If Sarah Palin still had all the same policies, beliefs, platforms, and Educational and political background, but looked like Roseanne Barr……

Would she be even HALF of the news story that she is?

I would bet not.

My wife, already suffering from a sore wrist due to continuous cyber-farming on FACEBOOK, was pounding away on her keyboard this morning. I asked her if she was farming again and reminded her that she had hurt her wrist from the constant farming of the previous week. She informed me that she was NOT farming…she was instead involved in a cyber “Food-Fight” on FACEBOOK.

FACEBOOK will be the death of society as we know it.

The lid of our toilet seat came off. We now have a “lidless” toilet. We still have a seat….just no lid. The psychological impact of the loss of the lid is huge. Now, it seems like you might as well just be sitting on an exposed piece of sewer pipe. Even though, as a guy, I never put the lid down anyway……I miss the lid. Good Grief!….fretting over a damn toilet seat lid…..someone shoot me!

I love how they decide to show the popular show “The Deadliest Catch” during the summer. The show is filmed in the dead of winter up in Alaska and the poor fisherman are enduring temperatures pushing -40 f. and here I sit in Texas, sweating like a dog while I watch the show, with it pushing 110 degrees outside.

I have been watching alot of commercials lately for a revolutionary new device that is guaranteed to make you stop snoring at night. This little gem of an invention is a plastic mold that you mold to your mouth then place in your mouth while you sleep. Wait a minute……plastic molded into your mouth? Isn’t that just a MOUTHPIECE? The same thing that most athletes wear? The same thing you can get at Wal-Mart for a couple bucks each? This commercial wants you to know that you can buy this revolutionary new invention for only two easy payments of $29.99 plus shipping and handling………for a MOUTHPIECE!

There are suckers born every minute.

Any Doctor’s that prescribed any medication at all to Michael Jackson within the past year are surely sweating bullets right now.

Bridgeport, the closest actual town to where we live, has been named the “Stagecoach Capital of Texas” by the Texas Legislature. Town leaders are bracing for the inevitable onslaught of millions of visiting stagecoach enthusiasts that are surely to make the town a “must-see” destination for future vacations…….. It’s so reassuring to see that our State Leaders are hard at work doing truly important and vital work……

Sarah Palin told CNN “I am NOT a quitter….I am a fighter”. Sorry Sarah, a fighter that throws up his hands in the middle of the match and quits and then climbs out of the ring…..is a QUITTER….not a fighter. Q-U-I-T-T-E-R.

Did you realize that at 12:34:56pm today…..on 7/8/09……..because all the numbers are aligned…..a lot of crackpots in the world think that the world will end today. What time zone does this world ending stuff start in? I would like a few hours head start if possible to prepare myself.

Update: The dreaded time came and went…..the world appears to still be intact…..somewhere up in Alaska, Sarah Palin is cursing the heavens….upset because she was one of the nutcases that thought the world would indeed end today…which caused her to quit her job……all for nothing…….

If Palin does run in 2012…she should choose Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina as her running mate. (Though I think he would prefer to be Ambassador to Argentina)

I wonder how Governor Sanford and his “trying to fall back in love with his wife”…is coming along?

I saw a report about how hotel occupancy rates in Hawaii are at an all-time low. Have you seen how expensive a Hawaiian vacation is lately? It is ridiculous. When trying to decide where to go next summer, it was a no-brainer to choose London when I priced out that London would be 1/3 of the cost of spending a week in Hawaii.

I told my son about the end of the world scenario with the 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9 time sequence while we were eating lunch. The poor kid sat and quivered watching the time tick by on his IPOD and even called his Mom to say “goodbye”….just in case….

We ate at a new Chinese Buffet in a nearby town. It passed the first three criteria we have for choosing good Chinese food….

1. There were no audible barks or screams from caged dogs, monkeys, cats, or other domesticated or wild animals in the kitchen whenever the kitchen door opened up.
2. There were no visible beaks, claws, whiskers, or teeth in any of the buffet items.
3. The cooks all appeared to be actual Asians unlike most Chinese places in Texas where only Spanish is spoken in any kitchen.

Lance Armstrong, now 37yrs old (Ancient in Cycling), and having not raced in the Tour De France for 3 years….is now less than 1 second behind the overall leader after the first week of the race. Looks like he has a great chance of winning his 8th tour.

My son’s 12 yr old logic on hygiene. He gets up, takes a bath in the morning, goes outside into the 101 degree heat, mows the yard, jumps on the trampoline, and does other activities so that he comes in the house drenched in sweat, covered in dirt and grass, and has bugs, flies, and mosquitoes buzzing around him in a swarm. The kid smells so bad that the cats all keel over and flowers wilt as he walks past……yet…..in his world….he does NOT need to bathe or shower…..because he already had a bath this morning…….

We have raised a junior sized, lazy little smelly elephant. The kid just needs some straw and a cage and he will be happy.

Billy Bob Thornton is a dude that can seem like a genius one minute and a raving lunatic the next. He appeared on Bill Maher last week and had a great point that really made me think about the state of Modern Music. He put it this way……. Think of all the great artists in music that all started their careers between the years of 1955-1975. For example…..Elvis, Chuck Berry, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Doors, Elton John, Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, The Eagles, Etc. There are literally tons of huge musical talents that all got their starts in that era. That music will live on for centuries and those artists will be famous for centuries. Now, name the acts that have popped up since 1975 that you think will be famous centuries from now. When compared to the 1955-1975 era, there are very few. Madonna is one, Bruce Springsteen another…though he started in the early 70’s before he made it big……Prince might be another…..but the names do not come as fast and furious as the 1955-1975 era. Billy Bob argued that music is dying…at least music that will last for centuries to come. Surely, 200 years from now, you will still be listening to Beatles songs just like we listen to old classical music today…….Will we listening to Jonas Brothers or Miley Cyrus songs 200 years from now? I don’t think so…… I think Billy Bob got this one right. Looking at my own music collection, 75% of the music is from pre-1985 or so. From 1985 to the present, the number of artists that I like is pretty small.

After watching the Michael Jackson Memorial, all day, on every channel on the satellite, my first thought is that you would have to be a pretty cold and hard person to have not gotten choked up at the end when his 11yr old daughter tearfully told the world what a great daddy Michael Jackson was to her.

With that great, touching moment fresh in my memory…..I shudder when I think back to just yesterday when the biggest Idiot on the planet….Congressman Peter King of New York, released a video in which he criticized the media and the American public who were wasting their time covering a “pervert, child molester, and pedophile” and that Michael Jackson had done nothing good in the world except “Sing and Dance a Little…” What an absolute IDIOT!!

Even if Michael Jackson had been convicted of every single crime he was ever accused of…..he has still done more positive work on this earth than the IDIOT BLOWHARD CONGRESSMAN….will EVER do in his life…..a million times over. Why do we elect these Idiot’s?

But, as we know, and as many forget, Michael Jackson was never convicted of anything. Innocent until PROVEN guilty right? Not in Congressman King’s world.

All the performers were great. Even Al Sharpton, who usually makes me cringe, was in top form.

Today we saw more of Michael’s 3 kids on camera than we had ever seen in their lives. We even heard one of his children speak in public for the first time. No matter how unorthodox his methods, you gotta give Michael credit for keeping his kids sheltered from the media so that they could live a semi-anonymous existence…up until now. Now, unfortunately, just like their Dad, they will be hounded and pursued by the Paparazzi and Press for the rest of their lives.

Sarah Palin’s abrupt quitting still has me and the rest of the world scratching our heads. In her world, what she did was perfectly acceptable….given the reasons that she supplied in her news conference. The only problem is….no one else but her seems to have heard any reasons in her news conference. All I know is….if after this little fiasco…she is STILL considered a possible GOP candidate for President…..then the GOP is much further down the toilet than even I think they are. Surely there has to be a handful of more qualified….mentally stable candidates out there?……..aren’t there?

Facebook really hurts my head. My wife lays in bed half the night last night helping her friend Teresa “farm” tomatoes on her Facebook farm. Today, Teresa comes over (in real life) and delivers a container of actual fresh tomatoes to my wife. Hmmmm…. Is there a Cash and Coin farm on Facebook where they can grow money and spread it around? Just wondering.

Wishing you all a safe and happy 4th of July weekend!

The plans here: Our town has a huge fireworks show out over the lake and our driveway is one of the best viewing spots in town. We are having about a dozen friends and family down for junk food, drinks, mosquitoes, oppressive heat and humidity, and the horrific sight of the youngsters setting themselves ablaze with sparklers and other cheaply made Chinese fireworks.

Good times.

Last night, I got to watch the entire Sarah Palin news conference for the first time and what an eye opener it was! I too have to believe that there is something more going on behind the scenes that we do not yet know about. That news conference was an incoherent, rambling mess that you could tell had been thrown together in a big hurry with little preparation. The news conference was so hastily called and then launched so quickly that many of the members of the press in Alaska did not even make it in time for the news conference. What’s the hurry? It could not have waited an extra hour or two? A bunch of the junk that she babbled on about for 15 minutes just did not make sense….though if you listened to her tone….she thought that quitting was the perfectly normal route to take. She babbled on with some analogy about being a point guard and knowing when to pass the ball for the team to win…..forgetting to mention that the point guard does not pass the ball…..and then quit the team and walk off the court in mid-game. She babbled on about not believing in being a “lame-duck” and that the best choice was to step aside now. If she had won the Election and was serving as VP….and John McCain announced he would not run for a second term as President….is it her belief that the two of them should then “step aside” so they are not true lame ducks? It makes no sense. It makes perfect sense in Palinville but to people with actual brain function….it does not make sense. Something is real fishy here. Even the most die-hard GOP pundits on FOX NEWS are scratching their heads on this one. I have yet to find one serious analyst that will publicly say that this move is a good move if she has intentions of running for the Presidency in 2012. Oh sure, Rush Limbaugh and the other GOP Blowhard talking heads will all come out on Monday and will somehow pin the blame for all this on President Obama and the liberally biased media, but behind the scenes….even old Rush is probably scratching his head and thinking “What the hell is she smokin up there?” She asked the voters in Alaska to give her 4 years as Governor. She quit on them with a year and a half left. The lady is an Enigma……or maybe…just maybe…. she is truly an Idiot after all.

Sarah Palin is quitting as Governor of Alaska.

(Start fireworks celebration and patriotic music now)

As to EXACTLY why she is stepping down……I don’t think anyone, including her, has a real answer to that question.

Rumor has it that she met with Senator Mark Begich just 2 days ago and gave no indication to him at all that she was about to drop this bombshell.

Others say she is taking advice from people deep within the GOP…..the same rocket scientists responsible for the great showing of the McCain/Palin ticket during the 2008 Election.

Others say she is listening to the advice of close-friends in Alaska…..the people responsible for taking her from housewife, to city council, to mayor, to Governor,…..but people who have no clue about National politics.

Some people say that she is just fed up with, and tired of, the constant negative press that she has received since being named as the GOP Vice-Presidential candidate. Welcome to national politics. In this day of 24hr news and an Internet crawling with millions of outspoken bloggers (like yours truly)….everyone, repeat, everyone in politics is going to be under constant attack….24hrs a day. Again, welcome to national politics.

Some say that she has grown tired of the near constant investigations for ethics violations that have swirled around her since her candidacy for VP was launched.

Some say that she wants to forget politics and just go back to being a wife and mother full-time. If that is the case, power to her. At least she makes that wise decision now, and not later in her career, when she might have been in an even higher powered office. (Senate/VP/President?)

Some say that this all part of her strategy in her quest to become the GOP nominee for President in 2012. How quitting on your state and the people who elected you…halfway through your term…..is good strategy for anything…is beyond me. If she chooses to run for President, does she not think that this kind of erratic behavior and strategy will NOT be used against her to a great degree? If she wants to run for President, fine. Why not finish out her term as Governor and THEN announce she is not running for re-election to the office? Quitting now…….will only hurt any further aspirations she might have for any future elected position in Government.

Maybe she wised up and realized that she is a good, decent woman and that she does not have the soul-less backbone needed to play in modern politics. We have all seen politics play out on TV and in the media over the last decade. It is slimy, dirty, sleazy place where good people get crushed and immoral, corrupt, lying thieves all flourish. A National Politician these days is as trustworthy as a Used Car Salesman. Maybe she realized that she could not stoop to the slimy level needed to survive in modern politics. I know I couldn’t. If this is the case, I wish her and her family a long and happy life. This will be the best decision she ever made….for herself and for them. I have no doubt she is a good woman and a good person. I have always just attacked that I felt that she was in no way qualified to be Vice-President of the United States, a position that puts her a heartbeat away from being President. She just does not have the political experience necessary for the job. That has always been my beef with her. Maybe she had aspirations of national office and when McCain came knocking…she gladly answered the door and said “yes” to his offer to be his running mate. Maybe she then saw the true cost and ugly underbelly of US Politics…outside of Alaska. Maybe, she has decided to say…”Thanks…but no Thanks”.

All I know, Idiot that I am, is that she is Quitting as Governor. As to her motives, as of right now, they are still shrouded in mystery. Maybe in the next few days she can have an interview with Katie Couric and she can mumble and stumble her way through trying to explain why she is quitting.

It’s time for Saturday Night Live to get on the phone to Tina Fey……surely there has to be some kind of comedic gold that can be had with this latest development…..

I pray that she sits down and spills the beans….and soon! Already, in the few short hours since her announcement, the forums on the Internet are ablaze with the two parties each blaming the other for her decision to quit. Maybe she too has a “Soul-mate” down in Argentina that no one knows about……hmmmmmm Has she been hiking on the Appalachian Trail lately? Good grief Palin….give us the goods!

First of all, to those of you FACEBOOK devotees and fanatics out there in Cyberland…..Sorry, but I cannot continue to use the site. I tried….I really did. My wife says that I need to use it because…(in her words..) “I have no LIFE”…but after watching FACEBOOK for a few months….I think I would lose what little semblance of life I have left….by staying on the site. No offence. I am just anti-social with a capital “A”. My wife is now “farming” on her FACEBOOK page and spends endless glassy-eyed hours drooling and staring at her screen…..watching her imaginary cyber vegetables grow……and worse yet, she has succumbed to the point of no return and spends hours watching her friends tend their own cybergardens……

No Thank You! I will go no nuts and die a lonely death the old fashioned way…thank you very much!

The oldest kid is still here. He is due to fly home to Indiana on Monday. We will be filing bankruptcy on Tuesday morning. I had forgotten how much a 22yr old can eat. I would check the fridge to see what crumbs are left…..but he ate the fridge.

Today, me and the boys went to the movies down in civilization. The boys saw “Transformers” while I went solo and saw “The Hangover”. It was hilarious! Highly recommended to all adults out there. Zach Gakjalkldkhalskdhlkalskhdlkhkis is a riot and is alot more funny than anything Dane Cook has done on screen. Just my opinion.

Poor Karl Malden died yesterday and just like Farrah Fawcett, his death is going all but unnoticed due to Michael Jackson coverage being on 25 hours a day. Oh, by the way…..New York City was nuked off the planet a few days ago…..they will have reports on the tragedy…AFTER…Michael’s funeral coverage.

Karl Malden was the first celebrity I ever wrote to for an autograph. He sent me 3. He was a classy guy and lived a good full life. He was married to the same woman for 70 years. My wife has been with me for 18 1/2 and will tell you it feels like 70 years!

The daughter has been living with the boyfriend ever since her return to Texas a week ago….and we have still never met him. Maybe I will be able to meet him at their wedding……..

According to her big brother….their apartment has one lone chair for people to sit on. We offered her an ugly love seat for free but she does not want it…because it is UGLY. We inherited it from my Mother-in-Law years ago…because it was FREE. Sure, it’s UGLY….but more important….it is FREE. I am a master tightwad. Free will always trump UGLY any day.

Us boys took my father to a minor-league baseball game earlier in the week and had a blast. The ballpark is right next door to the IKEA furniture store. If you have never heard of IKEA…it is a Swedish furniture mega-store that is the size of Rhode Island. We ate dinner in the IKEA restaurant. We had to call the wives on the cell phones to brag that we were actually eating dinner….in a furniture store! The place is huge. We will have to make another trip back to just go through the store because I think you will need about 8 hours to see everything in the store.

Farrah Fawcett passing away had a huge effect on my autograph blog. She had over 50,000 hits by herself in the days after her death. The autograph blog is now well over 100,000 more total views than this blog.

I love the idiot spaz who keeps leaving comments on one of my political posts from like 9 months ago…. Does the idiot not read and notice that the post was from last fall? The election is over you spaz……My guy won…your guy lost….life goes on…….and no….I will not post any of your comments…..not because I am scared….but rather because I get sadistic pleasure at deleting your gripes and delusional thoughts. Try again next election….and thanks for stopping by everyday!

To the Governor of South Carolina. I don’t know what the Hell you are smoking to ever think that telling a reporter that your mistress is your “soul-mate” and that you are “trying” to fall back in love with your wife…..is a good thing. Any woman that keeps a man around that is “trying” to fall back in love with her…should also be shot. As far as I know, his wife has all but disowned him and I hope she moves on with her life and let’s the dirtball go back to his “soul-mate”.

SOMETHING ALREADY

There, I did it. At the insistence of, and based on the nearly non-stop begging and groveling employed by my Dear Blonde Cousin in Oregon…..honoring her request……I have written….

SOMETHING ALREADY

I hope you are happy. My work here is done. Now, if you will excuse me, I must return to my 134 straight hours.. marathon… of watching non-stop Michael Jackson death coverage on the satellite!

And just in case Dear Cousin is not satisfied with this latest blogging effort….for her sake, and for the sake of her sanity and for family unity….I will throw in an extra…

SOMETHING ALREADY

No need to thank me….I was happy to oblige. Now……back to Michael…..sob sob sniffle sniffle……

Kids #1 and #2 of our brood just arrived in Texas on Thursday after having driven down from Indiana. Our 19yr old daughter (Kid #2) just graduated from Cosmetology/Hairstyling college and has come back to the Lone Star State to live with her boyfriend……a boy we have yet to meet….so we cannot yet confirm on whether he does or does not…actually exist. Our 22yr old son, recently discharged from the Marine Corps and now enjoying a new career of unemployment like millions of Americans…rode down with his sister so he could visit us for the first time in 2 1/2 years. When he left home just a few years ago, he was still a fresh-faced kid who barely cracked 100 lbs soaking wet. Now he is a hulking, weight-lifting obsessed, tattooed behemoth who could break his dear old Dad with the flick of his finger. My how times change. So, for the next week or so, our entire family will at least be within 20 miles of each other for the first time in a long time. This is the first time our son has seen our lakeside home we bought a couple years ago and he likes it a LOT better than the tiny manufactured home (trailer) that we used to live in. He finds it funny that we live right on a lake, have water 30 feet from our front door, yet have never fished, boated, swam, or even touched the water on the lake. What can I say…..we are not water folk. It’s nice to look at….but I have no desire to go play in the lake every day. It is like when I lived in a small town on the Oregon Coast. I think we went to the beach like twice all year. The ocean was just there….again….good to look at….but not a place you had to go play on every day.

Today we took him to our favorite Chinese Buffet for lunch. 70 miles away. Only in Texas would you drive 140 miles round trip just to eat at a particular restaurant.

We drove home from lunch and when we hit the bank here in town, the sign said it was 108 degrees. Ouch!

I talked to my parents about 6pm and they said that their thermometer showed that it had cooled off to 105. Break out the sweaters!

Only 3 weeks until Red River. It has been in the upper 70’s up there with lows in the 30’s at night. We can’t wait.

I really feel sorry for poor Farrah Fawcett. She was a truly classy lady who deserved to be remembered and honored by the networks and magazines when she died…..but Michael Jackson sure tossed her to the back pages. My autograph blog did get a HUGE spike in views after Farrah passed away with well over 50,000 people visiting the site in just the last 3 days. About 80% of those views were of my autographed photo of Farrah. Michael Jackson was a huge talent and deserves all the press and coverage that his death has caused…but let’s not forget Farrah.

My dear wife is finally done with all her online Masters Degree courses at Texas Tech. Now, she is in the process of watching the 94 hours of TV shows that have been saved on the DVR over the last 3 months. She should be done sometime in October or so.

She graduated with a Bachelors from the University of Texas back in 1989 and now has a Masters from Texas Tech. The kid and I would like to see her do the graduation ceremony at Tech but she has no desire to. She holds no allegiance to Texas Tech at all. For my family in Oregon, this would be like her being a Duck and then getting her Masters at Oregon State. The two schools hate each other. She only went to Tech for her Masters because UT did not offer her particular course of study.

Tomorrow we are taking the big kid to see the family up in Chillicothe. That’s another 150 miles each way. Between eating lunch and visiting family….we will be racking up the mileage on our new car this weekend.

I don’t know why the Governor of South Carolina does not just go ahead and resign right now. How he can go in and face his peers and his employees after seeing his love letters plastered all over the media is beyond me. Those people will never look at him or respect him the same way again.

Do all Politicians cheat on their spouses? Is there a requirement for that in some rulebook that we don’t know about? If I was a woman married to a politician and the husband made it famous…I would divorce his butt right then and there….BEFORE he did the mandatory infidelity thing. Some people on TV have tried to defend these idiots by saying that these politicians just mirror what is going on in our entire society….basically implying that WE ALL cheat. I don’t know what they are talking about because that theory does not fly in my neck of the woods.

Personally, I think that Infidelity, drug use, conviction of felonies, etc. should all be violations that require immediate removal from office for publicly elected officials all the way from the President down to the level of local mayors.

What would the media coverage have been like if Elvis or John Lennon had died in our current era of 24hr news TV and the Internet? I think Elvis’ Death would have been twice as big as Michael Jackson’s has been.

I still have a “Off the Wall” ALBUM by Michael Jackson. An actual ALBUM. Wonder how much that will be worth now?

EBAY is crawling with snakes that are ripping people off right and left with fake Michael Jackson signatures and autographed photos. I wrote about it on my autograph blog. A lot of naive, unsuspecting people are paying hundreds of dollars for autographed photos that are just COPIES and that are NOT authentic. A lot of people are going to get rich off selling that crap on EBAY.

It is a sad enough day when we lose any great celebrity. It is especially tragic when we lose two giants in one single day. Today, the Entertainment Industry lost both Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett. I am 45 years old. In this one day, we have lost probably both the biggest sex symbol, and the biggest music icon of my era. I went to High School in the late 70’s/Early 80’s time frame. In that period, Farrah was “THE” sex symbol, and I was a proud owner of “The Poster” (Below). In that same period, although Prince, and later, Bruce Springsteen would give him a run for his money, Michael Jackson was the King of Pop Music. MTV exploded during my High School years and Michael Jackson was it’s biggest mainstay. While Farrah’s passing was not totally unexpected given her brave battle with Cancer, the loss of Michael Jackson has shocked everyone. It is truly a sad day. We have really lost two giants and they will both be greatly missed.