Religions are the primary source of most bigotry, violence, intolerance, misogamy and wars - all in the name of someone's God. The world would be a better place without religious cults.
But if that were to happen
Let's keep the Gospel Music as an art form.
I would go to church just to hear this music. Or at least sit outside and listen.
the Ol'Buzzard
I love
tomatoes – real tomatoes – not those tomato avatars they sell at the
supermarkets. When I was a kid living
in the Mississippi delta, tomatoes grew the size of softballs and were so acidy
they would burn your lips if you ate them whole. They tasted like TOMATOES.
The clones
we find at the supermarkets look like tomatoes, they have the color of
tomatoes, they feel like tomatoes and when you slice them they appear to be
tomatoes; but when you eat them: nothing.
When I think
about it, they don’t actually look right: they are too perfect and too shiny
and can sit on the counter for two weeks without going bad – Frankenstein tomatoes.
Our old
house was in the woods – constant shade.
Our new place is open to the sun. After purchasing some disappointing
tomatoes from the supermarket this winter, It dawned on me that perhaps I
should plant a couple of tomato plants this summer – grow some real tomatoes.
Off to my
new go-to DIY resource: YouTube.
Wow! Stick a plant in a grow bag, water it, and
tomatoes abundant. Sounds easy.
First things
first; I order six grow bags
.
The ‘plant your
garden in container’ sites say that using commercial potting soil is too
expensive and that it is cheaper to mix your own; so I purchase a couple of bags
of garden soil, a couple of bags of dehydrated cow manure, a large bale of peat
moss.
From Burpees
online catalog I order three tomato plants.
YouTube says
I need bone meal, copper fungicide and fertilizer to insure healthy tomatoes
While
shopping at Walmart I see a seed planting flat with 72 planting pockets. Why not plant some squash and cucumbers and herb
seeds – makes sense.
I had no
idea that seed packets were so expensive, so I only purchase six along with a
bag of potting soil.
I will need
some plant pots to transfer the seedlings from the planting flat.
You Tube
suggest you put grow bags in some sort of container that can hold a couple of
inches of water, because grow bags dry out so quickly. Walmart on-line has eight red dishpans that
are the perfect size on sale as a lot – and delivered to the house.
I hadn’t
figured where I would keep the planting flat while the seeds germinate – no window
in the house will accommodate it. While
at Tractor Supply I find a green house for sale for $39.00 – seems reasonable.
There is a
problem; if I put the green house on the lawn the grass will fill it in no
time. Land scape cloth is available at
Walmart for $16.00, but you also have to buy the pins to stake it to the ground
for $6.00. What the fuck: in for a penny
in for a pound. I should be able to
cover a 10x12 area to plant my container garden.
I still need
a trowel and a watering nozzle for my hose.
Will probably have to go back to Tractor Supply.
What the hell is happened to me? All I wanted was a few tasty tomatoes.
the Ol’Buzzard
The U.S.
Congress investigating the government cover up of UFOs, finally, definitively revealed:
there is no intelligent life on Earth.
“We are
just an advanced breed of monkey on a minor planet of a very average star.”
Stephen Hawkins
The premise
that other life exist in the universe is statistically undeniable.
In our hubris
we determine that life 'as we know it' can only evolve under the same conditions as earth; an
area around a star where liquid water could exist on an orbiting planet. We have named this area ‘The Goldilocks Zone.’ (Of course, water exist under other
conditions, like Jupiter’s moon Europa – water beneath that ice surface is
grater than all five of Earth’s oceans.)
Our Milky Way Galaxy is estimated to contain between 100 and 400 billion stars, surrounded by hundreds of billion of planets, many of these planets in a position to support life.
There are between 100 and 300
billion galaxies in our observable universe – our cosmic horizon. (The cosmic horizon is limited by the
time that has elapsed since the Big Bang, and the speed of light.)
“And if
each of these galaxies house about the same number of stars as ours does, we
are looking at more than 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (one sextillion) stars
in the observable universe.”
Neil
DeGrasse Tyson
Cosmic
Queries
The idea
that life does not exist anywhere other than Earth, on a planet orbiting one of the sextillion stars in our observable universe, is ridiculous.
However: The
nearest stars to earth are in the Alpha Centauri System about 4.24 light years
away (24.44 trillion miles.) According
to NASA, UNSW Australia discovered the closest potentially habitable planet
outside our solar system orbiting a Red Dwarf star called Wolf 1061, only 14
light years away (84 trillion miles away)
The chance
that an alien race is traveling trillions of miles to regularly visit earth and harvest farts from human
abductees, belongs with the same consideration as QAnon’s lizard people.
The argument
that an unidentified object in the sky must be an alien space craft, falls
under the same premise as God of the Gap – allowing you to jump to the
conclusion of your choice because it hasn’t been proven it is not. (In Logic that is known as Argumentum
Ignorantiam: something is so because it hasn’t been proven it is not.)
We should
remember that the first letter of UFO is U: Unidentified – period – we don’t
know what it is – stop.
the Ol’Buzzard
I am tired
of the false equivalence drawn between the Democrat Far Left and the, so
called, Republican Far Right. First,
the Republican mainstream is now where the Far Right used to be a few years ago, and the
Republican Far Right is out in LaLa land. News pundits
on Fox News and politically correct mainstream news pundits try to make a false
equivalence with the Far Right and Far Left of the two political parties.
The Far Left
of the Democrat Party want to clean up the environment, they want to give
universal health care to all citizens, they want to lower drug prices and give
a free college or trade school to every graduating high school student. The Far
Left want social justice and equality under the law.
The Far
Right of the Republican Party want to violently over throw the government of
the United States. They want all gun
restrictions removed. They are the Republican wing of white superminis, Neo-Nazi,
antisemites, homophobes, Christian fundamentalist and conspiracy nutcases. The Far
Right would jail women who obtain abortions and codify Christian doctrine as
the law of the land. The so-called mainstream of the Republican
Party is complicit by acquiescence.
the Ol’Buzzard
My best friend, emotionally my little brother, has enough guns to outfit a revolution. His dad and I worked together in the military and spent many hours hunting, fishing and drinking together, not necessarily in that order. We were both Maine State Guides and survival instructors. He was like the older brother I never had, and influenced my life, for better or worse, resulting in the man I am today. I miss him every time I think of him.
Back in the
sixties, in Maine, when we were running together, there were no mass shootings
and daily gun violence. We were allowed
to own rifles, shotguns and pistols for hunting but were not allowed to carry
them in our automobiles except during hunting seasons, when we possessed a
valid hunting license; and they had to be visible in a gun rack or on the seat,
unloaded and with the ammo stored in a locked glove compartment or trunk of the
car.
Gun violence
was rare. Sometimes hunting accidents occurred
that were suspicious; but fear of armed thuggery didn’t exist. Kids and young people were not killing each other,
and kids that had access to fire arms were taught to use them safely.
For many of
us our guns were our most prized possessions; but we didn’t consider our guns as
weapons; that mindset came later when military style weaponry became available
to civilians, fueling the outgrowth of militias: insecure males trying to feign
manhood by dressing up in military gear and running around in the woods.
The idea
that any civilian actually needs an assault weapon for home protection is ridiculous. A
shotgun loaded with double-ought buckshot is a more deadly deterrent to a home invasion
than any assault weapon or handgun with an extended clip.
I am not
anti-gun; but you only have to be reasonably intelligent to realize the
connection to the availability of guns, guns designed as military weapons, and
the daily gun violence that plagues the United States.
The genie is
out of the bottle, the nation is armed, and we can never return to those saner
days.
the Ol’Buzzard
Aside from
the obvious that the white supremacist murderer that killed ten in Buffalo New York
was wearing military tactical gear and carrying and a weapon with a high-capacity
clip, the motive for the killings was the ‘replacement theory’ that is so heavily
touted among much of the Republican base and some media celebrities on Fox News.
Check out
this LA Times report
Buffalo
shooting is an ugly culmination of California's 'great replacement' theory
(msn.com)
There is
nothing I can post that better describes the rise of the White Power movement
that has spun off terrorist groups like the MAGA anarchist that attacked the
Nations Capital.
When are we going to call out the Republican Party what they are? They show us every day but we are too politically correct to confront them. Their base is the safe haven for racist, terrorist and anarchist. They are no longer a political party but a terrorist organization fueled by Fox News and other extreme right networks. They are a birthing place for the most ridiculous conspiracy theories and a fertilized garden for idiots.
the Ol'Buzzard
The have
finally done it. The U.S. has now turned
the corner from democracy into a Christian Califate.
It has been progressing
in plain sight for years; politicians showing fealty to Christian demands of a
church-state.
Let’s get
this straight; the end to Roe v. Wade, the end of women’s personhood, in not a
Republican victory, it is not a conservative victory, it is a Christian victory.
It goes
beyond just the abortion issue. It is
the goal of Christianity in America to declare the United States a Christian
nation an enact Christian versions of sharia laws.
Fundamentalist and Catholic installed themselves in positions at the state level of government. They systematically infiltrated the Republican Party, electing their minions into federal offices; finally coopting the Supreme Court.
It will not
be long before the Ten Commandments hang again in the courthouses of this
nation.
The Ol’Buzzard
