Opinions need not be feared nor suppressed.

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Ain't much point

Answer me this: How can the Fedrule Govmint follow through on the threatened “automatic budget cuts” when there is no actual budget in place? And how can you work from within the framework of a budget that does not exist?

I told you King Oblahblah was clueless.

To my email friend, I offer this: Why don’t I engage anymore? Activism at the grass roots level no longer matters when the Feds arbitrarily mandate every aspect of our lives to us by executive fiat driven by self-immolation and some imagined and perverted form of divine guidance.

What? The U.S. won’t collapse if I repeatedly rail against a local towing company?

Hey, once Jordan falls, Israel--our longtime ally--will be completely surrounded by hostiles. Note to Jordan: You’re next.

So, how’s that Oblahblah-driven “Arab Spring” thing looking now?

I keep reading that political pundit’s the world over say the next presidential election is Hillary’s for the taking.

Um, didn’t they tell us last time around, when we needed a follow-up to Dubya? ‘Member, back when the Democrats screwed over their longtime party stalwart simply because she was a woman?

This is a typical negotiation between King Oblahblah and the Evil Repuglicans…

King: I want 3.

ER: I’ll give you 2.

King: Nope.

ER: I’ll give you 2.5.

King: Incorrect!

ER: Okay, I’ll give you 2.75, provided you give me a watered-down X, a little bit of Y & maybe Z.

King: I DEMAND 5!!! And I’m taking my case to the American Access Card carriers!

How’s the search for dear old dad going now that it’s actually paying dividends after the 50-year lull?

Yesterday, I posted the following on Facebook…

Earlier today I received a call from a business owner in Alsea, Oregon.

She hesitated returning my call for over a week because she had no idea who and what I was going on about. But after she talked to the manager of the mercantile store, she then realized what I was calling about. Turns out, the locals do not know Gene by his given name, but by an alternate name of his choosing. She also said the local children call him ‘The Green Man,” one who can transform into a tree to avoid detection.

She doesn’t rent to him and his sidekick, she kind of sponsors them. Or allows them since they were living on the wooded areas of her farm when she and her husband purchased it 30 years ago. She also said he is intensely shy, crazily private and avoids contact with most others. Some might call that paranoid personality disorder, but that’s for another day.

Anyway, I also came to learn that his sidekick Lisa just may have a bigger Internet footprint than I do, and that’s quite an accomplishment while pursuing a nomadic lifestyle and living in a forest.

The following is a reader’s comment she left at an Internet Zine…
AB #11 January 2011
$2 c/o Lisa Ahne
POB 181
Alsea, OR 97324
If you have ever read Dwelling Portably then you will recognize the format and style of AB immediately. I think it’s done by some of the same people, but I’m not sure because there wasn’t a name associated with the letter that came with it. Anyway, if you have never read this type of zine before it’s kind of hard to figure out what’s going on at first. There are no introductions or explanations , just pure information, ideas, and how-to’s focused on living a semi-nomadic and government free life on 21st Century Earth. The information contained within this zine is pretty amazing. What fascinates me most about zines like this is the complete disconnect from any emotional meandering or analysis in the writing, it is intended to provide the reader with information on this type of lifestyle and that’s it. As a curious post-romantic (kidding) I always want to know more about the people writing it, like what their day to day routines look like and what the pros and cons of living nomadically in modern America are. But I suppose that’s the point, the less we know about the people writing it, the easier it is for those people to keep living that type of life: If I really wanted to know what it’s like, then I should get out there and try it for myself. This issue is heavily focused on how to build boats that you can live on. It also has some zine reviews, how to survive without much money, how to avoid being hassled by authorities, some healthy eating tips, and random nomad advice from the people who are actually doing it.
Note that I scored the P.O. box number.

Hey, man. If you’re looking to start a separatist movement with your AK-47 and your flamethrowers, seems like a good place to start: dwelling portably.blogspot.com

And, no. Even I couldn’t make this story up. I’m told I’m good. Just not this good.

Markie

(end yesterday)

Anywho, no I ain’t been posting much of late. With four more years of economic stagflation to work my way through, there didn’t seem to be much point. Seriously, ain’t much point.

Signed: Markie (the guy who pays for the growing list of overly, overly generous freebies).

Later

Monday, January 21, 2013

LaLa

Fresh off her having killed two loose, rabid pitbulls, I figured I'd muck about with Wifey's 5-POUND KILLER YORKIE!!!

The 82nd Airborne has formed a perimeter around the base of the mountain, they have trebulets and giant fireballs at the ready and are now calling to the enormous monster...Here LaLa! Here Lala! Here Lala!



Jeez oh Pete.

Later

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Fifty years later

Cuzzin Annie,

My father’s current haunt. Er, whereabouts.

Before we get into this, let’s take a trip back into the past.

When I was a sprat of ten or so and spurned my step-dad’s efforts to legally adopt me, he became very, very angry and told me that if what I wanted was my real father, I should look him up in Dearborn, Michigan. I was stunned to hear that being that my mom repeatedly claimed she had no idea of what had become of my father after the kidnapping incident in Florida. Time passed.

After my mom passed away, I scrolled through this little green address book she always had in her purse, seemingly forever. And listed in there was an interesting name and phone number: Martha Maser, XXX-XXXX...Dearborn, Michigan. And if you remember, Martha was his new love interest and my custodian during the majority of the kidnapping period. My interest piqued, I called the number fully expecting it to have been disconnected some decades ago.

Instead, it rang. And a man answered. After I asked to speak to Martha only to be told she had just stepped out, the man asked who was calling. And when I said my name, he said “no sh*t” after a lengthy pause. It was Gerald, Martha’s son who had actually lived with me when we were on the lam.

He told me that Gene and Martha had divorced in 1982, and that he, Gene, was headed off to Seattle, presumably to seek a position with Boeing. What I have learned during the past couple of days is that Gene probably never made it all the way to Seattle.

When I found the booking photo from Oregon, I emailed the Benton County sheriff’s department, the very folks who had taken Gene into custody and charged him with criminal trespass. I provided them all the pertinent facts and requested a response. Over a week passed with no response and I figured it was worth a shot, even if it didn’t deliver the desired result. But this past Thursday, the arresting officer from Benton County, Everson XXXXXXX, gave me a buzz.

Benton County has approximately 60,000 residents, with two cities armed with police departments. The remainder of the backwoods county is policed by the sheriff’s department. Everson is the one and only Forest Patrol Deputy, with tracking as well as search and rescue a couple of his primary responsibilities while patrolling well off the beaten path.

He encountered Gene on a railroad property of some sort, and after Gene refused to identify himself, he was taken into custody and transported to the county jail in Corvallis where he refused to speak, but ate like a pig. When asked if he had ever been arrested, he said he hadn’t been. But after his fingerprints were taken and run through the computer, an ages old kidnapping charge from Florida came back to bite him on the ass.

Anyway, once he was outed, he told the sheriff that he and his female sidekick---Lisa Ahne---have been living in the mountainous forests of Alsea, Oregon for the past thirty years. They have constructed a series of heavily camouflaged bunkers of sorts, and they hurriedly shuffle from spot to spot to spot when civilization comes infringing on their bucolic turf.

I’m told that Gene does not collect social security, but he does construct woodsy ornaments which he and his honey trade for supplies down at John Boy’s “Alsea Mercantile” in the unincorporated outcropping of a few buildings in a nowhere town named Alsea. In addition, Lisa is said to have a P.O. box number in town, a number that the sheriff said he will work to acquire and pass along to me. He also told me that while Gene looks a little worse for wear, his mind is still sharp.

This is where I’m at.

Despite Peace’s best efforts, she couldn’t come close to finding my dad. But after the conversation I had with Gerald twenty years ago and the advent of the Internet, I always concentrated the bulk of my search efforts on the Pacific Northwest, the heart of Boeing Country.

And now that I finally know where he lurks, I’m supremely proud of the fact that through tireless efforts spanning more than a decade, I did it. I found him. And as you and I both knew all along, he never expected nor intended to be found.

He had the well-heeled parents, the multiple university degrees, the air force stint, the electrical engineering patents, the senior engineer guided-missile exploits and the like, while all I had was a fading black ‘n’ white booking photo. And after thirty years of intentionally being off any known grid, I found him.

Who’s the genius now?

Markie

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

23 more edicts from the king

After reading the list of 23 executive actions our self-anointed king has initiated in the name of gun control, I write most of them off as being little more than feel-good window dressings.

And his suggestion (his demand) that Congress quickly enact an assault weapons ban as well as a limit on the size of ammunition clips, well, that’s laughable in the aftermath of the Great Gun Sales Run of 2013 directly due to the reckless anti-gun rhetoric of the oft-frenzied left.

Smart. Real, smart. Flap your fat lips uncontrollably, gun sales surge, NRA memberships spike and now, now you want to limit the availability and lethality of guns?

Democrats: Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live on the public dole without ‘em!

As for the, ahem, suggestions to Congress…

Universal background checks? Abso-freaking-lutely!

Assault weapons ban? How come only the white boys need suffer? Why not include a handgun ban so as to not seem so outwardly racist?

Besides, in an urban combat scenario such as an attack on an elementary school classroom, a semi-automatic handgun will do just as effectively as a rifle. As for the ammo clip limit, clips can be taped together with the open ends opposite each other.

Clip size? There are so many ways around that one, it’s patently absurd.

More of the same from wise-ass King Oblahblah. Speeches, talks, talk, talk and more talk. He’s easily impressed with himself. We as a backsliding country are broke and racing towards a $20 trillion debt.

Gainful employment is fast becoming an antiquated concept, replaced by an endless array of freebies and further promises of continued dependency. And now that the wise one has contributed to the surge in gun sales, he’s going to control and restrict them with a single stroke of his auto-pen.

As effing if!

Later

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Record this!

For those employed by the taxpaying residents of Luzerne County, accountibility is a dish best not served.

Be they election honchos, department heads, interpreters or big civic players, they all seem to reflexively retract from the light of day being shined on their clandestine activities.


I'm all in for another term.

Vote for Walter.

Later

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Booking photo revisited

As a boy, requests for information about my father were handled as if I was asking for the codes to the nuclear suitcase. I was told, he was missing, and that not a soul knew what had become of him. But after my mom passed away and I spied the contents of her purse, I learned otherwise. I learned that he was remarried and living in Michigan all along, at least, up until 1982 where the trail went cold due to divorce.

While still in grade school, I was given nine pictures of my father, which I still have. Eight were of him as a boy of 11 playing eight different musical instruments. The other was a mug shot taken in 1961 by a police department in Florida. And growing up, that was the only image I ever had of my father, that booking photo.

Courtesy of the Wilkes-Barre Police Department, I had the following picture taken. It was my surreal gone sublime homage to my father: Look, Dad, I got one, too.


Just a couple of years ago, after an exhaustive Internet search by my daughter, a couple of long lost relatives were found over there on the other side of the country. And they forwarded pictures such as the one posted below, which shows my parents together (a first for me) in the very late fifties.


When I recieved that photo, I just sat and stared at it. It was the first time I saw my dad looking young and vibrant and happy as an adult. Not exactly the it-sucks-being-arrested pose.

Anyway, in keeping with the arrest photo tradition, we had this pic taken after my grandkids tangled with the WBPD...


After my mom died, I used her heretofore unknown mini phone directory to track down and speak to my dad's step-son by way of that marriage that ended in 1982. He told me that after the divorce my dad set off to Seattle, presumably to work for Boeing. And because of that, while using the Internet to locate the long lost parent, my efforts almost always focused on the Pacific northwest.

And finally, finally, after all these decades, I struck gold...http://www.mugshotsworld.com/GENE-JOSEPH-COUR

So, after five decades of asking and wondering and imagining and yearning and searching, we're back to the booking photo thing. Same as it always was.

What's that dated spiel? Be careful what you ask for?

Later




Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Waypoint: More chaos and tumult in lieu of a budget

Well, I see the profligate-spending triumvirate that is embodied by Oblahblah, Pelosi and Reid have deftly delivered us to the other side of the still-developing financial fiasco known as the “fiscal cliff.”

Absurd, and economically repulsive political theater.

May they all rot in a remote corner of Kenya.

Therein, we have the so-called “balanced approach” whereby the Fedrule Govmint all but swallows and digests the private sector in the name of economic fairness, or redistribution or whatever word a raving, clueless lunatic would attach to the next four years of economic carnage.

The deal forged by the ruling classes amounts to little more than attaching a Band-Aid to a bulging hernia. Or giving an overpriced pill to a flat-lined patient soon to be a corpse. Oblahblah’s economic corpse, that is.

When all of this foolish spending-our-way-out-of-the thickening-morass finally amounts to the long-expected bond market meltdown---when 401Ks go the way of Cracker Jack prizes---I’ll see you at the checkout line at the nearby Salvation Army thrift store.

Hang in there, troubled private sector kiddies.

The worst is surely yet to come.

And to my self-appointed NFL football tormenter: the 4-12 Philthydumpia Eagles were a mere 7 points removed from a winless, 0-16 season. Feature that!

Look it up, it probably won’t hurt much worse than the realization that eight years have passed since the Eagles were considered relevant.

Still want to have a pity-soaked going-away parade for deposed coach Andy Reid---the smartest guy in his padded room?

Word has it that he’s off to Arizona, where he’ll be repatriated with the young quarterback he very recently screwed over for a convicted felon.

Good luck with that.

On a lighter (?) note, all of our states and cities are marching on towards financial insolvency, but don’t sweat it…health care will soon be universal or some such short-sighted and ill-thunk death blow sure to feed the now slowing-spinning, but soon to accelerate death spiral.

Other than that, I’m looking forward to the coming fantasy baseball season, assuming the Democrats don’t attach death taxes or sin taxes or escape taxes or redistribution taxes to any of that.

But, chances are…