Voting

Have you ever bet on a fart, and lost?

You know it might stink. The important thing is, if its an SBD nobody else knows YOU did it.   What the heck. Right? To have the little sucker betray you and leave a skid mark worse; a greasy, all day odorous, skid mark, well that's just wrong, Right?

Voting the lessor of two evils is betting on a fart.  You know its going to stink.  You're just hoping it doesn't leave a big streak of poo on your back side.  It always does.  You'd think we'd learn not to do it.

Self Evident

I haven't made up my mind about the whole Occupy Wall Street thing.  Is the system fixed? Yeah as much as the players can fix it.  You don't send your kid to an Ivy League school for nothing.  There is a reason half the class go to fancy pants jobs and the other half goes to government procurement offices. That reason has nothing to do with the betterment of the country or a desire to serve "the Public".

But, and this is a big but, do the Occupiers have my best interests at hart?  I don't think so.  They get their funding from left wing political agitators like George Soros.  Who is George Soros anyway?  Apparently he's a rich guy too, according to this, worth about $22 Billion.  Not a bad chunk of change.  Did he go to a Ivy league school?  Does the London School of Economics count as Ivy, or does it just help you land a job doing arbitrage trades on Wall Street?  Cause thats what George did after college, which came after WWII.  George was too young to do much during the war.  Ever industrious though, George had a job handing out eviction notices to Jews who were going to the death camps and apparently he made a couple of bucks on the side pawning their left over belongings.  Seems like an odd enterprise for a Jewish kid.  Maybe he's just a tad flexible with the ethics when it comes to getting what he wants.

Occupy Wall Street, funded by Billionaire, Holocaust Profiteer George, Hedge-fund owner and Wall Street Insider, Soros.  WTF is this all about?  The guy bank rolling the protesters is one of the biggest inside traders of the last 50 Years.  What could be his motive?  Well if history is any indicator then the past might give us a clue to the present.  Is there a past?  The Brits call it, Black Wednesday.  The long and short of it is that during a little financial crisis, George Soros, with some fast and furious Forex trading, broke the Bank of England, and made about a Billion pounds sterling.  Remember the Asian Financial Crisis?  George Soros does, not sure how much he made on that one.  He thought it too little and lamented that they got out of the trades too early.  Apparently every seven to ten years or George needs to make a quick buck and he's not having any luck getting the Nazi's back together.

Occupy Wall Street seems to be a bit of theater, dressed up as social crisis to facilitate some Forex trades.  I'm just guessing here but I think George has shorted the dollar.  So George has set up his own little empire of concerned citizens  dumb ass pawns that do his bidding.  I guess we've got George's motive, whats theirs?

cosmetologist (ˌkɒzmɪˈtɒlədʒɪst)

—n

a person skilled or trained in the use of cosmetics and beauty treatments.

In my defense I thought the chick was a guy. I guess we all know why shes out of work, evil capitalist pigs.

Bathing With Hippies

It is a universally accepted fact that there are certain topics of conversation that one does not bring up in polite society.   There once was three, Politics, Religion and Sex.  People talk about sex a lot more these days, and its getting harder to tell if your in polite society. Like the seven words you can't say on television (pre 1990 and cable) you NEVER talk about the big three.  It's just bad manners. 

During the annual elk pilgrimage I made a couple of trips down the mountain to soak in Saratoga's hot springs.  One one of these trips an older couple showed up to take an afternoon dip.  Since we were the only people in the pool at the time we struck up a conversation.  Which soon lead to politics.  (Not my doing). Now I've learned (it might have took awhile) that I'm not a good political conversationalist.  I'm a fairly good political debater i.e. argumentative type, etc., but not a good conversationalist.  So for the sake of my blood pressure and because my wife/family/friends tend to look at me like I'm a ranting lunatic after almost every debate/conversation I have, I've learned a few techniques that help me get along when dealing with the insane/liberal/hippie/haterofAmerica/communistnutjob types that one occasionally meets.

Technique number one.  Find some point, no matter how small, (sometimes its very small) that I can agree with that they have made, and acknowledge/feign/fake some sort of common ground or agreement with the insane liberal.
Technique number two.  If they actually made an intelligent or rational comment, of any sort what-so-ever agree that it is a legitimate point and change the topic to anything not politics.
Technique number three.  If either technique #1 or #2 has been even slightly successful in averting my derision and sarcasm, and there is no possible way to politely get the topic changed; I change the topic to something that they will likely know nothing about or dislike so that they will let the whole thing drop.

Now about 95% of the time the three points above work wonders for me and allow me to keep some semblance of decorum while I preserve a degree of personal integrity where my philosophy/politics/religion are concerned.  My basic technique can be summed up as, avoid conversations with liberals in the first place, fake agreement on some small point, polity change the topic, change the topic at any cost. Like I said normally this works out pretty well for me.  I avoid stupid conversations that only irritate me. The problem comes when a political conversation starts out looking like I agree with the person on the substance and conclusions that they have.

I think we've all been there, you meet some, they seem OK and then something gets said that make you think, "hey these are my kind of people".  Maybe you like the same sports team, or whatever and you think, "they might be OK".  I get that way with politics.  If someone gives me a little clue into their thinking, I tend to let my guard down a little.  After all, there is no reason to avoid a topic if we basically agree.

So there I am, in my swim shorts and this older couple drops in the pool.  "How's the water?" he asks.  I said, "it's great, not quite as hot as the other day".  We chit chat a bit.  Live around here? Yep. You? Nope, passing through.  Just basic stuff, safe stuff, everyday conversation with someone you don't know, just met and aren't going to see again.  Without any warning politics rears its ugly head.  "So what do you do for a living?" she asked.  Seems like an innocent question.  We answered.  There's a problem though, when someone asks what you do, its just natural to ask them the same thing back.  In my defense I was expecting, a normal answer, something along the lines of, "I'm retired".  What I got was a dissertation on the evils of illegal immigration and how it was killing jobs in the valley.   Come to think of it he never did say what he did for a living, owned a business I think.

Anyway, he hates illegal immigration, is complaining about it.  Seems OK to me.  Illegals do push wages down.  He might be intelligent.  Seems like we actually agree on this, and with the exception of the Hole most of the state is conservative.  So I venture an amicable, "Yep, illegals are helping wreck our economy".  "Nothing wrong with our economy" he retorted.  From there it went down hill fast. I tried to shut up equally fast.  As someone who has actually read an economics text book, or two, I've learned that there is a forth topic no one wants to talk about, economics.  It's boring and almost no one understands it beyond, "me got job, good" and "buy stuff cheep, good".   This guy had a third "economic" concept he held to, "republicans bad, democrats good".

I'm now at the "change topic at any cost" option.  I go for hunting.  Major fail.  They are bunny hugging tree humpers. This has gone from bad to worse and the turd is circling the bowl. I'm considering the nuclear option.  Instead, I grab a towel and call it a day. Hippies, no matter how clean you are, still make you feel dirty just being around them.

Home Again

For your viewing pleasure, pictures from elk camp.

It was a beautiful trip.  The weather was very nice and the snow only lasted a day.  Which meant that the elk stayed up at higher elevations.  I did mange to see some cows and one bull elk that ran by me in heavy timber, but I didn't get a chance to shoot one.  As far as other wildlife, I did get to see some moose, deer and I think a bear.  I say think because we had one or two near our camp that other folks saw.  One dark morning I went out to find a tree and I might have chased him out of the area.  The next day I was glassing a shelf and did see two dark creatures moving around a meadow.  It was too far to make out what they were for sure.   So again this year, I'm not cluttering up the blog with pictures of dead elk.  However I did manage to kill a couple of antelope on Saturday.  One buck and one doe, both of which are hanging in the garage awaiting my butcher knife.

We did have a couple of other adventures, on the way into Saratoga to soak in the hot springs we had this little adventure as we tried to cross the continental divide.

This put us behind schedule for the Hot Springs and dinner.  Which turned out OK since there was a number of young female athletes taking an afternoon soak when we finally did show up.  Elk camp, its not just about shooting elk, drinking beer, eating chilly or telling lies around a campfire; its also about the scenery and enjoying nature.

Its That Time Again

Elk season starts day after tomorrow.  Blogging will be even more  nonexistent than before.

MOH Update

I found this on the net and since I posted about this story I thought I'd give a link to the David Letterman interview with Sgt Myer, USMC MOH.  Grease'n the bob cat must mean something different in Indiana than Kentucky.