Appearances Can Be Deceiving - A Story - Royal Dog In Trouble - Les McCann and Eddie Harris - Baily

Good Thursday morning to you. Hope this finds you well.

I've been thinking about a little story about how a butt crack changed my life. Contrary to how it sounds, this is a story for young people or anyone thinking about "appearances" being too important.

When I was around 12 years old I loved to ski. The ski area at Red Lodge was about 40 miles from where I lived. We would bum rides from whoever we could to take us skiing. Someone's brother, dad, teacher. One of the people who took us was a teacher named Mr. Beel.

Mr. Beel had come to rural Montana from Berkeley California to teach high school kids about science. In my book he was cool, smart, funny. He had an old Studebaker that would barely make it up the hills to Red Lodge. The ceiling cover was coming off in the back. We would take turns holding it up with one hand to keep it off our heads.

I grew up in an area of Montana and in a family where most people did not have a lot of money. I was lucky to have a pair of skiis, a peanut butter sandwich and cocoa for lunch and money for a lift ticket. I didn't have cool skiis, boots, or clothes. That was a problem for me for a short time in my life. I was at an age where "appearances" were important. Skiing is a sport where you can see people who have a lot of money and show it with how they dress, what kind of equipment they have.

I was in that early adolescent phase and became self-concious and a little worried about looking like a dork in my jeans with my non top of the line equipment. That is until I was saved by Mr. Beel's butt crack (he has no clue I'm sure).

Here's how I had my epiphany.

My intellectual hero the overweight, hippie teacher, scientist, ski-car driver Mr. Beel didn't have cool ski clothes or equipment either. But he was a cool guy. One day we were at the ski run and I walked into the cafeteria and saw Mr. Beel chatting with some people about something. He was happy, they were happy, he was animated they were animated....and his butt crack was hanging out for everyone to see. No one seemed to care or notice. He didn't care. He was oblivious to how he looked. At that moment I decided I didn't care how I looked either....I haven't tied my shoes, brushed my hair, or worn a belt for the last 40 years.

Back on point again. What actually happened was at twelve I realized no one really cares what I look like. People care what they look like. The main thing is to be happy...and forget about your clothes or your butt crack hanging out or whatever.

Afterthought.......After I wrote this I thought I should add a few words of caution. If you do walk around with body parts exposed; two things to keep in mind (a) you don't want to hurt other peoples eyes (fat people like me should have to wear shirts)...Did you read about that golf course in Iowa or somewhere where they forced fat old men to put on shirts? I say "hear hear" to that idea my good gentlemen and women and (b) you don't want to get arrested...well probably not anyway.

You've heard the old saying about walking around with your pant's unzipped right? It pays to advertise baby ;-)

---------------------------------------------------------------

What else could we talk about this morning. That's sort of a royal we..since I know you can't talk to me.

I see one of the royal dogs is in trouble. A royal dog of the canine variety that is. This has to be important news; it made it all the way to the Topeka Kansas Capital Journal where I clipped the AP story below. From what I gather not only did this dog go on a biting spree, she then tried to pin the rap on another dog.

Here's the AP wire -

"A dog belonging to Princess Anne attacked a royal maid five days after it fatally mauled one of Queen Elizabeth II's beloved corgis, Buckingham Palace said. Florence the bull terrier bit the maid's leg at the royal Sandringham estate in eastern England, the palace said. The woman was treated for a minor bite following Saturday's attack and didn't need to go to the hospital.

Five days earlier, Florence savaged a corgi named Pharos at Sandringham, injuring him so badly that he had to be put down. Media reports had widely blamed another of Princess Anne's bull terriers, Dotty, for the corgi incident, but Buckingham Palace cleared her Tuesday and blamed Florence instead.

Buckingham Palace refused to comment on whether Florence would have to be put down after biting the maid, who was in her 50s, according to a report in The Sun newspaper.

British media reported that Florence had no history of violent behavior, unlike Dotty, who bit two children in a park in 2002 and landed Princess Anne with a $880 fine."

---------------------------------------------------------


Have you ever listened to Les McCann and Eddie Harris Album Swiss Movement Live at Montreax? Damn that is one fine album. The best track on it is "Compared to What" which I thought was written by Roberta Flack but apparently by Gene McDaniels

Here is a link to the

Les McCann and Eddie Harris Album Swiss Movement Live at Montreax

and to the

Compared to What Lyrics

It's some great jazz saxophonic coolness baby. Turn it up real loud and it will pump you up. I got turned on to it one summer when I was working in the Grand Teton's and living in an employee dorm. There was a wild man (in a good sense) living next door and every afternoon/night when he got home he would crank that song and we'd rock out.

In case you were wondering what in the hell this has to do with Princess Anne's corgi one of the lines in that song is

Tired old ladies kissin' dogs
Hate the human, love that stinking mutt (I can't stand it!)
Try to make it real compared to what?

I can sympathize. Sometime I'll tell you the story about my crazy aunt and uncle (I mean that in a good way) who lived in a boxcar in the Big Sky country in the big open. They didn't have any kids but they had chiuauas they treated like kids. My sister and I hated those dogs. They were always sick, with little casts, or wraps on their legs. They would ride on the floor of the front of their car and sort of stink the place up. Maybe I'm making this up. I love dogs. I had a little dog that was truly my best friend (animal friend). I'd talk to him all the time. Not in a weird Son of Sam like way but like a normal person who talks to dogs, crows, cats, birds. Hey what's normal anyway?

I'm going to stick a picture of my dog here. Even though it makes me sad since he's gone now. Man I loved that guy. Like they say on that Horizon Air commercial you can still smell him on me and I imagine some of the people I work with may want to have a little talk with me about that ;-)




Baily was the best dog a person could want. I'm sure he's in dog heaven now.

I should be moseying along now.

Wishing you the best and wondering if you like this song too
Won't You Be My Neighbor

Hope to see you soon neighbor.

Jack

Thoughts At Closing Time - Straight Story - Teach Us to Count our Days - The Flower Fades

I have 45 minutes until closing time at 2 am. Just you and me Joe. Frank Sinatra on the jukebox singing the song Johnny Mercer wrote -

One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Things change too fast sometimes. Kids grow up, parents grow old, years on the job come and go. Sometimes it seems like an instant.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Have you ever seen that movie the Straight Story? Alvin, the old guy driving the tractor to see his sick brother, says "the hardest part about getting old is remembering when you was young."


Audio Clips from The Straight Story

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Have you ever read the 90th Psalm?

It's one of my favorites. Moses wrote it. He is talking about eternity, God's power and human fraility.

One of the lines is,

So teach us to count our days
that we may gain a wise heart.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Another beautiful passage comes from Isaiah Chapter 40

A voice says, "Cry out!"
And I said, "What shall I cry?"
All people are grass,
their constancy is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
when the breath of the LORD blows upon it;
surely the people are grass.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

You know what I hope for you my friend?

That you are happy.

That you find a way to joy in your life.

Do what makes you happy when it's time to do that thing.

Work, get high, have kids, don't have kids, don't work, don't get high, drink, stop drinking...live, laugh and love.

Just one more Biblical verse for tonight To every thing there is a season

or if you prefer let's use the Byrds song written by Pete Seeger instead Turn Turn Turn

Peace and good night...drive safe now.


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Flan From the Butte Heritage Cookbook

Good Wednesday morning to you. It's just after midnight January 7 early in the morning and this new year 2004.

Have you ever made flan? I love that stuff. What I actually know how to make from scratch off the top of my head is custard. Custard and flan are sort of like first cousins in the food world. Custard uses the whole egg; flan only the yolk.

I made some flan last night from a mix my wife bought and was wondering how to make it from scratch. I looked in my Butte Heritage Cookbook and found this recipe in the Oriental section for flan.

8 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
2 cups fresh milk
1 lemon rind or vanilla for flavoring
3/4 cup brown sugar

Dissolve brown sugar in 1/4 cup water and cook over moderate heat until the sugar browns. Line a suitable mold with the mixture and set aside.

Scald the milk in a double boiler for 15 minutes. Blend the egg yolks with the sugar, milk and flavoring.

Pour into mold lined with carmelized sugar. Place this into a bigger pan half-filled with water and bake until mixture becomes firm.

Cool before removing from the mold.

Georgene Cachola
Georgena served in the Peace Corps in the Phillippines.

Sports v. Reality

Good Morning to You.

Hope you are feeling fine today. Can I get you a number three? Hash browns, two eggs over easy, toast and coffee?

Lots of college football today. Did you see the Texas Tech vs. Navy game the other day?

Texas Tech's team did some kind of choreographed dance number in the end zone after they scored a touchdown. The announcers, the Texas Tech coach, the refs and the fans were not happy. Texas Tech got an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.

I can't say I blame the players since they see that kind of nonsense on the NFL they probably think it's fine.

The problem I see with the end zone dances, players signing balls or making cell phone calls after touchdowns is that it may eventually blur the line between sport and entertainment to the point where you end up with something like professional wrestling or roller derby. Not a sport and not entertaining either (sorry for you professional wrestling and roller derby devotees...just my opinion).

I love the hoopla around sporting events I just don't like seeing individuals going to extremes to pat themselves on the back. It's classless if nothing else. Plus you could pull a muscle :-)

It's funny how we distort the importance of sports in our culture. We all (fans and players) have to remember it's all a game and not real. Real is a nurse in an emergency room working to save a critical patient, or a soldier in harms way, a mom taking care of a sick child, a pastor counseling someone grieving.

Having said that I'll get back to watching the football bowl games and looking forward to the Golden Gopher Texas Tech basketball game later today. Just trying to keep it in perspective.

Jack

Peacemakers

I got this today from a mailing list I'm on called Upper Room Reflections.

I think it's a good thought to end the year on.


==========================



THE INFANT'S MESSAGE OF PEACE

IF WE ARE TO BE truly peacemakers, I think we must move beyond the
notion of peace as the absence of conflict . ... Peace has to do with
the fullness of things, with lion and lamb lying down together, not a
world without lions. If we are to have hearts capable of the peace of
Christ, which does indeed pass all understanding, we must have hearts
capable of embracing the joy and the sorrow, the sacredness and the
sin of the world. ...

The infant in the manger at Bethlehem comes with a message of peace,
an announcement that all sad divisions, all the irreconcilable pieces
of our public and private lives will be brought together in the
celebration of "shalom" -- God's blessing, God's peace. This will
not, I think, occur when conflict has ceased. For creative conflict
is a necessary component of growth. Rather, peace will reign when our
forgiveness of self and others is wide and deep enough to create new
possibilities and, without the use of violence, to transform our
seeming impasses into new freedoms and joys.

-- Wendy M. Wright
THE VIGIL

Navy Stories

Good afternoon to you. Hope the holidays are treating you well.

Just about wrapped up 03.

Have you ever been on a ship that was refueling at sea, while underway in the dark?

I got a chance one time when I was on the USS Belleau Wood LHA 3 in the Navy. It was cool. The oil tender came up beside us. The bosun shot a line across to the tender. They pulled a cable across and set up a pulley system to pull the fuel line across. After we got connected we steamed side by side for hours getting our tank filled up.

Two parts stick with me about that experience. It was really pretty and there was some good music. Sounds like your high school prom you say?

For my money that refueling was pretty and had some good music. There were lights on the lines between the ships that danced and glowed as the ships steamed on in the night and the bosun mates got to play the Beatles "It's a Hard Day's Night" on the PA. It was cool.

One time some Marines gave me a ride in their amphibious tank vehicle on a nice sunny day off the coast of California. I'm not sure what those vehicles are called but they have a water jet type motor like you see on ski boats that shoots a big rooster tail of water into the air. The Marines were buzzing around and trying to spray each other with their rooster tails. It was a fun ride.

The ship was pretty quiet unless we had the Marines on board. We had a crew of maybe 800 sailors but the ship could hold maybe 2000 Marines or so. When the Marines came on board things got more exciting. As sailors we were used to the conditions on the ship and knew each other as crew members. The Marines came from land based activities and were used to more open space. It worked out fine..but tensions would get a little higher when the Marines were on board. You'd see a few fights between them....it was just a lot more crowded.

One of my various jobs as a sailor was movie projectionist. We showed movies in a big room up near the top of the ship. It was open and had folding chairs for people to sit on. Picture this.....

I'm in charge of the movie and the room is full of sailors, and Marines who aren't all that happy to be on board to begin with.

It was a projector with the big reels and it had a latch for holding those big reels in place.

Do you see where this is going?

I start the projector and a couple of minutes into the movie the reel comes off and rolls down the aisle with the film coming off in huge spirals. Whooooaaaaa baaaabbby I had some mad people on my hands. Sometimes I have sort of a natural clown tendency. I think people sort of relaxed watching me screw around and sweat trying to rewind all the film on that reel.

Besides my Jerry Lewis run's a projector act on the ship...I won the Stoker Award for something good. I know it wasn't stoking coal since the ship burned diesel.

One time I tightened a fuse holder on the bridge during night air ops. The loose holder was causing intermittent electrical power on the bridge with aircraft in the air waiting to land/takeoff. Not good. I had to work on the box hot. Luckily my natural clown stayed away.

Another time the back door of the ship was stuck down and we needed to load on amphibous ships and vehicles. That door weighed about 2000 tons and was always causing us trouble. The back end of the ship was designed to be filled with ballast and sink down so we could float small craft in and out. The problem was the seawater would mess up the switches on that door. I figured out a way to bypass the switches and get the door up. I heard later that our sister ship the USS Tarawa had done something similar and dropped the door causing some major damage.

I was a peacetime sailor...I just hope that all the real soldiers, sailors, airmen, airwomen, and marines know how much we appreciate what they do.

God Bless You All.

New Atlas Bar - Smoked Salmon - Fishing

Heh how ya doing?

You look marvelous darling.

Can I get you a short stack?

College hoops coming up this Saturday morning. Missouri v. Memphis, UCLA v. Michigan..and the NFL's Seahawks are down to the wire. Need to beat the San Francisco 49'rs to have chance at post season play.



The picture above is of me working at the New Atlas Bar circa 1976 or so. A photographer stopped by and asked if he could take a few pictures. That was quite a bar at the time. It had a library, tables where old men would play pinnochle or gin, a few tables for poker, lots of stuffed animals and or their heads. Pictures of airplanes. It was an interesting place. I worked for the owner T.P. Mulvihill. T.P. had been an ace fighter pilot in WWII. He would show up at 6 am every morning to do the books and then open at 8. The regular bar tender would come in at 10 to 6 and then I'd work the 6 to 2 am shift.

Through the wonders of the internet I was able to find this token from the New Atlas bar.

Note: I lost that picture of the saloon token. I have one around somewhere maybe I'll take a picture of it if I ever find it.

These tokens were used by the gin rummy players and could be redeemed at the bar. They were worth a bit. Which is 12.5 cents. You've heard the term, "two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar?" Or maybe "shave and a haircut 6 bits?"

Here's some background I googled up regarding Origination of the Term Bits for Units of Money

"Spanish pieces-of-eight were made of soft silver. Because coins were so scarce in the young country, large dollars were often cut into pieces, called “bits”. That practice is recalled today in the chant, “Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar”, or in the song-tag, “Shave and a haircut, six bits.”

Can I get you some more coffee?

I finished smoking that salmon last night. I think it was pink salmon with maybe a blackmouth thrown in. Someone gave it to my wife awhile back and she asked me to smoke it. Did you know there are 5 varieties of Pacific salmon? Chinook, Pink, Silver, Coho and Chum. There may be a sixth variety called the Cherry that lives on the other side of the Pacific nearer to Japan. There are five varieties of Pacific Salmon we can catch in the Pacific Northwest (Washington, Oregon, B.C., Vancouver Island, Alaska).

I love fishing. I think fisherman are eternal optimists. Generally whenever a friend and I were going to go fishing we would think in terms of catching our limits, how we were going to transport the big fish we caught home etc. The fact that more often than not we didn't have to worry about limits or transporting huge fish never really got to us. It's the excitement of the unknown that makes it so fun. Who know's what you might hook into. I used to do a lot of fly fishing, but I'm not adverse to using a worm, spinner, eggs, dynamite (just kidding).

One of my first jobs was selling worms for bait in front of the Kiwana's annual pancake breakfast. The Kiwana's would set up a huge tent in the city park bordering main street on the weekend that river fishing opened up. When I was six I set up a little stand in front of the tent to sell worms I had dug, for bait.

I used to tie flies. I spent a fair amount of time and money at Dan Bailey's in Livingston gathering fly tying supplies. My first try at fly fishing was shortly after I got a cheap fly rod at the local Gambles hardware store. I was just a kid and didn't have money for flies so I took a few feathers off a hat of my Mom's and tied them to some bait hooks. They looked sort of like crickets to me anyway. I was on cloud nine or ten when I actually caught some trout with my homemade flies. I was hooked.

Fishing a wet fly takes no particular skill...using a dry fly on the other hand is tricky. I grew up in some of the best trout fishing areas of Montana and loved to fish from the time I was a little boy using buttons on the end of my line because my Gram didn't want me hooking myself when I was about four.

Missouri is coming back in the basketball game so I'm going to cheer them on.

See you soon.

Cooking Breakfast Over a Fire - Yellowstone River Stories

Good morning. How are you? Can I get you a warm out of the oven cinnamon roll?

Maybe a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice?

Just a coffee?

So how was Christmas for you? I hope it was peace filled.

My wife and daughters are braving the crowds to do some shopping today. I get to stay home. Yes!

Have you ever cooked a breakfast over a camp fire? or any fire? I highly recommend you try it some time. Probably sort of tough for us city dwellers I know. You could use a bbq but an actual wood fire would be the best. When I was a boy my Gram would take my sister and me to campgrounds by the Yellowstone river or sometimes the Stillwater river, and cook us breakfast over a campfire before we all went to school. Gram was a teacher. She had a theory about how food tasted better over a fire. I'm not so sure now that I'm older what it was that made those times so special, I kind of think it was because we were outside having fun before school eating eggs and toast beside a beautiful Montana river.

I'm going to smoke some salmon today. I'll use my Johnny's Seasoning Salt and Brown Sugar brine, air dry then smoke using alder chips in a Little Chief Smoker...method. It'll be good and maybe remind me a little bit of being down by the Yellowstone with Gram smelling something good.

The Yellowstone is a big river, beautiful and unforgiving. One of Gram's brothers drowned in that river while taking some cattle across. He fell off his horse and couldn't survive the current. Gram gave me a pair of homemade spurs from one of her brothers...I don't know if it was that one or not. It's interesting to think of her family being cowboys of the type who actually rode horses and watched over cattle. One of her brothers named Con, was a fence rider which meant he spent most days on a horse riding along a rancher's fence to make sure it was intact.

A guy I used to go skiing with drown on that river too. He was a good swimmer and athlete but he got caught in some deadfall (trees stuck in the river) during a raft trip and couldn't get out.

I was on a raft trip where we came close to disaster on the Yellowstone due to not respecting the river. The river can be deceiving when you raft it in late summer. Slow and boring with some very treacherous spots for the unaware. We had about 10 adults and 6 kids, three rafts and inner tubes on that float. I'd been down the river many times. The mistake we made (I think now) is that no one was really in charge. There was a large sweeping turn in the river where the current had undercut the bank to expose tree roots. The water picked up speed and pushed towards that bank as it rounded the corner. The way to avoid the trouble was to paddle hard to the left which took you into a straight channel of the river and avoided the under cut.

We didn't make the decision in time and ended up letting the current push us into the bank, roots and near disaster. By the grace of God we all made it out of there. After the excitement of people getting out of overturned rafts and away from the crushing water the river flattened out, narrowed, and became shallow and fairly fast again. We had beer and pop in a small raft with a long rope tied to it. Somehow that rope got wrapped around my leg and I had a raft pulling me downstream faster than I could walk or run, and making it almost impossible to swim because it was pulling me feet first with the current. I thought I was going to drown before I was able to get the rope untangled from my leg.

I grew up on that river and had a great deal of respect for it.

Beer and pop floating down a river reminds me of something I saw fishing for trout in Montana. One day I was driving home on a road on the upper Gallatin River. I was driving over a bridge and saw a red and white cooler floating down the river. I knew that there was another bridge not to far down the road where I could get out and maybe intercept that cooler. I did intercept it. The cooler was filled with beer and pop. I can only imagine some unlucky rafters had overturned and lost it somewhere upstream.

Another time I was fishing on the Yellowstone north of Livingston (up near the Paradise Valley). I'm all by myself just enjoying the day when I hear some noise/laughing from a raft coming around the bend. I'm standing there and a raft full of topless woman floats in front of me. I felt kind of embarassed standing there with my pole in my hand. I didn't want to stare or act like it wasn't an everyday thing for me so I just kept fishing.

Just two more fishing boating stories for this morning.

A friend of mine used to fish for huge salmon over on the Hoh river in Northwest Washington. That's a big river and you need to know what you are doing. They were in a driftboat and had been following guides who knew the river. The problem with that river is if you take the wrong turn you will end up in a dead end where the river forces you into a deadfall (there are huge trees that fall into the river). Anyway they took a dead end and got stuck on a deadfall. The drift boat overturned they lost everything, fishing poles, cameras. My friend said he probably would have drown if hadn't had neoprene waders on that give you additional buoyancy.

Finally a funny story I guess....

Same friend was over on the Hoh fishing out of another guy's drift boat. They were in a quiet big part of the river and getting sort of bored because no fish were biting. No one was around and one of them had some M-80's (don't ask me why) I'm just telling what he told me. M-80's are big firecrackers that have a fuse that will burn in water. One of them throws an M-80 into the water just for the heck of it I guess. About this time another boat comes into sight. You have to sort of imagine this picture, a nice quiet beautiful river...with these yahoo's in a driftboat knowing in a few seconds a big bang is going to happen...no one is around except them and the other boat now. They think they are going to look like the idiots they are...

Not so quick.

Their driftboat begins to close on the M-80. Just as the fuse finishes it's job the boat and the M-80 contact each other. They ended up blowing a six inch hole in the side of their own boat. No lie. I bet those guys in the other boat were mystified.

I'm going to go in the back and peel some potatoes give a holler if there's anything I can get you.

Keeping Watch

.
.
.
.
.
KEEPING WATCH

I NEVER STAYED AWAKE long enough
to view whatever really happened there
in the quietest hour of night,
but I was close to it ...

I knew, in the silence itself --
breathing in, breathing out, keeping watch,
keeping vigil for the Coming.

-- Wendy M. Wright
THE VIGIL

Getting Quieter Now

Good evening.

Never seen you in here before.

Getting close to closing time here at Jack's.

It's been a good year.

I'll be quiet now.

It's getting quieter.

Need to quiet down and enjoy thinking about that silent night.

The beauty of that event was that we all can be forgiven. No matter what you did or didn't do you can ask God for forgiveness and thereby gain the ability to more easily forgive yourself.

That's my story and I'm stickin to it.

Good night

and

God Bless You

Gambler's Dream

Howdy! How's your night going? Can I get you a Diet Pepsi? How's the family?

I'm on the wagering/probability wagon again tonight.

Did you know a "dollar" is a 100 dollars, a "dime" is 1000 dollars and "Action Jackson" is a gambler who wagers every day - day and night in Gambling Lingo?

It's instructive to see what to expect in the world of sports wagering by looking at 10 bets that you have a .5 probability of winning. Assume you bet 110 to make 100. For those 10 bets you risk 1100. If you have just a slight edge (you can pick the results of the event with greater accuracy than using a coin toss) and like I did today, win 5 lose 4 and push on 1 you end up making 60 units.

I've been studying this for about a year now and I can say that the chances of you making money wagering are almost nil. It's the almost that keeps us going.

A 5-4-1 record would be not too bad over time. You are winning 5/9 or 55% of the time. Say you started the day with a bank roll of 1100 dollars. At the end of the day you would have made 60 bucks (500 won - 440 lost). Is this worth it for tying up 1100 dollars and your time for a day? Depends on how much your time is worth I guess. For most of us probably no.

The fun part is to start thinking about winning more money by starting with more or by winning and reinvesting your winnings.

If you started with 11,000 dollars instead of 1100 and repeated your 5-4-1 record betting 11,000 each day for 300 days of the year (with a 65 day vacation) you would be making about 180,000.

Another way to think about this is if you could invest your money at a daily compound rate of 5.5% (instead of making 5.5% a year on your principle like in your savings account you make 5.5% a day). Now we go exponential baby.

Suppose you go to Vegas with your 1100 bankroll play 100 days of the year, keep reinvesting your winnings and going 5-4-1 every day. How much do you think you would have at the end of your 100 days? Another way to think about it is suppose you put 1100 in your 5.5% passbook savings account when you were born and got it back when you were 100 years old.

The answer my friends is for those 100 days of work and your 1100 initial investment you will have $232,615. Even better is if you decided not to sluff off for 265 days but worked 200 days and took a 165 day vacation to the tropical paradise of your choice. After 200 days of work you have $49,190,882.

This is theoretically possible (it's also theoretically possible that given enough attempts you could walk through a wall due to the random nature of your own and the door's atomic structure). Aside from no proof that anyone has ever been successful in Vegas but the Casino owners, one of the obvious faults in the gambling dream is that you would have to find someone willing to take quite large bets as your career progressed. Near the end of your 200 day career you would be making 5 million dollar bets with your 10 bet a day rule and 50 mil bankroll. It's fun to think about anyway...

The Kelly Formula is interesting to read and think about a little.

Reading a little bit about the Martingale theory of wagering is fun too; theoretically you should never lose at roulette with Old Marty's System

Probability, statistics, gambling, wagering, failure analysis, insurance underwriting, actuarial tables, investing or whatever we call it permeates our lives and culture.

Soul has James Brown Godfather of Soul. Probability has Blaise Pascal Godfather of Probability. Blaise mentions betting with Pistoles in this story. I think that was a baseball team in Italy, one of his buddies or a unit of money.

He also figured out some pretty elaborate bets on if God exists or does not exist Pascal's Wager.

The point I think is that wagering, risk taking and games are as old as humankind. There is something deeply ingrained in us that makes us enjoy the thrill.

Maybe taking a risk by going up to someone who could use a hand and offering our own...would be a good risk to take today.
------------------------------------------

Anti-Ascorbic Acid - Finger Wave - Bad Job's - Soup Story

Good Tuesday morning to you. Can I get you some coffee? Maybe an omelet and some nice crunchy hash browns? Maybe biscuits and gravy and a couple of eggs over easy?

You don't look so good. How about an anti-ascorbic acid? That's a shot of whiskey and an orange juice chaser. I remember a good lookin gal named Sally was drinking those one day when I was tending bar. Her sister was Joy and lost a leg to cancer and eventually her life. Another story. Joy was a nice nice person who died much too young.

Have you ever had anyone give you a one or two finger wave? Not the road rage type of finger waving but a friendly wave? Back in Montana while driving on dirt roads in the back country a passing driver would often give you a a one or two finger wave. It was a casual wave, done without removing your hands from the steering wheel, and consists of a finger or two lifted in salute to your fellow traveler. It's kind of a cool feeling to have some stranger give you a friendly wave. Next time you are out on a back road see if you can share the friendly one finger wave.

Not much happening in the rambling Jack Cafe today. I just finished swamping the place out and emptied the spitoons. Next time you think your job sucks think about me emptying those spittoons with the juicy stringy loogified loogies in them. That's almost as bad as that job I had awhile back collecting dog urine. I was sort of a human fire hydrant. True story. I volunteered at the vets to collect some urine from my good old dog Baily. He was a short Bichon Friese so it was hard to see his pp. I had to follow him around and hold a little sample cup under his leg...it was not a pretty sight.

I think I'll eat a piece of that warm pecan pie with you. I'll just make us some fresh coffee.

Did I tell you a guy was in a while back and complained that his soup was too hot? He likes to complain but to give him the benefit of the doubt I decided he lived in a parallel universe where things maintain a constant temperature and just leaving the soup on the counter for awhile, blowing on it or adding some ice cubes would have no effect. Maybe in his world entropy is not a problem. Houses don't crumble, paint don't peel, cars don't rust...everything isn't getting cold and disorderly. They had a referendum and repealed the second law of Thermodynamics in his world. Yeah that's it...

You know what's really cool? Taking a nice deep breath. In through your nose and blow it out through your mouth. That feels good doesn't it. We should remember to breathe more I say. I hate it when I turn blue and pass out because I forgot to.

Breath. Relax. Let it all go.....

Hope we all have a peace filled day.

-----------------------------------------------------

Christmas Season - Kinky Friedman - Beat the Wintertime Blues - Oysters On The BBQ - Hangtown Fry

Good Friday morning to you.

How's your Christmas season going? Got your Christmas shopping done?

I tend to be on both sides of the Christmas fence in that I like the consumer/commercial side and I am also very interested/moved by the religious aspects.

When I was a kid I loved to go to midnight mass and smell the incense, hear the priest singing in Latin. I liked the ceremony, the ritual. I was a good Catholic altar boy for a few years (well maybe not always so good like the time my cousin and I took beer from the Knights of Columbus beer stash in the church basement to have with our lunch during the annual 2 week summer catechism class the nuns put on....ahhhh but that's another story).

I remember one of my old old friends Jimma would be at midnight mass with a good whiskey buzz on...a religious, alcoholic, Irish-Catholic. Jimma was missing a piece of his ear from a fight. He was a good guy as far as I was concerned; my cousin and I would go visit him in his apartment and have few drinks when we were about....11 years old or so.

When I was around ten, eleven and twelve I would go to mass every morning on my bike and perform my routine with Father Kelly and later Father Tobin. Usually it was just us and a few older ladies during the week. Today it's sort of hard for me to recall what drove me to get up early and get out on the cold Montana mornings. One time Father Tobin gave me a pen that had red, green and blue ink...maybe that was it. I have always had a thing for pens and pencils.

I hope we can all enjoy the holidays no matter what they are. Hanukkah, Ramadan, Christmas, Tirupavai.....

That's the cool thing about living in the US of A we have a diverse and strong population that can live together and appreciate our differences.

I like to listen to Don Imus on the radio and a couple of funny thoughtful quotes I've heard him say recently about the holidays are -

From Jewish Cowboy Singer Comedian Kinky Friedman "The Jews say Santa Claus killed Jesus."

Kinky Friedman's Official Website

As someone said, "I celebrate whatever holiday gets me off work."

How about a nice barbeque to offset some of those holiday shopping, running, cooking, working, etc. etc. etc. stressors. There's something about playing with a fire and smelling smoke that appeals to our primitive selves (or maybe that's our pyromaniacal selves for some of us). In any event....

Beat The Wintertime Blues BBQ

Get yourself a Weber barbeque. That's one that's kettle shaped and has a lid with vents so you can control the heat.

What to cook....let's start with some oysters. One of the things I really appreciate about the great Pacific Northwest is the seafood. We have some great salman, shrimp, crab, clams, oysters...umm ummm ummm.

Get a few dozen, or as many as you need, fresh in the shell oysters
Light your barbeque (use a chimney, not presoaked briquets or lighter fluid unless you like that taste)
Eat a few of the oysters raw (they have to be small and cold for this to be enjoyable)
Put the rest of them on the grill a dozen or so at a time.
Prepare a small pan of garlic butter
Keep an eye on them oersters until they start to open a little or liquid bubbles out
When they are ready pop them open with your oyster knife (or something similar) and using a fork scrape the oyster into your pan of warm garlic butter
After you finish a batch call your friends and family outside and eat the oysters out of the pan with crusty french bread while drinking beer or sparkling soda or nothing.

Ever wonder if sometimes we eat things like escargot or maybe oysters because it gives us an excuse to eat garlic butter?

If you want you could make yourself a hangtown fry with some oysters. I was big on that for awhile after I read the story about that dish in a cookbook. You can pretend you are a gold miner or maybe an outlaw...

I googled to this site and clipped the little blurb below about the hangtown fry.

Foodreference.com

"Supposedly created in 1849 during the California goldrush, possibly at the Cary House in Hangtown (now Placerville). Food was expensive in the mining camps and towns, and oysters and eggs were the most expensive. Either a miner with a bag full of nuggets wanted the most expensive meal he could order, or it was the last request of an outlaw about to be hanged. The Hangtown Fry is eggs, oysters and bacon cooked together as a scramble or an omelette."

After we let those oysters settle let's cook a nice salmon on our BBQ.

See you all soon. Remember to breathe. Nice and deep...let it all go. Buy some flowers. Be good to yourself.

Peace to you and yours.

Personal v. Private Life - Hot Milk and Heidi's Melted Cheese on Toast For When You Can't Sleep

Good morning to you. Couldn't sleep either eh? Can I get you a cup of warm milk? Maybe some toast with melted cheese ala Heidi in the Swiss Alps?

Heidi Toasted Cheese

I've been thinking this morning while I was wiping down the counter. One thing that I can't quite put down is famous people who have married their first cousins. Have you ever thought about that?

Have you ever known anyone who married a cousin? First or otherwise? I can't think of anyone. Sometimes my family introduces me as Cousin Jack twice removed or something but never had any of them express an interest in marrying me or vice versa.

What brings this up you ask? Yesterday Business Week ran an article about the recently deposed CEO of the Boeing Company. In the article it says that he had been married four times....once to his first cousin. I was trying to think who else I was aware of who had married a cousin and the only other person who came to mind was Jerry Lee Lewis who married his thirteen year old cousin.

The Business Week article is a hatchet job but has some fairly bizarre quotes about this powerful man. Makes me think he ticked some people off and now that he's on a downhill slide they are piling on. One quote has someone saying, "we have another Bill Clinton on our hands." Which brings up another point for me.

What about the idea that whatever your personal life foibles may be they have no bearing on your work? Whether you are president or CEO or whatever your job is...it should be separate from your secretarial love affairs, intern cigar episodes, multiple divorces etc etc etc?

I think not.

You cannot separate what you do in one area of life from another. Think about it. It's not bad on it's own that you were married and divorced four times. If you were honorable and didn't cheat and decided to go your separate ways with four women you were married to....heh more power to you both. The truth is more likely something else and you are what we refer to in the vernacular as "a jerk" or sometimes "a jackass". That doesn't mean you couldn't be one heck of a successful person I guess...funny how we think of success.

So I'll get off my little soap box and fix you that

Cup of Hot Milk and Heidi's Melted Cheese on Toast Can't Sleep Snack

It's funny how pieces of stories you read stick in your mind. When I was little I had a book where Heidi was visiting her grandfather (Heidi is a little Swiss girl). It's cold outside and the grandfather fixes little Heidi some melted cheese on toast that he cooks over a fire. I'll make that for you now.

Microwave a cup of milk (or heat in sauce pan)
Add salt and pepper
Make some toast (over a fire if you have one)
Put some good cheese on it (I just used some pepperjack...but some good soft cheese would be nice)

Enjoy....think about being in the Swiss Alps with your nice old grandpa...with the wind howling outside and you are in your cozy warm little chalet sitting in front of the fire.

Good night now.

Just

The Best Way to Know God is to Love Many Things - Insanity Why Not?

Hello and a good Saturday to you.

I'm coming off a bad case of the Fujian. Man that was some tough flu. Funny how things sort of come in bunches sometimes. Just in the last few months my dog died, found out my liver is dying, my mom died. I guess it isn't really that funny. Ahhh life is a vale of tears...the good thing is we have lots of crunchy snack foods to make us happy

Crispy Snacks

I added a couple of links to my blog. I really like that Buddhist/Zen/Meditation Interlude site that Tom Barrett runs. Great thoughts of the day, meditations and things. In my humble opinion a fine use of bandwidth (as opposed to this garbola).

Today's thought over there is -

"The best way to know God is to love many things." - Vincent Van Gogh

I like that.

That quote from Vinnie makes me think about something else I wanted to touch on...Have you ever thought about being insane?

How much fun it might be? How scary? Painful? Exciting? Maybe really being alive for a change?

I was insane once but now I'm certified sane. Isn't that an old joke? I've delved on the edges and fallen in now and then....it's really not all that bad. On the other hand my insanity isn't your insanity. For you it might be hell. I'm sorry.

It's very hard to describe this to someone who hasn't been there. Let me say this - some of the funniest, most alive, people I've ever met would be considered insane I suppose, (they were institutionalized). I don't know where this is going...I guess just don't worry so much if you are a little crazy...it's okay. Everyone is or should be. Just be happy...be nice to other people...try to laugh.

Back in the 70's an old friend of mine once went off the deep end and thought he was running for public office. One of his first campaign moves was a one-man march on Washington DC. This was back in Montana. The cops picked him up walking nude on the interstate about 1/4 mile out of town. He was really a nice guy and funny. Never hurt anybody. He had some chemical imbalance or something and every once in awhile he'd do something really weird and they'd put him in the loony bin and then he'd be okay again. The thing I always thought when I talked to him was that he had sort of a twinkle in his eye like "I know what I did was just friggin crazy..but I don't care..it's sort of like really bizarre funny performance art." Cool. To me anyway...so much better than being so careful.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance about Robert Pirsig's journey into madness. It's a little more painful than my own or my old friends journey. Worth a read maybe though. I remember hearing this guy on NPR who had some mental illness. At one time he thought he was a champion horse jumper in England or something like that. The part of the interview that stuck in my mind was that he said how "alive" he felt when he was crazy...he missed it.

So what to do today? Maybe go a little crazy. or maybe just cook a nice pot of

Get Over the Flu Chicken Soup

Make your mirepoix (saute some onions, carrots and celery in a soup kettle)
Brown some chicken in that kettle too.
I made some soup with chicken drumsticks the other day and it worked pretty good because the bones and skin and stuff add flavor (if you made a soup with a chicken breast you might want to add some boullion to flavor)
I like to add garlic, salt and pepper.
You might add noodles or rice.

What else could you throw in there? Barley? Probably not peas. Corn, green beans, peppers. Sorry if this isn't detailed enough for you. If you really like eating the same thing all the time buy yourself a can of Campbell's soup. One thing about my recipes is that you never get the same thing twice. I like the Zen nature of that perfect slightly cracked teapot (soup) whatever that only lives in that moment.

Add some stock if you are a real cook cook like in a cafe (stock is made from vegetable cuttings, chicken parts etc and left to simmer in a stock pot)....most home cooks don't have time for that.

Add some chicken boullion and water for flavor. Eat your soup and stay warm now.

Just one last thing...I have to tell you about something I heard on the radio yesterday (It's about soup).

Somewhere near where I live is a soup factory of some sort. It's like Larry's Natural Soups or some odd name like that. Anyway the neighbors around where this soup factory is have been complaining to the city about the smell. I can't quite imagine what kind of soup Larry is cooking that it causes odors that are considered pollutants by his neighbors. Here's the kicker...the city bought Larry's land. They are putting in what they are calling the BrightWater sewage treatment plant. I can see some city planner saying, "You want to whine about smell? I'll give ya something to whine about..."

Did you hear about the lady in Houston who ran over a McDonald's manager because they wouldn't put mayo on her cheeseburger? I guess she thought she was at BK. I loved the old Belushi skits about no Coke Pepsi cheeseburger cheeseburger. If that lady ever comes into Jacks after she gets out of the pen I'll give her all the mayo she wants. I can't run as fast as I used to.

Peace to you and your's.

Jack

Biker Club Story - Good Sam Story - Exploding Root Beer Story and Recipe

We had a heck of a busy day at the cafe today. A group of several hundred bikers were on their way through town to a convention. I was on my own and the place was packed. It was really cool to see all those Harley's parked up and down the street. They had all parked diagonally and backed their bikes in a V formation. One of my regulars; Clyde came down the street riding his three wheel bicycle and parked it right beside the Harley's. He's in his 80's. He came in and had a ginger ale. I don't think he noticed anything different...probably just thought things were a little bit more busy than usual. I was a little worried because they were smoking pot in the back, but I wasn't in a position to try and instill some rules. I was glad they were peaceful and didn't fight or steal things. They probably all work at Microsoft or the likes anyway. That happened just not today.

Have you ever seen those signs on the back of RV's that say Good Sam's Club? You'll have to take my word for this but one time there was a convention of Good Sammer's near where I was living in Bozeman. One of the Good Sam's was running his generator late into the night and it was bothering another Good Sam in a neighboring RV. One thing led to another, an argument ensued and the one Good Sam shot the other one. I always wondered if that guy got kicked out of the Good Sam club.

I've had a great weekend. I hope you all have too. I'll leave you with a recipe of sorts. It's a fun thing to make next summer since it can be kind of messy. Jack's Exploding Root Beer

The first time I made root beer was when I was about 12 or 13. The instructions on the root beer flavor bottle said to put the root beer in a glass bottle and seal tightly. I had some gallon jugs from the local root beer stand which I thought would be perfect. I filled them up and left them on the top of the fridge. Sometime later in the middle of the night a large explosion wakened the house. The bottle(s) had exploded. It actually caused enough force to take paint off the refrigerator. The kitchen was covered with sticky root beer. My mom had to take the fridge to a body shop to have it repainted. Don't try to make root beer in gallon jugs. 12 oz beer bottles work just fine. Some may blow up but that's fine as long as they are in a box in a place that it's okay to spill some stuff you okay.

How to make Root Beer

Wait for a nice sunny day when you can work outside
Get some of your own or some neighbor kids to help you
Mix the root beer flavor, sugar, water and yeast according to the directions on the root beer flavor bottle
Siphon the root beer mix into sterilized recappable beer bottles
Cap the bottles
Put them in cardboard boxes in your basement or a cool place for a few weeks and you'll have some good root beer to drink when it's cold and rainy...and you'll know that it has some sun and kids laughter in it.

Savor it baby.

Wagering

My wagering so far today is making me think I better stay back here behind the counter slinging hash.

I'm 1-6 against the point spread so far this morning in my gambling endeavor. I'm hoping the Seahawks, Vikes and Cowboys can get me back to even money. I took the Cowboys +4.5 over the Pats for 7 units on the late came today.

I'm going to rescind my recommendation that you start wagering. It's not for the feint of heart, or undisciplined or idiotic...which pretty much describes all of us at some time. If you decide to jump in I have a few recommendations.

Never bet more than you can afford to lose and be happy. That's the whole point right? To do things that we find satisfying. It's pretty easy to lose sight of the good part of sports if you get wrapped around the point spread.

Bet about 1% of your bankroll (that's a unit in my world). If you want to make 100 dollar bets you need a 10K bankroll. 10 dollar bets a 1K bankroll, 1 dollar bets a 100 dollar bankroll and 1 cent bets require a dollar bankroll. The bankroll should be money you don't care about ie. not for food, clothes, beer, education or anything else you find important in your life.

Make a lot of bets. That way you don't care if you lose a few. It's also mathmatically sensible if you read into this a bit. Just do it for fun and if you don't like it stop.

There are some definite down sides for people who tend to be obsessive or have a tendency to addictive behaviour. Plus if your bankroll doesn't grow it's a pretty safe bet your butt will from all the sitting around.

One last thing that made sense to me is that you need to have a desire to win. This sounds kind of silly but if you read or listen to a fair number of people they get off on losing....maybe they like blaming others or just have some sort of masochistic streak where they can find a lot of comiserate souls in the gambling community.

I'm sure I'll change my point of view on this as I age. I hope so anyway. If we never change how can we grow?

Wagering Is Not Gaming

Good morning and welcome to rambling gamblin Jack's Cafe.

Can I get you a cup of coffee?

I'm going to recommend something degenerate to you today.

No not that you weirdo...I'm going to promote the virtues of wagering. I think Bill Bennett wrote a book about this already but heh there's still room for us little guys.

Wagering is not gaming. What?

Wagering means you have to use some brainpower to have a chance to beat a system that does not have fixed odds. Gaming means you go to a casino and play any game they have and the chances of you winning are fixed...no matter how hard you try or how great a system you have or whatever.

Gaming is fun. Gaming can also be a high tax on stupid people if it's not fun...for example state sponsered lotteries or scratch tickets and casinos. Man I hate to see poor people waste money on those. If you like it and have fun and can afford it...more power to you though. I love to play craps once in awhile or pull a slot machine or play cards.

I'm going to recommend my young and old friends that you enter the world of sports wagering instead of throwing your money away on the lottery. Okay no one too young should be gambling or doing anything other than learning and having fun and doing stuff young people should do. Actually sports wagering would be a perfect activity (if handled properly) for a retired geeky type who like to read, look at numbers, chat...play games.

You can wager on line at sites in England, Australia, the Netherlands and lots of them down in the South America/Bahama area. These are legit companies. Check out USA Today for names.

Anyway I have come to find being a sports fan is fun and putting a little bit of money or whatever you can afford on games makes it more fun for me anyway. It's basically a way to keep track of how well you are predicting the future.

If you want to win or lose real money stick to the stock market.

Today is NFL day my friends. I have a little dough on a lot of games. I can't go to church because of my "flu" hack cough sniffle...

I think I'll put a little on Agassi to win down in Houston for the good old US of A. or maybe just for the good of anyone in the world who is considered on the older side. Wow...33 is old in tennis.

I have the Rockets -2 over the Raptors in the NBA this morning.

I'm going on these picks for today in the NFL...for some reason the big play is New Orleans over Atlanta. I'd tell you how I came up with these but that would spoil your fun. For you novices the minus number means I'm betting on a favorite to win and cover the point spread. So for the first bet if the Saints win by 10 then I win. If they win by 9 I get my money back, and if they win by 8 or less or lose outright I lose my bet.

Atlanta Falcons v New Orleans Saints take the New Orleans Saints -9

Minnesota Vikings v Oakland Raiders take Minnesota Vikings -4.5

San Diego Chargers v Denver Broncos take Denver Broncos -8

Kansas City Chiefs v Cincinnati Bengals take Kansas City Chiefs -6.5

Detroit Lions v Seattle Seahawks take Seattle Seahawks -10

Jacksonville Jaguars v Tennessee Titans take Tennessee Titans -9.5

St Louis Rams v Chicago Bears take St Louis Rams -6

New York Giants v Philadelphia Eagles take Philadelphia Eagles -3.5

Lastly for all my fellow Virgo's out there our horoscope today at www.theonion.com is

Virgo: (Aug. 23—Sept. 22)
If you, like many Virgos, are a gambler, the stars advise you to bet on the army of horned demons and take the points.

Lets do it boys and girls!

Viola's Casserole

Ahhhhh Sunday Morning. Love it. Go to church or stay home read the paper...watch football or movies. Go out and play. Whatever you want.

This morning I wanted to write down a recipe from my adopted grandmother Viola. She was like so many woman in my life, strong and smart. Graduated from University of Montana went on to raise two good sons (one my stepdad) on her own after her husband passed away. She was a teacher. Always polite...always nice. She helped me with my schoolwork when I was in elementary school. Very kind woman.

The recipe is simple but good and comforting...like Viola. I haven't made this in a long time I hope I can remember it.

Viola's Hamburger Casserole

Brown hamburger
Add diced onion early enough in browning process so the onion carmalizes but not so early it burns
Boil and drain egg noodles
To hamburger/onion mixture add - can of cream of mushroom soup, can of cream of celery soup, cup or two or more of sour cream, small jar of red pimentos, can of corn - drained, salt and pepper to taste
Combine noodles, hamburger, soup mixture in a casserole dish.
Put crumbled up potato chips on top
Back at 350 for an hour or so....until chips are brown and the mixture bubbles a little.

This is good. I think I'll make it today.

Wherever you are today I hope this finds you well or at least with the hope that things will be better.

Peace

Fujian Flu - Cop's - Gang Tackling Rush - Nicotine Alcohol and Fast Food - Chili Recipe

I haven't been blogging much lately. Had the flu or something and couldn't get up for a while. I'm drinking double tea and feeling better. Being the media junkie I occasionally am I have to comment on a couple of things in the news.

Paris Hilton tape. Seen some of it. I looked at the video and she looks too scary. It's really dark and she has raccoon eyes.

I always get worried when I see people with really dark circles around their eyes. Are they sick or addicted or really flexible and dangerous like Pris in Blade Runner. The best part of that movie to me is when Rutger says, "All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain."

You'd think Paris could have bought a decent video camera, makeup or at least some software to retouch that video. I'm sort of a dope...but I feel sorry for her. We've all done stupid things some of us a lot more than others. I hope she finds whatever she is looking for.

There were two items that were worthy of front page coverage in our local newspaper today. This headline...

Monroe Prison is Now States Largest Now there's something to be proud of eh? On that topic I have to say I can't stand watching Cops in (whatever city). Seeing the police gang tackle a transvestite crackhead or arrest some kids for possession of marijuana isn't my top priority as a taxpayer. I guess if we elect the punishment versus treatment philosophy we can fill up our prisons to the brim and create more jobs for the inbred to work as prison guards. Okay there's probably some good prison guards like in the Green Mile...but I always wonder about voluntarily choosing that kind of job. Whatever.


And this article -

Youths Are Smoking Less, Except in Middle School. I'm glad to hear preschoolers aren't smoking as much as they did when I was a kid. My grandmother use to tell me her brothers would smoke driftwood...which of course I had to try. I think I was 5 or 6 when we hid some cigars in a cave to smoke as part of a short lived boys club some friends and I created.

You know when you think about it nicotine and alcohol can kill you a lot more surely than the stuff they are arresting some of the people on Cops for. Maybe the police should gang tackle some Phillip Morris tobacco executive and play that on TV? How come Rush can have enough percocet or whatever it is oxycontin...synthetic heroin to put down a herd of charging rhinos and he gets to go to rehab? Where's the gang tackling? Prison? Can't we all just get along?

Here's a commercial I love Eating Kentucky Fried Chicken Keeps You Slim. It's sort of like a Jared theme except it's a guy sitting on the tailgate of a pickup eating KFC and his friend notices how slender he has become. Asks him what he's eating? Why KFC, you know it hardly has any carbs?

I remember an old New Yorker cartoon of two really really fat people who appear to be a married couple and one is saying something to the other like, "Things were pretty good till that Kentucky Fried Chicken moved in next door." Who do you think is telling the true story; the people from YUM who are marketing KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, or New Yorker cartoons or Matt Groening when he (or whoever wrote that episode) has Homer order double-skin Kentucky Fried? I think the humorists have a closer take on reality.

Lose weight and eat KFC...sure why not.

I liked the tack Jack in The Box took with the ad campaign that said their cheesy fries promoted good health....and then the guy doing the ad says he used to work for the tobacco industry. I think that's funny and true....and fine. If you want to eat a cheesy fry or smoke a cig have at it...but don't pretend like it's not a death defying stunt.

What's a good recipe for late Friday night? How about been drinking beer and partying in the trailer all night chili? I was at a party many moons ago in a trailer where an odd sort of fellow (kind of a criminal sort of guy who was the boyfriend of a girl I knew whose dad was in prison) cooked some chili and used beer in it.

I remember that girls dad once said how prison had taught him a lot about manners. He was very polite. Another thing I learned was that if you saw a woman with a very nicely tooled leather purse...a lot of time she had a husband or boyfriend in the state pen.

Back to the chili.

In a pot (it always helps to cook things if you have a pot...chili on a stick is really hard to make)
Fry some hamburger or mutton if you happen to be Hindu...if your vegan or veg fry some tofu.
Cut up onions and add to hamburger as you fry it.
Drink some beer and Listen to some country western music (optional)
After the burger is browned dump some beer on it (I don't know what this does but I've played around with putting beer on or in food I'm cooking for the last 30 years...same as wine I guess except not)
Add tomato paste, sauce, stewed tomatoes, fresh, canned whatever kind you have
Chili powder
You used to be able to buy something called a chili stick (some kind of fatty meat product with spices...that made a good chili..I don't know where to get them now).
I always put beans in chili - kidney, although I guess you could use some other kind.

Serve with crackers, grated cheese, onions and sour cream on the side. Drink more beer...party on.

Truth be told I don't drink at all anymore. If I was young and partying with some people in their trailer I'd be down with it though.

Peace brothers and sisters.