Do you have your papers?

Do you have your papers?

Col. Hogan ! Where is my pocket protector!

Hello Gentle Readers, I write to you from Dusseldorf, Germany.  I love this goofy sounding name.  It is a little known fact that this is where the pocket protector was invented.  Or maybe not.  I have no idea where the pocket protector was invented, but just saying “Dusseldorf” makes me feel a bit dorky.  And I know what you are thinking….”Gee, he must always feel dorky”.  OK, you got me.  I have no right to disparage a perfectly good German city name just because it sounds silly.

I am here to attend an industry function.  I will be here for four days and most likely I will not see anything more of it than the street that runs from the airport to the convention center, which is only a few kilometers long.  It is early December and pretty cold.  It is not snowing, but is very dreary.  I like cold weather, but the short days makes me want to hibernate.  There are good reasons why bears do it.  In fact, I have been working on storing belly fat all year long in support of bear hibernation.

Before I left home for this trip, I shaved off my mustache. If you look at my profile photo you will see I was sporting what many consider to be handsome manly growth.  But I got tired of it. (Not the manly part; the growth part)  I had been thinking about getting rid of it for a while now, so the day I was to depart, it came off.  In honor of going to Germany I shaved all but a short, Hitler style mustache, just under my nose.  I started to goose step into the next room to present my new look to my wife, Fraulein Intrepid Traveler, but I knew she would not be amused.  So I quickly dispatched the last of the offensive facial hair.  I guess I need an updated Glamour Shots photo for this blog, now.  The sad truth is that without the mustache I look like a very old Smurf.

If you are a faithful reader of this blog you know that I, among other things, am a master of foreign languages.  I can quickly adapt to any culture and flawlessly communicate fluently.   At least that’s what I wrote on the entry form when I applied for my new International Man of Mystery Identity card.  I am hoping that when it comes in the mail, I will also receive the disguise kit that includes a fake mustache.  

Anyway, back to language skills.  All my German vocabulary has been gleaned from listening to the Nazis from the “Indiana Jones” movies and from TV’s “Hogan’s Heroes”.  So my repertoire of German words is limited to “Dumkopf !”, “Achtung !”, and “I see nutheeng”.   I think one of the tricks to sounding like a German is to raise one eyebrow as you speak and look suspiciously at the listener, as if you just uncovered his plot to overthrow Fearless Leader.  And consider wearing a monocle.  It may be a good look for you.  

Irrespective of my linguistic skills, the German language is difficult to master.  Whoever invented it apparently just chained together a whole bunch of words into one long word to make new meaning.  In English we refer to that as a sentence.  Seems like a simple concept to me, but these Germans like to control their language as they like world domination.  It used to be their thing to invade another country just because it was sitting there minding its own business.  Take that, Poland! Achtung !  But Germany has finally gotten over that bad behavior.  Americans don’t need a VISA to enter Germany.  In fact, they hardly even looked at my passport.  I was anticipating a short, fat man wearing a trench coat and a sneer, to ask me for my papers.  I guess the control culture does not extend to border protection.  

After I had been in the country for six hours I texted my wife that no one here seemed very Nazi-like.  Getting carpet bombed in WW2 probably cured them of the tendency.  Now Russia’s Vladimir Putin has taken over the role of European Bad Boy.  Since I know fewer Russian words than German, it would be even harder to make fun of that language.  And Russia has their Nuclear Warheads, so I probably shouldn’t poke too much fun at them.  They may know where I live.  That International Man of Mystery disguise kit may be my only hope.

Obama's Wonderland

Sing with me, Cousin Pooky!

I was listening to Christmas songs on the radio the other day and these lyrics just came into my head.
I know you will be singing this tune through out the Holidays now.  My apologies to the author of "Winter Wonderland".

Barack Obama was elected
When Hope and Change was selected
His prior job was a Prof
Now he only plays golf
Welcome to Obama’s wonderland
 
He can’t talk without a teleprompter
Now the Dems are in the dumpster
He has done liberalism in
By being just him
Welcome to Obama’s wonderland

To shrink our Army is his mission
While Russia invades another nation
Obama will not do a thing
The world knows he’s a weakling
Welcome to Obama’s Wonderland

He spends our money like a madman
But wants more via the taxman
It’s to increase his voter base
Which is mostly the black race
Welcome to Obama’s Wonderland

The Tea party is mobilizing
Good old values are arising
Just two more years
Till he exits in tears
Say goodbye to Obama’s wonderland.

Romanian Chicken Death Match Contenders and other observations

Romanian Chicken Death Match Contenders and other observations

Warning:  Chickens are larger than they appear.

I am in Romania to do a field check of some equipment that was recently installed here.  The field location is about a two hour drive from the small city of Medias, Romania, where I am staying.  Fortunately, I am not doing the driving.  I say fortunately, but I wonder about that.  The driver, Fione, is very familiar with the area, but these are winding two lane roads.  The asphalt paving has long ago worn out. And the patches have been patched. I sneak a look at the speedometer and we are going well over 80 kilometers an hour, and we barely slow down for curves.  We are in a small European manufactured car with those tiny 14” tires, and I am fearful that we’ll hit a pothole at these speeds and a tire will disintegrate. We pass all the slow moving vehicles like they were parked, and once we nearly pulverized a dog who decided to challenge us as we sped by.  

Fione crosses himself, as in a Catholic ritual, when we pass certain churches.  With the aggressive way he drives I hope he is building up Catholic points for godly protection. If he continues to pass cars on curves I may start to cross myself too.  It can’t hurt to hedge my religious bets.

On trips like this I tend to spend a lot of time in other people’s cars with drivers that don’t speak English.  There are two guys in the backseat and I am in the front with Fione.  He has one of those cell phones that sticks in his ear, and with no warning, he’ll suddenly starts yakking.  Since he speaks Romanian, with a few English words mixed in, I don’t know if he is talking to me, the guys in the back, or to the phone.  He’s one of these guys who cannot talk without using their hands, so he will begin gesturing wildly and raise his voice for no apparent reason.  I wish he’d just keep both hands on the wheel.  I am getting old, I guess.  I wonder if I should tell him not to run with scissors.

The guys in the back are blathering on in Romanian too.  It always seems like everyone talks at the same time.  Don’t they take a breath?  And there is talk radio on too.  So I am surrounded by voices but completely ignorant about what is being said.  It is easy for me to filter all this out. (I am married, you know). I ignore the voices and daydream in my own world.  For me it is a cacophony of silence.  

The rolling hills are full of the past season’s corn crop.  Either the dried corn stalks are still standing, or stacked in shocks in the field.  I see corn cribs stuffed full of dried ears.  I guess it was a good harvest.  As we drive past the farms, the modest homes have livestock milling about in the yard.  I see milk goats, sheep, cows, and a few horses.  It is common to pass a horse drawn cart that is used as the family station wagon, loaded with feed, or people, or nothing, being pulled by a trotting horse.  I notice that there are very few power lines in this country.  I am told that these homes have running water, electricity and gas, but their power consumption must be low.  

Most homes that we pass have small vineyards, where I suppose they grow grapes to eat.  They certainly could not produce enough grapes to make wine, in the spaces allowed, unless they grow them for a cash crop.  When you live in the country you do what you need to do to put food on the table and money in your hand.  I also see lots of giant free range chickens that seem to be in every yard.  Compared to the chickens that the fetching Mrs. Intrepid Traveler raises on our property, these Romanian chickens are huge.  They look like they would kick her chicken’s asses.  Make no mistake, I do not advocate chicken fighting.  I am not the Michael Vick of the Global Poultry Death Match Competition.  I’m just saying that these Romanian chickens look like they could bench press a Volkswagen bus.  Col. Sanders would be salivating.

I admire the folks who live out here.  The ones walking on the road, or in the villages that we blast thru, are the generation that lived thru the communist years.  They probably grew up knowing nothing but Totalitarianism.  I would love to have a conversation with some of them.  I am very interested in how European cultures live.  The problem is we don’t speak the same language.

I hope that I get our equipment problems solved here on this trip, but I would love to have an excuse to come back here in the summer.  I want to experience Romania when the crops are growing and the days are longer.  This is a beautiful, peaceful place.  Just don’t piss off the chickens.

Up from Communism

1,2,3,4, We are about to blow.  5, 6, 7 Who will we incinerate?

Up from Communism

I can see at least fifty, maybe more, standing there on the short cropped grass.  They stay bunched in a tight group, surrounding a tall, slim man who is carrying a stick.  They react to his every gesture. They undulate around him like a slow moving school of fish.  It is amazing how coordinated their movements are even though the person they are watching seems completely detached from them.  He’s not really paying attention.  He is more intent on examining the turf ahead of him and trying to decide what to do to advance his position.  From my casual observance I’d think the guy did not have a care in the world. Looks can be deceiving.  "Where am I", you ask?  Could I be at a Washington area golf course watching the mindless followers of our nation’s current President? Mesmerized by watching him play yet another round of golf?

No, I am not watching Mr. Obama.  I am in Medias, Romania, staring across a hillside at a flock of sheep, being herded by a staff wielding Shepard, as they slowly meander across the rolling pasture.  I didn’t mean to denigrate these sheep by comparing them to Democrats, but there are similarities:  The wool suits, the vacant stares, the collective intelligence of…, well,… sheep. 

I am in Romania to do some fact finding about equipment problems.  I have an idea of what could be wrong but my theory needs to be validated with facts, unlike global warming, so I came to see for myself what is going on.  But I know you are not interested in hearing about that any more than I am interested in writing about it.  Better to tell you about Romania.

The terrain of Romania reminds me of Northern Italy and Slovenia.  Modest, tree covered mountains with broad, open meadows make it a beautiful place.  This country is just now emerging from the cesspool resulting from Communist control that started when World War II ended. After the breakup of the Soviet Union there was great unrest.  Many of the small countries that had been under the thumb of the Soviet Union were now free.  The Berlin wall came down.  Suddenly these countries could choose how to govern themselves.  Romania is one of those former Soviet satellite states.  The country had been run by strong man Nicolae Ceauşescu, who had ultimate control since 1947.  There was a coup in 1989 and he was subsequently removed from office and summarily removed from the living.

Since then, Romania has struggled.  The transformation to self-rule is difficult when a culture has been accustomed to Mr. Big, from Central Planning, dictating the next five year plan.  But the country now seems to be on the right path.  The day I arrived was Election Day.  A new president was chosen.  But it was not common knowledge from the people I spoke with whether the President has a four year or a five year term.  I was told both.  That kind of information seems like an easy bit of political science that any Romanian would know.  But maybe I am speaking with the same kind of people that are routinely interviewed on the streets of the U.S.  These U.S. citizens might know the size of Kim Kardashian’s ass but do not  know the name of the Vice President.  But, in fairness, maybe that is what happens to a population when there are no elections for half a century. 

The new President has a German last name.  I was told as if I would be shocked by that fact.  It was explained that it was a surprise for him to get elected since he was not Romanian. Huh?  You’d think they’d have written the election law to exclude non-citizens.  Turns out that what was meant by that comment was that a large German population migrated into Romania about 800 years ago….so this new President, being a part of that ethnic group, was a newcomer.  That explained a political banner I saw supporting a competitor and the sign simply mentioned that candidate’s name and Romanian.  I guess that little dig at the German’s heritage was all this fellow thought was a reason to vote for him rather than for that German interloper.  I say “guy” in a generic sense.  There were 14 candidates on the ballot and three of them were women.  The candidate that exceeds the 50% threshold wins.  This Election Day must have been the run off, but that was not mentioned by the person telling me about the election process.

Another lingering relic from the era of Soviet rule that I spotted from the roadway was the cooling towers for a Nuclear Power Plant.  I have since done a little research and learned that it was built with failed 1980’s technology. Now, I am hardly a nuclear power expert, but I noticed there was no containment dome over the power plant. Some of you may recall another famous Soviet Nuclear Power facility, with no containment dome, that experienced a mildly significant event.  This Romania reactor has the same design flaws as the Russian Chernobyl reactor.  I wonder if word of that disaster has reached Romania yet. 

There is much more to say about Romania, but since this post is less funny than factual, I will end it here. I just hope that my reason for coming to Romania on this trip becomes as informative to me as this post will to the reader.  Even if you are the kind of person to play golf when you should be working.

Pets – If luvin them is wrong, then I don’t wanna be wrong

Who wears a tie with pajamas, anyway?

Pets – If luvin them is wrong, then I don’t wanna be wrong

I just returned home from an eight day trip to India, and, as usual, my Border collie greeted me with sincere enthusiasm.  She is usually so excited when I return from a trip that she looks like she is having a seizure.  (I often have that effect on women). Whenever I am gone for an extended trip overseas, or even to the hardware store, she goes nuts when I come home.  I guess a person can’t say that’s a bad thing. For years my daughters made a game of who could kiss me hello first when I returned from work each day.   I loved the attention, but it was evident that this game became less and less about showing me affection and more about sibling competition.  This was in the early days of video games, so I suspect they were pretending I was a space alien, being killed by their kisses.

At 2am this morning, one of our cats woke us up with her snarky, irritating meow.  She wanted food.  Or water, or nuclear disarmament of all western nations, or whatever.  We never know what she wants, but we can’t get her to stop waking us up.  She seems to have no concern about it being the middle of the night.  If I bought her a kitty wrist watch maybe she would she pay attention to the time?  I really don’t think she cares.  She wakes us up, which then wakes the dog, who wants to go out, and then will bark later to be let back in.  It is a nightly ritual that I don’t miss when out of town. 

Sometimes I think we are trapped in a come-to-life version of the Flintstones cartoons from the 1960’s.  The dog wants out, the cats want in, and there is continuous turmoil about which pet wants to be where.  I may have to give up wearing my leopard skin pajamas.  I don’t want to be seen wearing them outdoors as I pound on the door to wake up the wife after the dog locked me out of the house.

That old, crabby cat has always been crabby, so it is not an age thing.  She has been like this ever since we rescued her decades ago.  (Never do this).  All our pets are rescues, either from an animal shelter, or from being abandoned by someone smarter than us.  You’d think that these pets, after we take them in, clean them up, feed them and get them to the vet, would show some appreciation.  But no.  They just act like dogs, or cats, or goats*…. or whatever.  They owe us BIG, but you’d never know that by their attitude. 

We have another adopted dog, a Great Pyrenees, who is barking outside right now.  He was abandoned by someone who moved from a neighboring farm and so we started feeding him.  He is a very, very large dog, with long white-ish fur, a black nose and black eyes.  When I first saw him, slowly lumbering around in the pasture, I thought he was a polar bear.  But since free ranging Polar bears are not common in Texas I knew that was unlikely.  This dog spends most nights, trotting around in the woods, with his head to the ground, barking at nothing at all.  Apparently he thinks this is his job description. It gets very irritating and we are afraid either he will get shot by a neighbor or they will shoot us for saving him.

We moved out to the country about five years ago.  (It only seems like five decades ago) and the first country pets we inherited were some goats* that a friend of mine had too many of.  He lives in far west Texas and bought goats* to raise for meat.  He quickly realized that due to the romantic nature of goats* they soon multiplied.  The goats* were eating the grass down to the dirt, so he asked if we wanted to take some.  (That was a dumb question to ask my wife, the fetching Mrs. Intrepid Traveler).  She is intellectually brilliant but somehow could not form the word NO when asked this question). So we drove out there (12 hours each way) and spent half a day chasing goats*.  We caught two lambs.  Lucky us.

I have included an (*) after the word goat, because these goats* were not goats* after all.  They turned out to be sheep.  Not that it matters what type of critter they are, since every pet is an animal that eats, poops, needs shelter, and needs their own vet.  I think we discovered the goat* mis-identification after one goat* started getting romantic with the other goat*.  Eventually a third goat* appeared as a result of the romantic encounters, if you know what I mean.  Well, time marches on.  We were given another free goat (no asterisk this time since it really was a goat) that was no longer wanted by someone who was raising show goats for the county fair.  We took in the spare goat.

My wife’s pet adoption attitude may have been the basis for an urban legend which was started to save parents from having to tell their kid that the family pet died.  Kids….if your mommy and daddy ever said they took your pet to out to the country to live on a farm…..it could have happened for real at our place.  My wife is the living embodiment of this urban legend, and I get stuck with the vet bills.  What’s wrong with this picture?

Anyway, I digress.  The spare show goat soon became the object of affection of that amorous ram (goat* or sheep? Now I am totally confused).  Well, he did what animals do in the barnyard and somehow managed to impregnate the real goat.  We took the real goat to the vet. He assured us that it was impossible for one species to impregnate another species.  But it happened.  (This might also explain the existence of Liberals?). This one ended as a miscarriage and, of course, a large veterinarian bill.  I told the vet, “Sir how dare you invoice us for an impossible medical condition?”  (Actually, that’s what I wanted to tell him that, but didn’t since I am a pet wimp.)

Another of our goat stories is more tragic.  When we lived in suburbia, one daughter wanted to raise show animals for the county fair.  This seemed like a harmless way to keep her out of jail, so we funded her activities for every year of her high school doing this. She raised show steers, and one year she raised a goat too.  (a real one).  I remember one night, she was out tending her animals, when I heard a commotion going on at the front door.  I look out the door’s window and see a goat’s head, complete with horns, staring back at me. I open the door and my daughter spilled into the house, carrying her goat that weighted nearly as much as she did.  She yelled that the goat was sick with a fever.  We helped her get the animal into the tub, where we iced it down to reduce its body temperature.  I am not sure of all the events that occurred with this but the goat, sadly, did not make it. 

I am sure that not many of you have been greeted at your front door by a sick goat needing to borrow you tub for a bath.  Or maybe you have.  That might explain why you are still reading my stories.

To summarize:  Do not purchase, rescue, or temporarily agree to shelter, any kind of pet, of any type, breed, or species, from anyone.  Just like the warnings announced in the airport:  do not accept packages from anyone you don’t know or do know.  If you ever do find yourself at a weak moment, about to agree to rescue an animal, immediately stop the process and mail me your wallet.  You can thank me later.  But not at 2am.  And not in person.  I don’t want you to see me, locked outside, in my leopard skin jammies.

All the News that’s fit to plagiarize

All the News that’s fit to plagiarize, satirize, or bastardize, from the Sub-Continent.

 

“First, don’t do anything stupid…unlike the American voters”

Today’s headlines, ripped from real life fiction.  Yes, Gentle Readers, it’s time for another installment of news from India, the Sub-Continent.  The term “Sub-Continent” became popular after the Brits took over vast land holdings in India.  They used the land to grow submarine sandwiches, which had been popularized by King Jared of England, who lost 50 stone weight by eating a diet of only submarine sandwiches.  This was later referred to as the Paleo diet, because all Englishmen have a rather pale complexion.

International terrorist news - An Al Qaeda spokesman, recently interviewed, lamented the lost glory days when they had a monopoly on terror.  Comparisons have been made of Al Qaeda being like the Microsoft monopoly of the terrorist world, when it was revealed that Al Qaeda means “Windows” when translated into English.  The version Al Qaeda 8.0, had a software glitch that allowed Navy Seal hackers to penetrate the Operations security system. The new Management at the firm have recently released an upgrade:  Al Qaeda 8.1, where the “start” button has been replaced by the “sword” button to euphemistically end the program.  In the “72 virgins edition”, they have the same button but labeled “detonation”.  You only push that button once.

Al Qaeda’s competitor in the terrorism industry is a newly formed organization known as I-SIS. It has become popular with hip young terror geeks, who claim that the I-SIS operating system is faster, more brutal, and savvier when using social media, like YouTube.  I-SIS even has a corporate logo that looks like an apple.  But everyone knows it is really a hand grenade. The I-SIS campaign to expand market share by stepping over red lines, has seen remarkable results, and they now dominate a new newly defined sales territory, I-Raq.  I-SIS is suddenly very profitable, after venturing into banking and crude oil production.  Next quarter’s corporate goal of I-SIS is to take over a region currently be serviced by another organization.  This new region, if I-SIS is successful, will be re-branded:  I-Srael. 

Political news:  Hillary Clinton was forced to abruptly cancel her India book signing tour due to lack of interest.  This came on the heels of her canceling the U.S. tour promoting her book about being Secretary of State.   Mrs. Clinton still had ten of the original dozen books that were printed for the U.S. market so she brought them to India hoping for a friendlier audience. 

Hillary was infamous for her ill-fated overture to Russia where she gave the Russian President a red “reset” button.  The Russians laughed at Hillary for the idea.  Her failure in India stemmed from a passage in the very last chapter of her book (chapter 2) where she told of giving the Prime Minister of India a smaller version of the red reset button.  In her book she said it was a “red forehead dot reset button”.  The India Prime Minister was not amused.   It was suggested to her that if the book had been printed on softer paper, that sales might have been more robust. There are 1.8 billion people in the country and there is a toilet paper shortage.

Washington D.C. - “Cautioner-in-Chief” Obama urged to do something. – When it came to light that over 100 U.S. citizens are now in Iraq and Syria fighting for ISIS, alarm bells went off in many political circles.  The potential for these individuals to return to the U.S. and cause harm has gotten many conservatives in a lather.  President Obama is being mocked for his “don’t do stupid shit” doctrine, which stemmed from his statement that he still does not have a policy for dealing with ISIS.  A recent headline suggests that there is growing pressure for Obama to abandon his minimalist foreign policy and “to do something stupid”. 

London – UK Cops tell victims to solve own crimes - Victims of petty crimes, like car theft, criminal damage, or dis-embowelment of prostitutes, are told to do their own detective work and investigate their own cases.  A report by the Inspectorate of Constabulary found that this do-it-yourself, or DIY trend was linked to the public’s viewing of certain television shows.  The viewing of TV shows that feature amateur sleuths solving crime, such as ABC’s “Castle”, and the PBS show “This Old Crime Scene” are fostering a new confidence about solving your own crimes, reports an un-named bank robber.  This un-named person happened to be investigating his own recent robbery of a bank.  “I am very close to solving this crime and my suspect is the notorious Al Capon”.  When questioned by a reporter about whether Mr. Capon could have actually done the crime, since he has been deceased for several decades, the investigator said, “Hey, we ought to throw the book at him!  Somebody gotta do the time!”  Mr. Capon was not available for comment.

And finally the lighter side of the news – Is your pet depressed?  Much like humans, your furry companions could also suffer bouts of depression.  What to watch for:  Pets who are withdrawn, have a lack of appetite, changes in sleeping patterns, dullness, or less chatty, These may be signs the pet may be suffering from either depression or from being covered with fur.  If your pet feels abandoned when you leave for a month, then do not let your pet see a calendar, or any multi-part television shows, so they won’t know how long you have been gone.  If your pet does not show signs of improvement after your return, one suggested treatment is to buy your pet his own pet. But make sure your pet is old enough to be responsible for his own pet.  And that your pet has no plans for any extended vacations.