SANDWICHES 101

BASIC SANDWICH:   

Two pieces of white bread – preferably Wonder Bread

Slather mayonnaise on both pieces

Place the pieces together

Enjoy

LETTUCE SANDWICH:

Two pieces of white bread – preferably Wonder Bread

Slather mayonnaise on both pieces

Cover one slice with Iceberg Lettuce

Place the pieces together

Enjoy

TOMATO SANDWICH

Two pieces of white bread – preferably Wonder Bread

Slather mayonnaise on both pieces

Cover one slice with slices of ripe tomato

Salt

Place the pieces together

Enjoy

BACON SANDWICH:

Two pieces of white bread – preferably Wonder Bread

Slather mayonnaise on both pieces

Cover one slice with at least six strips of bacon

Place the pieces together

Enjoy

EGG SANDWICH:

Two pieces of white bread – preferably Wonder Bread

Slather mayonnaise on both pieces

Cover one slice with a fried egg

Place the pieces together

Enjoy

OLIVE SANDWICH:

Two pieces of white bread – preferably Wonder Bread

Slather mayonnaise on both pieces

Cover one slice with green pimento filled olives

Place the pieces together

Enjoy

PINEAPPLE SANDWICH:

Two pieces of white bread – preferably Wonder Bread

Slather mayonnaise on both pieces

Cover one slice with sliced pineapple

Place the pieces together

Enjoy

OTHER SANDWICHES:

This sandwich formula works well with ham, bologna, spam; almost any meats, onion and cheese…  Be creative.

Life is better with Mayonnaise

Bon Appetit

The Ol’Buzzard

MAINE AND MOXIE

Maine people today are not the same as they were when I first came up here in the military in 1961.   Maine people use to be colorful and contrary.  They didn’t much care for outsiders and they were quick to show it with an excluding attitude or curt comment at your expense.   But, this was the charm of the people.  

Every night the TV weather man on channel 8 gave a weather forecast which included the weather at Hannibal’s Crossing (which didn't exist.)   If you asked a Mainer how to get to Ustis he would likely say, ‘You can’t get there from here’ with a heavy Mainer accent.  You could never trust directions or explanations from a Mainer because you never knew if you were being led down the path. 

LL Bean at that time was just a big open warehouse with hunting, fishing and camping items on display.  Bean was open 24 hours a day.  When you walked in the door there was a counter displaying pipes and tobacco and you could fill you pipe from the free displays and walk around smoking while looking at outdoor gear – Bean was not a clothing store as it is today.   

Mainers were a thrifty bunch; it was not unusual to see some Mainer out on a lake with a 30 year old motor on his boat – if he had something new he made it look old so as not to be mistaken for an outsider.   Mainers were hardy: they ignored the bugs and the heat and the snow – especially in front of outsiders who would be frantic swatting away the black flies and midges or shivering in their boots knee deep in snow. 

Down in Weld, Maine there was two grocery stores: The Store and The Other Store.   When you went to The Store it had a wood stove with chairs around it and you felt like you had stepped back in time fifty years…  Actually, you always felt like you were in another time a place when you were in rural Maine. 

And Mainers Drank MOXIE, a vile drink that taste like it is made from pine pitch.

First known as Moxie Nerve Food it was not originally made in Maine; it began as a patent medicine in 1876 produced by Maine doctor then living in Lowell, Massachusetts.  

A few years later he added soda water and marketed it as a beverage. 

Moxie is designated the official soft drink of Maine and a Moxie Festival is held each summer in Lisbon Falls Maine.   

Maine is now the retirement state for many people from southern New England, but you can still, occasionally, identify a native Mainer because he will be drinking Moxie.  

the Ol’Buzzard

THE LINK TO "LETTERS FROM THE EARTH' BY MARK TWAIN:

http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/twainlfe.htm

the Ol'Buzzard

A COMMEMORATION FOR FRED PHELPS AND THE WESTBORO BAPTIST CHURCH

Jesus loves Fred Phelps you know

For the Bible told him so

Jesus talked to him that’s true

Always told him what to do

Yes Jesus loves him

Yes Jesus loves him

Yes Jesus loves him

He loves him more than you. 

Hate the Muslims hate the Jews

Hate the Hindu Buddhist too.

Jesus tell me who to hate

Going to Hell will be their fate

(Refrain)

Women are evil God hates tits

Twats and bums will give him fits

Daughters of Eve will cause him pain

Sex is nasty rots your brain

(Refrain)

Gays and lesbians trans-gender too

Jesus hates them you should too

Abominations one and all

They will cause mankind to fall

(Refrain)

Kill the gay and atheist too

While you’re at it kill the Jew

Burn them all and you will see

Jesus love you as much as me.

(Refrain)

Abortion doctors they must go

You can shoot them in church you know

Witches, warlocks make them flee

Jesus hates them just like me.

(Refrain)

Jesus loves Fred Phelps I know

For the Bible tells me so

He loves him and he loves you

But he loves him more than you.

Yes Fred Phelps is dead today

He has gone the Jesus way

He can hate from heaven high

He can hated both you and I

(Ok; it should be me but it didn’t rhyme.)

Anyway; Fuck him.

the Ol’Buzzard

NOAH

CLAP YOUR HANDS IF YOU BELIEVE IN FAIRIES AND TINKERBELL WON'T DIE

Last year the History Channel’s series ‘The Bible’ set cable TV records.   As should have been expected, this year will be the year of religious fervor at the box office.    Movies to be released include Son of God, Noah, Heaven is for Real, Exodus and Mary, Mother of Christ.   These exaggerated fictional renderings of the old Bible stories are going to result in a dramatic ‘Back to Jesus’ movement among the fundamentalist that will culminate in renewed religious mania against anything liberal. 

In all cases these movies will rewrite biblical history and attempt to make these stories emotionally believable for modern time.

I am constantly seeing the advertisement of Noah on cable TV.   The movie features Russell Crowe as Noah who looks more like Mad Max than a six hundred year old man.   (The movie fails to address the issue that Noah was suppose to be over five hundred years old, and that it took him and his sons one hundred years to build this ark…)

The story is too ridiculous to even comment on.  Talk about biblical fantasies, this story surpasses the ridiculous. 

Years ago I read Mark Twain’s Letters from the Earth that primarily deals with the story of Noah.   It was the first time that I had read anything the questioned the validity of the Bible.

Twain begins with Satan being banished from heaven for a day for being surly with God.  To kill time Satan comes down to earth to view the strange life forms God had created on this speck in the cosmos.  He writes letters back to heaven to describe the ridiculous creation called man.    Twain gets a little carried away with some parts of the story and is mistaken on his cosmology, but when you consider the time and attitudes of his day he was a Renaissance man.  

It is eleven short chapters and worth a read.

the Ol'Buzzard

SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS

The recent Yellowdog Granny post contained a clip about the ‘Right to bear arms.”   We constantly hear the idiot right parrot the Second Amendment without actually understanding the context. 

Ted Nugent
Got deferment from military because he craps the bed.

ARTICLE II

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. 

 

Adopted in 1791, the Second Amendment was written for that time and place.   In 1791 the United States did not have a large standing army nor military reserve units as exist today.  In case of military necessity men could be conscripted for a militia and would be expected to furnish their own weaponry.   Thus, in lieu of a standing army it was important that citizens be allowed to own firearms – a right not granted the average citizen of Britain.  

The intention was never to arm citizens for the eventual overthrow of the Constitutional government, but to guarantee the ability to quickly raise an armed militia. 

Today we have a standing Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard and Military Reserve Units and a military industrial complex that could easily arm the entire world.      There is no longer a need for the Second Amendment: the need for citizens to own military style weapons does not exist. 

The Second Amendment should be revised to allow citizens to own firearms for home protection and sporting purposes – but restrict all large capacity automatic and semi-automatic military style weaponry. 

It is only common sense: but there is the rub.

the Ol’Buzzard 

SPRING TIME IN MAINE AND MORE

This year we are going to forfeit spring here in the western mountains of Maine.  We have over three feet of snow on the ground and more expected Thursday and again Saturday.   Normally, we experience a week to ten days of zero or below consecutive nights each winter, but we have been in the single numbers or below almost every night for six weeks.  Tonight the forecast is for five above (on the coast) to fifteen below up north. Here at the cabin we will be somewhere in the below numbers.    

The problem with this winter is the snow cover combined with the low temperatures.  Somewhere between now and June the temps are going to take a seasonable jump and when they do our snow melt is going to cause flooding and an enhanced mud season.  

Mud season here in Maine is not for the faint of heart.   The people on the coast, for the most part, will fare all right; but those of us up her in the rural north that live on dirt roads have to make special preparations.

A neighbor of mine puts one of those big whip antennas on his Honda, even though he doesn’t own a CB.   He figures that if he loses the car in a mud hole he will know where to have his kids dig when the ground firms up.   We all carry extra supplies (just in case) including one of those avalanche beacons.     

Some people strap those beacons to the back of their children’s back-packs before they send then out to catch the school bus.   I have seen others men strap empty fifty-gallon oil drums to each side of their cars – I understand that this also allows you to safely continue ice fishing late into the spring.

We up here in north western Maine are known as resourceful.  Unlike the flatlanders down on the coast it is not unusual to find some old dubber with a 1947 Sears outboard on the back of his boat – the damn thing probably doesn't work but it sure looks good to the ‘people from away’ when he paddles into shore - and if it was good enough for his father and grand father….   Yes we are resourceful: we can start a wood fire without charcoal lighter fluid (gasoline works just as well – and faster) and we know the difference between deer shit and moose shit and bear shit and people shit. 

Speaking of bear shit; did you know that during berry season bear shit is rainbow colored.   It gets these pretty shades of purple, lavender, pink and blue.   I swear that someone could paint with it onto canvasses and sell them through L.L. Beans.    (I am full of ideas: after all I invented the moose turd earrings and worry beads, and a couple of years later found the same thing for sell at Beans.)  

But I digress:  with the winter we have had (and are having) I won’t be able to dance necked in the back yard around a bonfire on the first day of Spring.   Maybe my wife will let me dance around a candle on the living room floor - as long as I don’t get in front of the TV.  

Where ever you are; have a happy Spring  – and dance necked around a bonfire if you get a chance. 

the Ol’Buzzard

IN DEFENSE OF WALMART

We buy most of our food locally, but we buy most products for the home from Walmart.  

I recently purchased a pair of bifocal glasses at the Walmart store: the frames were $17.00 and the total, including Transition lens, came to $125.00 – less than half of what it would have cost at the local eye doctor – and they came with a one year warranty.    

Our microwave, George Foreman grill, some of our dishes, some of my tools etc. came from Walmart.   I get the toner for my printer, most of our paper products and cleaning supplies and even the windshield washer fluid for our car from Walmart.    Many of these products I would have to go out of town to purchase. 

The bad rap for Walmart is the wages they pay - and the way they treat their workers; but, have you ever asked a worker at the Dollar Store, or Save-a-Lot what pay and benefits they receive?

When my wife and I first came to town thirty years ago the unemployment rate was 15%: one out of six people were unemployed.    The paper mills were the desired place to work; next came the shoe factories; then there were the wood turning mills ( seventeenth century sweat shops that never went more than three days without an work related accident);  and finally the tanning mill ( you could always tell the tanning workers because they had fingers missing.)   

Walmart employs a few hundred people in our small community.   For the most part the people working at Walmart are untrained and would be unemployed if the company left town.   Are there better places to work?  You bet – but those jobs don’t exist here. 

Before we get all high and mighty about the Chinese junk sold at Walmart check out where your cell phone was made; what third world country your clothes were made in; all the products, including fresh foods you purchase on a regular basis not produced in the United States.  

We liberals complain about global warming, yet we drive pickup trucks, heat our homes with fuel oil, burn wood stoves, buy our electricity from coal fired plants, and have a house full of plastic.   We should be conscious of our hypocrisies.  

Walmart, such as it is, forces local stores to compete – and for someone on a small fixed income cheaper products are important. 

We buy local when ever we can, but we shop at Walmart on a regular basis – and we say hello to a number of our friends that work and shop there.  

I will stand in a protest line with the Walmart workers for higher pay; but I don’t wish the Walmart store to go away.   Their business plan is like every other big business in the country: designed to pay big bucks at the top while paying workers as little as possible.   This isn't new.  It is the way it has always been.   It is the American free market way. 

the Ol’Buzzard 

OKLAHOMA VS SCIENCE

SQUATLO published a post about the Christian reaction to the new TV show Cosmos, hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, which is running on the Fox channel (also National Geo.)

This brought to mind a partial commentary by Isaac Asimov titled The Threat of Creationism:

“…tens of millions of Americans, who neither know nor understand the actual argument for – or even against – evolution, march in the army of the night with their Bibles held high.  They are a strong and frightening force, impervious to, and immunized against, the feeble lance of mere reason.”

What more can be said?

the Ol’Buzzard

A TRIP OUT

A TRIP OUT AND BACK - AS IN OUT OF TOWN.

If you ever needed proof that an infallible GOD who built the cosmos and set the planets in motion and oversees the universe doesn’t exist you only need to visit a gynecologist office and see all the women needing medical service.     Even disallowing periods, PMS and menopause; women’s plumbing and reproductive systems break down more often that a 1964 Rambler station wagon.    You would think the perfect creator could have come up with a more trouble free system: or else you have to conclude that he actually does despise women. 

My wife had an appointment with her doctor in Portland (Maine,) about one hundred and twenty mile to our south.  We decided to go down a day early and check into a motel, 

enjoy a good seafood restaurant, 

remain a second night after her appointment and then return home leisurely.    

But as Stephen king wrote in Pet Cemetery: when the baby wandered into the road and just missed being killed by a semi-truck:

It didn't happen that way – he goes on to describe the body of the baby being sucked under the truck. 

A major storm (for this time of the year) came across the mid west and roared into Maine at exactly the hour of my wife’s appointment.   Immediately afterwards we pulled out of Portland in the rain and within half-an-hour we were creeping along the freeway at forty-five miles an hour in a mixture of sleet and rain, which soon turned into snow and sleet.   After leaving the freeway for the final stretch back home we were in a wet-snow storm that slowed our progress to thirty mph. 

About 20 miles from home there is a huge hill to climb and then descend - and this was on our minds the entire trip.  We crested the hill in third gear with no problem and then descended in second gear.   I am so impressed with this little Toyota RAV-4’s handling on ice and snow that I should be a spokesman for the company: the computer controlled independent all-wheel-drive constantly adjusted each tire for the road conditions and made the trip back uneventful.  

We got back at four-o-clock: I fired up the wood stove and then broke out the snow blower to get a jump on the plowing.   After supper we lost electricity, as we knew we would, but got it back about daybreak.  

Early this morning, after a banana and a glass of milk, I tackled the snow clearing.   We received well over a foot in a twenty-four hour period and so it took more than two hours to clear. 

 

Now, back inside – the wood stove is pumping – a hot cup of tea – and all is right with the world.  

I love winter; but I think I am ready for mud season (also known as spring here in the Western Mountains of Maine.)

the Ol’Buzzard

WHO GIVES A SHIT?

Some people have a song that runs through their head and drives them nuts. 

 I’ve got an old movie that keeps popping into my id and I can’t find any reference to it on the internet.   The damn thing is probably so old that no body alive but me gives a shit about it anyway. 

It was an early 1950’s black and white movie about a Martian invasion.   Teen agers in their hot rods were attending a Bill Haley and the Comets dance (he sang Rock Around The Clock in the movie) when the invasion began. The Martians looked like the little aliens in Mars Attack (or Paul) but they had hypodermic needles that would extend from their finger tips and could inject poison.   Finally realizing that light could destroy the aliens the teenagers surrounded the Martians with their hot rods and at a signal turned on their headlights winning the day (or night).    The adults never knew that the teen agers saved the earth.  

I searched Bill Haley and the Comets movies and could find no reference to a walk-on in a horror movie.  

It was a stupid movie anyway… this is obviously just my mind fucking with me.   It is like that song that lately has driven me nutz:

A horse is a horse of course of course

And nobody talks to a horse of course

That is of course unless the horse  

Is the famous Mr. Ed

I-AM-MIST-TER-ED.

Now, run that through your subconscious: you can thank me later. 

the Ol’Buzzard

the Ol’Buzzard

THE MAD HATTER'S TEA PARTY

We are all wound up over the state of human insanity in our world and we tend to express our discontent on what Rachel Maddow calls the internet machine.    But all of this will end in a predictable way.   We will remain incense; meanwhile we grow old, infirm, diseased or injured and then we all die. 

We get put in the ground, we get cremated, we get sky burial or some not so lovable love one flushes us down the toilet.

And then generations pass and people will be wound up over the human insanity in the world: liberals will be disgusted with the way the rich are treating the poor; and people with hearts and brains will be protesting the next war; Christians will be bigoted against their next perceived enemy; while politicians placate the factions in power in order to retain their exulted station.

The world is constantly moving – there is constant change; but everything stays the same.

Meanwhile Mother Earth presents us with an opportunity to witness astounding splendor – if we would only disconnect and observe. 

  

In two weeks we will experience the Spring Equinox.   This is a magical time when the day and the night are equal in duration and the earth moves from Winter into Spring in our hemisphere.  

This should be a time of celebration: a time when we stop what we are doing for a couple of days and stand in awe at the transformation that is taking place on our world.   This is a time that we should be aware of our own insignificance and marvel at the miracle that is the accident of our existence.   Once people lit bonfires and danced through the night…

Now we are too busy – or too preoccupied with the absurdities of our own making.

Spring Equinox: March 20^th.    First day of Spring – March 21^st.

Take a break

Take a breather

the Ol’Buzzard

UKRAINE UPDATE

  Forget about all the political spin on major networks.   Follow the happenings in the Ukraine from a Canadian living in the Ukraine.   Links below 

Ukraine – Not a good time to be a student of history

Ukraine – Extreme Apprehension

the Ol'Buzzard

CHICKEN TITS

As a child I was raised in the Delta of Mississippi.   My grandmother and I lived across the street from my aunt and uncle who raised chickens in their back yard.   On special occasions we always had chicken; and since we were a rural community it was always fresh and local.   The point is: I know what chickens are suppose to look like – alive or cooked. 

I recently bought a package of boneless, skinless chicken breast at the local Hannaford supermarket.    The three chicken breasts in this package were enormous.   I would gauge them at least a D cup; there are women I have known with smaller breast.   What the hell kind of Frankenstein monster-chicken breed yields this size breast meat?  

  

 I'm just asking

the Ol'Buzzard

SNAFU

SITUATION NORMAL ALL FUCKED UP

When you read the blogs across the internet probably seventy percent of them are doom and gloom.   They expound about things going wrong in their state, their town or the world – and they are right.  Humanity is fucked up.  But there is nothing new. 

The human social condition is like war: there have always been wars and there will always be wars; the weapons change; the venue changes; the participants change but the results is always the same: people die.

The point I am making is: I am 70+ years old and I have seen it all before.  There has never been a time in my lifetime when everything was not fucked up.  My first memories are of the Second World War – then the McCarthy era, Southern states rights and segregation, the Korean War, the Cuban crisis, the Presidents assassination, Vietnam War, integration struggles, race wars, Nixon, Clinton’s blowjob, Russia, the Cold war, Bush years, Iraq…  Then each state, city and town had its own issues: corrupt police forces, corrupt politicians, religious intolerance, murder – rape - riots – carnage – shit, fire and molasses. 

It is amazing that we have the internet and we can express our frustrations and incredulousness with the state of our individual worlds; but nothing has changed and nothing will ever change.   The players will be different, the venues will be different, the crisis of the moment will be different; but the world will remain fucked up – that is the natural order for the human race.  

Most individuals are basically decent people; but as soon as we pack – we heard up – we take power over others we become corrupt.  That’s who we are. 

It is hard to find something positive to blog about – perhaps cats.  

But in the meantime my blog will join the majority seventy percent and continue to express wonder at the insanity the human race brings to bear against itself. 

There is a ZEN story about a man on a journey that builds a boat to cross the river then drags the boat with him for the next hundred miles. 

 

It is good to be cognitive – it is good to be aware – and it is fine to be troubled; but let us remember we all have eighty-six troubles and let’s not drag the boat once we have crossed the river.

Have a good day

the Ol’Buzzard

DEATH AND THE HOKEY POKEY:

Nan at ALL THE GOOD NAMES WERE TAKEN just did a post on mortality.   

When you get my age you find death lurking in the shadows just beyond sight.    You are conscious of your mortality and your limited future – something that never really concerned you when you were young.  

I don’t worry about death, but I know it is the final payment we all owe to nature. 

My grandmother would tell the story that her family always got together at Thanksgiving at the great grandparents house and it was an unspoken joke that my Kentucky great grandfather always started the meal by saying that this would probably be the last Thanksgiving he would share with them.   This went on for of years - until he wasn't. 

I don’t have family to share with: just my wife.  At my stage of life I find it important to do the things I enjoy.   When I am finally gone I have only one request: that my wife put my ashes in a douche bag with bourbon and water and run me through one more time.

The last ride!

the Ol’Buzzard