My parents have decided to sell their house and possibly move away to Indiana. They have been busy packing for weeks now. My Mother wants to pass on her legacy to her Son & Daughter and has had my Sister and I over to “shop” for anything we wish to take before she leaves. I must say that both of my parents came from rather poor and meager beginnings. My Mother married my Father when she was 16 years old and they have been together ever since. My Father is retired now and although I certainly cannot say they are wealthy, they’ve done pretty well for themselves considering what they started with. To say that I’m proud of them would be an understatement. I consider myself very lucky to have been brought up in a stable household and instilled with good morals and manners.

I certainly was not a pampered child. I didn’t wear the trendy fashions; I didn’t have the latest video games or plenty of “pocket money”. Candy & soda were a very rare treat and Christmas usually consisted of just one special present. My parents had expectations of their children. We had chores, they made us do our homework, and we had to be home at a reasonable time each night. What I did get however, was a Mother & Father who loved me and cared about me. My father was the kind of guy who would take his kids to the park and throw around the football. He coached the baseball team, he took us fishing. There were family picnics, vacations and outings. My Mother actually cooked dinner and we all sat around the table as a family unit each evening. During the holidays, she decorated the house and filled it with wonderful smells of baking bread & cookies. To me, this is the legacy of my Mother & Father, not their stuff. Those memories are more important to me than any belonging of theirs they want to bestow on me.

I’m not quite sure if my Mother understands this about me. She was raised in a time when our Country was just recovering from the “Great Depression”. I suppose the environment I grew up in would be considered “lavish” compared to what she had to endure. She had an “absentee” father and was raised by relatives for significant portions of her childhood. I think she assigns much more value to an accumulated wealth of possession than I do.

In any event, I think my lack of enthusiasm for her horde of “collectables” might have upset her. But Mom & Dad, if your reading this, all I’ve ever really wanted from you was your continued love and support. I want you to both be healthy and happy and come over for BBQ’s and good times with your Grandchildren. I want Dad to play chess with the boys and teach them to play the guitar. I want the boy’s Grandma to bake cookies and pies and tell them stories of how milk used to cost a nickel. You two have accumulated over half a century of “Life Experience” and that is of more value to the family than any set of dishes could ever be.

Mom did manage to “con” me into taking a few things, so I’ll display my “loot” here from the last couple of trips….

pic-1 Here is an antique clock that has to be well over 100 years old. I hung it in the living room tonight, wound it up with the key and it’s keeping pretty good time so far!

pic-2 Here is a blue crystal decanter with a set of six glasses. Very exquisite and my favorite color!

pic-3 A Christmas stocking that my mother embroidered just for me!

pic-4 A professional dart-board with six quality darts that had never even been taken out of the box. I hung it on the door of the shed and the dart you see in the pix represents the first time Mark ever threw a dart in his life. I kid you not… I’ll swear it on the Bible, we were all standing there with our mouth hanging open in disbelief!

pic-5 Mark standing proudly in front of his accomplishment.

I just came across an interesting news story that I’ve been previously unaware of. Apparently, back in the late 1800’s during the Spanish American War, our Government enacted a luxury tax of 3% on all long distance calls placed in the United States. Billions if not Trillions of dollars in taxes have been collected on that premise over the last century. Since the telephone can hardly be considered a “luxury” nowadays, folks have taken the I.R.S. to “task” over this in the courts and have won over and over on appeal. It appears that “Uncle Sam” has finally conceded defeat and the tax will be eliminated and Billions of dollars refunded. Does this mean we can expect another check in the mail?

I’ve yet to see anything the “Government” can do that the private sector can’t do twice as efficiently for 1/2 the cost. This in my mind, is the “EVIL” of Government. We in essence give politicians an “Open” checkbook with very little accountability. Our politicians create a huge bureaucracy around whatever they do and our tax dollars get squandered away.

We all watch “Special Reports” on 60 minutes when a Charity gets investigated and we are appalled to find out that only 25 cents of every dollar donated actually goes to the “cause”. I often wonder how much of our tax dollars go towards doing something productive.

I’m not going to be that “hard core” Republican screaming for tax cuts nor am I going to be the “Left Wing” Liberal trying to create a Government Program for everything under the sun. All I’m saying is that I think Uncle Sam needs some liposuction to get rid of all his “pork” and we need to get back to basics and eliminate the deficit so we don’t mortgage our children’s future.

WhooHoo! According to my “Stats”, my blog has had close to 20,000 unique visitors. None of you “regular people” understand this or even care about it but to us HTML’ers, uniques are the “Holy Grail”. For what reason do we toil placing code upon a server? So people can come see what we have to say of course. It’s all for not unless “cyber eyes” are reading what we are writing!

“Stats” are a wonderful thing as I’m sure some of my fellow Webmasters/Mistresses will agree, **cough** Xerraire **cough**. They allow you to see how many people are coming and where they are coming from. They can tell you which keywords and topics on your site are making it into the search engines and which are the most popular. I can see what country my visitors are from, what browser they are using, their screen resolution as well as what color underwear they are wearing at the time of their visit.

They other day, I was digging into my “Raw Statistics” because I wanted an answer to a question that had been perplexing me. The majority of my “Hits” come from Google image searches. This is why I’ve gotten into the habit of water-marking most of my images with my domain. Upon further investigation, I discovered that I had several images being “Hot-Linked” in a big way. I found them plastered all over pages at MySpace.com as well as Forums and Bulletin Boards. Normally I get all heated up over what I consider to be “Bandwidth Thieves”… but for now, I’m looking the other way because the images have my domain displayed on them. What the heck, free advertising huh?

I know most of you are probably scratching your head about now thinking “WTF is he talking about”? Humor me… it feels good to get it out!

I got this movie on a recommendation from a coworker. I pretty much grew up with the comedy of Jim Carrey and I absolutely loved Tea Leoni in “Family Man” so I thought I’d give it a shot. Carrey and Leoni play an upper class suburbanite couple who are doing pretty well for themselves when all of a sudden the company Carrey works for collapses “Enron” style and they lose everything. Comedy then ensues as they turn to a life of crime to support themselves.

We watched this after our BBQ for Mother’s Day with my Family and it definitely provided a plethora of laughs. So if you want a family evening with a fun flick Jim Carrey style, this one is pretty funny!

I’ve been ranting for quite a while about how our Government is really not serious about researching alternative fuel sources other than oil. It is my firm belief that Capitol Hill has been “Bought & Paid For” by special interest groups. No serious laws get passed, no serious money is allocated for research, all we get is a little bit of “Lip Service” from the President every year in his State Of The Union Address about how we need to do this.

Meanwhile, we continue to put money into the coffers of the Middle East. This is the same region of the world that is sending our Soldier’s home in body bags. Ironic, isn’t it? The fuel our country so desperately craves is fueling their war against us as well.

Who is swallowing the “Kool-Aid” that these people in the Middle East like us? They hate us! We represent everything that is unholy to them. They despise our culture, attire, morals, art, media, literature and code of laws. We are the “Great White Satan” to them. Your average radical Arab feels no remorse in killing a United States Citizen. In fact, they see it as their Duty for God. We are not “human” to them, we are akin to one of their sheep or camels. This is what we are up against folks. We’ve taken an area of the world with an archaic mentality and infused it with a huge flow of cash.

We cannot be compatible with these people. They are hundreds of years behind us in “Evolution” if that is what you wish to call it. Think about it, there was a time in the United States were Women were treated more like property than an equal. It was less than a Century ago that women won the right to vote! It really wasn’t that long ago that stealing a Man’s horse would earn you a hang-man’s noose in the center of town. Our Civilization has grown past this value system where as the third world mentality in the Middle East has not.

So it’s all about the Oil folks, it really has always been about the Oil. The “Great White Satan” has to flex its military might to protect our “Interests”. But I ask you, does it have to be about the Oil? Here, watch….

This Video.(sorry about the quality)

Here’s a fella that’s taken water, the earth’s most abundant and clean resource. Three fourths of the planet is covered in it… and he’s figured out a way to make a vehicle go 100 miles on a half cup! He seems to be just your “Average Joe” Inventor. It appears that this endeavor might have started in his basement. One would think that something this spectacular would have come from the endless resources of our Government. One would think that a discovery this groundbreaking would be front page news in every media outlet across the world.

Sadly, I suspect that the people in power haven’t figured out a way to convince us that we need to pay for the water that would fuel our vehicles. See what a pessimist I’ve become?

Happy Mother’s Day to all the Moms out there! A little over a week ago, I began racking my brain over what I could get my Mom on Mother’s Day. She is so difficult to buy for, she doesn’t like Jewelry or perfumes and her tastes are very specific otherwise. A gift certificate would seem like I didn’t even try and I wasn’t even going to try to pick any clothing out for her.

An idea finally hit me and I wrote my Sister an email asking if she would be game for a Mother’s Day BBQ. After a little back and fourth we decided that Saturday the 13th would actually fit better into everyone’s plans and the weather forecast for that day looked more appealing as well.

Everyone converged on my house yesterday afternoon and all in all, things went down very well. My Sister’s Hubby (Artie) was appointed “Grill-Master”, the boys did some swimming until their lips turned purple and teeth began to chatter and I gave A.T.V. rides up the mountain.

Here are a few pix of the occasion…

Artie proudly displays the contents of the grill.

The dinner table adorned with a dozen red roses which my Mother brought for Wendy.

My Sister and her Husband.

Artie teaches the way of the Grill to Timothy.

The pool is open for business.

Mark by the pool.

Erick & Timothy.

Tim trying to warm up.

Time to go see the eye doctor again, my glasses are broke. Since getting contacts last year, I’ve gotten into a routine of pretty much just wearing them when I work. Usually, by the time I get home my eyes have had enough and I switch to my glasses for the evening. Now they are broken beyond repair and I find myself currently in agony with dried up contacts in for the last 12 hours. I can feel my eyelids scraping against them. Suffer I shall, because it’s either this or not being able to see!

I’ve been on this planet for almost four decades. One accumulates quite a bit of “life experience” is such a time span. I’ve always preferred people to be direct with me, just tell me what is on your mind, don’t beat around the bush. I’ll deal with it, I promise. One of my biggest peeves, and pardon the crude pun here, is do not “Piss in my face, then try to convince me it’s raining”.

Each year, I get a letter from my employer attempting to “sugar coat” the premium increase for health insurance. It’s really insulting to my intelligence. To read the letter, one would think they are doing me a favor! “We’ve added this benefit and that benefit (which you’ll never use), oh and by the way, you have to pay 30% more this year”. I don’t want to hear their physco-babble nonsense. If the letter was written something like this… “Dear subscriber, unless you are a complete moron and haven’t been watching a lick of news for the past few years, you already realize that health care costs have been spiraling out of control. We as a corporation, are not willing to eat into our profit margin and absorb these costs for you. Effective immediately a 30% increase will go into effect.” You see, I could respect something like that. At least I would know exactly where I stand.

Another of my favorites came from when I was in Management. Each year, when annual increases were due, they would send me a “compensation letter” detailing how much money I made. I’ve always thought a Salary was pretty cut and dry, but to hear them “spin” reality, I actually made twice as much as my paycheck reflected due to all the benefits the company provides.

Politicians are also famous for this. John Kerry cracked me up when he was running for the Presidency. The man had a life-long record of being a far left, socially liberal, anti-war activist and he and his team tried to peddle the line that he was going to “kick ass and take names” in the war on terror. And I won’t leave out Bush either, let’s not forget his famous landing on the Aircraft Carrier with the banner unfurled in the background stating “Mission Accomplished”. It’s been a couple of years since that incident and American’s are still arriving home in body-bags. Oh, or how about the famous line “I’m a uniter, not a divider. That worked out real well, huh?

Some of you may be old enough to remember when Michael Dukakis was running for President. The man was actually doing very well in that particular election until one of his people decided the polls showed America thought him soft on defense. They dress him up all G.I. Joe and snap this photo of him in a tank. Back then, American’s were smart enough to see right through this kind of B.S. and summarily slapped him down like an obnoxious school boy. The photograph is widely considered to be one of the worse public relations disasters in know history!

So anyhoo, this whole rant I’m on is leading up to this story I just came across. Read it then tell me if you’ve ever come across such a silly piece of nonsense in your entire life. And also, please take note that they are presenting this information almost as if it were fact and “dressing it up” with lots of big words and scientific terms to make it sound plausible.

Read The Story Here

Check out the movies on This Site.

This fella takes the art of Juggling to a whole new level. Now that I’m past my youthful stage of clubbing, bars & parties… this kind of show might be an ideal evening of entertainment. Of course, I’ve always wanted to actually go out and see the Phantom of the Opera production. Does this sound “Cheesy” to you? Wendy and I used to talk about this BC (Before Children). We would check the schedule to see when the play was coming to a place within driving distance. Our fantasy was to get some tickets, reserve one of those fancy Hotel suites with an in-room Jacuzzi, bring a couple bottles of champagne, and have a “Just me and you” evening. Then along came the children and it’s looking more and more like by the time they are grown and we are again free, this kind of evening might involve Metamucil and Depends undergarments. Such is life.

A true story which happened the other night. I’m at my store it’s just a few minutes until closing time. It has been quite the routine night, nothing out of the usual. I’ve announced the closing on the intercom and I’m ushering the last of the customers from the store. The doors are locked and I take a quick walk across the front lobby looking down each aisle to make sure everyone has gone. It’s been a long day, I want to go home!

I notice that there are still two young girls in the store… maybe 18 or 19 years old. One of them is wearing pajama bottoms, what’s up with that? Is it now fashionable to coordinate pajama bottoms with a blouse and hit the town? Anyhoo, they are just having a good old time shopping away, chatting it up. I get on the intercom again and announce the store is closed, and ask politely to please make final selections and bring them to the front checkout. Do they heed my request? Absolutely not, I can still hear them back there “Hee-Hawing” as if they don’t have a care in the world. I wait a couple more minutes and decide I need to go see what they are doing. I head up into the office and I can see them through the security mirror. They are really pissing me off because not only are they making me stay late, they are making a mess. Just picking stuff up, looking at it, and tossing it to the floor, taking hosiery out of the package & leaving them to dangle on the rack.

About now, my blood is starting to boil and I’m contemplating whether I should just turn the lights off and tell them they have to go and then I notice the Pajama idiot kneel down on the floor and do the classic “look both ways” and sure enough, she starts loading her purse with stuff. Now I’m way past boiling blood and into a full eruption! I run down the stairs and walk straight up to them and looked her dead in the eyes…

Mike: “Give me the Stuff”.

Pajama Idiot: “What stuff”?

Mike: “Stop being stupid, I saw you”.

Pajama Idiot: “Saw me what”?

Mike: “I don’t have time for this crap, open your purse”.

Pajama Idiot: “Ok, I’ll give you the stuff back”.

(At this point, she empties all the stuff she stole onto the floor)

Mike: “Now both of you get out of my store. Don’t ever come back. If I catch you again, I’ll send you out of here in hand-cuffs, understand”?

Pajama Idiot: (Looks up to the ceiling) “yeah… Man, ya’ll got some serious surveillance in here, I thought I was pretty slick about that”.

Mike: “Yeah, slicker than snot on a doorknob, only two people in the store 15 minutes after it closed knowing the whole crew is watching for you to LEAVE so they can go home. Now GET OUT”!