Don't know what it is

About girls on the beach that I love so much.

Goatee

I don't shave when I'm on leave.  It's nice to not scrape your face off if you don't have to.  So for the past few days I've been rocking a goatee again.  I'll shave the sides of my face and my neck just to look somewhat groomed, but I leave the rest of my face alone.

The Ragin' Mrs. met me when I was a civilian and had facial hair.  She never saw my chin until I re-enlisted and shaved for the first time, some three years after we started dating.

To be honest, I can't wait until I retire and can grow it again.  It makes the morning ritual that much easier.  I miss having a goatee.  Seems odd to want something so simple, but there it is.

How I loathe this facist state

If you'd like to find a gas station that sells non-ethanol polluted fuel, there's a map for that!

Now, look at Kalifornia on that map.

The ethanol they put into gas steals at least three miles per gallon from me.  My little Scoot has a ten gallon tank, and when I run non-ethanol, I get at least 250 miles from that tank, and that's in stop-and-go traffic.

Put in the ethanol crap, and it drops to 210-200 per tank.  I have to purchase a gallon and a half MORE of the ethanol crap to drive the same distance as normal, unpolluted gasoline.  And gas ain't cheap here in this filthy fucking fascist freakshow of Los Angeles. 

I cannot wait to leave this fucking hell-hole for good.  I'm going to piss on the "You're Leaving California!" sign they have at the border, and I'm never looking back.  And never coming back.  Fuck this commie-run septic-tank of a state.  It could fall into the ocean and I wouldn't give a shit.

Driving

I have spent a huge chunk of the past week driving around various states visiting various family members for the holidays.  I am loving being able to sit down on my own couch and read up on the news that I've missed.

Boise State got it's ass handed to it in Hawaii.  And the team lost it's head coach to the University of Washington.  Gotta see how they're going to rebuild with their new coach, who's a Boise State guy from a few years back.

Obama is on vacation pissing off the locals in Hawaii.  Hey, you fuckers voted for that shithead.  YOU deal with him!

Phil Robertson is back on Duck Dynasty on A&E.  It seems that if the whiney douch-nozzles want to keep their cash flowing, they'd better tell the Facist ProgNazis at GLAAD to go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.

Meh.  I'm going to have a cigar and do some more catching up.

Did you all have a great Christmas?

I spent half the day in my PJs, and ate so much that all I could do was lay back and rub my swollen stomach.

Life was good.

With Angelic Host Proclaim....

Gloria en Excelsis Deo

I love Christmas music, especially when it's well sung.

Almost there

But this song is too beautiful to only have it one night.

Need better speakers

So, about the Duck Dynasty kerfluffle

Look, the Duck Commander folks are going to be fine, on or off TV.  Let's not forget that Phil Robertson was a multimillionaire with his own wildly successful business before he ever got on TV, OK?

With that being said, I think A&E just screwed the pooch.  Hard.  They knew who the Robertsons were.  They knew what the Robertsons believed.  That's the hook to the entire show!  And Duck Dynasty has a huge audience of people who are happy to see hard-working Christians on their TV sets.  People who pray over their dinners, and enjoy watching a TV show where a family prays together before they tuck in to their meal.

So A&E caved to the tiny minority and suspended Phil Robertson "indefinitely".  How'd the rest of the Robertson clan react?  Well, just like you might suspect:

We have had a successful working relationship with A&E but, as a family, we cannot imagine the show going forward without our patriarch at the helm.  We are in discussions with A&E to see what that means for the future of Duck Dynasty.

I was reading somewhere else about how the Robertsons had signed a contract and they couldn't get out of it without paying a load of cash, and blah blah blah.  Someone else responded "You have no idea just how much "Screw You!" a redneck can come up with when he puts his mind to it."  I have no doubt that the Robertson clan is going to either get their way with A&E, or find some other place to do their show.  Or for that matter, to simply fold up shop on the TV show and go back to being wildly successful millionaires in Louisiana.  But I've heard that Glenn Beck has already put out an offer to bring Duck Dynasty to his Blaze TV.

Now, wouldn't THAT be a hoot?

Kicking the Hornet's Nest

You know a guy has hit his target when he writes a blog post denouncing Atheism, and he gets 1,430 comments on it.

Wow.

Well done, Sir!

By all means read the article, and if you have the time read some of the comments.  They're....  instructive.

Remember, kids....

Bleach is our friend.  Always keep some handy.  You never know when you'll have to completely disinfect the bathtub.  We filled it up, dumped bleach into it, and let it sit overnight to make sure anything in there was dead.

Woo. Hoo.

You want to have fun?  Try plunging your toilet, only to have sewage back up into your bathtub.  Then go outside to the spot where the pipe meets the sewer and see water (you wish it's only water) dripping into the crawlspace of your house.

Yeah.  I should be in bed right now.

UPDATE:  Tree roots.  You could actually smell them as the snake was cutting through them.  There were at least four sections where the plumber had to back the snake out and push it back in to deal with the roots.  We'll see how long his clean-out job lasts, but with the sweet-gum trees around here, it's only a matter of time before they plug it up again.

Reno erat Rudolphus

HAHAHAA!

*snort*

You want to know how you love someone?

It's when you hurt when they hurt.

When they cry, and you feel that stab in your soul.

It's not some teenage infatuation, or some pop-music ideal of love.  It's sharing the sorrow that they have, and both wanting to take that pain away, and yet understanding that they have to undergo that pain on their own, yet still suffering with them.

Every description of love seems to involve the glassy-eyed, Romeo and Juliet, "Let's die for each other!" kind of love.  I've seen every few novelists actually get into the painful side of love; the part where you hurt in your soul because your loved one hurts.  I suppose it's because so much writing today is done in a politically correct, pussy-whipped sparkly-vampire novel, and that sucks, because it takes away so much of the actual experience.

But then, if the writers haven't experienced it, how can they write about it?

Meh.  I've drank to much.

Leftism is inherently violent

Ace of Spades has a link to the news report on the newest school shooting in Colorado.  And the shooter is a hard-core Leftist, as usual.

Trying to explain all the different ways that Leftism is violent is like trying to explain all the different ways that mercury can poison you.  But the proof of the pudding is in the tasting.  Time after time after time, the mass shootings that go on are perpetrated either by people who are bug-fucking nuts, or Leftists.

But I repeat myself.

Memories

A post over at Og's place brought back a memory from my high school days.

I was over at a friend's house, and he had invited some of his other friends over; please note that just because we were all friends with my amigo, that doesn't mean we were all friends with each other.

My friend had some bb guns, and in a fit of inspiration, his other friends suggested that we go out and see if we could shoot each other.  I guess they figured that with three of them and only one of me, I'd be easy bait for them to have some fun with.

I do recall telling you folks that I grew up in the country, right?  And that my father is a Marine?

I spent the better part of an hour and a half peppering their asses with that bb gun.  Every time they thought they had me cornered, I'd pop a round into someone's leg, wait for the loud "OW!" and hightail to cover somewhere else while they fired at me in vain.  "Kentucky Windage" was not a part of their lexicon.  It was a part of mine.  I left them fuckers welted, and I enjoyed every minute of it. 

I told you all that to tell you this.

After all was said and done, and we were drinking water, one of those fuckers pumped their bb gun up to max, snuck up behind me and shot me right in the ass.  My eyesight went red; my friend blocked me from killing the gutless pussy who did it.  I managed to leave the premises without committing murder, although the little shitheel never walked on the same side of the street as I from that day on.

But I went home, and that night as I was getting undressed for bed, I saw a small little hole in my jeans.  Right where I had been shot.  Uh oh.

Took of my skivvies.  Same hole, same location, with blood around it.  Well, crap.

Went to the bathroom, and saw the hole in my butt-cheek, still bleeding a little.  Not good.  What to do, what to do?  I couldn't find any tweezers to pull it out, and trying to twist myself in half just to see the area was making me cramp up after fifteen minutes.  The bb was still lodged in my butt-cheek.  So I did what I didn't want to do - I went and got my Dad.

"Hey....  um....  Dad?"
"Yes Dave?"
"Can you help me out a bit?"
"Sure...  what's the problem?
"Well....  um....  there's this bb in my butt, and...."

And that is how my Dad ended up digging a BB out of my ass with what tools he could find in the bathroom - a syringe needle (Mom was an RN at that point; she used to come home and just dump her pockets out in the drawer.  We had syringe needles, but no syringes) and a bottle of witch-hazel to wipe the blood away.  I still have the scar on my ass.  And after he got the bb out, he handed it to me, washed his hands, gave me a look and said "We will never....  ever....  speak of this again."  My mom still doesn't know.

A customer review

So, on the advice from a reader, I recently checked out a place called Gotham Cigars.  I looked at all the various offerings, saw what they had, and bought a five-pack of stogies.

Now, there are probably as many different ways of reviewing a cigar business as there are people who do reviews.  But for me, the best way to check out the quality of a shop is to see what they have in the bargain section.  I've found that a lot of folks have about the same prices on the top-shelf sticks.  You can only discount a Montecristo so low before you're losing money with the sale.  But the good shops I've found have the best bargains in terms of quality of smokes.  So with that in mind, I went bargain shopping.

I ended up getting the Alec Bradley Tempus Imperator seconds 5-pack.  It was $14.50 for the pack, $5.99 S&H for a total of $20.49 out the door (so to speak).  A touch over $4 per stick on Tempus ANYTHING is a damn good price, considering you'll never see a Tempus for under $10 a stick here in the LA area. 

Payment was collected on November 30th, and I received notice that package shipped on December 5th.  That's a touch longer than I would expect, but I waited to see how fast they got to my door.

Cigars showed up on December 7th.  Very nice.  They were packaged well enough that I could smoke them right out of the box.  I know, because I did smoke one of them right then and there.  The rest went into the humidor for a nice little nap.  The stogies were everything I would expect out of an AB Tempus.  All in all, it was one of the best bargains I've gotten on a second from one of the big name factories.

So, was I happy?  Well, you'll notice that Gotham Cigars is over on the sidebar under the "Be A Man" heading, so that's a yes.  I'll be giving their shop a more in-depth look later on, after the holidays have finished draining my bank account dry.

Battery issues

Had to deal with some hardware issues on the ol laptop.  Sorry bout the free ice cream going missing.

Veni, Veni, Emmanuel