I hung out at the New Prospect Volunteer Fire Department today with Daniel, his wife, his oldest son and his girlfriend, and a young friend of theirs.
It was the annual fund raising fish fry and this makes the third year in a row I've come here. For $15 you get a generous portion of catfish, fries, hush puppies, coleslaw, baked beans, desert (I had the banana pudding) and a drink.
Update: It's been a great Saturday, watched the Kentucky Derby then had drinks up at Stetar's, with some fine bluegrass, and nice people.
Living just down the road from Nashville is a hoot. There are ten different events going on this weekend, with a half million tourists expected in town.
The biggest event is the Taylor Swift concert. Hundreds of Swifties have been camping out in a line overnight, just to buy stuff off her Merc Truck when it arrives today.
I personally can't stand the girl. I don't like her look, her attitude or her music.
I wrote four blog posts yesterday, on totally different topics. I love to write, it's a substitute for creating code.
My big programming rig sits quietly in the other room, my old friend with the giant monitor, lighted keyboard, and powerful processor. I used to spend many hours in that chair over the almost five years I've lived here.
But, even though I considered my code brilliant at the moment, nothing stuck. And stickiness is what defines reality. So I quit coding.
Now I just write, from my little keyboard on the little Acer laptop that sits on my table in my little house at the end of a dead end street in a little town at the bottom of Tennessee.
And, I just had a great breakfast in the Square (yea, one of the places on my boycott list) with my neighbor, his wife Jen, her dad Norman and his wife Kay. It's good to get out and about and talk to folks! The old Southern lady Kay was talking about cutting the legs off of frogs to eat them, and then burying the bodies, only to find the dirt moving the next day. What a way to go, have your legs cut off and then buried alive! Count me in! OMG...
I was discussing AR-15's with my neighbor Daniel, who owns two of them, and he asked me if I knew what AR stood for.
I assumed Automatic Rifle, and he said no, nor does it stand for Assault Rifle.
It actually is an abbreviation for the inventer and initial manufacturer of the rifle, ArmaLite, Inc, back in the fifties. The fifteen stands for the final version.
It wasn't selling well so they sold their design to Colt, who acquired a contract with the U.S. military, and it became the standard issue to Vietnam troops during that war. It was known as the M-16.
Colt's patent expired in the seventies, and multiple weapons manufacturers jumped on it and created their own version, and AR-15 became the generic name for the gun. Ironically ArmaLite, the creator, is still in business and is selling a variety of styles of their own invention.
The NRA estimates there are eight million AR-15's in circulation, and I would say that 99.9999 percent are in homes for self defense, not for school shootings.
Banning this rifle is futile and foolish. Imagine prying them from the hands of eight million law abiding patriotic Americans. You want to talk about a blood bath?
There has to be a solution to keeping them unavailable to deranged people, but outright banning the ArmaLite version 15 ain't going to work!
The Second Amendment:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
America was built upon it's Constitution and Amendments. It's the vehicle that gives you the ability to thrive here, and have the right to bitch about gun laws! But you cannot override it, because to do so, leads to tyranny.
Back when I lived in Teton Valley, Idaho, I drove a Paratransit bus for an outfit called TRPTA (Targhee Regional Public Transportation Authority).
They were based down in Idaho Falls, and occasionally my partner Karen and I would be called there to attend a company meeting.
We would take one of our busses based in Driggs, and head down after work.
Somehow, I always ended up sitting next to Lindsey. She was an office lady there, married with kids, and we had a connection. Nothing sexual, we just enjoyed each other.
She would loop her arm through mine sometimes and rest her head against my shoulder. These were good sized meetings, with about forty or fifty drivers there, and I can't imagine what they thought. We didn't care, Karen was gay, and she would just roll her eyes and smile. :-)
TRPTA went out of business a while after I left them. My friend Amanda, the boss lady, was unfortunately full of shit. I had a long career as a Paratransit supervisor with two large companies back in Seattle, and one day she invited me into her office and diagramed her vision for the company on her blackboard.
She had a real talent for spinning bullshit, that fooled a lot of people, but I knew it was nonsense. She was my friend, I let it slide, and the company eventually imploded.
But at least I made a friend named Lindsey!
I haven't had any coffee for several months now, actually the only time I drink it is on road trips, and it's usually rotgut stuff from a gas station.
I was in downtown Lawrenceburg, TN and I had the craving today, so I asked Goggle. Turns out there was a coffee shop just South of the Square in a beautiful old house. In fact, if it wasn't for the tiny little sign near the street, you wouldn't know.
As I turned the old doorknob, I wasn't even sure if they were open. I was greeted with a bustling scene of attractive young women, and kids. I asked the lady at the counter if this was normal, and she said yes, it's a gathering spot for young mom's to get together in the morning with their children.
She made me an espresso style black coffee, with a double cup and a straw, and it was delicious! The address is 205 S Military Ave, if you're in the neighborhood.
I am convinced that Amazon is running a scam. Do you ever wonder where those movie clips on TicTok come from? This is copyrighted material, but it's all over that app.
Here's how it works. I'm scrolling through TicTok, pausing to watch an interesting movie clip, then I click the comments to determine the movie name.
If I find it, I bring up NetFlix, a service I pay for, and all of their content is included for that price, but the movie is never there.
Prime Video on the other hand comes with my Prime membership, and offers a lot of included content. When you go looking for that movie, it's always there, but for the additional rental fee of $3.99, plus tax.
I fell victim to that yesterday, as I have before. I wanted to watch Dreamer with Dakota Fanning as a young girl who races a horse in the Breeders Cup. So I clicked the Rent Now button, and watched it for $4.37.
I think Amazon is finding great movies that are not on NetFlix or other platforms, putting clips on TicTok designed to capture your interest, then making them available on Prime Video at a price.
It's a Scam!
I just saw on TV the result of a major poll, asking "What's the best State in the Country to live in"? The result blows my mind! I'll bet if given twenty guesses, you wouldn't get it!
The answer, Utah! They even had a picture of the Salt Lake City skyline on the screen as they announced it.
Are you kidding me? That state is just south of Idaho, and I've driven down it many times on the way to Vegas, and my favorite places in Arizona. It's barren ass country untill you get to SLC, and I've visited that city many times. It's just as bad as any big city when it comes to crime and drugs.
And it's Mormon land, the big Temple is there, this is crazy. Idaho is way better than Utah. South Dakota, Montana and Wyoming are Paradise compared to Utah! How about Florida?
I just remembered something, I lived in that city when I was five, before moving to California. Wow, I used to live in the best State in the Country, now I live in the greenest State in the land of the free!
My bird feeder, and the seed board on my porch, have become pretty popular. I have a wide variety of regulars that show up, and I leave my door open all day, with no screen, just to enjoy them.
But I can't keep the squirrels off my bird feeder. I thought they were jumping there from nearby tree branches, so those were removed, but they're still getting up there.
I figured they may be jumping straight up, so I researched that and sure enough, they can jump that high.
I'll try to raise the feeder up closer to the line, but I don't have much faith that it will work.
I like squirrels, but they've developed a real craving for this bird seed, and keep wiping me out. I may have to borrow one of my neighbors AR-15's, then shoot and eat them. Folks here say they taste pretty good, and now they're all fattened up!
I spend my days pacing around my little house, watching streaming video. I rebuilt my bed today, flipping both sheets to avoid the laundry mat for a while.
I saw an ad on Paramount+ for Perdue chicken, free range and no antibiotics, so I broke my several year chicken boycott, and bought a big bag of strips. I also grabbed some new sugar free dipping sauce called Yum Yum from G Hughes. It was the highlight of my day yesterday.
I visited my duck buddies at the park this morning, it's been a while. They were hunkered down sleeping in the grass when I pulled in. I let out my quack quack call and they jumped up and came a waddling. It was great to see them and hand feed them some quack cocaine, which I carry in my truck at all times.
My dad gave me some pocket change ($107) today. The royalties from his old family gas well show up in my mailbox when they go over a $100. If I last the next couple years I may get some decent scratch from a multi-million lawsuit from the well. That's got long cruise written all over it!
I don't shower as much as I should, because it doesn't matter. It's also my biggest fear to fall in the shower, and break a hip with no phone in there to call 911. Besides, having a bunch of paramedics hauling my naked ass off the floor, to the hospital, is not on my bucket list. I think I would rather just lay there until Daniel got home. If I don't answer the door, he knows the codes to get in.
I ain't looking for no sympathy here, I'm just writing and saying what's real. That's what blogging is all about. I wish I could be talking about a new website, workouts at the gym, or a new lady! But that ain't the reality...
I have no patience with poor restaurant service. There have been four instances here that have pissed me off to the point that I will never return.
The first was a popular Mexican place that I don't even remember the name of now. When I was seated, I was handed a bowl of chips and a menu. I decided quickly what I wanted, then I sat there for ten minutes. The place wasn't busy, and a couple came and were seated in a booth across from me. When a waitress came up and took their order, I stormed out of there!
Next up was the new place in town, Hinie's Barbecue. I had their pulled pork sandwich, and it was a lame amount of pork in a bun, and over priced. I bitched about it on FB and the owner replied that it was a new guy cooking and he didn't know how much pork to put on there. I've never been back.
I have had an occasional breakfast at the place in the Square, and it's not bad. Unfortunately, when I go in, there are always a couple of big tables with a bunch of good old boys sharing loudly. Daniel says I should join in, hell no. The other day I went in, and again sat for about ten minutes while the two waitresses catered to those tables, and once again stormed out!
Finally, Arby's. They have a decent deluxe fish sandwich that I like, but when I went there yesterday, there was nobody at the counter. I'm watching the drive up window being serviced, Door Dash orders being filled, and I'm standing there like an idiot, waiting for someone to come to the counter and take my order. After five minutes, I said "Fuck this!" loudly, and stormed out the door.
I'm running out of places to eat around here, because I hold a grudge when it comes to bad service, or poor food quality!
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