Batching The Funnies

Recall I used to occasionally post 20-30 *funny pics* on this here blog.

Well I'm going to continue to do so but let's try posting them in an album from now on.

There's 100+ in this first one (click the arrow, then click the smaller one). What can I say, I have a keen eye for high-level mirth!

If you can't read the image simply click on it to open in another window.

If you don't *get* it....keep looking and thinking!

Pols = Self-Promoting, OPM-Spending Scumbags

I took my kids to Old Bethpage last week. It's a historical recreation of Colonial living: barns, farms, cobblers, butter churning, etc. - that's very similar to Old Sturbridge Village up in Western Massachusetts.

Old Bethpage had some sparsely-attended, 3-day annual event going on.

But plastered throughout, and I mean THROUGHOUT, were those signs pictured above.

Ed Mangano, some Nassau County politician, spent taxpayer monies to stamp his name all over the event. It was almost as if HE had paid for it all!

All the while Nassau County is cutting back on services, laying people off, and on the brink of functional bankruptcy....you get the picture.

Early this summer our *town* opened a brand new $12 million dollar pool. There was plenty of partying going on for the grand opening: radio station live-broadcasting, balloons everywhere, and an array of local politicians trying to take credit and ride the wave of popular content. (The pool actually stinks. It's 3 feet deep; the diving boards are gone; the water slides are so slow that kids stop midway down; etc.)

Anyways they were there handing out T-shirts to everyone who walked in. But check out what was printed on them:

Yeah, that's right. The shirt had a bunch of unknown politicians/bureaucrats' names emblazoned on the back. Would you want to wear that shirt around town? For crying out loud....the *receiver of taxes*??? I saw quite a few people throw the shirts back on the table.

Of course there's that scumbag in West Virginia with over 50 buildings named after him!

It ought to be a law nationwide that no politician is allowed to put their name on anything that they didn't PERSONALLY pay for in its entirety.

This may seem like small beer and it is, sort of.

It's just that these elected(?) @ssholes spend steal our money and act like they're *royalty*. And considering how confiscatory income taxes are....how far have we actually progressed from Feudalism???

(OPM = "Other People's Money")

Fat People De-Couch and Line Up For Food

I submit that food stamps minimally should be for starving people rather than sedentary gluttons...

They should probably tell them there is *free money* atop a different Poconos peak every day....but then really have nothing there but perhaps a salad bar (vinaigrettes only).

Remembrances Of Shows LOST

Apparently it's been 7 years since it debuted. The uploader calls this an *anniversary trailer*:

It was definitely the best show on color TV since Party of Five...

I Would Have Been Deadly...

...if they had digital cameras back in my college years!

Tim Ferriss Ripples

So last August I lent Tim Ferriss' epic book - The 4-Hour Workweek - to a northern friend.

Nearly a year later he delivered the book back along with the exciting announcement that he had conjured up a Ferriss-esque business plan and was just about to launch it.

He's designing and selling his own line of high end silk women's scarves - primarily via the web of course and underpinned by many Tim Ferriss principles.

Good luck to him - I hope he gets fat and rich off this venture!

Our lawyers are still ironing out what my share of the profits should be...

How To Hit A Submerged Golf Ball

Okay the first one was INCREDIBLE, sort of.

Pro golfer Bill Haas hit it yesterday to essentially win $10 million in a sudden death playoff:

I say it was only sort of incredible because it's not really a hard shot to pull off.

Check out my Jabroni's attempt second attempt at hitting a submerged golf ball from our golf trip 2 years ago:



The announcers on color TV yesterday made a big deal out of Bill Haas putting a little spin on his shot BUT Jabroni's shot second shot spun nicely as well. I'm thinking this type of shot spins rather automatically.

Oh, yeah Jabroni made the next putt and shot even par for that round - winning ($5?) slightly less than Bill Haas...

One Crazy Homeschooling Broad

Okay my cousin - no, not the latent invert - just sent me a blog post to read titled:

Career Ruin: Homeschooling.

Click the link and check it out.

I don't know that this woman is crazy but she comes off as such anyway.

I mean - she's a purported homeschooling advocate and yet she paints homeschooling as a *career ruin*???

Perhaps she's one of those manipulators who chooses provocative headlines simply to get more hits and more of a reaction a la Tim Ferriss?

Well it works. There are a whopping 250 comments on that post as of now. (And she has an enviable 60k subscribers too. Why?)

Okay I just realized that I linked to this fulminating chick before - in a post where she slams wonder-kid Tim Ferris. How's that for irony?

I just read a couple more of her screaming posts and think I've got her figured out. She's what this gambling, drug-addicted, 3-toothed, South Philly golf jabroni of mine referred to back in the mid-90s as a *Hillary*. (To me he once said, "I'll bet you've got a whole lot of dem dare[sic] Hillary's at UPenn...")

In her divorce (surprised?) post, Penelope self-diagnoses and agrees:

Anyway, during the time between crying and deciding that I'm the queen of resiliency, I stumbled across this information about my Myers Briggs type: ENTJ. There are sixteen personality types. ENTJs make up 4% of the general population and 80% of the population of executives.


Here's the news about ENTJs in a marriage:


"Gender issues are especially significant for ENTJ females. As a type, their arrogant, confrontational manner and need for control can appear to be quite 'unwomanly' to others. Of course, the problem intensifies for the ENTJ female when dealing with men. Their demanding, objective, competent, and independent nature is not particularly endearing to most men."

People tell me all the time they admire the *sacrifice* my wife and I make to educate our children outside the system. I don't really respond to this but if I did I would say, "YOU are the one making the sacrifice, not us."

Will homeschooling ruin your career? Sure, in many ways it will derail and retard climbing the ladder of work success.

But you'll GAIN so much more: a stronger family, better education, better socialization(!), etc....winters in sunny Florida!

I'm not entirely sure why Penelope Trunk homeschools her kids. I have my formidable hunches but would have to read some more for corroboration.

I just don't think I can bear any more of her grating vitriol at this time...

Alright one more....check out this crass post of hers.

How To Handle Bad Friends

I don't think I know a single person who hasn't suffered the experience of a *bad friend*.

It starts with bewilderment then might even devolve into anger. "What in the world did I do?"

They blow you off; never initiate doing anything; or worse. I mean how hard is it to send an email???

Yet you were friends for years...

But were you? Were you really?

The first taste, of course, was in the teen/college years when friends coupled up with opposite-sex partners. I knew plenty of guys who flat-out *fell off the planet* on account of girlfriends. (Many of these chicks were marginal - to put it mildly too!)

Then it happens later on with first wives and first husbands; a busy job; and/or babies. All of a sudden it's been years since you've seen a former jabroni. My daughter is five and some of my wife's old pals haven't even met her. Heck I had to *sever all ties* with the best man at my own wedding only a month or so before the event.

Whatever. Anger, if it manifests, subsides. People growing apart is a fact of life. And the more times it happens to you....the less the sting - provided you're socially healthy and keep making new buddies. If you're going to diversify something as unimportant as your *financial assets*, you probably should be doing the same with your social assets. (BTW, an 80% stock/20% bond portfolio over the past few decades would have correlated with the S&P 500 to the tune of 99%. In other words, "WHAT DIVERSIFICATION!?")

I was thinking about this *bad friend* phenomena from another angle the other day - through my homeschooling lens. I concluded that many (most?) of these foundering friendships were the residue of long ago forced association. They were geographical neighbors and in-town classmates. So these relationships were never built on solid ground to begin with, failing the stress tests of time and distance.

Last I checked the world's population is approaching 6.8 billion. So it's downright Moronic to focus on or fret about specific earthlings here and there.

And going forward it's probably a sub-optimal idea to invest too much of your precious time with local yokels, classmates, and co-workers.

LinkedIn - Another Psycho Social Network?

So I decided to monkey around with Linked-In...

I set up an account but really just entered my name and website...

And the next thing you know I'm getting flooded with invitations to connect from all sorts of random people - INCLUDING that @sshole former landlord of mine from up in Boston!

What the heck? I was pretty sure I checked off that I didn't want to invite my the contacts from my Gmail account.

But I think that somehow other people who've invited me in the past to *connect* can now see that I'm on Linked-In.  Weirdos from whom I bought things off Craigslist in Florida(!) apparently want to connect with me.  Why?

I just spent 30 minutes trying to figure out what exactly is going on - what level of basic privacy is possible on this social network and still haven't a clue. I went into Settings and reduced everything to what seems like the most private level but can't tell what happened, if anything.

It says on the site, right under the log-in, "We will not store your password or email anyone without your permission."

I call bull$hit on that.

My wife said she got a notice saying that I was now on Linked-In even though I didn't (intentionally) invite her. Email or not...this communication was not authorized by me.

I had problems of this nature with FaceBook too which I won't get into right here.

I submit that these so-called social networks are out-of-bounds with how hard they are to understand and with the licenses they take *on your behalf*.

I don't necessarily want to be using these sites....but it seems I have to or I'll be invisible on Google.

Hopefully by joining these two social networks this past year....I've KILLED THEM.

Saving Up For WHAT Exactly?

Here's a great parable from The 4-Hour Workweek.

An American businessman took a vacation to a small coastal Mexican village on doctor’s orders. Unable to sleep after an urgent phone call from the office the first morning, he walked out to the pier to clear his head. A small boat with just one fisherman had docked, and inside the boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish.


"How long did it take you to catch them?" the American asked.


"Only a little while," the Mexican replied in surprisingly good English.


"Why don’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?" the American then asked.


"I have enough to support my family and give a few to friends," the Mexican said as he unloaded them into a basket.


"But...What do you do with the rest of your time?"


The Mexican looked up and smiled. "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Julia, and stroll into the village each evening, where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, señor."


The American laughed and stood tall. "Sir, I’m a Harvard M.B.A. and can help you. You should spend more time fishing, and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. In no time, you could buy several boats with the increased haul. Eventually, you would have a fleet of fishing boats."


He continued, "Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you would sell directly to the consumers, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village, of course, and move to Mexico City, then to Los Angeles, and eventually to New York City, where you could run your expanding enterprise with proper management."


The Mexican fisherman asked, "But, señor, how long will all this take?"


To which the American replied, "15-20 years. 25 tops."


"But what then, señor?"


The American laughed and said, "That’s the best part. When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions."


"Millions, señor? Then what?"


"Then you would retire and move to a small coastal fishing village, where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos…"

My Inflation-Protected Hard Asset

Apparently there's more supply than demand. Whatever.

Meanwhile....I'm up to $1,875 per deposit!

I'm tempted to post some more impressive videos of my kids doing math and see if I can up my rate to 4k per.

Needless to say I'm a big seller in Asia...

THIS Is Funny

He apparently said it *90 times* this past week in speeches, "PASS THIS BILL".

I can honestly say I have no idea what he's talking about - no idea what the *bill* is as I don't follow the din of contemporary politics.

But I'm quite sure that more rules, regs, and money printing in Washington isn't going to help the economy.

I do thank him for the damn good, teleprompter-skipping, laugh though!

Educational Video Game?

Normally I call bull$hit on things marketed as such - as well as oxymoronic *educational television*.

But I did see these eye-catching cubes yesterday at the Maker's Faire in Queens.

I also believe the games are open-sourced in nature. Well at least they are opening up the code and hoping that others develop the games.

$149 for the cubes and I'm not even sure if they are for sale yet.

No doubt many parents will be persuaded by the marketing. But will the Moronic kids dig it?

Picasa Photo Albums

Do any of y'all use Picasa - Google's photo and image management application?

I do try to concentrate as much as I can in my Google Account: email, YouTube, all my notes and half-written books are Google Docs, etc.

But a couple of years ago I downloaded Picasa (the desktop application) and it automatically went about synch-ing with the millions of photos I had on my hard drive. I couldn't control it at all and my computer was getting old so Picasa kept crashing during this synch process. Needless to say I never got started using it.

However I do have many of my photos uploaded to Picasa over the web. I think of it as a free online, in case of a flood or computer crash, storage. Of course I hit the memory limit long ago.

But yesterday I paid $5.00 - essentially nothing - to upgrade my online storage to 20 giga bytes per year. Right now I'm uploading 2011's photos to Picasa and I'm considering that since I have a new PC I may try out the desktop Picasa application again.

Do any of y'all use Picasa for managing and editing photos? I myself can't stand Shutterfly and the like. It seems to me to be so much more convenient to have my photos - along with everything else! - centralized in my Google account.

Privacy For The Paranoid....And Would-Be Stalkers

I can't recall if I highlighted this website before or not - Radaris.com.

Go punch your name up and you might be, as I was, very surprised how *public* your info is.

What to do about this?

Well here's a blog post that tells you how to get your info pulled from some of at least the bigger data scrapers.

Why?

You write a blog post saying, "We're going into Manhattan today to see..." and you come home and find yourself robbed.

You become famous all of a sudden from winning the lottery and your family is kidnapped...

Or, you become infamous all of a sudden and your family is harassed. For example, Steve Bartman!

Personally I really don't like how easy it is to see *relatives* on these websites too. I mean, WTF? Many of my relatives are downright embarrassing...

The Next Strata Of Craziness

My left hand is killing me right now. I thought I felt a slight pain in it this afternoon but went to hit range balls anyway. I was having a bad session so I may have hit an extra hundred or so in a fit of frustration.

I've been playing golf and working hard on my game for over 20 years now. But if I develop say a chronic wrist or hand problem or perhaps suffer a gruesome injury there obviously I'll be done with golf and all that work and progress will in many ways be for naught.

These are sobering thoughts that beg the question - am I in fact using my time on this doomed planet wisely?

I met a guy yesterday who just moved to Queens from essentially fly-over country. He and his beautiful wife came to start a church here in New York. They have no money really, no other work lined up, they've two of their own and two adopted foster kids whom they homeschool,...

I asked and he said sincerely, "God will provide..."

Say what you will about this guy but he's got real balls and there are plenty of other brave souls out there doing what to the vast majority of us seems unfathomable. In fact I'm on my third reading in the past year(!) of The 4-Hour Workweek and I'm paying particular attention to the heroic stories of Morons who quit the grind and followed their passions.

Meanwhile I spend my scant free time smacking around meaningless little white balls - albeit further and straighter these days.

The more I ruminate upon it, the more I'm tempted to quit golf green-light my wife's desire to quit her lucrative yet dehumanizing Wall Street job.

It's probably time to man-up and see what we're made of. After all she and the kids (me too!) would be better off with her home than with a little more rapidly depreciating dollars in the bank.

Would such an overt act of financial self-destruction be crazy? Most certainly....but no more outlandish than say homeschooling my kids!

Again, check out that book if you haven't already. I'll say it again - I'M ON MY THIRD RE-READ IN A YEAR! It would be too weak to call it, among many other labels, a self-help book. More accurately it's a treatise on modern day *self-propulsion*.

This guy, Bill Rockwell, advanced very far in the 1997 World Putting Championship - beating numerous tour pros!

And I Thought My Parents' Nostalgia Was Cheesy!

The OUTfits in beginning are classic. How about that ginormous yellow leather top?!

'Old Coots' + PC + Webcam

2.6 million hits on YouTube in less than a month?

I like how the fossil started yawning and almost dozed off!

The Same Experts Say Their Kids Should Be Socialized In School!

Someone posted this on one of my homeschooling forums today:

Dear Moron,

Tomorrow, people from around the world will join hands to create 24 Hours of Reality. I hope you'll join us. Together, we're going to focus the world's attention on the scope, scale and impact of the climate crisis.

24 Hours of Reality begins at 7 p.m. Central Time on Wednesday, September 14. Over the course of the day, there will be 24 presentations across 24 time zones in 13 languages. I'll be presenting in the final hour at 7 p.m. Eastern Time.

Use our simple tool to set a reminder so you don't miss it.

http://climaterealityproject.org/reminder/

Together, we're going to take a stand against the "new normal." We're going to remove any doubt stirred up by deniers.

Together, we're going to catalyze urgency around an issue that impacts every one of us.

Find a presentation in your language or your part of the world and use our tool to schedule a reminder email. You'll receive 15 minutes before the event.

http://climaterealityproject.org/reminder/

Make sure you're a part of this event. Make time. Tell your friends and followers you're participating and encourage them to join you. At the bottom of this email, you'll find some easy links to help you spread the word.

I'm truly excited for tomorrow and I hope you are, too.

Sincerely,

Al Gore

Founder and Chairman

The Climate Reality Project

Now one would think that the homeschooling set would be MOST SKEPTICAL of the climate change global warming nonsense. After all it's nothing more than the revealed truth of government-funded, INTERESTED, credentialed experts - people/institutions that these parents won't trust in simple matters of phonics, arithmetic, and conflict resolution (socialization!).

But alas I've run into hordes of homeschooled kids parents who have swallowed whole this noxious garbage. Granted, I've been living in Boston and New York most recently...

The idea that these quacks can even accurately measure the Earth's temperature TODAY is ludicrous. NEVER MIND that they don't have *average temperature* data for Earth going, some 4 billion years or whatever it is to compare today's theoretical temperature to. It's easy enough to count barrels of oil burned and acres of deforestion...

BUT it's not so simple to model the most important climate-determinant, atmospheric gas. That would be *water vapor*, aka clouds.

It's truly rich that the people, like myself, who would love to debate these eco-pagan socialists are deemed *deniers*. Al Gore's cinematic propaganda (e.g. polar bear sensationalism), his web rabble-rousing, and his unwillingness to debate naysayers smacks of Nazism more than anything.

Global warming....brought to you by the same people who built the projects, who said Fannie Mae was solvent, who encouraged you to buy a house and invest in the stock market, who promise Social Security will be there when you retire, who drove this nation into $14 trillion of debt,...and who can't teach Johnny to read or add.

I just take deep breaths and remind myself that at least I'm not FORCED to associate with these people - the homeschoolers I mean. In fact I just stay away from group *science classes* once in a while depending the subject matter and who's running them. Make no mistake my son, at only age 6.75 has already been inundated with this flavor of nonsense and he knows to generally and quietly ignore it.

*Mind pollution* is 100 times worse for Father Earth than air pollution could ever be...

Shorting Another Paid Newspaper Website

Seriously....would you pay $3.99 weekly(!) for access - *premium* access - to the Boston Globe online?

I mean how many times do these newspapers have to fail with pay-walls before they get a clue?

The reality is that readers hate to even *log-in* when registration on these sites is free. So hardly anyone is going to PAY, yet again.

It seems like, given the ocean of free content online, that the only web content people will actually pay for is practical advice/instruction and of course, p0rn.

Note - the foundering Globe is still owned by the *geniuses* at the New York Times.

See also - Let's Guess The Price.

Hijacking Minds...

What a terrific headline by Drudge!

I found the 9/11 memorial hype this year to be absolutely nauseating.

Realize that in the ten years since 3,000 people died in the attacks...

...that over 400,000 people have died UNNECESSARILY on the roadways - a silent holocaust in and of itself.

To the fools that claim they are *accidents* I call bull$hit. There are people texting, tailgating, weaving, and driving 80 mph in the right hand land everywhere. And there are absolutely no efforts made to get shady uninsured drivers off the road, get illegal immigrants and blind 'old coots' off the road, or to investigate the extent of cordless cellphone usage in crashes. No, the people, the media, and the government just accept this as an immutable reality.

And they do so because it doesn't present a mass marketable, self-aggrandizing opportunity for themselves.

So when every blowhard on the radio and television wants me to reflect on what THEY deem important I punch the off-button with indignation. Realize again that they NEED everybody talking about, worrying about, angry/happy about the same things each day or they simply don't have a market for their *product*; they'll have no one to manipulate.

I suggest that whenever someone else tries to hijack and terrorize your mind that you take appropriate self-defensive measures.

Was 9/11 a big deal?

Yeah, of course it was. You don't have to tell me. I was on the phone with my (future first) wife when the first Tower fell and the line cut off. She was only 4/5 blocks away.

In fact at around 9pm last night when we got back from Maine there was still a massive vigil going on in our hometown of Manhasset, NY. Our *Wall Street* town lost 40 people or so on 9/11.

But still, why were we attacked in the first place?

It was because the powers-at-be let important $hit slide (lax illegal immigration enforcement, threatening rhetoric from overseas caves, etc.) in the first place while they focused on self-serving crap like global warming, gay marriage, and defeating their political opponents opponent.

Artic-Bound

My youngest cousin is getting married in York, Maine on Saturday. I'm very excited to go up north before the snow hits (next week?).

On my mother's side there were 12 of us cousins. And after this weekend they will essentially all have been married except for one, a forty year old, well-marbled male - who my first wife insists, despite innumerable girlfriends, is a closeted invert. Whatever.

Around age 30 we were in wedding-overload. Many were fun but there were plenty that were brutal - obligatory, boring, in undesirable locales, expensive, etc. Thank God we're finally out of this life stage. There are a few re-marriages on the horizon....but those tend to be, or SHOULD tend to be lower key.

It should be clear sailing once I get over the Throg's Neck Bridge tomorrow morning. It's been painful lately. The GPS says 5.33 hours to York; but it will take us 7 with stops and traffic.

The best part of the trip, sorry Cousin, is that I'm going to play Wentworth By The Sea Country Club with a long-lost buddy on Sunday morning in New Hampshire. This is my fifth private club invitation in the past two months....so why should I ante up and join a club of my own??? Plus I have nearby Bethpage...

Alright I was kidding.  I've very happy for my cousin and excited to see my entire family at what will no doubt be the last family wedding for several years.

Chainsaw Bought....Still Have Ten Fingers!

In late July, I was awoken by a booming cracking sound right outside my window. It very well scared the scat out of me.

Curiously, there wasn't even any wind or rain at the time. And thankfully it fell in the middle of the yard rather than on the house or on those wires right behind it.

So what was I going to do with this tree.

I called a couple tree places (after emailing them a picture) and they wanted around $500 to remove it.

Recall that last summer I had another down tree (branch) and I circumvented this jam-job by hiring a guy off Craigslist to cut it up for $100. I had to help him and dispose of it myself.

One of the tree guys I called told me he'd come down himself to check it out because he was on his way to the *club* near my house anyway. Which club, I asked. Oh, the VERY EXPENSIVE one. Great, his estimate wasn't going to be cheap...

After talking to him about golf for 20 minutes and definitely having charmed him....he came in at $400 for the job. There's no doubt in my mind that if I was someone else, perhaps some 'old bag' dowager or yuppie type the price would have been $700 or even $1,000.

I hired him but the next day thought better of it.

I went to Home Depot and bought a $330 18 inch chainsaw. I figured this way I would no longer be held hostage by these tree predators. Here on wealthy Long Island with all these huge old trees and frequent thunderstorms....these guys are millionaires. Seriously.

Make no mistake I was scared to death of using a chainsaw. Google told me there were *40,000 chainsaw related injuries in America each year*!

In fact at the store I called my first wife, informed her of my DIY plans, and she screamed at me, "If you cut your arm off....there's no (deleted) way I'm coming to the hospital!"

Of course I saw another local *mom* at Home Depot and after chatting a bit she remarked about my chainsaw purchase, "Your wife is SO LUCKY to have a husband...that can do things around the house like that." Take that Mrs. C-Nut?!

I read the instructions and safety manual 6 times, cover to cover. I read chainsaw forums and watched YouTube chainsaw videos. All told it took me several hours of preparation - maybe even more than 10. And that was before even cutting it up. Tim Ferriss would clamor that this most certainly was not a good ROI of my time. Whatever. I hate to get ripped off and be at the mercy of sodomizing contractors, et al.

I tried to get a couple guys I know to come over and just help me get started but everyone was busy.

So eventually I mustered the courage to fire the saw up by myself. It started smoking and the chain started moving even though I had the brake on. The manual said this should NEVER happen. WTHeck! I turned white.

Customer service guy on the phone told me I had to pull the trigger/throttle right away - that was my problem. Then I had trouble restarting it. Damn. Did I break this thing right off the bat. What was my *supportive* wife going to say (if I ever told her)?

But it wasn't broken and I soon got to work on the tree (had to pull the cord 12 times even though the manual said to NEVER do more than 4-5). Well I got to work on the smaller limbs anyway. The manual, with all its breathless warnings, really does scare the $hit out paranoid noobs like me. It talks about *kickback* constantly. That's when the tip of the saw hits something and the whole thing bounces back right toward your face. Yeah, really. Although my saw had a kickback guard on it - assuming I installed it correctly.

It was a bigger job than that pic might suggest - being pretty thick at the base. Also, the tree limb was still attached high up on the trunk. And the manual warned to NEVER cut anything like that, over your head.

Actually I was able to break the branch down using only my brute strength. Yeah I'm indeed strong as $hit. (or the limb was dangling...)

Now it did take me a long time to delimb the tree. I wasn't exactly confident in what I was doing on this first job of mine. And again, I was scared of severing something and ending my golf career before I hit my peak.

Then once I was done with the smaller stuff I had to figure out how to cut the trunk. I didn't want my saw to touch the ground, having heard that dirt will destroy the saw in an instant. Eventually I figured out that I needed to keep propping up the end of the log in order to prevent *binding* - when the wood pinches the saw. The log was freakin' heavy and not exactly easy to prop up for the first several cuts.

Many Hours later here's the burnable wood anyway:

I put it on Craigslist as *free firewood*. Some guy in a $60,000 Land Rover came by and loaded it into his car. Saving $20-$30 on firewood ought to help him pay for the luxury vehicle, no?

I'm sure some of my more handy readers are laughing at my real world, incompetence. Yeah, I can't spackle or change a flat tire either without a cordless cellphone. Whatever.

Many of y'all can't buy stock options mid-market or prove Stewart's Theorem!

Of course Category Zero Hurricane Irene landed here last week and not a single tree fell in my yard now that I'm armed with my own chainsaw...

Check out this *chainsaw accident* video:

Looked real to me!

See also - Chainsaw ROI.

Thou Shall Not Mention DEBT

This ad was *banned* from all the major color TV networks (last year?) and some of the minor ones like History Channel, etc.

Why the would TV networks do such a thing?

I mean it's not offensive to an ethic group (actually flattering the Chinese).

Oh yeah....it's offensive to the *ruling class*, the *powers-at-be*!

I've always said that it's telling when someone lies about something insignificant. They're most definitely NOT to be trusted.

By the same token on small beer like this, Big Government reveals itself a fascist and Big Media reveals itself as completely illiberal.

I mean the ocean of REAL CRAP and misinformation they broadcast night and day...

We can only hope that the *banning* notoriety ultimately achieves more than what the original intended viewing would have.

Really...Who LOVES Their Dentist???

Did any of y'all know that dentists supposedly have a very high *suicide rate*?

I mean I knew that postal employees had a high homicide rate; I knew that those fat vegans have the highest herbicide rates...but I had no idea that dentists turn their savagery inward (as well).

Here, you can Google it.

Very interesting...

Another Out-Of-Nowhere Web Millionaire?

Apparently this chick young lady has made millions(???) from videoing herself putting on make-up!!!

You've got to be kidding me, right?

But heck....if that vapid Moron Oprah was watched and paid as much as she was....there just ain't no explaining Earthly economics.

Anyways, good for this girl. There's obviously value in what she does - *how to tart yourself up*, etc.

Not An Endorsement....Just a WOW

This buffoon has 4 million YouTube subscribers and his videos have been watched over 1 BILLION freakin' times!

His niche? He covers *viral videos*, seriously.

Warren Buffett - STEALING From Taxpayers!

Okay, first of all, even though BAC stock is on sale for less than $7 a share....the guy, this RESCUER, would only buy 6%-dividend-paying PREFERRED STOCK.

That means the common shares, what the lumpen masses own, can and most likely will be diluted all the way down to zero and he'll still be in line to be paid his 6% dividend.

And who'll be paying it?

TAXPAYERS!!!

With all the backdoor bailouts we're already funding Bank of America to the tune of billions per year. Buffett's first dividend is essentially already coming from us.

The idea that this guy is a genius is nonsense. Recall he sold ALL OF HIS SILVER around $5 or $6 - at the bottom! (Silver is $43 today.)

And from the article I cropped above....it looks like this Moronic 'old coot' is still averaging up on his shares of Wells Fargo.

Mark my words that stock will be his undoing - his ignominious swan song.

The guy is nothing short of a complete jerk.  Not only is he *managing down* his own taxes and *talking them up* for the rest of us....he has to basically STEAL from the kitty too!

FREE Parental Education Conference

Check this out:

It's an educational conference coming in 2 weeks to Massachusetts. Guess what....IT'S FREE to attend.

In fact I know the gentleman - Dennis Pratt - fairly well who set it up from my time up in Boston. In fact I've lent him some of my education books so I may be partially respons-....nah.

The flyer is self-explanatory and a bit of an exhortation. Parents most certainly ought to be taking a much more active role in the education of their own children. God knows the government (and many private schools) have been failing miserably!

From the website:

On Saturday, September 17th, Parents Decide is hosting a first-of-its-kind conference to help Massachusetts parents discover which type of school might best match their unique child. Several Massachusetts education experts will overview all the schooling options available to Massachusetts parents.


A school is "good" only when it matches your child! Parents worry, is the problem with their child? With their parenting? With their teacher? With their school? The real problem may simply be a mismatch! Mismatching children causes problems -- today, and continuing throughout their future. You, the parent, are in the best position to match your unique child to your expanding schooling options.


Would your child thrive at a different type of school? Explore your options with education experts from charter, private, parochial, alternative, hybrid, and home schools, and maybe improve your child's future.

Dennis told me that the response and level of interest that this whimsical idea of his has generated has been INSANE. Last I heard he was expecting over 500 people already for this seat-of-the-pants inaugural event. The gig is up now; more and more people realize the *school* emperor is unclad and ugly!. It's just that most frustrated parents don't really know what corrective steps to take or even what their options are.

Saturday September 17th in Marlboro....mark your calendars.

If some of my Massachusetts readers could *LIKE* this post on Facebook I'd really, really appreciate it. And you know I never ask y'all for much either! Thanks.

Science OR Nescience?

Hah!

Now I'm certainly no flack for their ONLY political opponent...

But this is ridiculous.

How about, "DEMOCRATS AGAINST ECONOMICS"???

Since they collectively don't understand the basics of say *the pricing of goods and services* right now, right here on planet Earth y'all will have to forgive my skepticism about their INTERESTED, apocalyptic multi-decade weather forecasts.

Of course there's a chance they do in fact understand economics but they set is aside so as to retain power via *class warfare marketing*.

Except that there's plenty of EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE against that possibility...

Krugman is, of couse, low-hanging fruit and must be summarily dismissed.

Click Here - to read an old post where I Marginalize a famous Harvard economics professor.

Shedding Light On Dank Basements

We lose power in this house here....well, all the time. It's a real pain in the butt to put it mildly.

So it was an automatic that we were going to be without electricity last week from Irene, that Category ZERO *hurricane*.

But actually we didn't. I mean we had a utility pole in our backyard in flames for a couple hours and STILL the power kept flowing. Furthermore, all of our neighbors were cursing in the dark.

I started gloating on F-Book....and what do you know, after the storm was all but over, around 8pm on Sunday our power went out and stayed out for 24 hours or so.

My neighbors across the street weren't so lucky. Nearly 7 days after the storm hit they are still un-electrified!!!

In fact, the house just across from us had their basement flood. Apparently they had just spent *a ton of money* getting it totally refinished. I can imagine how much they spent seeing how they paid nearly $2 million for the house about 3 years ago. (High end, new construction probably shouldn't have water issues, right???)

The woman told me that the sump pump stopped working when the power went out. Go figure.

As my wife put it, the fact that they even HAD A SUMP PUMP ought to have warned them not to spend too much money down there in the first place.

This was only ammo for me too. My wife is eager to re-carpet and repaint our moldy basement (where all our computers and homeschooling work gets done) but I've been telling her that there's no way I want to do anything until I'm satisfied that our water problems down there are resolved.

My neighbor mournfully informed me that, "Insurance won't cover one bit of it..."

Brave Dude Messing With Earthlings

I'm quite sure he's experienced handcuffs....and for that my funny bone is grateful.

Website Building Chronicles - 2 - Eben Pagan Selling Me On Change

The guy is one of the biggest names in internet marketing. Apparently he's already sold over $100 million worth of info-products online. Some of you might recognize him as *David D'Angelo* of *Double Your Dating* fame.

Anyways I paid $1997 last week to sign up for his Guru Masterclass - in hopes that it would get me moving along with HomeschoolDad.com.

Well so far it most certainly has. I've learned from him that my innate aversion to *sales/marketing* is something I HAVE to exorcise if I want to remake myself as an edu-coach.

He's got me working on all the basic sales tactics that many of y'all who've been in that line of work are no doubt familiar with: an elevator pitch, copywriting, understanding the prospective customer, etc.

While most of it appears to be commonsense I submit it MOST CERTAINLY IS NOT. Plus it represents a whole new mindset for me. Eben asserts that online wantrepreneurs should spend 80% of their time on MARKETING and only 20% of their time on the PRODUCT. That certainly sounds shady, does it not? Whatever. Like it ain't SHADY to work for a hedge fund, a morally bankrupt corporation, the government, be a union thug,...

There are all these scientifically proven lines of conversation, tactics if you will, to get a customer to essentially do whatever you tell them . It's all about emotional hot buttons, sequencing, selling *benefits* instead of products, etc. For a successful marketer, the key is to not just help people, but more accurately you have to *help them help themselves* AND they will magically pay whatever you charge! Eben preaches this as nothing short of gospel.

I already gave it a whirl, sort of, and this new mindset landed me $12 or so right off the bat.

Yesterday there was a guy at the driving range next to me hitting balls. I instantly noticed that he was making a common error with his swing. A few minutes later his wife came by and told him that they had to go, that they were up next on the tee. Now I hit balls at this course a lot - recall I bought 40,000 range balls there last summer - and usually Hackers get to the course late, foolishly buy more balls than they can hit, and then have to leave a bunch at the range when called to the first tee. Obviously, ball-beaters like me scoop those extras right up.

I said to myself, I bet if I give that guy a tip on his swing he'll give me the balance of his range balls. But what a manipulative, slimy thought, right?

Well I interrupted his practice and told him he was casting real bad, releasing his wrist cock at the top of the swing. About 5 shots later he was beaming and thanked me profusely - even loudly asserting that I should *teach*. He then handed me an entire jumbo bucket of balls that he had sitting there and ran off to the tee.

Now I didn't know he had that many balls he had left but nonetheless, I was positively chilled by the way this played out - how the transaction unfolded just as I imagined.

The balls? Well a year or so later I've hit about 23,000 of them. My left hand is always calloused BUT my swing is at a whole new level!

See also - Website Building Chronicles - 1 - For Morons.

Food Stamp Nation - $221 A Month!

Do y'all know what EBT means?

It means that Kentucky FRIED Chicken accepts food stamps!

This, in my opinion, is outrageous. I've seen similar signs at Burger King and other junk food establishments.

I just saw a semi-crass video satire of EBT-nation - click here. (Warning - Adult Language)

Personally I didn't see the intended satire; it was more of a tragi-documentary.

Right now an astounding 46 million Americans, 15% of the country(!), are engorging themselves on food stamps.

The first thing I'd do if President dictator would be to immediately cut that number to 5% of the population. And I mean IMMEDIATELY.

Riots? Maybe not or so what? It's better to cut the cord on this unsustainable stupidity now rather than later.

The Republican party will NEVER take the firm stand on this issue - or a hundred others - that's demanded by logic and justice. Yet many fools go on voting for them - falling for the diversion that *we aren't as bad as THEM*.

I maintain that the only hope for this country is for the Republican party to disband, to be defunded by said fools, or vacated en masse.

Too Much Gin-N-Juice?

Summer Hiatus = OVER

I hope y'all had as good a summer as I have had. While we don't take the summer off like school people, we do adjust our schedules on account of the *climate change*.

The kids did the town's sh1tty, but cheap(!), rec camp for the month of July. It was over 4 hours long counting the busing to and from my doorstep. Generally after that the kids would have lunch, decompress from their punk moods (which they always come home with from these age-graded, socializing activities), we'd do some of their *work*, and then we'd head out to our town pool.

In August my son did an all-day Cub Scout camp for a week; he did chess camp one week; and then last week he and his sister were shipped up north to their grandparents' house in Massachusetts.

There were many other highlight adventures too. I took them into Manhattan a few times. Central Park and even Battery Park are TERRIFIC for kids! We enjoyed free GOOD seats to a Mets game. Although I must admit I didn't know a single player on the Mets besides David Cone...

We busted all the way down the Garden State Parkway to visit my third cousin and her family in Stone Harbor, NJ. But the highlight of that trip, for the kids anyway, was spending the afternoon and evening on the boardwalk of Wildwood, NJ. The Raging Waters waterpark was the best we've been too if only because they have no *height restrictions* on their slides. Unfortunately my camera was secured in a locker otherwise I could have videoed my peanut, 30 lb daughter going solo off a great slide that released riders about 10 feet above the water....heads were turning left and right in search of the irresponsible parent!

On that trip we also hit Philly on the way home to see assorted jabronis. And I also took the kids up to UPenn to see the old stomping grounds from my deformative years. For those of you unaware, Penn has probably the most spectacular urban campus in the country notwithstanding the hideous girls. That's what 200k in tuition gets you for sure there anyway now...

We did a whole lot more but you get the point.

I myself got some serious work done around the house and at least in the brainstorming department for my new edu-endeavor HomeschoolDad.com. It's golf season too so I've hit more than my fair share of balls in between playing a few rounds here and there. My swing has taken another hard-earned leap forward which I'll discuss at another time. A couple weeks ago I was fortunate enough to play two Top-100 courses in the same week. I was invited to play Piping Rock (#88) in nearby Locust Valley. And then two days later I played Bethpage Black (#20 or so) - shooting a decent 87 from the back tees (7,400 yards, par 71). At Bethpage I drove the ball like the old Tiger Woods but pitched and putted like a bogey golfer. The course is flat-out LONG....if you can't pound the ball off the tee AND handle 200+ yard approaches you probably won't play it more than once. And you'll need a calculator to add up your score!

Long Island actually has some really, really good golf courses (8 or 9 of the Top-100 in USA). Of course they are all private outside of Bethpage, Eisenhower, and a handful of others. One positive development is that I keep getting invited to play private country clubs - quite often actually. In a couple hours I'll be teeing off at Southampton GC which is adjacent to Shinnecock out in the Hamptons. I guess since I'm getting older more of my peers are financially established enough to join clubs. In fact my wife wants to join one of the two country clubs close to our house next year. The cheaper and probably better one has initiation fees of somewhere between $7,000 and $17,000 and the weekday membership that we are considering is $8,300 per year. The more expensive one is about 30k upfront and a whopping $12,000-$18,000 per year. I can talk some more about this later....(Wife wants to join AND quit her job!)

Other developments include purchasing and wielding a chainsaw(!); buying a Sony Internet color TV; procuring a weight bench; reading some good books - as I always do; and spending $1,997 on Eben Pagan's, an internet marketer, training.

Alright I have a tee time...

Aging 'Old Coot' Rock Star?

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