This is My World

Do you have a short message you want to give someone?  But you want a unique way to send it.  Never fear, I have an idea.  Well, actually, it wasn’t my idea.  I just stumbled into it on eBay.

With the economy being tough and eBay auctions being a little low, a cartoonist and eBay seller in Georgia came up with a unique way to make a few extra dollars.  If you win the online auction, “Redneck Beer Gut Man” will write your message on his “Beer Gut” and email 3 JPEG views directly to your inbox.

Redneck Beer Gut Man says his beer gut is ”prime advertising space” and would be perfect for a marriage proposal, business card, or blog advertisement.

There are a few rules though.  The messages have to be in good taste, no offensive messages.  They also have to be 20 words or less to fit on the beer gut.  The color choices are red, black, green, or blue.

So, here’s to Redneck Beer Gut Man for coming up with a truly awesome and unique idea. 

Click here to see the auction.  If you have any unique ideas of your own, use the contact me page.  If I like it, I’ll write a blog entry about it.

Either the stress of slowly starting my own business is starting to get to me, or I’ve had way too much time to think about my own way of life.  I’m not sure which, but here’s what’s on my mind today.

What are a human’s true basic necessities?

Well, I’ve come up with three basic things.  Food that’s safe to eat, water that’s safe to drink, and shelter to keep you safe from the elements.  So that’s food, water, shelter.

Sounds simple right? For some people it is.  If you can cook wild food over a campfire and live in a cave near a fresh water source, life wouldn’t be any simpler.  There are people who do it.  However, it would be trespassing if you were to find such a place on someone else’s land and fire is illegal during dry seasons in the National Forest. 

So, we’re back to owning or renting land for the necessity of shelter.  That requires money.  Money is something you have to work for. 

If you manage to work for your money within walking distance, you won’t need a car or gasoline.  Anything that close probably won’t have a fresh water source on it.  So, you’ll have to pay for nature’s most basic and abundant commodity.  After rent or mortgage, that’s bill number two.

Next, you will most likely have a neighbor.  Neighbors tend to be nosy.  So, if you don’t have electricity, it’ll become public knowledge and you run a chance of having visits from a social worker.  Not to mention most homes have electric stoves and many residential areas do not allow campfires.  There’s your third bill, electricity.

If you manage to find food somewhere or grow it yourself, good for you.  That’ll save you a grocery bill.  If not, that’s bill number four. 

It’s amazing how life’s basic necessities can be so complicated.  At one point in ancient history humans lived in caves near fresh water sources and knew what around them was safe to eat.  And now, many Americans think the only safe food to eat is in a grocery store.  Therefore, we come almost to crisis over the near collapse of a financial system that only serves to complicate life’s basic necessities: food, water, shelter.

One of the many things that makes America great is the Americans’ strong sense of independence.  The attitude of “We can do it ourselves” resonates in every American from toddler to elderly.  To remain independent is the pride of every American.  Recently, in many of my articles I have been quoting Thomas Jefferson, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  Well, today I thought I would tell you the rest of the quote.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

In case you haven’t noticed it is the second, third, and fourth sentences of the Declaration of Independence of the United States.  This declaration of course isn’t actually law.  However, it basically listed the reasons why the colonies didn’t want to be a part of Britain any longer. 

I strongly believe that the founders of our country were on to something.  They realized that when the government interfered into the affairs of the people, the society itself would slide downhill.  Their sense of independence was passed one to every generation of American.

In recent history, however, the American people have become more and more dependent on the government, and the trend is getting worse.  We should not depend on the government to decide which banks and businesses fail.  Nor should the government be able to decide anything about the individual health care of a person. 

As an American you have the liberty to decide what you purchase and what you do not purchase.  Businesses know if their product is selling and if it is not.  So, if a business does not make a product that sells, it is their fault when it fails.  At no point does taxpayer money need to go into a failing business.

One of the things I always remember hearing as a teenager is my mother saying, “Read the fine print.”  That applies to anything you sign.  When you get a credit card, before you sign the application you have the ability to read it or have someone read it to you.  All of them list the late fees, over limit fees, variable rates, etc.  Most of them even have a statement on them that says the company can change the interest rate for whatever reason it wants to.  If you signed that application without reading it, it’s your fault that you are in so much debt.  The government doesn’t need to bail you out of it.

On to health care.  If you cannot afford to pay one doctor, don’t assume you won’t be able to pay any of them.  Search for a doctor you can afford.  Most major cites have free clinics and some doctors actually charge based on income.  Most states already have a state option for health care that is just like what Obama is proposing at the federal level.  If it’s not broke don’t fix it.

Don’t blame the federal government for every concern that you have.  If you borrowed money for anything, including a house or a car, knowing that you couldn’t afford it, don’t blame the government.  That’s your fault.  If you lost your job because your company went bankrupt, while certainly devastating to your family, that’s not the government’s fault.  It’s the company’s fault.  At that point you may have to relocate to find another job depending on how big your company was.

All this being said, I firmly believe that the government is currently claiming they are taking care of it’s people, when actually they are trying to make it’s people more dependent on the government.  This should not be allowed at all. 

American’s, keep your independent spirit!

Former President George W. Bush was on Fox News yesterday talking in a press conference.  He was very straight forward about his opinion of current President Obama’s new policies.  Mr. Bush made it clear that he did not want to criticise Obama as a person.  However, Mr. Bush was very frank with his opinion of Obama’s policies. 

“Government does not create wealth,” Mr. Bush said, explaining that the role of the government is to create an environment in which American people have the liberty to create jobs and income on their own.

I only saw a couple clips of his speech in a Fox News video.  From what I saw Mr. Bush seems to be more relaxed now than when he was President.  This of course is understandable to me.  If I were to attempt to lead a nation that just wanted handouts, I would be very stressed, too.  In fact, I would probably stutter when I talked, and misuse and make up a lot of words out of sheer stress.

The government’s job is defense of the nation, and creating and enforcing laws that protect the people.  Unfortunately, right now the government is trying to make the American people so dependant on it that they lose their sense of independence and liberty.  The scary part is that it seems to be working. 

There are actually people on Social Security Disability for alcoholism and and obesity.  These are not disabilities, these are life choices that those people have made.  Yet, here I am with back pain so bad that I can only sit up for about an hour at a time, and just got turned down for disability.  Instead of whining about it, I’ve filed an appeal with the help of a lawyer.  In the meantime, I am scratching around everywhere trying to find a legitimate work from home job that will keep my utilities on.  Mainly because I know that without people holding jobs and paying taxes, there wouldn’t be Social Security for people to fall back on when they are disabled.

Now that I’ve touched on taxes, let’s talk about the economy.  I am so sick of hearing people say that Obama will bring the country out of the current economic crisis.  Where do you think that money is coming from that he’s unsuccessfully pouring into failing businesses?  Straight out of the working man’s pocket is where it comes.  Obama is full of hot air with no positive action.

Former President Bush said yesterday (June 17),

“I know it’s going to be the private sector that leads this country out of the current economic times we’re in.  You can spend your money better than the government can spend your money.”

You know what?  He’s right.  American’s know when to save and when to spend.  We know what we want and what we need.  It’s the companies that make those products that we want and need and can afford that will be the most profitable.  The government needs to stay out of it.  The economy was starting to fix itself before Obama’s “stimulus bill” was passed.

They need to stay out of our health care, too.  A good example of government run health care is in the Navy’s Recruit Training Command (boot camp).  When I was there in 2002, they started handing out cough drops and cough syrup for pink eye.  That was the standard of what you got when you went to medical no matter what it was.  I even got a “cold pack” for having an infected blister on my heal.

Normally, I don’t really read unless I absolutely have to.  However, I was listening to the Right Perspective one Friday night.  It’s a show that people can call in and explain what they think is wrong with America today.  The hosts’ opinions are based on the Constitution of the United States of America. 

Anyway, the first Friday I listened, they had a guest on the show that was advertising his book called Animal Colony.   The authors, Dr. Thomas Allen Rexroth and Mark Andrew Olson, called it “An allegory for today’s America.”  Basically, a group of animals weren’t being properly taken care of by their masters anymore.  So, they left and established their own colony in an abandoned Indian Village.  They found that working to grow their own food, teamwork, honesty, and family values really worked well.  The colony flourished, until a lot of it’s members decided they didn’t want to work anymore.  You can read more about “Animal Colony” at AnimalColonyBook.com.

So, after I finished reading this book I got to thinking about America.  I remember hearing history from my dad about Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence.  I remembered Dad teaching me that “all men are created equal.”  It’s the choices you make as a person that make you who you are.  If you choose to rely on the government for support for your whole life, that’s your own choice.  You always have the option of figuring out how to make it on your own.  That’s one of the many liberties this country has. 

You also have the Freedom of Speech.  If you don’t like the president, you can let people know why you don’t like him.  If you don’t like what other people are doing, you can tell them that and you can tell them why you don’t like it.  They also have the freedom to listen to you, ignore you, or offer their own opinion. 

At one point in this book the Animal Colony voted in a leader that promised the easy life.  In practice, however, this new leader used a lot of fancy talk without any positive action.  He was ruining the colony, like I feel Obama is ruining America today.  The new leader of Animal Colony was giving people handouts that didn’t deserve them at all, like Obama gave the auto makers and banks.  Every time someone stepped up to to say he was wrong, they were quickly hushed by the town crier (media). 

At the very end of the book, one animal was able to speak up loud enough for everyone hear about the problems with the Animal Colony.  He was offering the colony a vote to keep the new leader or elect the challenger.  He got his point out before the colony erupted into chaos.  His son pointed out that it seemed as though a few people were listening toward the end.  He thought they might think about it while they slept that night. 

So the challenger’s last statement in the book was, “If that is true, then we have one hope left.  Tomorrow, we vote.”

That last statement rang in my head as I slept that night.  I have concluded that, in my own opinion, the only hope for America is to somehow vote Obama out of office.  Then, we can start rebuilding out great nation on “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Okay.  So it’s really not like to me pay attention to politics or politicians.  For years my opinion has been that politicians are overpaid idiots that for lack of any reasonable skills to support themselves went into “public service.”  Well, I still have that opinion.  Recently, I’ve realized that it’s even worse than that. 

For years in Washington, politicians have been making laws and decisions that would normally anger people to know end. Then, to cover it up they make a massive deal out of something frivolous so the media would cover that instead of what’s really going on.

Now, we have a president that is blowing smoke for media attention and not making any real change.  Well, he is making the national debt a lot bigger.  For what?  I haven’t seen anything come out of that.  Except that my bank, Wachovia, merged with Wells Fargo and now has higher overdraft fees and poor customer service.  Wachovia used to be a good bank to have.  Well, I guess he is trying to socialize the health care system.  It hasn’t passed yet; and I don’t like doctors anyway.

So much for helping the little people, Mr. Obama.  You’ve screwed us over worse than what we were to begin with.  Oh and thanks for draining money into the auto makers.  It only prolonged the inevitable.  They were going bankrupt anyway because the CEOs can’t seem to figure out how to put their business before their paycheck.  So now taxpayer money has gone into a big bottomless pit.  I would like to point out that those CEOs still have their mansions, and I still have a trailer that leaks when it rains.

Anyway, I’ve checked into this “transparent government.”  So far it’s been non-existent.  Other than updating storm drains in small towns and making ATV trails in National Forests, what’s in that economic stimulus bill?  And how do storm drains stimulate the economy?  And what is in the credit bill? The only thing I’ve found is that now the credit card companies have to let you know before they screw you over. 

That’s okay though.  I don’t have a credit card for that reason. When the country’s economy completely crashes, I’ll still eat.  I know how to hunt, fish, and grow a garden.  At least then I won’t have to worry about paying for stuff I don’t own.  I won’t have a paycheck for the government to pull taxes out of.

San Quentin State Prison in California is located in the San Francisco Bay Area.  It has a beautiful ocean view and houses 5,300 of California’s toughest inmates.  Because of the universities and number of volunteers in the area, the inmates have access to a variety of rehabilitation programs and are able to attend college. 

Well, like many of California’s jails and prisons, San Quentin is over crowded.  To complicate matters even more, the State of California is broke.  So, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to sell the prison to anyone who wants to buy it for $2 million. 

The plan is to spend $1 million to build a new prison.  The state would then profit $1 million.  This of course makes sense on paper.  However, as anyone else in the world know, just because it looks good on paper doesn’t mean it’ll actually work in practice. 

See the problem is that while they would be constructing a new prison, the 5,300 inmates that occupy the current one would be temporarily relocated to other already over crowded facilities.  This would cause more violence and other issues in the other prisons.

I know times are tough, but selling a prison isn’t the answer.  However, I do recall a story a while back where Mr. Schwarzenegger wanted to legalize marijuana to be able to tax it and collect revenue.  Now, that would be a better idea.

It’s official!  According to Reuters, a Japanese company had invented a car that runs on any kind of water, even tea.  I found a link on Digg.com that led me to YouTube for the video.  YouTube provided a link to share it.  It’ll only go 80 kilometers per hour.  I’m not sure what that is in miles, but it doesn’t sound very fast.  However, it is a step to finding a gasolene alternative.  Could you imagine when scientists actually find the technology to make a water-powered car travel at highway speeds.  Wow! That would just be amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXy7uokE4IM

I recently wrote a story about Myer’s Grade School needing new playground equipment.  The students and faculty were trying to raise the money through fundraisers.  I am pleased to share with you that they have started building.  First, volunteers from the community helped tear out the stuff that was going away.  Next, they will bring in equipment and cushioned surfaces. 

The People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) offered the school free equipment in exchange for advertisement on the equipment.  The principal hasn’t said no yet, but she is hesitant to agree to anything because PETA hasn’t given a direct answer on what advertisement they require. 

That aside Myer’s Grade School still needs help with funding the rest of their playground. 

If you would like to donate, the address is

Cannelton PTO
615 Taylor St.
Cannelton, IN 47520

All this month in Santa Claus, Indiana the Holiday World and Splashin’ Safari theme park has be running a food drive called “Feeding Families Food Drive.”  When guests entered the park this month, if they donated 2 non-perishable food items, Holiday World workers would give them five “Holibucks” to spend like money in the park. 

This morning in Evansville Holiday World used a truck provided by Kimball International to deliver 20,000 cans and prepackaged meal items to the Tri-state Food Bank.  The theme park’s director of admissions, Eric Snow, said that more shipments will be brought to Evansville, but some will also be delivered to Indianapolis, IN, Louisville, KY, and Nashville, TN. 

With thousands of visitors to Holiday World every year, this should be a very successful program.  I used to worked in a food stand inside Holiday World  in 2000 and 2001.  Then it seemed like the lines of people would never end.  Still more people would pack their own coolers and take a break to eat outside the park.  If everyone that went to Holiday World would bring 2 food items, the amount of donations to these food banks would seem endless.  Thank you Holiday World and Splashin’ Safari for “Feeding Families.”

For more information on Feeding Families Food Drive visit the website at www.HolidayWorld.com/Give.

Remember when Mr. Obama first took office as our president?  Everyone thought he was going to save the country.  So, almost immediately the economic stimulus bill was passed.  Republicans were really mad because they didn’t have a chance to actually read it.  Guess what, I was on their side.  When you are in a leadership position that you can make decisions for an entire country, you should definitely read things before you agree to them.  I always read contracts before I sign them.

Well, it seems like Mr. Obama has done it again.  This bill controlling the credit companies has passed and again no one seems to know what it says.  I’ve been trying to figure out what is in it and see how much of it applies to me, but I can’t seem to find that information anywhere.  So much for the crystal clear government he promised.  When it comes to matters that actually affect the American people, this administration seems to be more secretive than ever. 

So, if anyone has any information about where I can find the contents of this secretive bill, please leave a comment and share it with everyone.

A truck going from Arizona to New York was searched at a routine scales stop on I-70 near Terre Haute, Indiana today.  Police brought out the search dogs and found 6 bales of marijuana hidden in the honey dew melon boxes.  In total police confiscated 133 lbs of marijuana and $4,000 in cash.

If they’d just legalize it, there wouldn’t be these types of packing mistakes.  Businesses would be able to have well marked packaging saying what is marijuana and what is melons.  It was be taxed like other goods and the government would start making money from it instead of spending money trying to prevent something. 

For a stronger case on legalizing marijuana please visit my story called “Marijuana, Curing Cancer Since 1975.”

“A search of the residence later turned up more than 72 pounds of marijuana as well as digital scales, a handgun and numerous boxes of Ziploc bags, the affidavit said. More than $1,600 in cash found on Langley was seized.”

The Evansville Courier reported that today.  Police also found 3 more pounds in the car so that’s 75 lbs.  Authorities estimated it to be worth $75,000 dollars.  That’s $1000 a pound.  I guess the price of everything is going up. 

Anyway, the comment board was alive of legalization debates and whether or not it was actually for personal use.  For conversation sake let’s say it was for personal use: 

• First, the $1,600 in cash shows that Mr. Langley did not trust banks.  That’s understandable.  If I had that much cash, I wouldn’t trust a bank with it either.  They’d probably find some way to screw me out of it.
• Second, the digital scales really isn’t anything.  Maybe he was on Weight Watchers or something.  To calculate the number of points in home-made food you have to weigh it first.
• Third, the handgun was probably for personal protection.  A lot of people own these nowadays.  I personally prefer a 20 gage Mossberg, but to each his own.
• Fourth, with the price of everything sky-rocketing anymore, it is cheaper to buy in bulk.  I’m always running out of Ziploc bags, so I probably should buy those in bulk.  Maybe he applied the same principal to his marijuana stash. 

If this gentleman was in fact intending to distribute marijuana, only he and his buyers would actually know.  The “authorities” did not catch him in the act.  They only found his stash and discovered his distrust of banks.  If marijuana was legal and Mr. Langley was selling it, he would be considered a business man.  So, the whole story depends on your perspective.

Tonight, I think I’ll take a different approach to what I normally write.  You see usually I find some article that either doesn’t set well with me and explain why.  Or I find some story somewhere that I don’t think is getting enough attention.  Tonight, I’m not picking some article.  I’m going to talk about reality for a minute. 

You see what’s flooding my local papers as well as the local news stations isn’t being talked about in the local gas station.  As a matter of fact, no one is really talking about it at all in this area.  We all pretty well seen it coming.  The auto industry is going belly up.  Chrysler is filing bankruptcy and GM is closing down dealerships. People are losing jobs and homes.  And Mr. Obama is making the American people fix it.

The President is making taxpayers like you and me bail out these companies that obviously can’t manage money to begin with.  Here in the real world if a small business owner had a company that was barely hanging on, he would start selling his personal stuff to bail it out.  If some of those big shots in those companies would sell their multimillion dollar mansions and buy an average size house, they wouldn’t need my money to keep their company afloat.  I live in a two bedroom trailer and can barely make ends meet.  Why do I need to fix a rich man’s problem?  Those CEO’s should have downsized their own houses and paychecks before they even asked for my money. 

You know what that reminds me of a song by John Rich:

Because in the real world their shuttin Detroit down,
While the boss man takes his bonus pay and jets on out of town.
DCs bailing out them bankers as the farmers auction ground.
Yeah while there living it up on Wall Street in that New York City town,
Here in the real world their shuttin Detroit down.

Well, they wouldn’t be shutting Detroit down if them CEO’s would have taken a pay-cut a long time ago and been more financially responsible to begin with.  You can’t raise your own salary if your company is losing money.  The same theory applies for the gas prices and the greedy oil industry.  If those big shots would be willing to live on $150,000 a year, we wouldn’t have seen anywhere near $4 a gallon last summer.  By the way, if they would take $150,000 a year, that would still be 6 times what I made last year.

The economy has been fueled by greed for many presidents, republican and democrat alike.  Now, the economy has has been flushed down the toilet.  The worst thing about it is that the people to blame (auto and oil CEO’s) can still live comfortably while the rest of us scratch at pennies for groceries. 

So, here in the real world Detroit is slowly shutting down and the jack-asses that caused it are still rich.  On top of that, some of the people that worked for them are now homeless.  To make it all better the government wants to blame it on the consumer (you and me) not buying their over-priced, gas guzzling, hunks of metal.  Don’t blame me for the crashing economy.  I’m not the greedy one, I’m just getting by.

When I was in the third grade I went to Myer’s Grade School in Cannelton, Indiana.  It was an old yellow school house with wood floors, a basement cafeteria and haunted bathrooms.  Then, it had students from third to sixth grade.  Now it has students from first to fifth grade.  It is the oldest structure in the United States that continues to be used as a school.

The playground, however,  is outdated with an iron swing set that has 20 plus years of paint on it.  A “new” play area was added when I was in the third grade complete with rings to go from one platform to another.  When I was there, we battled skinned knees and elbows on uneven pavement.  A couple of kids actually had to have stitches.  They have covered much of this with pea gravel, but that’s still doesn’t cushion a fall and there’s no telling what could be living in it.  Much of the same equipment has been there longer than I have been alive (26 years), including the slightly unstable slide with no protection from falling off the side of it.  There is hope for this old playground, though.

Myer’s Grade School students are doing many fundraisers trying to update their playground.  However, they need help.  The new playground is estimated to cost around $120,000.  Cannelton just doesn’t have that much money.  Therefore, the PTO is also reaching out for donations. 

If you would like to donate, the address is

Cannelton PTO
615 Taylor St.
Cannelton, IN 47520

Please help these young students get the safer playground they deserve.