My Sunday Morning "Laptop Rant"

If you are reading this you must have lots of time for thinking, early on Sunday morning. In rural North Carolina, the birds are making their morning noises, and the traffic on old 74 Highway, outside my home, is peaceful. With gas at $2.98 per gallon, one would expect only those with a nicotine habit or the baby needing diapers, or a fool would be on the roads unless it was an emergency. The AC is running and the ceiling fan is on high. As I sit here reflecting on how much difference 24 hours makes, it was 97 degrees yesterday. Going to be hot as heck again today. With a nice breeze blowing and the shade of an old loblolly pine, it was almost pleasant. I convinced myself, with some loving help from my wife, to use my new Black and Decker hedge trimmer to trim four over grown Red Tips in the yard. (product placement time- wink) The hedge trimmer model I bought was battery powered. That tool must have been designed by my clone, because it has a limited run time. The moment both my arms were about to fall off, the battery began to die. Halleluiah Brother! I just smiled at my wife and said this dang battery is about dead. That was all it took. She has known me log enough to know I was so darn happy that be battery was dead. She said it would be ok to stop. My Saturday of yard work was almost finished; Black and Decker battery powered hedge trimmer-- my new best friend. I put the trimmed branches in the bed of my F150, filling it to capacity, and drove them to a brush pile on our property for composting. It was time for a cold shower and a power-nap.

My family deliberately sleeps late on Sunday. I got up early to take the dog for a walk. My arms are still weak from running that hedger the morning before. They will be sore on Monday. I need to get back in the gym. This hot weather saps my energy and I just can’t stand burning four dollars worth of gas to drive round-trip to Whiteville. It might be worth it, but for now, the heat is my excuse.

I really think watching TV depresses me way too much. All I see on TV is death and destruction on the news, violence and sassy-talk on the networks, and sex and drugs on FX, and the rest of satellite TV. If junk food can make one fat, then a diet of junk TV can make your brain fat...hum could this be is a good analogy? Basically, this is one of the issues education is in such a bad state in the US. No one has the guts to really stick there necks out and say, ok, our kids watch way to much brain junk food, they are eating to much crap and developing diabetes and other weight related maladies and we are way to spoiled. Take for example, borrowing from the words of an AP writer concerning the 10-day power outage in the Queens, New York:

City Council hearings on the blackout are scheduled for Monday, while a state Assembly hearing is scheduled for Thursday. On Saturday, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY, demanded an investigation of the utility's power grid capacity and infrastructure.

"It's clear we need an independent assessment of what ails the power grid before we have another blackout," the senator said in a statement.

On Friday, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY, toured the affected Queens streets and called the outage "a classic case of blunder after blunder."

Clinton asked the president to declare the neighborhood a disaster area, a step that could trigger federal aid.

Officials working for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who resisted taking that move, said they don't believe the aftermath of the blackout meets federal criteria for a disaster.

New York Gov. George Pataki asked the federal government to offer low-interest disaster loans to Queens residents who suffered heavy losses.

By watching and listening to news from that region, you would have thought they had been hit by a terrorist attack. Special news bulletins, speeches from the mayor, hello, the flipping power grid broke and it takes time to fix it. Federal Disaster? PLEASE, it's a potential scam artist epidemic.

When North Carolina citizens were hit by hurricanes, and the power was off for nearly 15 days, folks just shook their heads and said thank God we are alive. I was appalled by the way folks that were interviewed in the Queens area and were asked how much business they lost during the power outage and one restaurant owner had the gall to try to say he lost $40,000 in business. Ah, from the looks of the diner, he would be lucky to have $40,000 of business in a whole year. Well it isn't a New Yorker thing, do not misunderstand what I am trying to say. Just look at all the reports of those Katrina scams. They are enough to make a taxpayer throw their hands up and demand that the next natural disaster, just let the victims fend for themselves. What is wrong with PEOPLE? This same mentality spills over into our schools.

IMHO, we are in deep poop and not a whole heck of a lot we can do to dig out of it in a hurry...PEACE