single out one group for higher rates of taxation by the almighty confiscators of all known monies.

Health: McDonald’s is killing Amerika. Happy Meals are immoral. Now eat your bean curd and be happy. You have been warned.

Illegal drugs: Legalize all illicit drugs, and tax the dickens out of them. Unintended consequences? Like what, all of the lawsuits that will surely follow the predictable uptick in vehicular deaths? Toke up, right-winger. Dude, man, chill out.

Policing: We unequivocally support our brave police officers until the Rodney Kings of the world go off half-cocked.

Welfare reform: If we do as the Republicans demand and reform this bottomless pit, how will the poorest of Americans be able to afford the 100-inch plasma televisions from Rent-a-Center?

Politics: The political rhetoric coming from the right is harming Amerika, those mean-spirited, baby-starving, homophobes!

Civic duty: Why, NASCAR and the NFL have induced an apathetic coma to come over the populace. The distracting allegiance to sports teams or entire sporting leagues should be reduced by way of incremental mocking, unless, of course, the populace finally relents and embraces soccer.

America and it’s time-honored traditions: See civic duty.

Sez me.

Later

Would you take a bullet for...

We’ve seen this many times before, when someone bursts onto the scene spewing incendiary accusations and calling people libelous names. And then the obligatory next move seems to be squatting a spot on the Internet so as to further accuse and drop even bigger bombs.

Kudos to Internet Hose Dude for the link.

The link: NEW!! DESSOYE MUST RESIGN (by Mark Robbins)

The excerpt (sort of):

July 20, 2011

Letter: Wilkes-Barre Police Chief Dessoye

cc: many officials  WOULD YOU “TAKE A BULLET” FOR LEO GLODZIK?

Obviously, I cannot speak for Chief Dessoye.

But I can share the following with Mr. Robbins, the guy who parks illegal vehicles illegally in Wilkes-Barre.

Chief Dessoye has been shot while serving the residents of Wilkes-Barre. Chief Dessoye once had his leg broken while serving the residents of Wilkes-Barre. And Chief Dessoye was forced to shoot and kill a man while serving the residents of Wilkes-Barre.

Mr. Robbins, I know you were embarrassed when it came to light that you operate unregistered vehicles lacking timely inspections on the streets of Wilkes-Barre.

But the documented fact is, Chief Dessoye previously took a bullet, and he took it while protecting the residents of this city. And your low-brow caped crusader act is boorish, ill-advised and flat-out ignorant. Face facts, you’re no Steve Flood, even on your best of days when your vehicles are legal.

So go and get your car registered, get it inspected, and leave the closest thing to a hero that Wilkes-Barre has alone.

Would you take a bullet for…?

How unfortunate.

As I have been known to say, idiocy begets more idiocy.

And while it's sad to watch, it is fun to follow it through to it's inevitable implosion. Tim Grier, anyone?

Later