My Own Grandpa

Two men met at a bus stop and struck up a conversation. One of them kept complaining of family problems.

Finally, the other man said, "You think you have family problems? Listen to my situation. A few years ago, I met a young widow with a grown-up daughter, and we got married. Later my father married my stepdaughter. That made my stepdaughter my stepmother and my father became my stepson. Also, my wife became mother-in-law of her father-in-law.

"Then the daughter of my wife, my stepmother, had a son. This boy was my half-brother because he was my father's son, but he was also the son of my wife's daughter, which made him my wife's grandson. That made me the grandfather of my half-brother.

"This was nothing until my wife and I had a son. Now the half-sister of my son, my stepmother, is also the grandmother. This makes my father the brother-in-law of my child, whose stepsister is my father's wife. I'm my stepmother's brother-in-law, my wife is her own child's aunt, my son is my father's nephew and I'm my own grandfather!

"And you think you have family problems!"

Non Issue

Wal-Mart: Worker wrong to refuse alcohol sale

A Wal-Mart supervisor said Monday that a worker was wrong to refuse to sell alcohol to a 57-year-old Iowa man just because his 15-year-old daughter did not have identification.

"What happened is not consistent with the intent of our policy," said Brian Nick, director of national media relations for the chain. "The last thing you want to do is create an atmosphere where people feel they can't be in the store purchasing things with their children."

Um OK.  Guy goes into store to buy some stuff plus some booze with his daughter.  Got it.  Cashier says no way.  Some how we are supposed to believe that the Wal-Mart cashier is automatically in the wrong. 

Missing from both articles is some very important information that would be helpful to understanding what happened.  I'd like to know is what the cashier saw.  Did the daughter unload the cart?  Did the daughter stand at the register like maybe she was going to pay for it?  Did it look like the daughter was the one making the purchase?  If it did, then the cashier was perfectly in her right to ask for ID, from the daughter.  Did the man who allegedly wanted to buy the booze ask to speak to a manger about the purchase or did he storm off and drum up some bad publicity for Wal-Mart?

Here is how it works for those of you who have never sold alcohol.  The person making the sale is the one responsible for the transaction, not the buyer and not the store.  The person who will pay the $750 fine and/or face jail time and court costs is the cashier.  The cashier won't get the backing of the stores management if s/he sells to a minor.  They will get fired and face the legal music alone. If you're running the register at Wal-Mart, chances are that you don't have all that many upward career options.  Maybe just maybe you need your dead end job.

With that in mind lets take another look at the situation.  Girl comes in with an older guy.  She seems to be a party to the transaction.  They are buying booze.  Because $750 is about half a months pay, and because you know the cops have been doing underage stings and because you need your thankless job, you card the girl.  The girl is underage/has no ID.  So you tell her you can't sell her any alcohol.  The customer gets mad.

So far all of this looks just like a situation with an underage girl trying to get booze and an older guy trying to score on the girl.  The clerk doesn't know the girl is your daughter.  If that is what the cashier saw, and what s/he thought, then guess what, you ain't buying any booze at that register.  Everything you've done looks fishy.  There is zero legal penalty for not giving you the beer.

Now I know the average person working at Wal-Mart isn't going to win a Rhoads Scholarship, beauty contest, or award for most personable person on the planet.  So its possible and even likely you simply had a cashier that was in a bad mood that day.  The way to handle that is to ask for a manager, show them your ID and pay for the purchase.  As it is, it looks more like an attention whore throwing a fit over an imagined insult.   

Isreal

What should the USA's official position on Israel, its boarders etc be?

On one hand we don't need to have a position on this subject.  Israel is on the other side of the world from us, has no intention of invading the US and otherwise isn't a threat to our safety.  If Israel ever attempts to invade the United States, we should rethink our policy.

On the other hand, its none of our business.  None.  We don't have a dog in this fight.  Our policy should be to inform US citizens that hanging out in Israel could be unhealthy and that this year might not be the best time to take in that Holy Land tour that you always want to go on.  That's it.  It's not our country.  It's not even our neighborhood.  It's not our business. 

That whole thing in Gaza, that's a local police matter.  There is no such thing as a Palestinian.  There is such a thing as political Islamic terrorists who want to destroy a Jewish state.  Since Israel is that Jewish state, they should take care of the situation themselves.  If Jimmy Carter (the white Obama) would have butted out and let the Israelis solved their problem, instead of legitimizing the terrorists, the whole mess would have been over a generation ago.  Carter was looking for a positive footnote beside his name in the pages of history and screw what's best for America and everybody else.

What about the religious significance of Israel and the blessings of the Abrahamic covenant?  Well what about them?  Israel as it exists today is a secular parliamentary democracy with an underlying socialist philosophy much like the rest of the western world.  For arguments sake, and because it is a historical fact, lets consider the historic/religious aspect.

Some Christians believe they should support the Jews because God will bless those that bless them.  Fair enough.  Islam believes that the texts known as the bible are legitimate in so far as they don't contradict the Koran.  The Jews of course accept that their historic texts are accurate, although most Israelis are secular and not religious according to the Torah.  Do any of those books have anything to say about Israel's boarders?  The Koran. NO.  The Christian New Testament. NO.  The Jewish Torah.  Yes.  What it says is:

On the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: “To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates—the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites"

What that breaks down to is a land area that extends from Egypt on the South to the Jordan River valley on the east, the Mediterranean on the West and The Euphrates on the North. Historically Israel has never occupied all of this land.  However, the Bible says what it says and since three of the worlds major religions agree, in principle, that it is binding, so be it.

In that case, what should the US's position on Israel's boarder be?  The exact same as before.  So long as they stay within those binderies, we don't have a dog in this fight.  We need to butt out and let the IDF handle the situation.  The best thing we can do for Israel is stay home and shut up while they sort out their own issues.  The US will do a better job serving Israel, our own interests, and world peace by staying home and staying quite.  Need proof?  Ask the Christians in Iraq.  What can't find any?  There were communities of Christians living there, as they had for 2,000 years before the US came in and "helped" that country.  Now those that managed to avoid being killed are in hiding.  Sometimes you help best by not helping.

Which is why we should let the Jews fought their own wars, managed their own territories otherwise handle their own business.  These people have been fighting for close to 4,300 years.  We can't solve it.  We shouldn't try.

Quote

I've been kicking this around in my head and wanted to get it down someplace.

"If you are a man, it is impossible for you to 'get in touch with your feminine side'.  You don't have one.  You're a man.  If God wanted you to have a "feminine side" he would have made you female.  In the beginning God created them male and female, not metrosexual and less hairy menstruating metrosexual with mammaries.  Want to get in touch with the feminine?  Get married.  Touch her.  See, it's nice isn't it?  It's nice because you're a man.  She was made that way to please you.  Do you know why no one ever tells a women to get in touch with her masculine side?  Nobody likes a less hairy metrosexual with man boobs.  It's a offense against nature.  MALE.  FEMALE.  That's it.  There is no benefit to a man being slightly women or a women trying to be a man.  It doesn't work that way.  Call it a design feature."

This rant brought to you courtesy of all the idiots claiming to be Christians who can't be bothered to glean even the slightest clue regarding the natural God made differences between the sexes.  We've made a huge mess of women wanting to be men and men trying to please women by thinking/acting like them. 

My grandmothers had no problem understanding things as "a man's point of view".  "Man talk" and "women talk" weren't bad things that somehow degraded the other person just by existing.  They knew that women and men didn't see the world in the same way.  Somehow that was OK.

5 X 5

Back on January 26th of this year I started my quest to become less of a man.  Less of a man in terms of mass and total percentage of body fat.  I hadn't lifted weights or worked out since I was in my 20's, and it showed.

My "method" of getting "in shape" consisted of Googling "weight lifting for weight loss" and picking a workout routine that the readers of a weightlifting website voted as "the best".  I also made an effort to think about eating less junk food.  I bought a gym membership and started on a 6 day a week workout routine after work.

I made it a point to only weigh myself once a month and not obsess about early results.  The rational being that so long as I was sticking to the schedule and making an effort, I would see results at some point. I set a weight loss goal of 18 to 30 months to achieve a target weight and 6 to 8 months to reach a "ideal" workout target for the amount of weight I was lifting.

The first couple of months went fairly good.  I did most of what I set out to do and my strength was growing according to schedule.  Then I hit a wall, or a plateau depending on how you look at it.  I stopped being able to increase the weights I was lifting.  My body weight remained steady and then started yo-yoing on me.  I was tired of my workouts and discouraged about my results.

I needed a new plan.

So I asked an older guy at the gym what he thought I should do.  He suggest that I forget about the system I was doing and focus on getting my strength at target levels BEFORE even THINKING ABOUT LOSSING WEIGHT AGAIN.  That seemed like crap advice to me, since the goal is to lose weight.  So I floundered around for another 6 weeks or so not making any progress and even putting a couple of pounds back on.  It seems like maybe two or three other guys gave me the exact same advice too.

A couple of points about lifting weights to lose weight:

1. Advice on weight lifting routines to "lose weight" should be taken with a grain of salt.  Skip that.  Advice on the internet designed to help a person who is at 10% body fat drop down to 7% body fat so they can go to a competition might not work so great if you need to drop inches and pounds.
2. If you're really out of shape, getting muscle back should be the priority, not dropping pounds.  This is counter intuitive.  It is also correct.  Focus on getting to your target performance level.  If you want to rep 10 X 275lbs on the bench (or whatever combination of lifting exercise goals) as a way to lose body fat then focus on getting to the 275lbs not on dropping weight.
3. IF you're old, meaning over 30, 40, 50 etc, admit it and deal with it.  You might need more than one rest day a week to recover and get stronger/leaner.
4. There is no "perfect" or "best" plan that works for everyone, every time.
5. If you don't have a plan, pick one.  Any one.  That's right it doesn't matter much.  Just start lifting correctly and stick with the routine for at lest 3 months.
6. Reevaluate after 90 days of doing the plan.  Now you have started a new habit and you have some kind of idea about how your body is reacting to the exercise.
7. Get a new plan and try it for 90 days.
8. Rinse and repeat.

I just started a new plan.  I had a couple of people tell me about Strong Lifts 5 X 5.  The guy running the website isn't doing anything new.  In fact its a very old weightlifting concept that he has borrowed from other people.  He's not selling anything.  He doesn't claim it was his idea.  He just promotes it, and for lots of people, it seems to work.

What I like about the new plan:

• All free weights all the time.  I had become dependent on the Smith machine.  I like the Smith Machine.  If you are lifting late at night, by your lonesome its nice to be able to twist your wrists and "save" yourself from a bad rep.  BUT by the time you're pressing/squatting etc 200lbs or better on the Smith, you're in good enough shape to use the free weights and get your balance and auxiliary muscles into the act.  I was stuck with my crutch and need to move on.
• It takes 35 to 45 minutes including warm up to get it all done.
• It's a "major muscle group" plan.  I had been doing all the muscle groups individually once a week and wasn't making much progress.
• I'm doing 3 exercises I wasn't doing before.
• Once you plateau there is a plan designed to move you into more "advanced" lifting.

What I need to do to advance my over all fitness goals:

• Add regular moderate cardio.
• Get a flexibility routine
• Work on diet.  I like "healthy" foods, I just like eating refined carbs too.  The carbs are killing me, probably literally.
• I'm thinking that a massage routine might help my recovery.  The problem is that I don't have that kind of money in the budget right now.

I'm going to do the new plan for 12 weeks and reevaluate my progress.

Flight Delay Announcement

A passenger on a Southwest flight says that he once faced a flight delay just before they boarded.

A flight attendant picked up the microphone and announced:

"We're sorry for the delay. The machine that normally rips the handles off your luggage is broken, so we're having to do it by hand. We should be finished and on our way shortly."