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Are we still here yet?

It is a rare Sunday that I blog. Not that anyone cares, but I like to lay my explanations, or rationalizations if you will, all out there so that I can see them. That is why I don’t cringe at editing after I have published something. If I didn’t have to go through a major to do, I would probably print out my blog before I publish. Of course, paper can get expensive.

I did want to say that I am still here despite all the hype generated by the media over one man who spent too much time working as a civil engineer. Harold Camping, the 89-year-old retired engineer, used selected Bible passages and all the numbers left floating around in his head after a fun career of engineering to predict that May 21, 2011, would be the “Rapture.”  That rapture did not take place except perhaps somewhere that the excellent recording of the same name released in 1981 by the group Blondie probably played. Wikipedia describes the song “Rapture” (Warning: Video preceded by a commercial, but worth waiting for especially the great sax and guitar) as a combination “New Wave pop, funk, jazz and rap music, with the rap section forming an extended coda.” And while I don’t care much for rap, I think this song rocks!

Whether it be rapture (the Biblical event, not the Blondie song), the End Times, the Second Coming, Judgment Day, or the Seven Seals whether opened by the Lion of Judah or subsequent to the second coming of Vernon Howell a.k.a., David Koresh, all are subject to interpretation and such dilly-dallying as did by Camping can lead to what many Christians see as “False Prophecy.” I suppose the most comforting fact that rapture did not occur Saturday, other than it didn’t take place, is that most folks of  most faiths thought Camping was off  the mark if not off his rocker. One Website even offers a free timer one can use as a computer widget that lists the days, hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds since Camping’s last false prophecy.

Still, one must wonder if this whole End Times things went through the minds of those who experienced strong natural events Saturday such as a 6.1 earthquake off New Zealand, a 3.6 in San Francisco, the eruption of Iceland’s busiest volcano and a tornado in Kansas?  Only from the tornado, of those nature-driven events, were casualties produced including a death and almost two dozen homes damaged.

Speaking of Kansas, it’s back to Kansas City for me tomorrow on business. This is Kansas City, Mo., of which I speak. If a little free time comes up perhaps I will catch a cab to take me over to the Kansas side just to say I have been to Kansas. When I last visited KC, it was snowing like we were in the northern climates instead of the extreme central continental U.S. I didn’t get to Kansas. As a matter of fact, I only traveled a block from my hotel the whole time other than the 20-minute trip to and from the airport. I did see Betty White at my hotel though. That was cool.

Scattered thunderstorms are forecast tomorrow for the KC area. That means two things. First, the possibility of delays but hopefully not cancellations. The second is the thunderstorms themselves. I could drive, of course, it would be a 14-hour trip. I definitely would need a stop for a night and continue on the next day. But that would be an extreme alternative.

Just go with the flow is all I can do. I’m pretty well packed and ready to go. Also, I’m here.

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Noodlers, how about a hand for the Texas Legislature?

Should agents of some future diabolical one-world government storm inside our homes and snatch away our fishing rods and reels — mine, when I get around to buying some more angling equipment again, will have to be snatched from my cold, dead hands — at least in Texas we may still catch plenty of those old catfish to keep us fat and happy. This is because the Texas Legislature passed a bill today that allows the practice of “noodling,” or hand-fishing.

Oklahoma noodling champ Lee McFarlin shows off a catch he made by hand. Luckily, he still has both of his arms.

Now granted, some Texans may have not known or cared that catching fish by hand in the state’s waters was illegal. But it is. The practice can land you a Class C misdemeanor offense featuring a $500 fine. And, I am uncertain as to this but if it is the same as other game violations in Texas, someone who commits such an act against wildlife also face a civil restitution fee. Now I don’t happen to know what the restitution value is for say a big ol’ blue cat, which can get big enough for you to call a wrecker to help pull it out, but the so-called “recovery value” for the animal can be found in the Texas Administrative Code:

” The recovery value of an individual fish shall be determined by adding the fish’s basic and recreational value for species which the Commission has designated as having recreational value for the purpose of civil restitution.”

Now on to the specifics:

“Recreational value for an individual fish is calculated by dividing the average value of an hour of fishing by the difference in total length between the state record fish and minimum hookable total length for that species and then multiplying that quotient by the total length in inches of the individual fish being valued, minus the minimum hookable total length for that species. This product is then adjusted for inflation by multiplying it by the quotient of the Consumer Price Index in the fiscal year the fish were killed, divided by the Consumer Price Index in the fiscal year the data were collected to determine the average value of an hour of fishing.”

That darned ol’ Consumer Price Index. It seems to just pop up everywhere.

Now let’s say that blue catfish that you and a buddy struggled with and which almost killed you both while pulling it out of an underwater stump weighed around 30 pounds. That’s pretty dad-burned big but hardly the record 121.5-pound monster that Cody Mullenix bagged in 2004 in Lake Texoma. Still, if you use the formula from the Texas Administrative Code then perhaps you better start pulling out that checkbook.

Even though the new law, if ultimately signed by our Goodhaired Gov. Rick, might save you some money one has to ask if the thrill of noodling is worth the loss of an arm?

Some old Cajun men once described to me the way they used to reach into underwater tree stumps and catch some enormous catfish. It sounded, to me, as a prime way to have one’s arm bit off, if not by a monstrous catfish, then perhaps by an alligator. Remember those daunting words from the brilliant songster Jerry Reed’s “Amos Moses,” a one-armed man who hunted alligators for a living?

“He could trap the biggest, the meanest alligator, and just use one hand/That’s all he’s got left ’cause an alligator bit him/Left arm gone clean up to the elbow.”

Good arms just do not grow on trees, you know?

 

 

 

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Don’t give a hoot, reboot!

It just doesn’t pay to write anything at the end of work day when one minute after the next turns to s**t. Of course, these days, it doesn’t pay me to write anything period.  I can fix the latter or someone can help me, but the former is not always as easy to repair, if at all. I hate to say to be trite and try to avoid lingo, but rebooting seems like a good option.

I have fixed more computers by restarting them than all the tech support people and computer repair folks I have encountered ever helped me try to get a machine up and running properly. For those who, for whatever reason, don’t follow me perhaps because of chronology I liken it to the old-time notion of fixing things by taking a hammer to a piece of machinery and knocking the living hell of out of it.

These days everything is so fragile, of course, so you normally wouldn’t want to do that to a box of plastic and tiny integrated circuits which cost thousands of dollars and store who knows how many megabytes of your life on it, even though it might temporarily make you feel better.

Thus, I’ll be pressing restart sometime later tonight and hope the damn thing works in the morning.

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Sharks everywhere

More and more nowadays the Tea Party seems as if its prime target is the Republican Party. Sooner or later the GOP faces possible vaporization of the Whig Party type if the TP frustration with the Republicans finally reaches a China Syndrome phase.

William Temple, chairman, Tea Party Founding Fathers, is exasperated that Newt Gingrich would dare finding fault with the plan by House Speaker John Boehner and his budget guru Rep. Paul Ryan to put Medicare into the hands of private insurance companies. Gingrich called the plan “right-wing social engineering” and “radical change.” Temple rebuts:

“Mr. Gingrich, who seems not to mind “radical change” in his domestic life, is simply wrong about the Boehner-Ryan Medicare plan,”  Temple says in a press release.

Boom goes the dynamite.

Temple goes on to criticize Gingrich while damning Ryan and Boehner with faint praise:

“It is not “radical.  It is tame as a pussy cat,” says Temple. ” The Boehner-Ryan Medicare plan is to fix Medicare and Medicaid sometime way off in the future, in the sweet bye and bye.  While Obama, Gingrich, Romney, Pelosi and Reid favor the essential tyranny behind ObamaCare – forced purchasing of a product – Boehner and Ryan have, up to now, been content to fiddle while Rome burns with regard to Medicare.”

Great stuff. With friends like Temple, the Republicans sure don’t need enemies although they’ve got them up the yang.

So, let the political allies tear themselves to shreds. I’m going fishing. Well, maybe not. Here is why.

Scott Jennings, a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department game warden, responded to a call back in March that a commercial fishing boat had pulled into Freeport with an 8-foot, short-fin mako shark. A Game Warden field report states that the crew told the Jennings that the shark had jumped into the boat’s stern as they were weighing anchor.

Yeah, right.

Incredibly, the shark flipped over the crewmen’s heads and landed forward beside the center console of the boat. The crew told the game warden that at one point, they had seriously considered abandoning the boat to the shark.

The report goes on to say that the shark couldn’t be removed from the boat without it being harmed so the game warden called up National Marine Fisheries Service agent Charles Tyer, who arranged the purchase of a “federal highly migratory species permit so that they could legally land the shark.”

Now that’s one hell of a fish story and a lot more fun to relate than the continuing soap-opera-like squabbles between the Republicans and the Tea Partiers.

So until next time, Show me the way to go home/I’m tired and I want to go to bed …

 

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No Trump. No Huckabee. No Lincoln.

The great big circus jerk that was not quite The Donald Campaign 2012 ended today as yet another TV host said they would rather be the boob on the boob tube.

Donald Trump told nervous TV and advertising executives today he would not run for president. They were nervous because they drank too much Starbucks. Trump will stay on his so-called “reality” television show “What’s It’s Name.” Really, “Celebrity A**hole” or something like that.

Trump comes out claiming he made the world safer from the Mau Mau hordes by demanding Barack Obama show his full birth certificate. In reality reality, the President made Trump disappear after ordering that Osama bin Laden be terminally terminated. Yeah, I know, Obama didn’t do it all on his own. Hillary helped — as did joint chiefs chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, defense secretary Robert Gates, Seal Team 6 and everyone’s mothers.

The hairball that would be president, at least in his mind, joins former Arkansas Gov. and Fox News pundit Mike Huckabee in pulling out from the Republican nomination race. Let’s see, who is left without a television show?

It is somewhat difficult to rejoice at the fact that Trump is gone. He could have made Obama look like Lyndon Johnson in his 1964 defeat of Barry Goldwater. That is, LBJ minus the drawl, the beagles, a nice but rather homely wife and oh yes, the skin thing. I know the media is in deep mourning because their lives would be on Easy Street with Trump running.

Huckabee is a lot different case. He was a somewhat attractive candidate in 2008, that is until he had to sell out to his base like every other GOP candidate these days. What is it with Republicans anyway? Their best and brightest ultimately have to sell their soul to the most ugly elements of the right in order to be elected, even to dogcatcher.

It is enough to wonder “WWLD?” Translation: “What Would Lincoln Do?”