Saturday, March 21, 2009

And Then The Fight Started...


My wife and I were watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire while we were in bed. I turned to her and said, "Do you want to have sex?"


"No," she answered.


I then said, "Is that your final answer?"


She didn't even look at me this time, simply saying "Yes."


So I said, "Then I'd like to phone a friend."


And that's when the fight started.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~


And this is where this series ends!
Older Than Dirt Quiz:

Count all the ones that you actually remember - not the ones you were told about

Ratings at the bottom.

1. Blackjack chewing gum
2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water 
3. Candy cigarettes
4. Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles 
5. Coffee shops or diners with tableside juke boxes 
6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers 
7. Party lines
8. Newsreels before the movie 
9. P.F. Flyers
10. Butch wax 
11. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning (there were only 3 channels). Some stations played the National Anthem before going off the air.
12. Peashooters 
13. Howdy Doody 
14. 45 RPM records 
15. S& H greenstamps 
16. Hi-fi's
17. Metal ice trays with lever 
18. Mimeograph paper
19. Blue flashbulb
20. Packards
21. Roller skate keys
22. Cork popguns 
23. Drive-ins
24. Studebakers
25. Wash tub wringers 

If you remembered 0-5 = You're still young
If you remembered 6-10 = You are getting older 
If you remembered 11-15 = Don't tell your age,
If you remembered 16-25 = You're older than dirt!

Friday, March 20, 2009

"I am responsible. Although I may not be able to prevent the worst from happening, I am responsible for my attitude toward the inevitable misfortunes that darken life. Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have—life itself."


~ Walter Anderson

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Emergency Flashers

Yesterday I had a flat tire on the interstate. So I eased my car over to the shoulder of the road, carefully got out of the car and opened the trunk. I took out 2 cardboard men, unfolded them and stood them at the rear of my car facing oncoming traffic. They look so lifelike you wouldn't believe! They are in trench coats exposing their nude bodies and private parts to the approaching drivers. 

But to my surprise, cars start slowing down looking at my lifelike men. And of course, traffic starts backing up. Everybody is tooting their horns and waving like crazy. It wasn't long before a state trooper pulls up behind me. He gets out of his car and starts walking towards me.

I could tell he was not a happy camper! ''What's going on here?" 

"My car has a flat tire," I said calmly. 

"Well, what the hell are those obscene cardboard men doing here by the road?" 

I couldn't believe that he didn't know. So I told him, "Helloooooo, those are my emergency flashers".
by Newt Gingrich 
Posted 03/18/2009 ET
Updated 03/19/2009 ET

"Outrage" is the word on everyone’s lips to describe the fat bonuses being paid with taxpayer funds to the failed executives at AIG -- and it is an outrage.

It’s an outrage that the American people are being asked to pay for the bad behavior of people who should have known better, be they reckless traders on Wall Street or reckless borrowers on Main Street.

But the cure for our outrage is not merely, as President Obama is demanding, that AIG be prevented from paying its executives. The $165 million in planned bonuses -- as manifestly undeserved as it is -- is chicken feed compared to the $170 billion in taxpayer funds AIG has received so far.

Nor is it acceptable to ask Americans to keep throwing their tax dollars at failed companies and their leaders.

The answer is an old fashioned one: AIG should choose between receivership or bankruptcy. It should not be allowed to choose more bailouts from the taxpayer.

Restore the Rule of Law: Allow Failing Corporations to go Bankrupt

Under U.S. law, Chapter 11 bankruptcy allows a company to reorganize. Chapter 7 allows a company to dissolve itself.

The choices for AIG, as both an insurance and non-insurance company, are more complicated, but ultimately boil down to the same options. And for other companies either receiving or looking to receive a bailout from the taxpayers, the option should instead be bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy would send a needed message to U.S. investors: Don’t assume the government will bail you out when you do something stupid.

And most importantly, bankruptcy would replace the rule of politicians over U.S. financial institutions with the rule of law. 

Geithner Didn’t Inherit the Policy of Throwing Billions at Failing Companies -- He Helped Create It

Because when it comes to Washington’s handling of the financial crisis, so far we’ve had the rule of politicians, not the rule of law. 

Most prominent among the politicians in question is Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

As Americans’ level of outrage has risen, so has the level of finger pointing by Geithner and others for the mess we’re in.

But Treasury Secretary Geithner is disingenuous at best and untruthful at worst when he says that he “inherited the worst fiscal situation in American history.”

The truth is that Secretary Geithner didn’t inherit the policy of throwing billions of taxpayer dollars at failing companies -- he helped create it.

Even before he was Treasury Secretary -- when he was still head of the New York Federal Reserve -- Geithner was so deeply involved in the government’s bail out of Bear Stearns, its take over of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and its bailout of AIG that this was the Washington Post’s headline from September 19, 2008:

“In the Crucible of Crisis, Paulson, Bernanke and Geithner Forge a Committee of Three” 

The first meeting of the first bailout -- of Bear Sterns -- was held in Geithner’s office. And the first meeting of what has become a $170 billion bailout of AIG was held -- where else? In Geithner’s New York Fed office.

Why Not Bankruptcy for AIG? Because Wall Street Wouldn’t Have Done As Well

From the outset, Geithner was central to the developing policy of having the taxpayers bail out ailing financial institutions like AIG rather than allow them to go bankrupt. And for months now, we’ve been told that these bailouts were necessary to avoid a wider, cataclysmic, financial meltdown.

But now it’s clear that other, less noble, considerations were at play.

As the Wall Street Journal editorialized yesterday, the real outrage over the AIG bailout isn’t executive bonuses, it’s that billions in taxpayer funds intended for AIG have been passed through to benefit foreign banks and Wall Street behemoths like Goldman Sachs.

And as former AIG CEO Hank Greenburg testified last October, these financial institutions wouldn’t have faired as well if AIG had filed for bankruptcy protection rather than do what it did, which was to negotiate a bailout with Timothy Geithner’s New York Federal Reserve. 

Here’s how Greenburg put it:

“Although AIG stockholders could have fared better if the company had filed for bankruptcy protection, other stakeholders -- like AIG’s Wall Street counterparties in swaps and other transactions -- would have fared worse.” 

For the Cost of Bailing Out AIG, Every American Household Could Have Free Electricity For a Year

So now everyone is outraged, and rightly so. But the lavish executive bonuses being paid with taxpayer funds are just the beginning of the story.

So far, the American taxpayers are on the hook for $170 billion to AIG -- that’s an astounding $1,224 per taxpayer.

What else could we have done with all this money?

$170 billion would pay for more than doubling the Navy’s fleet of aircraft carriers.

$170 billion would pay for a four-year education at a public university for more than two million Americans.

$170 billion would cover the electricity bill of every household in America for an entire year.

When You Reward Failure, All You Get is More Failure

What Washington should learn from all this outrage is to return to the common sense that should have guided it all along: When you reward failure, all you get is more failure.

A company that needs a $170 billion taxpayer bailout is a failed company. The executives that led that company are failed executives. But instead of having to face the consequences of their failure responsibly through bankruptcy or receivership, AIG and its Wall Street “counterparties” are being rewarded for their recklessness -- with our money.

Thanks to the Bush-Obama-Geithner policy of bailing out failing companies, we now have the worst of all possible scenarios: A taxpayer subsidized, government supervised private company; an unsustainable public/private hybrid that is too public to make its own decisions and too private to be responsible to the taxpayers that are keeping it alive.

Outrages like the fat cat bonuses currently dominating the headlines will only continue as long as the rule of politicians supplants the rule of law on Wall Street.

Congress should rethink this entire process. The dangers of a domino-like financial meltdown are real. But so, too, is the danger that the outrage of the American people will reach the point that we no longer trust the dire warnings -- or the righteous indignation -- coming from Washington.
MEMORIES from a friend:

My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to 'sprinkle' clothes with because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old.

How many do you remember? 

Head lights dimmer switches on the floor. 
Ignition switches on the dashboard.
Heaters mounted on the inside of the fire wall. 
Real ice boxes.
Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards. 
Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner.
Using hand signals for cars without turn signals. 

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

I believe - 


That no matter how bad your heart is broken, the world doesn't stop for your grief.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Rambling Down Memory Way

Someone asked the other day, 'What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?'

'We didn't have fast food when I was growing up,' I informed him. 'All the food was slow.' 

'C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat?'

'It was a place called 'at home,'' I explained! 'Mom cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.'

By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table. But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it:

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore Levis, set foot on a golf course, traveled out of the country or had a credit card. In their later years they had something called a revolving charge card. The card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears & Roebuck. Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.

My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed (slow). We didn't have a television in our house until I was 5. It was, of course, black and white. 

I was 13 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called 'pizza pie.' When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had.

We didn't have a car until I was 4. It was an old red Nash Rambler.

I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line.

Pizzas were not delivered to our home. But milk was.

All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers my brother delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which he got to keep 2 cents. He had to get up at 6AM every morning. On Saturday, he had to collect the 42 cents from his customers. His favorite customers were the ones who gave him 50 cents and told him to keep the change. His least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day.

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies. Touching someone else's tongue with yours was called French kissing and they didn't do that in movies. I don't know what they did in French movies. French movies were dirty and we weren't allowed to see them

If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren. Just don't blame me if they bust a gut laughing. 

Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it?

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Something incredible has arrived!

I just became a shareholder in me2everyone and I never had to pay a single penny for the shares! It can only be described as the gold-rush for 2009. This company is going to be huge and shares will soar in value over the coming months! You can register for free and it never has to cost you a single penny!

me2everyone is going to be a cool new virtual world where you can meet friends, chat, shop, play, watch videos, create an art gallery, open a virtual newspaper, play the free inworld lottery and make money from your own online store! You and everyone you know make the decisions, shape the world, create real incomes and share in the profits. It’s a new place where you meet new people or invite your friends. Learn new skills or expand your business. Find the love of your life or help the planet.

Membership is free and every member automatically becomes a shareholder in me2everyone Limited. Personally I have 250 shares in the venture and I am going to increase my shares very soon. This is an excellent chance for all of us to make some real progress in 2009 and beyond! Please do not miss it.

If you are looking for something really good in 2009: something that changes your view on the world, then you really have to spend just one minute and look at this website.

Just click here to see what it's all about
www.me2everyone.com/298524

~~~

I checked out the site. Right now, frankly, there's not a lot to see. The concept is interesting, so I joined. If you are interested, click this link. At the very least, you'll help me to get more shares. Will it make me money? I have no idea. Could be just a lot of hype to drive up traffic and possible future revenue.

If you click, good luck! And most of all, have some fun!
How is Norma ? 

A sweet grandmother telephoned St. Joseph 's Hospital.

She timidly asked, "Is it possible to speak to someone who can tell me how a patient is doing?"

The operator said, "I'll be glad to help, dear. What's the name and room number?"

The grandmother in her weak, tremulous voice said, "Norma Findlay Room 302." The operator replied, "Let me place you on hold while I check with her nurse. After a few minutes, the operator return ed to the phone and said, "Oh, I have good news. Her nurse just told me that Norma is doing very well. Her blood pressure is fine; her blood work just came back as normal, and her physician, Dr. Cohen, has scheduled her to be discharged on Tuesday."

The grandmother said, "Thank you. That's wonderful! I was so worried! God bless you for the good news."

The operator replied, "You're more than welcome. Is Norma your daughter?"

The grandmother said, "No, I'm Norma Findlay in 302. No one tells me shit."