“Lurking for millions of years…”

The recent seismic events affecting the island of Honshu have jolted me out of my blogging funk.

Yes Fan’s, Chuckie has returned.

The Japanese earthquake disaster can be broken down into a few distinct phases.

Phase 1 was the earthquake itself. Unprecedented in modern times, never before has a developed civilization undergone a disaster of such biblical proportions. Except for maybe Pompeii, and that one really sucked.

Phase 2 was when the Tsunami washed ashore. Water weighs a little over 1,800 pounds per cubic yard. Moving at 45 miles an hour over land this 30 foot high wave brushed aside anything in its path easily. It drowned anything that lived through the initial quake jolt.

Phase 3 is the ongoing atomic scenario playing out at the Fukushima Dai-chi nuclear power plant. I say atomic to differentiate between the fission and fusion processes related to nuclear energy. If you don’t understand the difference maybe you should have paid a little more attention in science class in high school instead of banging cheerleaders and/or football players. I am sure all the dope you smoked didn't help much either.

The destruction that has occurred is beyond imagination. The potential for health problems if those reactors melt down and release a cloud of radioactivity into the atmosphere is also beyond comprehension.

So as long as we are dealing with beyond imagination scenarios, I submit for your approval:

Phase 4

“Lurking for millions of years, encased in a block of ice, evil incarnate, waiting to be melted down and to rise again.”

GODZILLA!

Godzilla has torn up Japan 28 times since the Castle Bravo thermonuclear test at Bikini atoll in 1954. Hell, he even made it to New York City recently.

Imagine how much fun that skinny obnoxious prick Anderson Cooper from CNN is going to have with that news story.

Thanks to Blue Oyster Cult for the quote and remember where you heard it first.

The Answer is…………

The answer is so simple. It is a beautiful solution to a good chunk of the problems facing this country today. I am surprised it took me this long to think of it.

We have an extreme unemployment emergency in this country. People can’t find work and yet we still have hundreds of immigrants streaming over the fence, through the tunnels and smuggled into this country in automobile trunks every day.

The majority of crops picked in this country in the south are harvested by illegal aliens in the border states. This puts a drain on the Welfare and Medicaid systems in those states and the federal government refuses to step in and help. The democrats in power see these leeches as future voters. If the feds are going to require your state to accept these refugees they should at least allow your state to police them and send them back when they break our laws. I fully support the state of Arizona.

Notice how the news media has been reporting more and more cases of e-coli bacteria infections from crops grown in the southern states? Lettuce and spinach and assorted other crops have been affected. Am I the only one to see the pattern here? The illegal immigrants are wiping their asses with the lettuce they pick to send to us to eat! When was the last time the news reported a wetback with e-coli? Haven’t heard that one yet from CNN have you?

I think it’s time we stood up in this country. Close the borders once and for all from the invasion of illegal immigrants. If you come to this country striving for the American Dream you have my respect and support. Register here, meld into our society and help make this country great. I salute you. My ancestors did on both sides of my family tree.

Until then lets put the army on the border with orders to shoot to kill anyone crossing without proper authorization. How many people would attempt to cross illegally into our great country if a few were shown dangling on the wire where they were stopped before they made it across.

Do the same thing with looters in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Caught stealing Rolexes from a jewelry store? Bang. Problem solved.

And the illegal, law breaking immigrants that are already here? What do we do with them when we catch them?

Simple answer.

Soylent Brown.

Spicy and available every Thursday…………

What’s That Smell?

Did someone forget to take scoop the cat’s box? Leave some raw shrimp unrefrigerated under the sink? Are the Aggies playing football in town this weekend?

Nope. It’s election time once again and the odor is coming from your TV.

I cannot stand the constant mud slinging and lying from these assholes who are running for public office. I have known personally a few people who went to Washington. They were good, honest hard working folks who wanted to make a difference: and they turned into money grubbing political scum bags.

You can’t vote them out because “them” is both sides of the coin. No matter how many times you flip it you lose.

Unless…………

You don’t flip the coin at all.

You and every other American has the right to vote. The politicians want you to vote as you will walk into the voting booth like a blind sheep and vote for someone. Hell they even call it “Your Duty” and guilt you into voting. They need you that much.

Here is the answer.

Don’t vote for anyone. Read it again, DO NOT vote for ANYONE.

Go to the poles and vote for those you personally know and trust. The others? Leave the spot blank. That’s right. Just don’t make a choice. Exercise your constitutional right to vote for none of the above. Maybe just maybe enough people will take this option and somebody somewhere might get the idea that the electorate is finally getting pissed off at the whole situation.

They don’t think you have the nerve to stand up to them. Short of running them out of town on a rail this is all we can do. You can’t shoot them like the hydrophobic dogs they are. Until they feel threatened nothing will change.

Imagine how sweet the victory for Asshole #1 will be over Asshole #2 if there were more blank votes than either of them received!

That would make for a story even those dickheads at CNN couldn’t ignore……

Conspiracy with a twist of Lime…..

Remember how the world was the day before 911? We had the normal political and social problems facing us. The economy was looking bad. The normal stupid little conflicts were going on in the Middle East. Unemployment was on the rise although at not such an alarming rate. The housing market was looking bleak. Just the normal stuff going on.

Then the tragedy of 911 happened.

People were furious and dumbfounded beyond belief. How could this happen?

And then the idiot asshole idea machine took over.

People actually had the audacity to accuse the president and his cabinet of having prior knowledge of the attacks. Some disease infested fear mongers even went so far as to say that the president played a direct part in planning the attack to suck the country into a war so that he and and members of his cabinet could financially gain from the costly conflict. The hottest topic for that next election cycle was the Homeland Security issue.

Here’s where it gets stupid. This is only hypothetical and not something I actually believe but it does make an interesting mental exercise.

What did Obama know about this oil spill disaster before it happened and was he involved in it in any way?

Has your life gotten any better from the economic stimulus package? Has the country rebounded from the millions of jobs lost since Obama took office? Is this whole oil spill crisis a diversion to draw fire away from incumbent democrats who are on the hot seat for supporting that idiot’s healthcare bill?

Heard anything on the news lately about the Tea party Movement? How about how badly the two wars are going? Where is the housing crisis issue? What about the talk about all the jobs being lost? The job report released today will look rosy as hell because of all the census workers are included in it. All the TEMPORARY census workers who will be unemployed in a few months.

The mid term elections all of a sudden are second page news.

It’s just interesting to me that when a major crisis hits America it’s always the president’s and governments fault when there is a republican in the white house. The nut cases crawl out of the woodwork to blame the president. When there is a democrat in the white house it’s never brought up.

I guess we have the news media to thank for it.

And we all know how fair and honest those whores are………

SeaFood……..

You hypocrite.

Yes you, sitting there reading this post on your computer made primarily of plastic. Comfortable in a synthetic fabric covered chair in a dwelling heated and cooled by electricity. Paid for by profits from your employment that you commute to in a vehicle that consumes fossil fuels.

Yes I am finally jumping into the oil spill in the gulf crisis.

I sailed in the gulf from Houston to Pensacola many years ago. The oil platforms off of the Texas and Louisiana coast were as thick as pine trees in a forest. They were everywhere. I have no problem believing the estimates that say there are more than 4,000 of them in the gulf. They are huge extremely complicated systems that can drill holes in the sea floor thousands of feet deep a mile or more below the surface.

They have been doing this for more than 40 years.

And now there has been an accident.

Men were killed, oil is leaking into the water.

The key word here is accident. No one intended for this to happen. Sure there may have been oversights on safety or maybe a complicated system just failed. Either way it was an ACCIDENT. Safety costs lots of money and would you pay a dollar or two a gallon more for gas to have a safer oil production system in place? Go ahead and lie to me, I'm used to being lied to. Something about having your cake and eating too.

BP is doing everything in their power to stop the leaking oil. It hurts them where it hurts the most,in their pockets. They are loosing millions of dollars per day. The stock market is falling; your retirement funds are dwindling away because the oil stocks in your mutual funds are dropping.

And now we are looking to assign blame and possibly prosecute their executives for the accident? Can we just try to repair the problem first and worry about who we are going to sue or jail later? And the damn TV news coverage makes me want to puke. I wonder why Al & Tipper Gore decided to announce their divorce THIS week? I smell Hookers and an environmental cover up.

Newsflash: The planet will recover. Read it again: The planet will recover. Maybe not in time for your vacation to the beach this year but it will eventually. I feel sorry for those that make their living from the gulf waters. They will have to adapt somehow. Just like we all have to when bad things happen out of the blue. Tornadoes, hurricanes, house fires, floods, earthquakes, diarrhea. Shit happens.

I could care less about dead pelicans and seagulls. I like having the lights on at night and I love my computer. Cold beer is really nice to. Everything in life has risks and rewards.

I really would hate to give up eating shrimp though.

I like shrimp.

The Great Escape…

We are out of Okeechobee.

A week and a half ago we found out that Wifey’s mom wasn’t doing so hot. She has some pretty serious medical problems that required us to move back to Jacksonville pronto.

We did it in less than seven days.

We are now living in a cool apartment off of Southside Blvd. in Jacksonville Fl. I was going to post the Lat and Lon but I was afraid all of my fanatical fans would hunt me down, steal my underwear and try to sell it on eBay.

Okeechobee was an enigma for us. A sort of tequila induced nightmare that we could not wake up from. We met some of the nicest and best friends we have ever had. We also met the very worst the human species has to offer. I’m not talking about the genetically and evolutionarily challenged people there. Those whom I refer to are the completely ignorant and socially unacceptable human beings who slip through the cracks of decent society and end up in the sludgy coated, nasty oil pan of life. You know the type. Single, drunk and pregnant with their second child at 16 years old, or infected with some sort of flesh eating bacteria acquired while collecting dead road kill armadillos from the highways at night to sell to local boot makers for their tough leathery hides. And don’t get me started about the serious injuries that show up at the emergency room from intoxicated rednecks out hunting wild boars for fun.

That is Okeechobee in a nutshell.

When the fossils finally leave Okeechobee for the summer the Love Bugs move in. Some refer to them as “Black Snow” They are so thick that when you drive down the highway you cannot even read the street signs at times. On the worst days they partially block out the sun.

They stick to your car and their blood is caustic. If you don’t wash the little victims off your hood and grill their evil and foul smelling entrails’ goo will eat through and pit the paint job on your car. Don’t even think of parking your car in the garage until you have deglazed it from the love bug cadavers or you will instantly vomit from the new Okeechobee odor your garage has now taken on. You would think that the birds down in that satanic hellhole of a town would be the size of DC-10s with all the bugs to eat. Wrong. They must taste as bad as they smell. Even the birds are grounded during Love Bug season

For those of you in Okeechobee that we became friends with, we love you and miss you terribly. The rest of you, go pound fire ant-infested sand up your ass with a wooden spoon.

My Olympic Moment:

I think I should be the director/commissioner of the next Winter Olympics.

The first thing I would do is change a few of the rules to make things just a tad more interesting for the viewing public.

Such as:

The Luge event would be done without sleds. I used to go belly-woppin head first as a kid in the snow in Connecticut. They can to.

Ice Hockey. Simple. No one is allowed to wear padding of any kind and take down the glass boards around the rink.

Ski Jumping. Make them land in a pool. Preferably filled with mayonnaise.

Curling. Make the rocks magnetic. Let the players use blow dryers.

Figure Skating. Make the men wear men’s clothing. Make everyone go barefoot. Require the women to have some form of cleavage. This means they must be older than 10 yrs of age.

All of the skiing, including that silly half pipe shit, would be in the dark. Absolutely pitch black dark of the moon stuff. The TV cameras can use night vision. Make the gates on the skiing courses out off concrete instead of those flimsy posts and flags.

Bob Sledding would be done in the dark as well without helmets.

Ice Dancing would be done naked and the audience would have high-powered water pistols filled with grape juice.

The speed skaters would all have to wear roller skates on the ice.

The bi-athletes would start at 5-minute intervals and get to shoot each other on the course. The survivor gets all three medals.

Drop the cross-country skiers off in the middle of nowhere a hundred miles from home smeared in honey to attract bears; the ones who make it back alive get medals.

Actually I have watched a lot more of the Olympics than I thought I would have. The scenery that NBC shows before and after the commercials is breathtaking in HD.

And I really do think the Curling is cool.

Whooda thunk that?

Morris? Is that you?

So there I am standing in the cat food section of Publix looking for new and interesting flavors for LT (our cat) to turn his nose up at when suddenly I am elbowed out of the way by a nasty looking snowbird troll-like fossil.

For those of you that don’t know, Okeechobee is where all the jurassic snowbirds from Ohio, Michigan and especially Canada come to in the winter months to get away from the snow and clog up the hospital and Wal-Mart.

The migration begins about Labor Day. Campers and wrinkled up fossils back up the highway from Okeechobee all the way to YeeHaw Junction. Easily hundreds of millions of dollars worth of geriatric buses and mobile homes flow into Okeechobee like ripple into a wino that just won the lottery.

Instead of a catch and release program where these old bags of skin could be taken out into the Everglades to provide sustenance for the local reptile and amphibian populations, the local merchants lure and welcome them into their establishments like a diabetics being drawn to a candy factory. I think the idea is to fatten up on the tourists in the winter months to survive the long ugly and hot summers here.

So being the nice, kind and understanding guy that I am, I engage this old codger in a bit of humorous banter. I mention that I wonder if the feral cats in the wild eat Atlantic Salmon or Turkey Giblets in Gravy (Both flavors LT likes)

And then he says "I like the sliced beef and the chicken bits myself”

He then went onto engage me in a five-minute dithyram about how he likes to mix canned cat food into a salad and have that for dinner on warm evenings.

And I swear to God he was serious.

I can tell most of the time when someone is pulling my leg, but this is Okeechobee where people take their kids to Golden Corral barefoot and then take fried chicken legs home from the restaurant in their pants pockets with out using even a napkin or a plastic bag.

So here we are in the valley of the wealthy wandering Winnebago’s where all the rich old farts from up north come to escape the cold and when they get here they eat cat food to save a buck.

I should have walked him next door to the hardware store and bought him a shovel and a rake so he could collect some of that free food that gets hit by them pick-em up trucks at night here on the highway.

I wonder if possum road kill tastes like chicken?

Cyber-Monday? Are You Kidding Me?

I’m watching Fox News and they are talking about how great this years “Cyber-Monday” is going to be. How excited they are that we will spend millions of dollars on line tomorrow. And the bargains we will get! Think of all the money we will save on all that shit we don’t need!

Are you kidding me?

When you bought something on the internet this year how did you pay for it? You just dropped some cash from your wallet into the scanner next to your computer and fired it off right?

Wrong.

You put it on your credit card. That’s right, your credit card.

Unemployment is now over 10% and the nations economy is in the tank. We are looking at a 12 trillion national debt and darker economic times than the Great Depression brought us.

But not you. You are so well off these days that you can put that new Playstation on your credit card at some God awful interest rate. Kid screaming for a new bicycle or maybe a brand new laptop? Not a problem. Whip out that plastic baby! It’s the American way. UPS will have it at your door in a week, (if they decide to deliver it at all).

And when the bills come in or get to be too big for you to handle just pick up the phone and call some asshole lawyer and declare bankruptcy. Or maybe even one of those sleezebag lawyers who run a clinic to get you out of IRS problems.

Here’s an idea for your debt problems in this Brave New America. Just claim that someone stole your identity. Simple, easy and best of all you are trendy and chic. Just think of how cool your friends will think you are. Be the first on your block!

OK dumbass, Time to wake up and face reality.

If you want shop on the internet this “Cyber-Monday” go ahead and do it. Just use a debit card. That way you can only spend as much money as you have. What a concept, spending only as much as you can afford.

And make sure you get a Playstation 3, or a new Fujitsu laptop please. This way when you have to sell it all to me for less than half price to cover your electric bill I can have the ones I want.

And can afford.......

Inflation Without Viagra……..

I remember when ten dollars was a lot of money. Sure I was a kid, but $10.00 would buy you the world. My first transistor radio from Radio Shack was $10.00.

The United States of America’s proposed budget for next year (fy 2010) is 4.1 trillion dollars.

So what?

We throw around numbers these days without any comprehension as to their real size

A million is a huge number. It’s a thousand thousand. Pretty simple.
A billion is a thousand million. Getting pretty big now.
A trillion is a thousand Billion. Holy Crap!

Do you have any idea how big a trillion of anything is?

If you could spend one million dollars every day since the day Jesus Christ was born you would not yet be at a trillion dollars.

If you could fill the Big House (University of Michigan’s 100,000 seat football stadium) and give everyone inside a thousand dollars, and then you did that every weekend for a full year it would take you more than one hundred ninety two years to get to a trillion dollars.

Let’s say the average dollar bill is right at six inches long. If you took one trillion dollars and lined them up end to end you could stretch them all the way around the Earth. Three thousand seven hundred eighty seven (3,787) times.

One trillion dollars stretched end to end would more than reach from the Earth to the Sun.

If your heart beats an average of 65 times a minute it would take you twenty nine thousand two hundred and seventy years (29,270) to reach a trillion heart beats.

Starting to get the picture?

As of right now. The US Census estimates the US population to be 308,032,676 people. Give each of us our share of a trillion dollars. That’s 3,246 dollars per person. And our proposed budget is 4.1 times that number.

I wonder how much money will be spent today, Black Friday 2009, in the US?

I’ll bet you is doesn’t add up to anywhere near a trillion dollars.

What I Hate About Arizona…..

Forget the fact that you can find the vodka in the orange juice isle at the grocery store. I also like that you can carry a gun in public in the open.

What a fantastic place to live.

The worst part about living in Arizona is that it is next to California.

I suppose the state itself, the soil and the water; the coastline and the sky are not to blame. It’s just the mindless human occupants of the land that are the problem.

The residents of California are a pox on the human race and pretty much to stupid to be alive. It gives me tremendous satisfaction to watch them suffer though their current budget crisis as well as the occasional earthquake and wildfires.

Don’t get me wrong here. I don’t especially want to see anyone killed or hurt, but when you build a house on top of an active earthquake fault, or rebuild your hugely over priced mansion on top of the ashes of the one that burned down last year in a canyon prone to wildfire I have a difficult time opening my sympathy valve, or my wallet.

I like how these multi-millionaire mansion owners in the California hills are just as mentally deficient as the folks who live in New Orleans, below sea level, who think the government should take care of them when their property floods after a hurricane.

Those dumb asses voted years ago to cap energy costs so when oil prices rose their utility companies couldn’t raise the prices for their customers. So they had to have rolling blackouts as they couldn’t purchase electricity from other utilities out of state without breaking the law.

Did you know that the idiot environmental nut cases out there have made it so that in some areas of the state you cannot even grill a steak in your own backyard on a charcoal grill?

Now they have passed a bill that will limit the energy that your TV can use. Televisions up to fifty-eight inches will have limits on how much electricity they can draw. I’m not making this up! I don’t think even I could make up something this dumb, and I’m pretty good at thinking up dumb ideas.

California is the entertainment capitol of the world. A well deserved title in my opinion. I get entertained every time I see those people bend over and hump themselves.

I just don’t want to pay for it……

My Blue Tooth….

For those of you who haven’t known me very long, I haven’t always been the cool, suave and debonair professional man of the world I appear to be now.

Yes, Chuckie was once a wild man in his own special way. Whether it was incinerating pigs, hurling bowling balls huge distances, brewing amazingly fresh beer, or building geodesic domes, old Chuckie seems to march to the beat of a different, yet dyslexic drummer.

If your body is a canvas, mine would be blank. I have no tattoos and no piercings. Just a few really sexy surgical scars that make for interesting conversations when I wear my Speedo.

So I had this bright idea at the dentist’s office to have an impending crown (almost $1,000 worth) dyed blue. Why not? I’m paying for the bastard. Why camouflage it the same color as all my other teeth? I see numerous people with all sorts of God awful ugly gold teeth walking around. I couldn’t afford a diamond insert like that bad guy Stone in the Remo Williams flick.

My dentist told me of the new process where he could dye this new material that he can make a crown out of. It’s like a glaze and a kiln process for pottery. After six firings it was ready. He glued that bastard in and I was the first person in recorded history to have a Blue Tooth! (We even called the company that developed the process to check)

Damn it was beautiful. It was a molar so I had to point it out to you, but it was there and it was all mine. I was finally a unique individual!

It cracked and broke a month later. Apparently the constant re-heating to get the color dark enough (Royal Blue) weakened the material and it just broke in half one day while I was stripping a wire with my teeth.

Now I have a gold crown, which has turned out to be one hell of an investment. And the keyboard and mouse I am using on my new iMac are running on Blue Tooth software.

And you didn’t think I was an amazing guy.....

The ECP…........

What I need is peace in my life.

I see old guys tying flies for fishing and they seem at peace. I see old guys whittling on pine sticks all day long and they seem at peace. The Mexicans next door tear apart their Chevys. Jigsaw puzzles to reading two thousand year old religious ghost stories seem to put some people at peace.

I envy these people, I really do.

So far in my 49 years of existence I haven’t found anything that really lets my mind drift off into a peaceful haze. Sailing gets close. It’s a bit of work and awfully expensive to charter a half million dollar yacht in the Caribbean, but it gets close. Chemical release just doesn’t seem to cut it for me. The days in college being narced out of my mind in the bottom of a swmming pool with scuba gear on are long past.

My fondest memories as a child were when we went to Aunt DeeDee’s cottage on Lake Pocotopaug in Connecticut. We would get up early in the morning and paddle the old Grumman aluminum canoe out to the sinking island and gather blueberries by the bucket full. Mom would do the blueberry pie thing and I got fat. Except for the summer thunderstorms there, those were the happiest and mot carefree days I can remember.

So a canoe it is.

A new Grumman 17 runs about $1,200.00 and weighs about 66 pounds

A new Kevlar 17 about $2,500.00 and weighs about 44 pounds.

I live in south Florida so I need something alligator proof. From what I am told, no canoe can stand up to a 17 foot long horny male alligator looking to mate or kill, or God forbid both! Florida (being the backwards ass state that it is) will not let you shoot a gator even in self defense.

I have thought about having Tabasco sauce mixed into the Kevlar epoxy resin for a light weight foul tasting craft. But bad taste would require the beast to strike first. That seems like a moot point to me.

So I need some sort of Star Trek like force field around my canoe. I have been toying with the idea of an electric field of some sort. Something like Captain Nemo shocked that giant octopus with. I’m still working out the details of a high powered current in the water while I am sitting in an aluminum boat. After all, the idea here is to repel dinosaurs and not become a human flashbulb.

I’m looking for peace, not the ultimate deep black sleep of death. I could get that by skipping my Plavix….

Hormigas…..

The ants go marching one by one Hurrah, Hurrah

The ants go marching one by one Hurrah, Hurrah

The ants go marching one by one, they all march off to Raulerson

And they all go marching on hospital grounds cause they know they’re safe.

Boom Boom Boom

The ants go marching two by two Hurrah, Hurrah

The ants go marching two by two Hurrah, Hurrah

The ants go marching two by two, they don’t even stop at the ICU

And they all keep marching on hospital grounds cause they know they’re safe

Boom Boom Boom

The ants go marching three by three Hurrah, Hurrah

The ants go marching three by three Hurrah, Hurrah

The ants go marching three by three through the ER cause they know that it’s free

And they all keep marching on hospital grounds cause they know that they’re safe

Boom Boom Boom

The ants go marching four by four Hurrah, Hurrah

The ants go marching four by four Hurrah, Hurrah

The ants go marching four by four they march right through the X-ray door

And they all keep marching on hospital grounds cause they know that they’re safe

Boom Boom Boom

The ants go marching five by five Hurrah, Hurrah

The ants go marching five by five Hurrah, Hurrah

The ants go marching five by five they're the only one who will survive

And they all keep marching on hospital grounds cause they know that they’re safe

Boom Boom Boom

The ants go marching six by six Hurrah, Hurrah

The ants go marching six by six Hurrah, Hurrah

The ants go marching six by six a shame as it would be easy to fix

And they all keep marching on hospital grounds cause they know that they’re safe

Boom Boom Boom

I can’t think of a rime for seven

The ants go marching eight by eight Hurrah, Hurrah

The ants go marching eight by eight Hurrah, Hurrah

The ants go marching eight by eight if only they would fumigate

The patients would be happy as they could sleep at night

Without being bitten to death

Boom Boom Boom.

Wolf, Wolf!

I suppose you could blame it on my parents. Dad went to a military prep school then into the Coast Guard. Mom was one of those practical Yankees. They were prepared for any and everything. Ice storms, hurricanes, broken ankles, you name it they had it covered.

I would like to think I inherited the best parts of them both.

My time as a disaster specialist with the Red Cross contributed to this condition/phobia as well.

Sometimes it drives me a little mad.

“We all go a little mad every now and then” Norman Bates once said.

I try to prepare for everything I can think of. I live in South Florida, I have a generator ready to go. A barrel in the garage to fill with fuel, a couple of 18 gallon Rubbermaid containers filled with food. I even have a water filter so I can make fresh water from the lake or even a puddle.

And don’t even think of coming down my street with designs of stealing my TV. Without revealing any specifics, let’s just say we have substantial firepower to thwart any looters with nefarious thoughts. We could probably repel a small invading country.

Some of my neighbors haven’t even bought a candle. They leave their crap in the front yard even though one hundred mile per hour winds are forecast and sit outside swilling Budweiser while everything falls to pieces around them.

Remember the story about the boy who cried wolf? Do you remember what happened to all the people who heeded his every warning and ran inside to protect themselves?

Nothing, nothing at all. They all survived and lived to tell the story.

There are times I wish the disasters I have prepared for all my life would actually happen. Sure it’s a sick thought, but just once I would like all those dumbasses who laughed at me and drank beer while I prepared to learn a lesson or two.

And I wish the state of Florida would cut me a substantial check for protecting them from this hurricane season. You see, when I prepare for a disaster it never materializes. That’s part of the curse of being Chuckie. I buy a generator and stock up on supplies and nothing happens. Dad says that that is the idea. He is a kind and thoughtful man. I love him for it.

But oh how nice it would feel to be sipping on a frozen margarita in my nice air conditioned house, with the lights on and a washing machine full of clean underwear, machine gun at my side, while my smartass redneck looser neighbors stand in line for a bag of ice and a gallon of water from the National Guard truck.

It is a dream I have………….

Morning Sunshine……

Chances are one of the most talented and beautiful women on the planet has said this to you at one time or another.

Yes, I am talking about Robin Meade of Headline News’s morning show

Gorgeous, intelligent, vivacious with a twinkle in her eye, she could tell you the world is ending and you would still feel warm and fuzzy hearing the horrific news.

Wifey, understandably, hates her. I’ll bet half the women in America hate her as well. I’ve noticed that 95% of the women on the planet hate the other 5% who are a size two or smaller.

Today Robin told me that the economy was getting better because the first time unemployment numbers were 30,000 (thirty thousand) less than last week. She even winked at me when she said it.

Sneaky Bitch.

If you analyze these numbers a few things might surprise and scare you.

For example:

If a half a million people are filing new unemployment claims every week we are looking at close to two million new unemployed people a month. This has been going on for almost a year. And thirty thousand (30,000) less this week means things are getting better? Are you kidding me?

Doesn’t this mean that the pool of employed people who are eligible to be fired is getting smaller? This means the percentage of working people getting the axe each week is actually growing.

Unemployment, for the most part, is paid by the employer who let you go. Sometimes the government steps in to help. And if you were fired for cause, like pissing off your boss or stealing from the company, you get denied. So these numbers you hear on the Boob Tube (Pun intended) don’t even account for the assholes were fired for being assholes.

After meeting my best friend Joe, I learned how long, and expensive, thirty seconds of television time can be. This morning Robin spent three minutes pushing her merchandise. She has a new book out, coffee mugs and T-shirts for sale.

Maybe we should have a few of those big ugly older Russian women who dress like Sergeant Shultz doing our news.

At least the content they are spewing might have more relevance to you than the "newsbabe’s" plunging neckline…..

B-Complex on the High Seas…..

Ahhhhh, There’s nothing like the morning after depression you get when you have just come back from an insanely fun cruise vacation.

Cruise memories in no specific order:

The ship being four and a half hours late leaving Miami due to being hit by lightning.

Carlos and Charlie’s being EMPTY for dinner due to a driving rainstorm during dinner.

The adults only hot tub and sun lounge, promenade deck aft.

The amazing band Wifey danced too until 2 AM the first evening.

Being ahead $145.00 at roulette for the trip, The Big Ugly Bet hit 7 out of 10 times.

Wifey being up $80.00 on the slot machines for the trip

I enjoyed the 17 shrimp cocktail appetizers I consumed before the three dinners we ate in the main dining room on the ship, (Four per cup)

Fresh Dos Equis on tap at Las Palmeras with the chicken enchiladas for lunch.

We love the sexy new Citizen watches we bought. Wifey got a gold ladies Eco-Drive chronograph, a very rare and pretty timepiece.

Our amazing cabin steward Slamet and how well he took care of us.

The gay little cruise director Karl (with a K) from London. yuck!

Breakfast in bed every morning was wonderful.

The new friends we met in the dining room, future cruise buddies?

I love the all you can drink soft drink card. What a deal.

Not seeing the waterspouts off the port bow our last morning at sea.

Not seeing the other Carnival ship slam into the Royal Caribbean ship in Cozumel.

I have mixed feelings about Margaritaville opening 3 blocks from Carlos & Charlie’s.

Staying on the ship in Key West while the tourists all go ashore, a relaxing idea.

All of these memories compel me to think about doing another “Chuckiefest at Sea”. We had more than twenty couples on that 3 day cruise and it was an amazing time. We received a special rate due to the number of cabins we booked and everyone partied until it hurt. Well almost everyone. One participant was just a tad bit too pregnant to enjoy herself completely. Good thing to as the kid turned out great!

Anyone out there interested in doing this one more time? I am sure Peggy would love to put a deal together for us again. Email me at astrochuckie@hotmail.com with ideas, questions and most importantly dates and destinations you would like for us to consider. It’s been too long since we all got together.

Time to scare the world once more!

How I Spent Last Monday Morning………

I had to attend the HCAHPS training at work.

Hospital Consumer Assessment of Health Care Providers and Systems.

Commonly referred to as the Hiccups Class, this little jewel is only a taste of the bureaucratic nightmare universal healthcare promises to bring us.

Let’s say you live in the projects. You don’t have a job and obviously don’t have health insurance. You live on the green welfare check and food stamps and buy whatever drugs you can afford with what you get breaking into houses at night.

You develop chest pain and call 911 on your new $300.00 iPhone.

You are rushed to the hospital in an ambulance with advanced life support and are treated at the hospital. After thousands of dollars of lab tests, x-rays, ct scans and IV therapy you spend a few days admitted for observation. Then you are released with a handful of expensive prescriptions and detailed instructions on how you should eat and change some of your lifestyles so you can live a healthier life.

You were abusive and foul mouthed to the staff of the hospital. You were combative and cussed out the doctors and nurses during your entire stay. At times you were violent and even spat on your health care providers. You even accused them of not caring for you properly because of your skin color.

Two weeks go by and you get a call from someone from the government asking you questions about your hospitalization. You told him/her how horrible your care was and that you felt you were not treated correctly. The food wasn’t delivered on time and they had the nerve to wake you up to draw blood or give you your medications at night. He thanks you and hangs up.

Since you are jobless and on relief your Medicaid benefits would cover all the procedures.

Wrong! You answers to that survey show you had a “Patient Complaint” and the government, the one everyone else’s taxes pay for, refuses to pay the bill. The hospital, doctors, nurses and everyone else that used their years of training and highly specialized skills to save your worthless life and put up with your childish shit for three days gets nothing. Repeat NOTHING.

What, you have a job, pay your bills and taxes, live in a nice house you work hard for, and are a decent and upstanding citizen in your community? You have heath insurance from work or privately purchased and gladly make the co-payments for the finest health care system in the world?

You’re screwed. You have to pay your bills. You may get a chance to answer this survey, but you still have to pay. Only the lowest members of the societal food chain, the worst of the scumbags get this kind of world class customer service in this Brave New America. Hell, you can be arrested for pirating cable in this country. It’s called Theft of Service. But you can complain your way out of thousands of dollars of hospital bills by being an asshole? While everyone who works hard and is responsible has to pay for it?

OK, I am posting about what goes on in my industry here, a major taboo. I know this isn’t a smart topic to tackle but someone’s gotta say it and it might as well be me. Besides if they terminate my employment I just might have a shot at some of this free healthcare myself.

I hope I live long enough to see how this horror movie ends………..

Money Grubbing, Blood Sucking Bastards……..

If you had the cure for cancer or at least an effective treatment for the disease, would you price gouge it’s victims for the treatments?

Diabetes

Some companies are making a killing off of those of us inflicted with this disease.

The Diabetes equipment manufacturing companies are blood sucking sub-human life forms.

According to the ADA, there are 23.6 million children and adults in the United States, or 7.8% of the population affected by this horrible disease.

Why am I so down on the Blood Glucose Meter manufacturers?

Let’s see here. A little math is required, bare with me.

A single Accu-Check Soft Click Diabetes test strip weighs .0085 oz. That’s about 117 strips per ounce. A bottle of 100 strips cost over $100.00 depending on your retailer and demographics. So therefore the brand of Diabetes test strips I use cost $1,882.35 per pound.

The Space Shuttle weighs in at about 4.5 million pounds at take off. The cost for those beasts is 2.1 billion dollars each according to NASA.

The shuttle cost $466.66 dollars per pound. One third the cost of my test strips per pound.

The drug companies at least have research and development costs plus all the time and regulatory hoops they have to jump through to justify the cost of the new medicines they bring to market. I don’t begrudge them that at all.

But the test equipment manufacturers set up the machines and push the button and out flows the cash. "Test yourselves 6 times a day" says the high paid spokesman on the TV. Sure at a dollar a shot. I wonder how much he makes per endorsement?

This is why we need to defeat this disease once and for all. Give what you can to the American Diabetes Association. Help defeat the disease and put the whammy on those who profit from it.

No wonder they give away those free glucose meters everywhere. Sort of like the local heroin dealer giving away free samples.

If You Are Not Scared Yet…..

You are not paying attention.

You can go to flag.gov and report your neighbors for saying and thinking things against the government.

The FBI was in the local gun store in Okeechobee asking about anyone who might be saying controversial things about the government and/or the President.

The federal government forced out the CEO and head of General Motors and replaced him with someone they wanted in charge of one of America’s largest businesses.

The government is requiring the 50 largest private insurance companies to report their salaries for their top executives and the expenses they incur doing business.

The President has appointed a pay Czar to check into the compensation that all private industries pay their top executives.

The federal government has the power to enter your home, search your property, and leave without even telling you they were there.

The federal government promised car dealers $4,500.00 dollars in incentive money per clunker turned in. When the dealers go to the website to fill out the paperwork for their promised payment(within ten days) the disclaimer they had to agree to basically gives the government the ability to monitor and own any data on the computer the dealership used. That means access to your personal data you provided to buy the vehicle. The government hasn’t even reimbursed these car dealers yet.

Now the federal government wants to administer our healthcare. They would be in control of enough money to colonize the planet Mars and put an NFL franchise there. And they can’t even pay out $4,500.00 owed per car in a bailout plan that they already set the money aside for?

And now, the 55 page Senate bill # S-773 would grant the President of the United States the power to shut down the internet and “locally controlled private networks” in the event of a “CyberSecurity-Emergency” This bill has been initiated by Senator Jay Rockefeller a Democrat from West Virginia. It also allows the federal government the right to “Map certain private computer networks” in order to prepare for any supposed attacks on our country. They cite the same powers President Bush used to ground every single aircraft in the United States the day of September 11^th 2001.

I am not bashing the Democratic party here. Some of these issues were passed by the last Republican administration. The point is, all of our government officials are in cahoots. They are more interested in building their own little empires and fortunes than doing their jobs. Their primary mission, in case they forgot, is to represent you and your wishes and concerns in Washington.

Sweet Dreams America. I wonder when and where we are going to wake up……