I'm Not Dead Yet!!!

With apologies to Monty Python - "I'm not dead Yet".

Sure it may seem that way since I only seem to be able to post on this blog about once a month. I want to write more, really I do.

So why don't I write. Its not like I have a lot to say right now. Its just that most of what is going on in my head is so jumbled up that it never makes sense when it shows up on the screen in front of me. The rest of what is going on in my head is stuff that I really don't want to talk about here.

There is so much I could be ranting and raving about politically that I don't even know where to start. I am so disgusted by what is happening in this country that I can not adequately express myself about it. Every time I start talking about our socialist president, his facist race baiting staff, and elitist self serving progressives that have taken over congress I start ranting and raving and end up sounding like some radical whacko. So I try not to talk about it too much. First off not being able to control my emotions about this makes me sound silly or stupid. Also I am in so many ways so depressed at the damage being done to this country. We are hemmoraging freedoms on a daily basis. Unfortunately the blame for this problem is spread pretty evenly between both political parties. There are many days that I think the only way to stop this death spiral that we are in is to clean house - every single elected official in Washington has to go. The democrats have an agenda that is going to lead to the destruction of everything that made this country great. The Republicans are not serious about stopping them.

So I have been avoiding writing about politics. I have avoided reading many of the political blogs I used to read, I avoid the news since they have sold out what little integrity they had when they stopped reporting the news and started trying to make the news.

My other favorite topic to write about here was my volleyball club. But late in the season this last year my team of 7 girls gathered around me during a team meeting at the end of a tournament - then encouraged by their parents they unloaded on me with a long list of complaints about me as a coach, then they all quit.

I have struggled a lot with this. Three of those girls are three of the original 8 girls that I started this club for. I know that we had some trouble this year. It was a tough year for most of my players. They weren't little girls any more and they really struggled trying to make the transition from little girls who just play volleyball for fun and athletes who find their fun in playing volleyball well.

Since they all quit I have been riding a roller coaster of emotions. One day I am ready to get back out of the court and start coaching again. The next day I start thinking that I should just walk away from the game and never coach again. If I can push girls who loved playing volleyball as much as those girls did to quit, then why would I ever walk out on the court with another group of young athletes.

Things are getting really bad now, the middle school season volleyball season starts again in a few weeks and I am not sure how that is going to go. I asked the Principal to find another coach to take my place this year. But she didn't so I am in a situation where I have to either leave those girls without a coach for the season. Or I stick them with a coach that they may be much better off without.

I have a lot of friends, family, coaches and other club administrators who all are very quick to tell me that what happened was not my fault. But that has not been much help because not one of those people have ever experienced something like this. Sure every coach has to deal with athletes that quit, or leave the game. But I don't know of one that lost an entire team before. If these girls had left because they didn't enjoy the game, or had other interests or such I would be a lot better off. But the only complaints they had were personal ones about me.

So there, I wrote a lot more about that than I ever wanted to. So I am trying to listen to my friends and let my head make the decisions here. But my broken heart keeps getting in the way and right now my head isn't ready to over rule my heart.

I guess I could start writing about our new family hobby. About 6 months ago my daughter started cowboy action shooting. Then three months later my son started. Last month I finally got my rear in gear and gave it a try myself. We have been having a lot of fun with it. So I'll try and write more about it later.

No Wonder We Have No Space Program

The United States Space Program sucks. We were the first nation to put a man on the moon - 41 years ago. But the last 30 years we have had a hard time getting out of low earth orbit. Now after just two more space shuttle launches we won't even have a way to get up into low earth orbit.

Now I know why. NASA - the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. You know them, the guys in charge of our space program. In a recent interview NASA Administrator Charles Bolden explained why our space program is in the shambles it is in.

"When I became the NASA administrator -- or before I became the NASA administrator -- he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering,"

So it is the foremost mission of the NASA administrator to make the Muslim world feel good about themselves?

Someone please explain to me what making the muslin world feel good about themselves has to do with Aeronautics and Space?

If you have an answer besides NOTHING I would really like to hear it.

If not, then why are we spending over 18 billion dollars a year pretending to have a space program?

R.I.P. John Wooden

John Wooden, the iconic coach of the UCLA basketball program in the 60s and 70s has passed away at the age of 99.

In the interest of being honest I am not a basketball fan. I have never been a basketball fan. It would be putting it mildly to say that I pretty much hate everything about the game. So I really hate to admit that I get a lot of my coaching inspiration from a basketball coach.

Detroit

I stole this from Wicked Thoughts. I guess its going to be one of those kind of days...

Jack was sitting on the plane when a guy took the seat beside him. The guy was an emotional wreck, pale, hands shaking, moaning in fear.

“What’s the matter?” Jack asked.

“I’ve been transferred to Detroit , there’s crazy people there. They’ve got lots of shootings, gangs, race riots, drugs, poor public schools, and the highest crime rate in the nation.”

Jack replied, “I’ve lived in Detroit all my life. It’s not as bad as the media says. Find a nice home, go to work, mind your own business, enroll your kids in a nice private school. It’s as safe a place as anywhere in the world.”

The guy relaxed and stopped shaking and said, “Oh, thank you. I’ve been worried to death. But if you live there and say it’s OK, I’ll take your word for it. So, what do you do for a living?”

“I’m the tail-gunner on a Budweiser truck.”

Top Westerns?

IGN has released their list of top Westerns of all time.

They claim their list was generated on the basis of each films:
popularity and longevity with audiences, their impact on the genre, their basic coolness quotient, and their quotability.

Here is IGN's list:

1. Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone; 1968)
2. Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood; 1992)
3. High Noon (Fred Zinneman; 1952)
4. Shane (George Stevens; 1953)
5. The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah; 1969)
6. The Searchers (John Ford; 1956)
7. The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone; 1966)
8. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (George Roy Hill; 1969)
9. The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges; 1960)
10. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford; 1962)
11. Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks; 1959)
12. The Outlaw Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood; 1976)
13. My Darling Clementine (John Ford; 1946)
14. Tombstone (George P. Cosmotos; 1993)
15. The Professionals (Richard Brooks; 1966)
16. 3:10 to Yuma (James Mangold; 2007)
17. McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman; 1971)
18. The Naked Spur (Anthony Mann; 1952)
19. Will Penny (Tom Gries; 1968)
20. Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah; 1973)
21. A Fistful of Dollars (Sergio Leone; 1964)
22. The Gunfighter (Henry King; 1950)
23. Silverado (Lawrence Kasdan; 1985)
24. Little Big Man (Arthur Penn; 1970)
25. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston; 1948)

I have some real problems with this list. But then I expect that anyone who reads such a list will find things they disagree with part of the list and agree with part.

Instead here is my llst of all time best westerns. What do I base this list on? Simple these are the westerns that I like to watch, over and over again. These are the westerns that when they are on TV I stop flipping channels and leave this movie on. Finally these are all Westerns that I liked well enough to own the DVD.

I have put no numbers on my list, because the order of these movies as my favorites would change from day to day. Maybe even hour to hour.

Quigley Down Under
High Noon
The Magnificent Seven
Rio Bravo
My Darling Clementine
The Naked Spur
Silverado
McLintock!
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon
The Fastest Gun Alive
Winchester '73
The Man from Snowy River
Support Your Local Sheriff
Chisum
How the West was Won
Stagecoach
Destry Rides Again
Dodge City
Destry
North to Alaska

OK, two of these movies are set in Australia and one of them in Alaska, but they are westerns in my opinion. Your mileage may vary.

I shot what?

Life on Mars

This Ain't Plinking...

For those of you who are not familiar with the term, Plinking is the shooting for fun. More often than not shooting with a .22 at soda cans. I grew up going plinking at the landfill near our cabin in the black hills. This open pit garbage dump was full of can, bottles, glass jars and mice. All just waiting for a kid with a .22 and a box of ammo to wander by. Best targets of all - old aerosol cans, like hair spray, etc.

This guy is British so he probably didn't grow up plinking. But then he wasn't plinking on the day when he made 2, that's right TWO back to back 8,120ft (1.54 mile) long kill shots in Afghanistan.

A BRITISH Army sniper has set a new sharpshooting distance record by killing two Taliban machinegunners in Afghanistan from more than a mile away. Craig Harrison, a member of the Household Cavalry, killed the insurgents with consecutive shots — even though they were 3,000ft beyond the most effective range of his rifle.

“The first round hit a machinegunner in the stomach and killed him outright,” said Harrison, a Corporal of Horse. “He went straight down and didn’t move.

“The second insurgent grabbed the weapon and turned as my second shot hit him in the side. He went down, too. They were both dead.” The shooting — which took place while Harrison’s colleagues came under attack — was at such extreme range that the 8.59mm bullets took almost three seconds to reach their target after leaving the barrel of the rifle at almost three times the speed of sound.

The distance to Harrison’s two targets was measured by a GPS system at 8,120ft, or 1.54 miles. The previous record for a sniper kill is 7,972ft, set by a Canadian soldier who shot dead an Al-Qaeda gunman in March 2002.

Read the whole article here.

Then to top matters off Corporal of Horse Craig Harrison a couple weeks later was shot in the head by a sniper, then a after that broke both arms when his vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb. When they sent Corporal Harrison home to convalese he insisted on returning to the front.

In the article linked above Tom Irwin, the director of Accuracy International, the British manufacturer of the L115A3 rifle, said:

“It is still fairly accurate beyond 4,921ft, but at that distance luck plays as much of a part as anything.”

Mr. Irwin, one shot from that distance may have a lot of luck involved. Two in a row - is possible because of training and skill. Not much luck there.

Bragging on my kid a while...

Forgive me, I'm going to play the proud papa for a while.

My oldest daughter was named the Burroughs High School Female Student Athlete of the Year today.

I'm smiling as loud as I can right now.

Kucinich Rolls Over

Democrat Representative from Ohio just held a press conference to announce that he is going to sacrifice everything he has believed and fought for over the last 10 years and firmly attach his lips to Nancy Pelosi's butt.

In announcing that he is going to vote for the health care bill that he opposed the first time.

During his speech he said something that should have everyone of you shaking in your shoes -

"We have to have control of private health insurance companys."

That's right, Kucinich, and the rest of his Democrat toadies is standing up and advocating the government take over of even more private companies.

All of you who think our government is headed towards socialism or communism are wrong. They are not going to stop at socialism - we are headed towards a full out, in your face totalitarian dictatorship.

Where does this all stop?

More Ray Stevens Music

CA State Senate Loses Their Fraking Minds

It's official! The California State Assembly has lost their freaking minds. And that is being kind, I am assuming that most of those twits had minds to lose in the first place.

Today, our illustrious State Assembly voted to make the first week in March a "Cuss Free Week."

WHAT THE HELL?????

Our state is spirialing down the crapper with almost no hope of recovery. We are massively in debt, spending significantly more money than we take in, we are being overrun by illegals and the best thing our state assembly can think to worry about it how much we are all cussing?

In addition to this idiocy. They make it a completely toothless resolution. We are all INVITED to stop cussing for a week, not REQUIRED to stop cussing.

I have a few other suggestions for our state assembly that I think they aught to impliment. How about we declare a:

1. Balance the damned budget week,
2. Stop spending more money than we make week,
3. Stop wasting your time trying to control our behavior week,
4. Start earning your keep and doing your jobs week,
5. Stop spending tax money feeding, educating, healing, and counseling illegals week,
6. Go out a get real jobs you lazy bastards week.


I'm sure there are a lot more ideas floating around out there, but I need to go outside and cuss awhile. But first one more bit of advice for our assemblymen - When you hear someone around you cussing - it is probably a pretty safe be that they are cussing at, or about, you.

RIP John Murtha

Democrat Representative John Murtha from Pennsylvania died today due to complications from gall bladder surgery.

In keeping with what my Grandma taught me about speaking evil of the dead, and if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all.

That is all I have to say.

Top 20 Movies of all time

According to boxofficemojo.com the top 20 movies of all time - based on total dollars of ticket sales - adjusted for inflation are:

Rank Title
1 Gone with the Wind
2 Star Wars
3 The Sound of Music
4 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
5 The Ten Commandments
6 Titanic
7 Jaws
8 Doctor Zhivago
9 The Exorcist
10 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
11 101 Dalmatians
12 The Empire Strikes Back
13 Ben-Hur
14 Return of the Jedi
15 The Sting
16 Raiders of the Lost Ark
17 Jurassic Park
18 The Graduate
19 Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
20 Fantasia

With the exception of Titanic, which I have never seen, (even though we own the DVD) I have seen every one of these movies in a theater. Most of them more than once. If you count home viewings on TV or video I have watched almost all of these films several different times. Excepting Titanic, I think I have only seen The Graduate twice - once at a theater in college and once on TV when I was home sick one week. With the exception of the Exorcist and the Graduate I have all of these movies on tape or DVD.

If you are wondering where Avatar is on this list - No. 21. I haven't seen it either. So it's probably my fault that it isn't in the top 20. I've already seen Dances with Wolves several times I don't want to watch it again with blue natives.

Ray Stevens - We the People

It's no Gitarzan but I like it anyway:

(un)luckiest Man in the World

Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only person officially recognized as a survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings at the end of World War II, has died at age 93.

Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip for his shipbuilding company on Aug. 6, 1945, when a U.S. B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on the city. He suffered serious burns to his upper body and spent the night in the city.

He then returned to his hometown of Nagasaki, about 190 miles southwest, which suffered a second U.S. atomic bomb attack three days later.

Is there an award for the man who was on the receiving end of the two worst butt kickings ever dished out on this planet?

What does it have to say about a guy who lives through two atomic bombings and still lives to be 93 years old?

Mr. Yamaguchi spent his life since the bombings speaking out against the use of nuclear weapons. While I don't agree with him, I can certainly understand his thinking.

Rest in Peace Mr. Yamaguchi, you have to be the front runner for the worlds greatest survivor. Now, lets see Bear Grylls or Les Stroud do that!