Three contractors are bidding to fix a broken fence at the White House

One is from Chicago, another is from Tennessee, and the third is from Minnesota.All three go with a White House official to examine the fence.The Minnesota contractor takes out a tape measure and does somemeasuring, then works some figures with a pencil.“Well,” he says, “I figure the job will run about $900: $400 formaterials, $400 for my crew and $100 profit for me.”The Tennessee contractor also does some measuring and figuring, thensays, “I can do this job for $700: $300 for materials, $300 for mycrew and $100 profit for me.”The Chicago contractor doesn’t measure or figure, but leans over tothe White House official and whispers, “$2,700.”The official, incredulous, says, “You didn’t even measure like theother guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?”The Chicago contractor whispers back, “$1000 for me, $1000 for you,and we hire the guy from Tennessee to fix the fence.”“Done!” replies the government official.

And that, my friends, is how the new stimulus plan works!

The Seabag

There was a time when everything you owned had to fit in your seabag. Remember those nasty rascals? Fully packed, one of the suckers weighed more than the poor devil hauling it. The damn things weighed a ton and some idiot with an off-center sense of humor sewed a carry handle on it to help you haul it. Hell, you could bolt a handle on a Greyhound bus but it wouldn't make the damn thing portable. The Army, Marines, and Air Force got footlockers and WE got a big ole' canvas bag.
After you warped your spine jackassing the goofy thing through a bus or train station, sat on it waiting for connecting transportation and made folks mad because it was too damn big to fit in any overhead rack on any bus, train, and airplane ever made, the contents looked like hell. All your gear appeared to have come from bums who slept on park benches. Traveling with a seabag was something left over from the "Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum" sailing ship days. Sailors used to sleep in hammocks, so you stowed your issue in a big canvas bag and lashed your hammock to it, hoisted it on your shoulder and, in effect, moved your entire home from ship to ship.
I wouldn't say you traveled light because with ONE strap it was a one shoulder load that could torque your skeletal frame and bust your ankles.
It was like hauling a dead linebacker.
They wasted a lot of time in boot camp telling you how to pack one of the suckers. There was an officially sanctioned method of organization that you forgot after ten minutes on the other side of the gate at Great Lakes or San Diego.
You got rid of a lot of the 'issue' gear when you went to a SHIP. Did
you EVER know a tin-can sailor who had a raincoat? A flat hat? One of those nut-hugger knit swimsuits? How bout those 'roll-your-own' neckerchiefs... the ones girls in a good Naval tailor shop would cut down & sew into a 'greasy snake' for two bucks?
Within six months, EVERY fleet sailor was down to ONE set of dress blues, port & starboard, undress blues, and whites, a couple of white hats, boots, shoes, a watch cap, assorted skivvies, a pea coat, and three sets of bleached-out dungarees.
The rest of your original issue was either in the pea coat locker, lucky bag, or had been reduced to wipe-down rags in the paint locker. Underway ships were NOT ships that allowed vast accumulation of private gear.
Hobos who lived in discarded refrigerator crates could amass greater
loads of pack-rat crap than fleet sailors. The confines of a
canvas-back rack, side locker, and a couple of bunk bags did NOT allow one to live a Donald Trump existence.
Space and the going pay scale combined to make us envy the lifestyle of a mud-hut Ethiopian. We were global equivalents of nomadic Mongols without ponies to haul our stuff.
And after the rigid routine of boot camp, we learned the skill of random compression, known by mothers world-wide as 'cramming'. It is amazing what you can jam into a space no bigger than a bread-box if you pull a watch cap over a boot and push it with your foot.
Of course, it looks kinda weird when you pull it out, but they NEVER hold fashion shows at sea and wrinkles added character to a 'salty' appearance.
There was a four-hundred mile gap between the images on recruiting
posters and the ACTUAL appearance of sailors at sea. It was NOT without justifiable reason that we were called the tin-can Navy.
We operated on the premise that if 'Cleanliness was next to Godliness' we must be next to the other end of that spectrum...
We looked like our clothing had been pressed with a waffle iron and
packed by a bulldozer. But what in hell did they expect from a bunch of swabs that lived in a crew's hole of a 2100 Fletcher Class can? After awhile you got used to it... You got used to everything you owned picking up and retaining that distinctive aroma... You got used to old ladies on busses taking a couple of wrinkled nose sniffs of your pea coat, then getting and finding another seat.
Sometimes, I look at all the crap stacked in my garage and home, close my eyes and smile, remembering a time when EVERYTHING I owned could be crammed into that one canvas bag...

Hank Jr

Hank Williams Jr. apologized for comparing President Obama to Adolf Hitler Sunday in a Fox News interview. It’s all smoothed over now.


Within two days, the surviving members of the Hitler family appeared on German television and accepted Hank’s apology

Exam

Memory Stick

Making Love

My wife said to me the other night “how come we don’t make love like they do in the movies?”So I bent her over the table, smacked her on the ass, grabbed her by the hair, fucked her hard and came on her face….














Turns out we don’t watch the same movies

Liberty Bars

I joined the Navy when i was 17 and shipped off to Boot camp 2 months after my 18th birthday. I completed Boot and "A" School in Great lakes IL. From there i was assigned the USS Belknap in Gaeta Italy. I have been to damn near every country that has a shore or harbor on the Mediterranean sea. I was 18 when i arrived in Gaeta and almost 21 when i left. I grew up in Liberty Bars. I found the following article and thought you might like it.

Our favorite liberty bars were unlike no other watering holes or dens of iniquity inhabited by seagoing men. They had to meet strict standards to be in compliance with the acceptable requirement for a sailor beer-swilling dump. The first and foremost requirement was a crusty old gal serving suds. She had to be able to wrestle King Kong to parade rest. Be able to balance a tray with one hand, knock sailors out of the way with the other hand and skillfully navigate through a roomful of milling around drunks. On slow nights, she had to be the kind of gal who would give you a back scratch or put her foot on the table so you could admire her new ankle bracelet some "mook" brought her back from a Hong Kong liberty. A good barmaid had to be able to whisper sweet nothings in your young sailor ear like, "I love you no shit, you buy me Honda??"
"Buy a pack of Clorets and chew up the whole thing before you get within heaving range of any gal you ever want to see again." And, from the crusty old gal behind the bar, "Hey animals, I know we have a crowd tonight, but if any of you guys find the head facilities fully occupied and start pissing down the floor drain, you're gonna find yourself scrubbing the deck with your white hats!"
The barmaids had to be able to admire great tattoos, look at pictures of ugly bucktooth kids and smile. Be able to help haul drunks to cabs and comfort 19 year-olds who had lost someone he thought loved him in a dark corner booth. They could look at your ship's identification shoulder tab and tell you the names of the Skippers back to the time you were a Cub Scout.
If you came in after a late night maintenance problem and fell asleep with a half-eaten Slim-Jim in your hand, they tucked your peacoat around you, put out the cigarette you left burning in the ashtray and replaced the warm draft you left sitting on the table with a cold one when you woke up. Why? Simply because they were one of the few people on the face of the earth that knew what you did, and appreciated what you were doing.
And if you treated them like a decent human being and didn't drive 'em nuts by playing songs they hated on the juke box, they would lean over the back of the booth and park their soft, warm tits on your neck when they sat two San Miguel beers in front of you. And the Imported table wipe down guy and glass washer, trash dumper, deck swabber and paper towel replacer. The guy had to have baggy tweed pants and a gold tooth and a grin like a 1950 Buick. And a name like "Ramon", "Juan", "Pedro" or "Tico". He had to smoke unfiltered Luckies, Camels or Raleighs. He wiped the tables down with a sour wash rag that smelled like a billy goats crotch and always said, "How are choo navee mans tonight? He was the indispensable man. The guy with credentials that allowed him to borrow Slim-Jims, Beer Nuts and pickled hard boiled eggs from other beer joints when they ran out where he worked.
The establishment itself. The place had to have walls covered with ship and squadron plaques. The walls were adorned with enlarged unit patches and the dates of previous deployments. A dozen or more old, yellowed photographs of fellows named "Buster", "Chicago", "P-Boat Barney", "Flaming Hooker Harry", "Malone", "Honshu Harry", "Jackson", "Douche Bag Doug", and "Capt Slade Cutter" decorated any unused space. It had to have the obligatory Michelob, Pabst Blue Ribbon and "Beer Nuts sold here" neon signs. An eight-ball mystery beer tap handle and signs reading. "Your mother does not work here, so clean away your frickin trash.""Keep your hands off the barmaid.""Don't throw butts in urinal.""Barmaid's word is final in settling bets.""Take your fights out in the alley behind the bar!""Owner reserves the right to waltz your worthless sorry ass outside.""Shipmates are responsible for riding herd on their ship/squadron drunks." This was typical signage found in any good liberty bar.
You had to have a juke box built along the lines of a Sherman tank loaded with Hank Williams, Mother Maybelle Carter, Johnny Horton, Johnny Cash and twenty other crooning goobers nobody ever heard of. The damn thing has to have "La Bamba", Herb Alpert's "Lonely Bull" and Johnny Cash's "Don't take your guns to town". The furniture in a real good liberty bar had to be made from coal mine shoring lumber and was not fully acceptable until it had 600 cigarette burns and your ship's numbers or "F**k the Navy" carved into it. The bar had to have a brass foot rail and at least six Slim-Jim containers, an oversized glass cookie jar full of Beer-Nuts, a jar of pickled hard boiled eggs that could produce rectal gas emissions that could shut down a sorority party, and big glass containers full of something called Pickled Pigs Feet and Polish Sausage.
Only drunk Chiefs and starving Ethiopians ate pickled pig's feet and unless the last three feet of your colon had been manufactured by Midas, you didn't want to get anywhere near the Polish Napalm Dogs.
No liberty bar was complete without a couple of hundred faded ship or airplane pictures and a "Shut the hell up!" sign taped on the mirror behind the bar along with several rather tasteless naked lady pictures. The pool table felt had to have at least three strategic rips as a result of drunken competitors and balls that looked as if a gorilla baby had teethed on the sonuvabitches.
Liberty bars were home and it didn't matter what country, state, or city you were in. When you walked into a good liberty bar, you felt at home. These were also establishments where 19 year-old kids received an education available nowhere else on earth. You learned how to "tell" and "listen" to sea stories.
You learned about sex at $10.00 a pop -- from professional ladies who taught you things your high school biology teacher didn't know were anatomically possible. You learned how to make a two cushion bank shot and how to toss down a beer and shot of Sun Torry known as a "depth charge."
We were young, and a helluva long way from home. We were pulling down crappy wages for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a-week availability and loving the life we lived. We didn't know it at the time, but our association with the men we served with forged us into the men we became. And a lot of that association took place in bars where we shared the stories accumulated in our, up to then, short lives. We learned about women and that life could be tough on a gal.
While many of our classmates were attending college, we were getting an education slicing through the green rolling seas in WestPac, experiencing the orgasmic rush of a night cat shot, the heart pounding drama of the return to the ship with the gut wrenching arrestment to a pitching deck. The hours of tedium, boring holes in the sky late at night, experiencing the periodic discomfort of turbulence, marveling at the creation of St. Elmo's Fire, and sometimes having our reverie interrupted with stark terror.
But when we came ashore on liberty, we could rub shoulders with some of the finest men we would ever know, in bars our mothers would never have approved of, in saloons and cabarets that would live in our memories forever. Long live those liberties in WestPac and in the Med - They were the greatest! "Any man who may be asked in this century what he did to make his life worthwhile I think can respond with a good deal of pride and satisfaction, I SERVED IN THE UNITED STATES NAVY."

Free stuff

The folks who are getting free stuff,Don’t like the folks who are paying for the free stuff,Because the folks who are paying for the free stuff,Can no longer afford to pay for both the free stuff and their own stuff.

And, The folks who are paying for the free stuff,Want the free stuff to stop.
And the folks who are getting the free stuff,Want even MORE free stuff on top of the free stuff they’re getting already!

Now….. The people who are forcing people to PAY for the free stuff,Have told the people who are receiving the free stuff,That the people who are PAYING for the free stuff,Are being mean, prejudiced and racist.

So …. the people who are GETTING the free stuff,Have been convinced they need to HATE the people who are PAYING for thefree stuff because they are selfish.

And they are promised more free stuff if they will vote for the people who force the people who pay for the free stuff to to give them even more free stuff.

And – - – - – that’s the Straight Stuff

Two simple truths in life

SIMPLE TRUTH 1

Lovers help each other undress before sex.However, after sex they always dress on their own.
Moral of the story:

In life, no one helps you once you’re screwed.

SIMPLE TRUTH 2

When a lady is pregnant, all her friends touch the stomach and say “congrats”.But, none of them come and touch the man’s penis and say “Good job”.

Moral of the story:

“Hard work is never appreciated”

Understanding Derivatives

Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit . She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up with a new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later.

Heidi keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers’ loans). Word gets around about Heidi’s “drink now, pay later” marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi’s bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Detroit .

By providing her customers freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages.Consequently, Heidi’s gross sales volume increases massively.A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Heidi’s borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.
At the bank’s corporate headquarters, expert traders figure a way to make huge commissions, and transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS. These securities then are bundled and traded on international securities markets.

Naive investors don’t really understand that the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds really are debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb, and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation’s leading brokerage houses.

One day, even though the bond prices still are climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi’s bar. He so informs Heidi.

Heidi then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being unemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and Heidi’s 11 employees lose their jobs.
Overnight, DRINKBOND prices drop by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the bank’s liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community.The suppliers of Heidi’s bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms’ pension funds in the BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lays off 150 workers.
Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multibillion dollar no-strings attached cash infusion from their cronies in government.

The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, non-drinkers who have never been in Heidi’s bar.

Now do you understand?

The best logic behind our nation's debt

You come home from work and find there has been a sewer backup and you have sewage up to your ceilings.


What do you do? Raise the ceilings, or pump out the shit?

Casey Anthony - Single mom of the year

How many months of man-hours did Florida police spend searching for little Caylee Anthony back in 2008, while her mother, Casey Anthony, knew exactly where the child's body was?
If you were the victim of a crime in Orlando, Fla., between July and December 2008, you should be enraged that the police couldn't prevent or investigate your crime because they were too busy looking for a missing child whose mother already knew the kid was dead.
It's a zero-sum game with police resources. Cops combing through the woods searching for a missing child are not going to be patrolling your street or arresting suspects.
From repeat domestic violence calls to Los Angeles car chases, hit-and-run drivers and the balloon-boy hoax, worthless louts consume vastly more law-enforcement resources than the rest of us. Cops in any town will tell you all the domestic violence calls come from the exact same homes, over and over again.
As long as we're looking for new revenue streams, how about billing these white trash low-lifes for their massive consumption of police resources? The dregs of society need to be assessed a fee for their abuse of government services and thrown in debtors prison in the unlikely event that they can't pay.
As I described in my last book, "Guilty," the leading cause of all social pathologies is single motherhood. One way or another, Casey Anthony's refusal to give up Caylee for adoption was going to cost society – and cost Caylee.
The statistics are so jaw-dropping that not giving up an illegitimate child for adoption ought to be considered child abuse.
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Various studies have shown that children raised by a single mother comprise about 70 percent of juvenile murderers, delinquents, teenaged mothers, drug abusers, dropouts, suicides and runaways. Imagine an America with 70 percent fewer of these social disorders and you will see what liberals' destruction of marriage has wrought.
A 1990 study by the (liberal) Progressive Policy Institute showed that, after controlling for single motherhood, the difference in black and white crime rates disappeared.
Meanwhile, adopted kids, on average, turn out better than even biological kids raised in two-parent families.
Of course, there aren't a lot of studies of adopted children because they aren't constantly mugging us. They're too busy running Oracle (Larry Ellison), the District of Columbia (Anthony Williams), or fantastic political websites, like Big Government (Andrew Breitbart).
One four-year study by the Search Institute in Minnesota found that adopted teenagers had greater empathy, higher self-esteem and more close friends than non-adopted teenagers in public schools, and were also less likely to engage in high-risk behavior, such as stealing and excessive drinking. In all, they scored higher than the control group on 16 indicators of well-being.
They were as strongly attached to their parents as their non-adopted siblings. Indeed, contrary to Hollywood movies portraying adopted kids mystically driven to find their biological parents, the majority of adopted teenagers rarely thought about the fact that they were adopted. (Apple's Steve Jobs has shown little interest in his biological father and corrects people who refer to his "adoptive parents," saying, "They were my parents.")
We could wipe out chronic poverty in America tomorrow – and the new iPad would be even more awesome, if such a thing were possible! – if only women would get married before having children or give up their illegitimate kids for adoption.
And yet, between 1979 and 2003, we went from about 600,000 babies being born out of wedlock, with about a quarter of them put up for adoption, to 1.5 million illegitimate births with fewer than 1 percent of them (14,000) given up for adoption. That's why Angelina Jolie and Madonna are constantly having to break up tribal wars to adopt Third World children.
A 2008 study led by Georgia State University economist Benjamin Scafidi conservatively estimated that single mothers cost the U.S. taxpayer $112 billion every year – in addition to asking the rest of us to keep an eye on their kids while they go clubbing.
We could have had two Iraq wars – Obama could have "saved or created" half a million stimulus jobs – at that price.
But in fact, Scafidi underestimated single mothers' burden to society by excluding additional costs of single mothers to poverty programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit.
That makes his estimates very low: Single mothers are six times more likely to be in poverty than married families. More than 80 percent of homeless families are single mothers.
Scafidi's study also did not consider the burden single mothers place on law enforcement because of their higher likelihood to neglect or kill their children.
Eighty-five percent of mothers who kill their children through neglect are single mothers.
(Column continues below)


The plague of single motherhood isn't an inevitable decay brought on by stupid choices of the underclass. Destroying the family is the active social policy of liberals. They enjoy experimenting with other people's lives and leaving the taxpayer with the bill.
The mainstream media and Hollywood studios are constantly issuing propaganda about the joys and triumphs of single mothers.
Thus, for example, the noted scientific periodical Us Weekly celebrated single motherhood with an article titled "The New Single Moms and How They Do It," which delusionally proclaimed that the "sisters are doing it for themselves."
No, they're not. They're "doing it" at an enormous and unasked-for cost to every man, woman and child in America. They're doing it at incalculable cost to the children themselves, such as helpless, innocent Caylee.
A 2007 New York Times op-ed column about three gold-diggers fighting for custody of Anna Nicole Smith's illegitimate daughter said: "Surely this change is a welcome corrective to the injustice of traditional marriage laws and family values that stigmatized 'bastards' for life."
Except one can't help noticing how many more illegitimate children there are – and the accompanying child abuse, neglect, suicide, runaways and murders – now that the stigma is gone.
Ann Coulter's latest book is "Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America."
Read more: Casey Anthony: Single mom of the year! http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=319449#ixzz1RQhbbRVo

Advice of the day

Never, never make eye contact with anyone when eating a banana.

So true

Flower porn

A pastor gets false teth

A Pastor goes to the dentist for a set of false teeth.

The first Sunday after he gets his teeth, he talks for only eight minutes.

The second Sunday, he talks for only ten minutes.

The following Sunday, he talks for 2 hours and 48 minutes.
The congregation had to mob him to get him down from the pulpit and they asked him what happened.

The Pastor explains the first Sunday his gums hurt so bad he couldn’t talk for more than 8 minutes.

The second Sunday his gums hurt too much to talk for more than 10 minutes.

But, the third Sunday, by mistake he put his wife’s teeth in and couldn’t shut up…

Onward and upward

Well, I managed to complete my studies and graduated with an associates degree in Business. I also managed to maintain my 4.0

I have since completed one semester of my upper division classes and i must say they are a little bit more challenging. I recently completed Finance which is entirely based on TVM (Time Value of Money). It wasn't very fun. A whole damn lot of calculations and such.

All of my business core classes are completed so the rest of the classes are the cool stuff. I am currently taking Big Ideas in Science so we get to talk about evolution and other stuff. This should be a fun class to argue in.

So wrong, but funny

We have a guy at work who has been dating the same girl for about eight (8) years. He just doesn't want to commit. We keep harassing him about but he just will not take the next step. So, we decided to help him along.

A couple of the guys gathered up a few engagement ring brochures and placed them strategically in his truck. Sure enough, the next day his girlfriend got in the truck and found one of the brochures.

She automatically assumed he was looking for an engagement ring and she of course announced her excitement. This put ole boy in a tight spot.

After he explained that the guys were playing a joke, he called everyone at the shop and cussed them out.

It may have been wrong, but it was funny as hell!!!

Weight update

Since i have started my new lifestyle, i have lost 105 pounds. I started at 347 and got down to 242. i flucuate between 245 and 250. I have manged to keep it off for over a year so i think i got it beat. I haven't decided if i want to lose any more or not.

Can't stay out of trouble

Last Sunday, my wife's family had a little get together. Some of the family was in from Alaska so they all decided to have a pot luck gathering. I must say that this family can cook. It is worth going to just to eat!!

As usual, i only know the family that lives local so my Father-n-Law was introducing me to the family that i have never met. I learned that i have several titles according to FIL. I was introduced as "That no account son in law, my coonass son in law, and that guy my daughter drug home". Nice to know you're loved ain't it.

Well, my wife introduces me to cousin "skinny" (real names have been changed to protect the innocent). It seems that cousin skinny is an anorexic. I have never met one before.

A few hours later i was sitting alone and i started giggling. My wife and FIL come up and asked me what was so funny. I said "I'm gonna go up to cousin skinny and tell her that her ass is getting big"

From that point on i was not left alone. It seems that not everyone shares my sense of humor.

F 350 Super Duty Dually

I cannot say enough good about my F-350. It is a 2002 model with the 7.3 liter diesel. Its pulling capability is AWESOME!!!!!!

The other day, i took possession of a 16', 20,000 pound rated dump trailer. Mt neighbor, James, has a hook up at the caliche pit. We were able to get it for $5 per ton. The caliche pit is 25 miles from the house so i figured i wanted to haul the maximum on each load. Makes sense, right?

We get there and weigh in. 14,700 for the truck and trailer. We pull over to get loaded and i assumed, incorrectly, that the loader had a 10 yard bucket. He dumped a heaping bucket in the trailer and i signaled to dump another bucket. He did.

When we went to leave, we had to go up about a 4 degree incline. I noticed that my truck was struggling. After i make it up the incline, we head to the scales. Side note, the person working the scale house, this was her first day. As we pulled on the scale, she told us we weighed 52,500 pounds. James and I looked at each other and said no way, that isn't possible. My wife asked me why i thought it was wrong and i told her that this truck couldn't move 52,000 pounds, the trailer is rated for 20,000 pounds and the hitch is rated for 30,000 pounds.

I get the load up to 50 MPH and James said to hold her steady at that speed. As we are driving along we hear a loud BOOM. My wife about come undone. We pull over and sure enough, we blew a tire. We are about 10 miles from the house so we limp along at 25 MPH hoping to make it home. About 2 miles down the road and BOOM. There goes another tire. This trailer is tandem wheeled, tandem axles. Both tires on one axle blew.

We call the tire place and they send someone out. He pulls up and throws is 10 ton jack under the axle. It will not lift it. He gets his 20 ton jack and it will not lift it. He looks at James and i and we just divert our eyes. Finally both jacks lift the axle and he is able to change the tires.

$340 dollars later and about 1.5 hours, we are making our way home, very slowly. During this time, we are beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, that scale was right.

When i get the load home, the dump bed will not budge. We have to use the tractor to unload what we can and we have to shovel the rest. After shoveling about half the load, the dump bed is able to raise up. 5 hours after we left home, we have the trailer emptied.

Our next two trips, we had the loader only load about 3/4 of a bucket and that gave us a total weight of 32,000 pounds.

What impressed me is that i have had my truck weighed and i know it weighs 8,000 pounds. That means that i had 44,500 pounds of trailer and caliche that i managed to pull. If that doesn't impress you, nothing will.

Could you imagine what would have happened if a cop had shown up? I can't even begin to imagine how many citations i would have received.

After all was said and done, i had 5 loads of caliche in my driveway and James had two. I figure i need about 15 more loads to finish my whole driveway.

On a good note, the tractor i bought worked fine. I picked up a Ford 600 series with a loader and shredder. The loader has a 3 foot bucket but that is about all the tractor could handle anyway. I got the tractor for a steal because the hydraulic rams on the loader was leaking. My other neighbor works for a hydraulic company so as of right now, the rams are torn apart and new seals should be in today. The tractor will be operational tonight at a cost of about $40.

Old Ironsides

The U. S. S.. Constitution (Old Ironsides), as a combat vessel, carried 48,600 gallons of fresh water for her crew of 475 officers and men. This was sufficient to last six months of sustained operations at sea. She carried no evaporators (i.e. fresh water distillers).
However, let it be noted that according to her ship’s log, “On July 27, 1798, the U.S.S. Constitution sailed from Boston with a full complement of 475 officers and men, 48,600 gallons of fresh water, 7,400 cannon shot, 11,600 pounds of black powder and 79,400 gallons of rum.”
Her mission: “To destroy and harass English shipping.”Making Jamaica on 6 October, she took on 826 pounds of flour and 68,300 gallons of rum.
Then she headed for the Azores , arriving there 12 November. She provisioned with 550 pounds of beef and 64,300 gallons of Portuguese wine.
On 18 November, she set sail for England. In the ensuing days she defeated five British men-of-war and captured and scuttled 12 English merchant ships, salvaging only the rum aboard each.
By 26 January, her powder and shot were exhausted. Nevertheless, although unarmed she made a night raid up the Firth of Clyde in Scotland. Her landing party captured a whiskey distillery and transferred 40,000 gallons of single malt Scotch aboard by dawn. Then she headed home.
The U. S. S. Constitution arrived in Boston on 20 February 1799, with no cannon shot, no food, no powder, no rum, no wine, no whiskey, and 38,600 gallons of water.
GO NAVY

Paraprosdokians

A paraprosdokian is a figure of speech in which the latter part of asentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes thereader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It isfrequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing ananticlimax. For this reason, it is extremely popular among comedians andsatirists.

I asked God for a bike, but I know God doesn’t work that way, so Istole a bike and asked for forgiveness.

Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standingin a garage makes you a car.

The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but it’s still on the list.

If I agreed with you, we’d both be wrong. (I have to remember this one)

We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it ina fruit salad.

Evening news is where they begin with ‘Good evening’, and thenproceed to tell you why it isn’t.

To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; To steal from many isresearch.

A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a trainstops. On my desk, I have a work station.

Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they cantrain people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish.

I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted pay checks.

A bank is a place that will lend you money, if you can prove that youdon’t need it.

Whenever I fill out an application, in the part that says “In anemergency, notify:” I put “DOCTOR”.

I didn’t say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.

Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billionstars, but check when you say the paint is wet?

Why do Americans choose from just two people to run for president and50 for Miss America ?

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute toskydive twice.

The voices in my head may not be real, but they have some good ideas!

Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won’t expect it back.

A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a waythat you will look forward to the trip.

Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with.

I discovered I scream the same way whether I’m about to be devouredby a great white shark or if a piece of seaweed touches my foot.

I used to be indecisive. Now I’m not sure.

I always take life with a grain of salt, plus a slice of lemon, and ashot of tequila.

You’re never too old to learn something stupid.

To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever youhit the target.

Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

A bus is a vehicle that runs twice as fast when you are after it aswhen you are in it.

Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

Beaux

I have joined the ranks of the terminally stupid

Yep, i have become one of the people i have always said were too stupid to procreate. Every month at work we get a list of accidents that happened. We have dubbed that list the Darwin awards. People who do really stupid shit and get themselves hurt. Unfortunately, I have become one of those idiots, although at home, not at work.

Here is how the story goes. My daughter in law has been after me to adopt a dog. Since we got 4 acres, we have plenty of room. Finally i told her that if she found a Catahoula for adoption, i would adopt it. I figured the chances were slim and none of finding a Catahoula in West Texas.

Sure enough, she finds one. I was actually in Amarillo when she found him so she adopted him for me. I was to take ownership when i got home. According to adoption rules, she had to take the dog to the vet within 48 hours. While at the vet she called me and asked what i was going to name him. I had to name a dog i haven't seen. I decided to go with his heritage and named him Feet Pue Tan (Fee boo tan). I thought it was funny.

So here i am with a Catahoula, a big yard and no dog house. I put something together for him but it wasn't very good. As you know, we had temperatures in the single digits last week. I decided that on Saturday i was going to build a dog condo for my new best friend. We call him Beaux for short.

I enlist the oldest boy to help me out. We decided to build his condo in the old water well shed. The shed is constructed of cement board so it will keep the wind and moisture of the condo. $211 later, i have all the supplies i need to have a dog house with a living room and a bedroom and the entire condo will be heated along with a heated bed for him.

The condo currently has two rooms but one of them will be the sleeping quarters for the second dog i plan to get.

Anyway, we build a floor out of treated lumber and start building the walls. We insulate the walls with R-30 insulation and seal all cracks. Everything is going good until i accidentally put some 3" nails in the pneumatic air gun.

As i am building the roof, the air nailer jams up. I must add that i was already pissed off at this point. Beaux, the smart ass that he is, decided to make a run for it when i had the gate open. I had to chase his ass down on a UTV to catch him, not once but twice. I was plenty steamed when the air nailer jammed up.

I was jiggling the safety device and messing with the trigger when BAM, the nailer went off and i felt a sharp pain in my index finger. I look down and there is a 3" nail shot through my glove and index finger. I just starred at it with disbelief.

I walked out of the shed and oldest boy looked at it and thought i was joking around. When he realized i was serious, he looks at me and says "Damn, you want to go to the hospital?"

I said "No, I just need to pull it out".

Let me tell you all right now that pulling the nail out hurt a lot more than it did going in.

As with all puncture wounds, once the nail was removed, the bleeding began. After i got the bleeding under control and the wound bandaged, i finished up the condo. I liberally applied pain medication in the liquid form and hopefully there will be no infection.

So because i was mad, in a hurry, and not paying attention, I get a nail through the finger. Just goes to show that we need to keep our focus no matter what we are doing or where we are doing it.

Paying for the wicked we have done

Here is a simple yet complex question. How much good does a person have to do to repay for the wicked they have done?

Can we ever make good for the bad? I would guess that this question depends on the perspective of the person who was wronged. For example, can a killer make good with the family of a person he killed? Can a liar make good with the victim he lied to?

Obviously both examples are on each end of the spectrum, but the question still remains. Can we make good for our bad deeds?

Which leads us to further ask, when is the bad made good? Who makes that call? The victim? The family of the victim? or how about the person who is trying to reconcile the bad?

In my 43 years on this rock, i spent the first 17 years being a good boy with the exception of normal teenage crap. The next 15 or so years, i spent some time in the Navy and living a lifestyle that most would call, un-christian like. The last 11 years i have been trying to renew my faith, live a good life, and walk the path my religion says i should.

When i started bringing religion back into my life, i started finding deeper meaning, a purpose for my life, and started to understand the difference between love and lust. All this, in my opinion, has made me a better man. My religion helped me get through some of the darkest days of my life. I always knew there was a reason for what happened and at times i walked by faith, not sight.

But those 15 years sometimes haunt me. I tell people that i have not always been a nice person. I did things back then, that when i think of them now, it shames me for the way i acted and reacted to situations. So how do we make good or atone for those bad actions.

How do we take back all the hurtful things we have said to others? I don't know if there is an answer.

When we answer to God for our actions, do you think it is like a scale? With all the good on one side and the bad on the other? Or do you think it is a list and the good will never outweigh the bad? One way or the other, we have to pay for those bad deeds. Whether it is here in our lifetime or the after life. Atonement must be made.

The Protestants tell me that Jesus died on the cross that my sins may be forgiven. I ask Jesus to forgive me, all is forgiven, and i am on my way to Heaven. My Priest says it isn't that easy. My Priest tells me that Christ died on the cross for mankind as a whole, to re-open the gates of Heaven, and allow us by Faith and Works, to works towards the ultimate goal of reaching Heaven upon our death.

He gave me an example; Let's say your neighbor builds a new house. The house is beautiful and you are jealous of his good fortune. One night, you take a can of paint and throw it on the wall of your neighbors new house.

After a few days, you start feeling guilty, and you go tell your neighbor that you did it. You agree to paint that part of the house and bring back the beauty of the new house. Although the new paint job covers up what you have done, the stain of what you did will always be there. My Priest said that the stain is like sins on our soul. We may cover them up, but they are always there under the surface. On the day of our judgement, those stains will be revealed, and then we will have to answer for them.

In my opinion, unless the person you wronged truly forgives you, those stains will remain on your soul.