Wednesday, February 27, 2013

IT IS STILL WINTER IN MAINE






We have about two feet of standing snow left after a week of above freezing temperatures; however, not to fear – winter is still playing catch-me-fuck-me here in northwestern Maine.  We have fourteen to seventeen inches of snow predicted for the storm coming through tonight and tomorrow.  

Up here it is all a normal part of winter and those of us that love Maine accept it as part of the charm – a place where nature reminds us regularly that we are all tenants in her world.





My concern is that I only have about one cord of firewood left and then I have to switch to burning expensive oil.   So I am looking for – and hoping for an early spring…which also means biking weather.  



and we know it is coming.



The black bike is mine, and my wife is in the jean jacket talking to the secretary of the United Bikers of Maine



I was out in the shed this morning looking at the motorcycle – I have a kind of a sexual thing going with the bike.   I want to touch it and stroke it and mount it and ride the hell out of it.  



I know that we are on the down side of winter when I find I am running a mild bike fever. 



the Ol’Buzzard


IS IT SPRING YET?




Friday, February 22, 2013

A WELL REGULATED MILITIA...






Much of the resistance to banning assault weapons and extended ammunition clips comes from the Militia mentality.  Militias are not big here in Maine but next door in New Hampshire they exist, and of course throughout the middle of the country they are as common as Vick's Cough Drops.  

Most of these militia groups consist of people living in a fantasy world, and their attitudes and mental states should be questioned.  They feel the need to arm to protect themselves from the government, from aliens, from the Russians, from the Arabs, from minorities and from the zombies apocalypse - and when they finally tip over the edge they are a danger to society.   Unfortunately these nut cases can’t be identified as mentally ill (though they are operating on the fringe) and so would still pass a background check. 

They obsess on Rambo movies and Mad Max - and in their fantasies see themselves as intrepid heroes that young women will flock to when 'the end' comes.   I think most are sexually insecure and probably were picked on as children.  Almost all have Concealed Carry License.  Some are x-military but most are posers.  They know they have never have the ability to become military Special Forces, so instead dress in camouflage and act out their fantasies - the weapon the equalizer for their otherwise pathetic manhood.

I get a Navy Special Ops hard-on when I think about confronting one of these posers without his weapon.   But hell, I’m too old…and what would it prove…but then again

the Ol’Buzzard



     


THE MERCURY DIME


HAPPY TRAILS




I don’t know how to embed a podcast but I think this one on the Mercury dime is interesting and so I am embedding the link to the website…if you choose to follow it then allow it to load and you will see a small icon in the upper left of the page that says POD.   Click it and you will learn some truly worthless information – but it is interesting.


The Ol’Buzzard


Wednesday, February 20, 2013

THE MEANING OF LIFE – AGAIN





You live you die: get over it. 

Most of us have, at some point, walked through an old cemetery.   The tombstones from the sixteen, seventeen and eighteen hundreds can’t help but fascinate us with their death heads and epitaphs.



Especially in New England the ground is rich with markers from the past.  

Years ago, while hunting partridge outside of Brunswick, Maine, I discovered five small blocks of granite marking grave sites.    Each stone was roughly chiseled with one word: Mother, Father, Son, Daughter, Baby.   I have often wondered about a family that died and no one knew their names.   Was it the plague or an accident that beset a family traveling through the area?   We will never know, for the only memory that is left of these people is five small weathered blocks of stone.   How many people have been buried in the Maine woods with no marker or wooden markers that deteriorated?

The only unique things about the dead in the old cemeteries are the monuments and epitaphs, because we don't know the dead or care about them.    Some of my favorite are:

From a grave in Pennsylvania:   In memory of Ellen Shannon, Aged 26 years, Who was fatally burned March 21st. 1870 by the explosion of a lamp filled with R.E. Danforth’s Non Explosive Burning Fluid.

From a grave in Massachusetts:   death was caused by bathing.

Another in Massachusetts:   Here lies the body of James Vernon, the only surviving son of Admiral Vernon.

Another Massachusetts: She was very Excellent for Reading and Soberness.

In Vermont:   The Old Nuisance.

And lastly:   She finally shut her mouth.

The point is that someone died and except for the unique stones (and eventually these will wear away) they are forgotten.   Their lives, in fact, had no more point or meaning than some Neanderthal that died in the ice fields of northern Europe; unless it is referenced to present human record.   Unless we say… their descendants…  which is to say that our life and the lives of our descendants is the point

After all what would the world be without us, and that is a circumstance that will surely come to pass.


I think that unconsciously we flatter ourselves that the earth exists solely for human habitation.   If we don’t believe the earth is six thousand years old and created for mankind (which means we accept the indisputable proof of science and evolution) we must come to the realization that humans have not always existed on this earth and will not always exist.  It  somewhat takes the wind out of our sails when we realize that nations and governments and leaders and wars and armies are the social concepts of human beings and in the scale of the cosmos are meaningless.    Perhaps we should consider the conundrum that Steve Hagen poses in his book buddhism Plain and Simple  that perhaps “we face the woeful prospect that we’re intelligent creatures living in a meaningless world.” (Though, I have a problem accepting the concept of blanket ‘human intelligence.)

At some point in the future our sun will burn out; at some point our galaxy will collide with Andromeda; at some point our earth will be hit by giant space objects; human climate change is effecting the chemical make up of our air and at some point will be irreversible; at some point a pandemic virus will evolve or be developed and released; or more likely, at some point a fanatical nation or group will bring about nuclear annihilation. 

The short form is that the human race, and the earth as we know it, will not always exist – and the lives of our forefathers and ourselves and our descendants will amount to a meaningless blink in space time.

Back to Steve Hagen and buddhism  Plain and Simple  - this should not be a downer, a reason for despair.   Through what ever accident of evolution, we have our time on this wonderful planet; and because our lives are finite we should not waste a day or an hour or a minute without being consciously aware and meditating on the wonder of the moment. 

Live in the moment, because you don’t matter. 

the Ol'Buzzard

GOOGLE CONSPIRACY THEORIST


Is this a big eye watching us?


I have installed and uninstalled Google Chrome three times.   How does the saying go: Fool me once shame on you.  Fool me twice shame on me.   But what do you say to the fourth time?    

In the past I have had trouble with Google freezing up my computer while a message was presented stating High CPU Usage By Google Chrome.   Even more disturbing is the fact that on occasions while I was working off line (not on the internet) my disk drive would start to whirl and the same message would appear - I had to ask myself: what is Google doing on my computer when I am not, to my knowledge, connected to the internet.   

Today using Internet Explorer I had a message to update my Adobe Player and when I accepted the download Google Chrome was downloaded without notice automatically along with the Adobe update.   

I have to admit the Chrome is faster and better on Blogger than Explorer but what information does it collect and why?   I have seen that some of the pictures I download on my blog appear in Google Images without my consent (unless it is in the small print of the Google policy we have to agree to to use the product.)  

Thanks to the Patriot Act we know Google collaborates with the government on data collection - but...

I am back on with Google Chrome - and fool me four times and I am officially a fool.
the Ol'Buzzard

Monday, February 18, 2013

THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS



Tonight the wind is blowing 35 knots gusting to sixty. There is something majestic and primitive and daunting in the din of the wind as the cabin creaks under its primeval force. It has often been described as a howl or a scream, but it actually sounds like a might surge of water through rapids or over a water fall: indescribable – unique in itself.

This winter we have had two trees near our cabin come down in high winds.

I remember vividly lying in bed with my wife in a small one room log cabin deep in the Alaska wilderness, listening somewhat apprehensively as the wind swept through the forrest in the arctic deep freeze, and trees cracked like rifle shots nearby.

There is a power of the wind that makes you feel insignificant and childlike. Refuged in a cabin, snuggled under the covers in bed, lying awake and listening as nature vents her forces beyond our control – this sound is one of my favorite things.

the Ol'Buzzard

Saturday, February 16, 2013

THE CHURCH OF SAINT PETER




“Sexually progressive cultures gave us literature, philosophy, civilization and the rest, while sexually restrictive cultures gave us the Dark Ages and the Holocaust.”,

(25,000 Years of Erotic Freedom, by Alan Moore Abrams.)

You can find no more sexually restrictive culture than the Catholic Church. Its views on women, premarital sex, recreational sex, abortion, homosexuality, sodomy, oral sex, contraception and celibacy for the clergy are straight out of the middle ages.

Lately, the pedophilia scandal that seems to be wide spread throughout the Catholic clergy has begun to surface.

Celibacy is an unnatural state for an adult male, and it begs the question as to the mental state of those willing to commit to the life style; and also asks of the attraction that some must desire for inclusion in an all male community.

It is now known that the Vatican has been knowledgeable and complicit in the cover up of priest pedophiles; and, perhaps we will never know the extent of the problem. Sexual predation by the clergy has undoubtedly gone on, undocumented, for hundreds of years.

Pope Benedict XVI has announced his resignation without any real explanation. Joseph Ratzinger’s involvement as a combatant in the Nazi army during the Second World War was known by the church elders before his selection as Pope and must have been resolved to their satisfaction. We also know that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before becoming Pope Benedict, was charged with collecting and overseeing all accounts of clergy pedophilia and sexual misconduct.

The Vatican has denied that the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI is due to health issues, so the obvious question is: has something surfaced that would be a further embarrassment to The Church?

Notice that the national news media and pundits are avoiding any investigation. This is a hot potato issue that no one wishes to broach.

Bless you
the Ol'Buzzard


Friday, February 15, 2013

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

PRESIDENT JOE SCARBOROUGH







Today as I watched Morning Joe on MSNBC, he spouted statistics and Republican talking points to denigrate the President’s State of the Union speech. He often says that “Obama should own the economy.” This morning he said that we have had the slowest recovery during the Obama administration than at any time during the last fifty years. He forgets to own the Republican disaster of the Bush years that crashed the economy and caused the biggest recession since the Great Depression (Yes, George W. Bush and his administration were all Republicans enacting Republican policies.)

Scarborough invokes the sanctified name of Reagan like a Pentecostal preacher invokes the name of Jesus before passing the snakes around to his uninformed and uneducated followers.

Yes, George Scarborough is going to run for President in 2016. He has not formally announced his candidacy but it is understood by all the regulars on his show, and his campaign rhetoric is only thinly disguised.

Let’s not laugh this man off. He would be a formidable opponent and he has a bully pulpit to garnish support and finance before actually committing.

Scarborough stands against all government social programs and voices unwavering support for ‘free market enterprise’ - which means deregulation and tax cuts for mega-business and unwavering support for the wealthy and Trickle Down Economics.

I honestly don’t know which one is the biggest threat to our democracy - the fundamentalist Islamic Middle East, North Korea or the Republican Party. Two would bring us down through terroristic attack and the later from within by derisiveness toward minorities and women and blatantly ignorant candidates placed in political office.

the Ol’Buzzard




Sunday, February 10, 2013

MORE BUTT SWEAT AND TEARS

Word verification bugs the fuck out of me when commenting on other blogs; but I have turned it on in hope of eliminating ANONYMOUS.

Have had two more hits from him since I deleted his spam fifteen minutes ago.

Sorry
the Ol'Buzzare

BUTT SWEAT AND TEARS

I haven't checked my blog in a couple of weeks - big storm etc. - and when I checked it tonight I found I had been spamed with 250 comments by ANOMYMOUS.    While trying to delete this intrusion I have accidently deleted recent comments from those of you who are kind enough to leave your opinions on my ramblings.

It doesn't look like I can retrieve them. 

ANOMYMOUS is some kind of commercial outfit that is trying to steer readers to its site. 

I don't know how to report this to GOOGLE so will just have to be more vigilant.

Has anyone else had a problem with these ass holes?

the Ol'Buzzard