Ya see...

See what can happen when ya introduce an unsuspecting Trojan to an eager Beaver? You sometimes get more than you expect!

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/polls?week=5

BOOMER SOONER!!!

$700,000,000,000

I'm sitting here in my little space with my aged yet paid for vehicles out front eating leftover pizza... I've been trying to find a word or two to describe how I feel about a Seven Hundred BILLION Dollar Bail Out.

I found one, PISSED.

I'm pissed off!

ONE of the things that really bugs me is the Used Car Sales Third Party Close,"This is a GREAT deal BUT you have to take the deal RIGHT THIS SECOND or the deal is off the table and it will cost you a lot more money later!"

I smell a scam.

Believe me, I've been on both sides of more than a few of those.

So, next thing...

We're gonna call Mr Fuck Up in and LOAN him billions of OUR dollars.

SURE! Great Idea! "Here ya go Mr Fuck Up! You've run your business into the ground. No big deal. Here's $700,000,000,000.00. Go try again!"

YES! I know there are more than one Mr F's.

AND! I know this whole thing started a long time ago.

See, it started with the Slicks and Hicks WE elected or allowed to be elected with our complacency.

Then, those Slicks and Hicks met up with some real Slicky Boys. The ones with the real money.

So, ya know, to put a broader gray area between bribery and honesty, the Slicky Boys hired Lobbyists. The TRUE Slicky Boys.

Alright, I'm outta control here. The whole damn thing is out of control.

I see the CHECK. It's damn hard to miss the 700,000,000,000 Lb Gorilla.

Where's the BALANCE?

Where are the repercussion's for Mr F?

What happens when the same policies produce the same results?

You can't run the world on credit.

I would have failed high school accounting if it weren't for Mary Armstrong letting me copy her homework and her test answers. Still, even I know that multiple accounts and minimum debt service payments = Bad Joo Joo.

And, it's not just John Q. Citizen living that way. It's the whole damn government.

The whole thing is a house of cards. One, just one of the people with a direct line to the underpinnings could pull it out from under us.

I was home when the Repo Man came a callin'. That's not anything anyone wants to experience.

Anybody got a copy of "Mandarin Made Easy"? I think I'd like to get a head start.

Saturday At Work

I was at work this morning when my phone rang at 10:08 AM CDT.

I answered, "Shake My Foundation!"

The Architect began chattering excitedly in Spanish, "Yo tengo! Tengo dos!!!"

"Hell YEAH!!!"

'What?', You ask?

What? What am I gonna doooooooo?

"I'm gonna ride on. Ride on..."

Hell yeah the Architect n Me. AT&T Center. 12 December.

AC/FREAKIN'DC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, yeah...

Shameless head-banging. Shouting,
"ANGUS!!!" stomp stomp "ANGUS!!!" stomp stomp "ANGUS!!!"

Christopher Buckley

Occasionally I watch this book review show on C-SPAN.

Authors come on, talk about their newest books and take questions.

I watched an interview with Christopher Buckley this weekend.

He used a metaphor about nitrous, "It's like XYZ on nitrous oxide..."

I don't recall what XYZ was.

Sometimes that's all it takes to put brain in gear. Good, Bad or Indifferent I scribble these things down in the black book or, now the brown book. Mostly that's where they stay...

"You can't write of nitrous oxide. You can't even speak to nitrous unless you have experienced life on nitrous.

Life is full of fits and fitful starts. You can't asses them or appreciate them or understand them... and you most certainly cannot score them... until you've launched upon them for yourself.

Most starts are uneventful, ubiquitous, even boring.

Some shameful.

Some frightful.

Some, howling beasts of erotic erectus-perfectum. Pistons screaming in joyous celebration. Four horn symphonies in cacophonous harmony. They leave long, short lived marks on the highway and long lived sign posts on the roads we travel.

You must notice, I do not speak to nitrous. After four and one half decades, I've yet to crack the valve on the big blue bottle.

After all of these years and fits and starts... I still grope and grasp about in a monochromatic fog... seeking out the valve."

More On "Choppas"

Sometimes you hear something and you know what you heard. Or, you think you do.

Sometimes you wonder what the hell it was you just heard.

Sometimes you ask yourself, "Was that a back-fire or gun fire?" Or, "Was that fireworks or automatic gun-fire?"

This Tuesday afternoon I was outside the East end of our East hangar.

"BLATTATATATATTA"

'Hmmm, Was that...?', I wondered. Briefly.

"BLAT..BLAT....BLAT..BLAT...BLAT"

'Uh, yeah it was, IS gunfire...'

The sequence repeated. Then, repeated again.

'That's not just gun fire. That's a friggin' GUN FIGHT!'

I could hear sirens. I still tried to rationalize the audio. Fireworks and coincidence.

How did I know that my initial instinct was right?

When the news choppas arrived.

Police shootout with a routine traffic stop.

Well, it started out that way.

Bulletin Board

At the facility where I work I'm known as a, "Repeat Offender".

I am among a number of guys that keep showing up, keep coming back when other jobs finish up or don't work out.

They are happy to have us here but they are understandably skittish. They never know when we might smell greener grass somewhere.

I have been in and out of here since 2001 or '02.

The first few times I was an independent contractor. Here a few days at a time working on King Airs. (This place began as an Aero-Commander shop.)

When I arrived three years ago I staked out a parking place. (It's still mine! LOL!) Lot's of guys have habitual parking spots. We can be territorial too.

I'd only been here a few days. At lunch time one day, I backed into a little white Chevy. I stopped, got out and looked. No visible damage.

Heading back inside I asked around for the owner.

That's when I met Joe, "Uh, you Joe?"

"Yeah.?"

"David.", I reached out to shake his hand, "I uh, guess I just backed into your car."

"What?"

No damage. No foul. No hard feelings. I'm still driving the same truck and he's still driving the same little white Chevy car. We've been 'Work Friends' ever since. He does have a new parking spot.

I haven't seen him around much lately. When I do see him he's not in work clothes.

There has been hushed talk about Joe.

Yesterday, I noticed a black and white picture posted on the bulletin board by the time clock.

It looked like some sort of Andy Warhol copy. Six images. Three across the top and three on bottom. From a distance they all looked the same.

Up close...

It was a series of X-Rays of my friend Joe's head.

That funny looking gray smudge in the middle?

A Goddamn big tumor in my friends brain.

Joe had written on the paper, "This is why I'm not here with you guys. Hope to be back soon!"

Me too Joe. Me too.

Vultures and Coyotes

Helicopters and TV Entertainment posing as "News".

Now, before I go off screaming about the blood sniffing "News" helicopters...

Some of my best friends have been helicopter pilots. (They say that statement is a sure sign of prejudice. That's another post.)

'Green 1' is a good example. I always thought the DAO Call-Signs were lame. Just be glad you weren't a DAO wife... 'Green Whiskey'. The Major is a great guy and a rotor wing pilot.

Bob and Hal. I've never met them. OK, I haven't yet met them. They both fly helicopters. Both fly for a living.

Hal flies for PHI. (Keep me straight here guys. I don't know my cyclic from my collective!) It seems that Hal's job is flying other folks to and from off shore oil rigs to do their jobs.

Bob flies for a guy that needs to be highly mobile and has the where withal to buy a helicopter and hire a pilot to get him where he needs to be to run his business.

It wouldn't surprise me a bit for Hal to write about a search and rescue mission or having come to the aid of a vessel in distress.

I wasn't surprised to read about Bob 'dropping in' to check on a burning house in Alabama.

Nor was I surprised to see two helicopters hovering high and East of Wiley Post Int'l yesterday.

There are several helicopters operating out of here but these two were in what I refer to as, "Strange Attitudes."

Basically, they were at odd altitudes in odd locations and hovering.

Three emergency vehicles rolling out to the taxiway confirmed my suspicions- They were Vultures.

I scanned around for other traffic. There were planes landing and planes "Holding Short".

Then a small single engine airplane landed and rolled midway down the runway and stopped. The fire trucks rolled out to him and...

That was it. No crash. No fire. No fatalities. No Blood...

Guess what, No vultures. Whoosh! They peeled off. Probably looking for a car wreck.

Imagine a scenario from oh, 30 years ago.

"Joe John Pilot" is out and about in his single engine airplane with retractable landing gear.

"Mrs John" knows he's flying. He does it all the time.

Joe John gets home.

"Hi Honey! How was your flight?"

"Oh, it was OK. When I got back to Wiley Post light the bulb in my nose gear down and locked annunciator was burned out. I had to declare an emergency. Flew past the control tower and they said all three were down. I knew they went down and was purtty sure I heard 'em all lock but I flew by. Landed. Just a burnt out bulb. What's for dinner?"

Versus Today-

"BREAKING NEWS!!! AN AIRPLANE IS ABOUT TO CRASH AND WE HAVE OUR CHOPPER ALL OVER IT!!!"
"Ralph! do you read me? Has the plane crashed? How high are the flames? We think there could be 10 to 12 people aboard this 'turbineprop' Piper Cub. Ralph, Are any of them famous? Are they dead yet? Ralph do you read me?!?!?!?!?"

"Mrs John! It's Mary! Turn on the Channel. Joe John is on TV and he's about to die!!!"

These people chap my ass.