Pumpkin Pie

The eldest has been press-ganged into providing the baking labor for Thanksgiving this year.  He is a dab hand with cooking and usually things turn out pretty well.  He does have a tendency of leaving a frightful mess in his wake, but that is a function of being a novice as well as a teenage boy.

He has been practicing on the willing subjects of the younger and myself.  Pumpkin pie was made on Saturday evening.  Most of the work was done with a happy heart, but he was a touch crestfallen when he was informed that the pie would be eaten on Sunday with dinner, not as a Saturday late night snack as was his intent.

        Pie Crust (Pâte Brisée)

• >2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for rolling 
• 6 to 8 Tbsp ice water
• 1 cup (2 sticks or 8 ounces) unsalted butter, very-cold, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Cut the cold butter into the flour with a pastry with a fork or pastry blender if you have one available , pour the water into the flour a bit at a time, until it is just sticking together into a ball.

Wrap up the dough ball in plastic wrap and let it sit for at least an hour in the fridge.

Roll out the dough and plop into a pie pan.  Press down along the bottom and all sides. Fit a piece of aluminum foil to cover the inside of the shell completely. Fill the shell up to the edges with dried lentils (about 2 pounds) and place it in the oven. Bake for 10 minutes, remove the foil and lentils (save these for later use) and bake for another 10 minutes or until the crust is dried out and beginning to color.

       Gabe's Pie Filling

• 1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, softened 
• 2 cups canned pumpkin, mashed 
• 1 cup sugar 
• 1/4 teaspoon salt 
• 1 egg plus 2 egg yolks, slightly beaten 
• 1 cup half-and-half 
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) melted butter 
• 2 teaspoon vanilla extract 
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 
• 1 teaspoon fresh ground ginger

For the filling, in a large mixing bowl, beat the cream cheese with a hand mixer. Add the pumpkin and beat until combined. Add the sugar and salt, and beat until combined. Add the eggs mixed with the yolks, half-and-half, and melted butter, and beat until combined. Finally, add the vanilla, cinnamon, and ginger, if using, and beat until incorporated.

Pour the filling into the warm prepared pie crust and bake for 65, or until the center is set. Place the pie on a wire rack and cool to room temperature. 

Flat Taxes

I am all for them, but not the way that you think.

First of all, I am for flat taxes in the following manner:

1. Stop thinking about income tax, it is a stupid way of thinking about it.
2. Everyone in the country is taxed, no exceptions.  A newborn with a trust fund is fair game.  Grandma's nest egg is fair game.
3. Corporations are taxed, no exceptions and at the same flat tax rate on their both their revenues and capital.  No deductions.  And this will include anything made by a foreign subsidiary of a corporation who offshored American jobs to save money on US taxes.
4. All individual wealth is taxed, no exceptions.  This includes savings, capital gains, real estate values, dividends, bond incomes, every nickel earned, retirement savings.  Everything of value is in play
5. No exceptions.  No oil depletion allowance, no home interest deduction, nothing.
6. A complete freeze of capital flight.  Fuck you and send you to prison if you try to run away to another with our country's wealth.  You are keeping it for now, it isn't yours to take and go elsewhere.  On the converse anyone who brings wealth in keeps it here.

I think that it wouldn't change a damn thing for the bulk of the folks.  Most people don't really own that much and live paycheck to paycheck so the flat tax of around 5 % won't effect them.  The middle class will pay about the same.  The rich will get royally screwed and will actually start paying the piper for their lawyer-infested underpayment for the past.

But you have to couple this with a balanced budget amendment.  The money that you take in is all you get.

I think that the real problem is that folks think of taxes as a moral issue.  They are not.  Government provides services at a cost.  Those services can be debated endlessly, but they still exist.  I don't think that a privatized army is a good thing, think here Wallenstein.  Government inspection of the food supply is essential, think here Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle".  The FDA is corrupt on the pharmaceutical side, but it does a better job of policing than allowing the pharmaceuticals to police themselves.  And we have all had a great big dose of what happens when you deregulate banks.

All of these basic services cost money.  If you add what I feel are the worthy extras and you have a budget 2/3's of the current.

But this is a pipe dream.  The rich want their money and the poor want it as well.  The rest of us are just tools. It ain't gonna happen.  It is just what I want.

Or: Herman Cain is a Douchebag

9-9-9 or 9-0-9 or My left nut.

Click to get a better view

Thank you for the graph

Solo pago quando ricevo

Now, lets take a look at a quote from Federalist sixty-three (James Madison):

Thus far I have considered the circumstances which point out the necessity of a well-constructed Senate only as they relate to the representatives of the people. To a people as little blinded by prejudice or corrupted by flattery as those whom I address, I shall not scruple to add, that such an institution may be sometimes necessary as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions. As the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers; so there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career, and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind? What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often escaped if their government had contained so provident a safeguard against the tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statues on the next. 

It may be suggested, that a people spread over an extensive region cannot, like the crowded inhabitants of a small district, be subject to the infection of violent passions, or to the danger of combining in pursuit of unjust measures. I am far from denying that this is a distinction of peculiar importance. I have, on the contrary, endeavored in a former paper to show, that it is one of the principal recommendations of a confederated republic. At the same time, this advantage ought not to be considered as superseding the use of auxiliary precautions. It may even be remarked, that the same extended situation, which will exempt the people of America from some of the dangers incident to lesser republics, will expose them to the inconveniency of remaining for a longer time under the influence of those misrepresentations which the combined industry of interested men may succeed in distributing among them.

When I read this, I wonder what President Madison would have thought of the current Senate?

The dogmatic and partisan nature of the current political class is so wide of this founders mark that he could probably only hold his head in shame.  It is a political circus, with re-election money averages of 8.5 million for the incumbent.

I fail to see how the vision of Madison can be transposed onto this greedy monstrosity.  Elections in America no longer have any of the dignitas required of so important an event.

Senators were originally appointed by the state legislatures.  The system appeared to work just dandy for the first fifty or sixty years of the republic.  Then the civil war and our first major national conflict started having unfilled seats and folks started whining about how they couldn't directly elect the senate. Oregon (of course) started us down the path for direct elections.

As part of the process of making the "improvements" the folks trying to fix things noted that:

Intimidation and bribery marked some of the states' selection of senators. Nine bribery cases were brought before the Senate between 1866 and 1906. In addition, forty-five deadlocks occurred in twenty states between 1891 and 1905, resulting in numerous delays in seating senators. In 1899, problems in electing a senator in Delaware were so acute that the state legislature did not send a senator to Washington for four years.

I wonder what the do-goodniks who "improved" the system would think of the current open whoredom of the election process.

Spend some time on this one

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/10/22/opinion/20111023_DATAPOINTS.html?ref=opinion

This is one of the most complicated graphics that I have ever seen, but I think that it gives me a better idea of what is going on over in Euroland than anything that I have read so far.

What shocks me is how many, big, and fat are the arrows going out of the USA.

I might even stir myself from my Sunday sloth and go buy a copy of the Times.

Local Affairs

A lot of you won't really care about this post.  It is concerns a local matter here in lowly Vancouver and the State of Washington and doesn't tend really address the big issues that are normally addressed in these pages.  But perhaps not, read on, gentle reader, and I think that you may find a story that you will be experiencing yourself soon enough.

Proposition 1183 is a move to sell off the state liquor stores and license the sales of alcohol to private businesses.  Pro's and Con's are out in force.  The person's opposing the move trot out the obligatory M.A.D.D. mother to explain what a bad thing drunks are.  The persons promoting the move are trotting out cops and firemen (In uniform of course, the firemen are exceptionally fetching) explaining how, with the new taxes and laws they will be able to do their job better.

From the best that I can see, all of these issues are just window dressing.  The primary funders and drivers of the bill appear to be Costco and the grocery store industry to sell the booze once the state is kicked out of the business. Costco alone has contributed a whopping 22.5 million dollars to fund the initiative They have been nothing but smart about it.  They hire big name marketing firms to do the con job. They have engineered the bill so that only stores bigger than 10,000 square feet get the nod, effectively making this a "corporate only" game.

You see, they are playing all the cards that big money has to play.  They define a market niche where there are profits to be made.  They advertise the hell out of it, with all of the false flags and disingenuousness  so prevalent in our society, and use their new found "rights of free speech for corporations" to tilt the playing field.  But in a sense, I find their very predictability soothing.  Nothing unexpected.  Repulsive perhaps, but nothing out of the norm.

The opposing side is playing its usual cards.  A bereaved mother believing that limiting the sale of booze will stop people from being killed in alcohol related accidents.  The liquor manufacturers fighting a rear guard action to allow them to keep selling overpriced booze to a pliable and compliant bureaucracy.  Again, repulsive perhaps, but nothing out of the norm.

I guess there are two arenas where I find the reactions to be much more unsavory.   The whores in the firefighting industry who are pissed that another public employees gets paid a wage when it should be going to him, and the morons who decry any government activity whatsoever.

First the cops and firemen.  These are the guys that are the most likely to be servicing the not -to-unlikely outcome of freeing up the sales of booze.   They say that cost saving from removing the state liquor stores would make sure they get paid.  I see nothing in the proposal that would ensure that would occur.  From what I can see, the money goes to state and local government with no ear marks.  It just goes into the hole.  Same as now.

What the bill does do is state that getting rid of the liquor stores will add 200 million to the states coffers.  and add 200 million to local governments over the next six years.  Gravy to the government is what we are talking about.  That tax money will come in from firing 1,400 employees.  That won't add up to 200 million a year.  It would also close 324 stores.  Hmm. Nothing close to 200 million there.

So the extra money coming in would primarily be from increased liquor sales primarily benefiting the folks who paid for it.  Fred Meyer and Costco.

So, when I hear the "all government is bad" morons, the clueless stooges, working cops and firemen wax poetic about this piece of corporate gravy, it really makes me sick.  It is a bribe to the state and local politicians to turn their heads while the corporations sell opium to the coolies.

To me, it is better the devil you know.

An afterthought
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/18/us-drinking-costs-idUSTRE79G6UX20111018

At the risk of

You know, there are times that I am certain I am not paranoid enough.

I get /. sent to me in my mail every day, and these two gems came up today.

http://www.newschannel5.com/story/15725035/officials-claim-tennessee-becomes-first-state-to-deploy-vipr-statewide

http://www.klfy.com/story/15717759/second-hand-dealer-law

The panjandrums are setting the stage for clamping down to keep their perqs.  Keep your eyes open and stay careful.

Gee, I Wonder?

If this graph has anything to do with our current economic problems.

Toms

I put the picture I am talking about down at the bottom, because it really is a footnote.

There have been a whole bunch of people out there who have been doing the little hand-printed "rebuttals" to the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) or 99% movement.  I spent some time thinking about what they wrote, and the more I think about them, the more that I think that they are wrong.

Look, no one is looking down on you because you busted your ass to get through a system that is stacked against you.  Hell, most of us are amazed and proud.  What you went through is noteworthy and to be commended.  I can't praise you enough for your not having a iPhone and living within your means in cheap apartments is cherishing a time-honored trend, students have always lived in cheap apartments (mine was a basement with a pipe running through the living room that cost $135.00/month).

But my question is, why the hell did you have to do it?  What the folks in the movements are speaking of is a society where the maldistribution of wealth is rampant.   It is this maldistribution of wealth that needs to be addressed on a societal level.  The colleges have become profit centers with college cost vastly outrunning inflation.

The student loan game is nothing less than corporate loan sharking.  Not meaning to be overly effusive in my praise, but you are a level headed kid, a lot of your fellow students really are dumb-ass teenagers who think nothing of signing a non-dismissable note which cannot be gotten rid of for the rest of their lives.   I am a cynical old man, but this is nothing less that preying on the stupid. That should be banned.

What the occupy movement should be about is returning a balance to the conduct of our government.  We are over-rewarding the haves at the expenses of the have-nots.  We are allowing the field to be narrowed to those few who, like you are level headed and willing to kill themselves slowly, and the rich who can afford to buy the paper ticket of success for their spoiled children.

Seems Long Ago

Here at Home

Had an occupy event down home in Vancouver yesterday.  Pretty interesting.

Mostly, I was happy to see folks getting out and starting to talk.  Yeah, yeah, there was no "clear message" and the speeches were uninspired, but that really isn't the point.  Folks were out talking, taking in a nice day, and trying to figure out what the hell it was that was happening to them.

We are at the trying on stage for slogans right now.  99% appears to be the leader, and folks use it quite a bit.  There is a hodge-podge of folks trotting out their nominees for the root of the problem

I am getting some hope.  There are pitfalls to avoid.  The democrat-whores are trying to co-opt the movement the way that the republican-whores co-opted the tea-baggers.  The movement has to start coalescing and getting the non-Che Guevara folks with a lick of sense out in front.

But, I would guess between 500 and 1,000 folks came out today in a sleepy little bedroom community to express discontent.  You really have to be a little hopeful.

Saturday Listening

Jonathon Coulton has always appealed to us nerdy WOW types.

Less

I always tell folks to head over to Mayberry's place for a good rant and some thinking material.

He recently wrote a bit about his forever hypothetical perfect boat (Craig, don't get your tits in an uproar, this is a common failing of all boat -loving types, we all love you anyway).  He spoke of a nice little boat and the desire for a little thirty horsepower engine to run it.

Now when you think about it, he is on the right track.  But I guess that, being the forever hypothetical perfect world guy that I am, I would approach the problem from a different angle.  In this light I will spend some time using him as an example while you, gentle readers, can use the idea should you wish to apply it to other pursuits.

Here's the deal, Mayberry is ratcheting down from a absurdly high level of motor power found on most boats here in America.  Maybe it would behoove him to look at this website to get an idea of how little engine is needed to make a huge difference.  He is doing the right thing in thinking small.  I think that mast and sails and very small engines are the way to approach things.

I took this picture over in Thailand back in 2005.  I was driving around the countryside in Phetchabun province and I had stopped over at one of the little stores to stretch my legs and drink a couple of Singha before I went back to the hotel.  The place where I stopped was the middle of farm country.  The harvest was going on and they were hauling stuff everywhere.  I stayed way too long drinking beers and watching the "water buffalos" hauling stray and sugar cane up and down the road.  It is a good memory.

But the "water buffalos" hauled a lot of stuff.  The little five and ten horsepower engines were more than capable of hauling damn big loads.  I would guess that they got yield pretty damn similar to those here in the west for a tenth the energy inputs.  These Thai farmers weren't air conditioned, and there were more of them on the job, but the yields were astonishing.

I don't think that  I think that if you want to get by in the not so distant future, you had better start looking hard at the energy inputs going into your ventures.  The way we have been doing are so overpowered and so ingrained, it will take a radical re-evaluation of our energy use requirements, as well as our desires.

Hat Trick Jesse

What is the meaning of #occupy?

Jon Stewart

I realize that I put up a lot of stuff from Jon Stewart and the Daily Show.  But, the guy is a talented performer coupled with great writers and he make me laugh frequently.  I will keep posting clips and I will keep laughing at/with him.

But what is starting to worry me is the way that a lot of folks seem to be getting the bulk of their news from his show.   Granted, the guy can keep you up on the fact that the world's leaders are the same flavor of dumb-ass as the folks who elected them, but is that enough information for people to make a decision about things that are going on around them?

Granted, the mass market media that tries to pass itself off as a news source sure as hell isn't sufficient to the task.  The blogs and alt-media are just as limited, usually being tied to a singular focus and not especially interested in actually looking at both sides of an issue.

So what you have is the creation of a set of news sources that allow one to get a flavor of what is really happening behind the self-interest tinged squealing of the different sources that I have outlined above.  When I was stationed over in Europe during the last six months of my enlistment, I got into the habit every night of listening to the BBC World Service, Armed Forces Network, and Radio Moscow.  If I slept on the raw data, then thought a little bit about it, I usually managed to figure out what was happening.

I would recommend something similar.  I now tend to read the Economist, Naked Capitalism, and Foreign Policy.  I also let Jim over at Some Assembly Required troll for my outrage fix de jour.


The world is a complicated place.  Looking for one news source to make it simpler will not give you the "truth" will only let you become myopic.  Stop trying to simplify things to make it fit some model that you think that can understand.

Styles

Apple Computer has had a strange hold on me.

It has been years now since I routinely used one of their products, the last of my Apples are now dying a slow death.  Obviously, I am not going to replace them with the current batch of overpriced eye candy that is the lifeblood of Apple

I'm kinda wondering how this will play out.  I watched Apple barf up a lung and almost go under before. Steve Jobs brought them into play, and later saved them from certain death before.  I am not certain that a flim-flam man of his astonishing ability to create style is available to make something from nothing again.

It was BSD with a pretty picture.  It thrived by cheapening and atomizing an already commodity product (American Music) and enhancing the self absorption of its users.  The astounding construction of an eighty billion dollar war chest and concomitant awarding to its CEO eight billion dollars was done on the twin pillars of Chinese slave labor and American fatuousness.

But they were always gorgeous things.  Sleek.  Sexy.  Cool.  I owned them for that reason alone.  The image that they allowed me was one that I craved.  But at the end of the day, they never really did the job that well.  The image did not fulfill the real world needs, just the imaginary and self referential desires that I held.

They were always just outside of fully-functional, substituting cool for that final, ugly little bit of something that allowed them to become yours.  My four year old Compaq running Ubuntu is capable of anything I need to do.  Android is looking preferable to the iPhone and iPod.  Amazon Fire is staring at iPad.   All of these options are open to everyone, without stepping into the Victorian High Tea that Apple worked so hard to create.

Apple was always about creating something that you wanted to be seen with.  What you did with it was secondary that driving purpose

Sunday Night Viewing 10/08/11

It is just a night at the inappropriate funnies.

Occupy

 “We have this ability in Lake Wobegon to look reality right in the eye and deny it.” 

You know, I'm OK with the Occupy Wall Street thing.  Yeah, it has tinges of the hippy earth muffin thing going on, which doesn't suit my personal taste, but that is just a style thing.  I have friends who lean toward the hippy whom I treasure.

I think that I like them because they are the opposite side of disaffection from the Tea Baggers.

It would appear to me that the greater bulk of the population in this country is getting vigorously butt-fucked by the "bigs".  The money is being mined from the lower and middle classes as rapidly as possible.  There lies the problem.

The tea party seems to be formed around the concept that they should be allowed to participate as part of the "pitcher" status in this societal butt-fuck.

The occupy wall street crowd seems to be saying that the butt-fucking really shouldn't be happening anyway.

Guess who I am rooting for?

Off to Pioneer Square I go.

Just Enjoy the Show

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Solarians or the Machine Stops

Neal Stephenson has recently published a piece over at the World Policy Institute titled Innovation Starvation.  A thankful hat trick has to go out to Russell over at Reflexiones Finales.

My oh my, did it ever strike a chord.   Now I will freely grant that I have read every book and major work by Stephenson.  Some I have read several times (I am fascinated by the period following the Thirty Years War to 1725).  I would posit that I would be a acolyte should he ever start a religion.

But the article in question really set my thoughts reeling down a long hallway was the idea that took me to  conclusions that others will find distasteful.  While I agree with Mr Stephenson central premise that the ability to innovate is being ruthlessly stomped out, I come to a completely different reason for the lack.

It all started with this quote for Mister Stephenson:

  ....and provide jobs for the burgeoning middle class that was the basis for our stable democracy.

At first, the statement seemed innocuous.  Just breezed over it, mind fluff.  But when I started reading through the article, I began to realize that the conditions that he so aptly described flowed from the "Burgeoning middle class" that this supposed innovation was to serve.

Hear me out now.  Because I realize that in American politics, picking on the middle class is a sure way to get yourself lynched, or at least digitally tarred and feathered.  But go through the article and pick out the real meat of Mr. Stephenson's hypotheses concerning the failure to innovate;  The desire of this society to reduce risk to absolute minimums.  This abhorrence of risk is deeply rooted in the middle class.

The reason that we do not truly innovate is that we are too comfortable and bourgeois a society to do so.

I'm going to say that again.

The reason that we do not truly innovate is that we are too comfortable and bourgeois a society to do so.

We have too many "educated" middle people who are just smart enough to know what side their bread is buttered on.  They will resist any significant change to the gravy train.  The poor are just the poor.  They don't have enough money to buy an election, so they get tossed hither and yon.  The rich don't see any reason to upset the apple cart that is making regular deliveries to their wallets.

The big ticket innovation that Mr. Stephenson wistfully remembers is the product of a specific time and mindset.  It is, in a sense, the gravestone of a generation, built in advance.  It is the desperation of the great depression, tempered by the crucible of the second world war, and made giddy with the wealth of being the last man standing in industrial might.

We are the children and grandchildren of these people.  We are more concerned about maintaining our relative status and outward displays of wealth than carving a rocket powered stonehenge.

Dead Wealth

This is the cover photo this week over at the Economist.  I can't dog these guys too much, if at all.  I have been a subscriber since 1989 and read the thing cover to cover every week.

But I think that they are beginning to hyperventilate a little bit lately.  Probably rightfully so.  things are getting pretty close-run at the present.  But when you go and read their article, it seems to me that what this clarion call consists of is a drama-tinged cry for more taxpayer money to bail out the banks that have overlent and got us into this problem in the first place.

Look, what is at play here is the ill gotten gains that the banks have booked.  They loan out too much money to dicey borrowers, the borrowers go south, the banks are screwed.   Like it or not, the banks are screwed because of their own bad decisions and panting greed.  They tried to force growth so that they could reap big profits and when the growth proved to be ephemeral, they took losses.  I think the best analogy is when a farmer puts down fertilizer (bullshit) that hasn't been properly composted.  It kills the crop.

It is not the duty of a country to backstop banks.  When people put their coin into a bank, they are doing a business transaction.  When banks go south through simple bad luck, or malfeasance, they are doing a business transaction.  Simply put, failure is part and parcel of any business transaction.

The too-big-to-fail banks really aren't.  There is enough current backstop to cover the depositors in the country (Which I think is a mistake, but it is there), so really all we are looking at is the banks not being able to pile more too-hot fertilizer on a dying plant.

We have to go through a withdrawal here.  My lord it is going to be painful.  But in the end about ten years out and a bunch of withdrawal later, we might be able to get moving again at an appropriate pace.  What we have now is nothing more than the end of our adolescence.

I think that you all ought to watch this next clip.  I saw it years ago when Ken Burns first debuted it on PBS, and Dave Cohen over at Decline of the Empire reminded me of it last week (thank you).  But it is a astonishingly faithful metaphor for the world in the last twenty years.

Zooniverse

Just an odd thought, check out the link below for the Ancient Lives project.

Give it a go, I just spent an hour

About

The Poison of the Past

I cannot say enough good things about Dave Cohen over at Decline of the Empire.  Erudite, well-read, with excellent analysis and presentation of a difficult and often contradictory subject matter.


But his post last Saturday disturbed me greatly.  In a way, Dave has presented the stone that we bear today.  The sepia toned propaganda of a "golden age" which poisons our view of the past and our abilities to cherish the present and the future.


Of course the fifties were a golden age.  Shit, the USSTAF and the FEAF pretty much assured that the industrial capacity of continental Europe and Japan was about that of Alabama.  The Luftwaffe obigingly performed the same service for Great Britain.


So jobs were freely available, we even set up a good-hearted installment plan for Europe in the shape of the Marshall plan (good for business that was) and MacArthur set Japan on a course with a lot of help with American know-how and under the table payments during the Korean War.


The game was rigged in our favor in every which way during the 1950's.  Hell, we even had a president or two who would stand up to the military-industrial complex on occasion.   But this was a rare and almost unique time in history and totally disconnected from the remainder of the history of the United States.


Nostalgia about this period of time is self-defeating.   Even folk like Dave who realize in their soul of souls that the fifties were an illusion seem to stare longingly at the images of a stilted past.


We boomers that are now on our way to our long home seem to keep returning to the Ozzie and Harriet days in our dreams.  But that is just the longing for a lost youth and the societal immaturity that allowed us to spend our descendant's legacy.


Hell, might as well go whole hog.  Buy a red corvette.