God, I think I have to go back to my therapist. Not that I'm that guy. You know - the type with a therapist. I started going with my ex to try and save our marriage and I just don't have anyone to really talk to these days.
My family means well, but they are far from objective. They would be on my side no matter what I did short of rape or murder.
I am tired constantly. It's true that I'm busy - very busy. Between settling in to the house in Barboursville, two visitation schedules, registering the kids for a new school system, a huge project at work, and all of the house work (painting, etc) I did before I left it feels like I haven't had a still moment in months.
That isn't the true source of my constant bone-weariness. Maybe it's depression. I'm not sure... maybe I'm getting old and this is what exhaustion feels like now. I've never been this constantly and persistently tired before.
I had a dream last night, too. It woke me up at around 3 AM - covered in sweat and breathing hard.
In this dream I was escaping from somewhere - an insane asylum? I was running, trying to get some sort of clothes off my chest. I'm not sure what it was, but it was very restrictive and gave me a panicked feeling as I ran headlong through some swamp, dogs barking in the distance behind me. I never actually looked down at the piece of clothing I was trying to get off of me.
They were coming for me. I finally shook off the claustrophobic article of clothing and ran bare-chested at full bore through the swamp. The dogs were getting closer. As the sound of their barking drew near something grew inside me. As the panic in me rose, it turned into something animal.
I gradually started running slower, but not from fatigue. My breathing became slower, more measured and I turned to face the dogs. There were two of them; both large and both fast. One trailed the other slightly. As the first one leaped for my throat, I intercepted him with my hand, spinning to deflect the second dog with the first.
My fingers sought and found the dog's windpipe. I pushed my fingers together to make them meet in the middle of the dog's throat and pulled it clean out of it's body, tossing the dog aside as I did.
Somehow I had a stout stick in my hand, and I used it to crush the other dog's skull in an overhand stroke that sent both splinters and blood flying.
I was seeing red. I knew the dogs' handler would be soon to follow. So I walked back in the direction the dogs came from. I walked quietly and slowly, keeping to cover, and managed to surprise the dog handler. He was wearing some sort of uniform and had a revolver in his hands. I woke up after about the third time I brutally hit him in the head with my club.
It was one of the most vivd dreams I've had in a long time. I got up and took a long pull from the glass of water by the bed. I stepped out on the porch, turned on the overhead fans, and had a smoke while the sweat dried.
I felt very calm by the time I went back to bed and fell into a deep, black sleep.
05 August 2009
29 July 2009
Giggity-gat! Can't Let the Terrorists Win (Again)
Yesterday I had the day from hell at work. Up against a deadline to get testing done against our 64 bit Oracle database, I had to do all of this in one day:
- Resolve three separate technical issues in coordination with the system's vendor (not Oracle) by 3 PM to get a "go" decision at the "go-no go" decison point
- Update the MS Project Plan governing the project
- Update "Command Center" document (don't ask)
- Meet twice with my upper management
- Determine permission levels needed on two servers to be used in the production go-live
- Go to Albemarle High School to get a form to allow my kids to attend Albemarle County Schools the coming up year
Everything got done, but I was left feeling drained by the end of it all. I ended up taking off from work at 4:30. There wasn't enough time to get anything else started or done, and I was really in no mood to try in any event.
I drove home, to Barboursville, and then immediately got changed into jeans, a t-shirt, and my fidel cap, gathered my SKS, loaded three 20 round clips, and then walked down to my brother's cottage to do some shooting.
He brought his AR-15 with two clips, and his .45 callibre Glock with two clips. We set up some targets against a hillside and proceeded to plunk away at them. God, to those who don't shoot, let me tell you something: There's nothing quite like shooting a powerful rifle repeatedly to drain away the day's stresses. Hippies can go ahead and insert phallic substitution joke here.
Whatever - it's really one of those subjects you can't intelligently comment on until you've tried it. Like parenthood or the military, you can read as much as you want about guns, gun ownership, and civil liberties but you can't truly know the subject until you yourself have done it. No ammount of reading will truly prepare you for parenthood or joining the military. In this case, you have to have owned a gun and shot it. Especially with rural gun ownership, there really is no debate in my mind about the nature of the civil liberty aspects or the essential goodness of it.
In short - suck it, hippies.
I'm also planning another expedition to the Rapidan Wildlife Management Area, this time on the weekend of 9-11. Possible attendees include me, my sister's boyfriend, a friend of his, my brother, and one to two friends of mine. In all likelihood we'll have to split up to not put too much pressure on the brook trout in any one stream.
Since the weekend is 9-11, I was thinking of getting a t-shirt custom made by my buddy Andy who runs the Black Cat Skate Shop in Charlottesville. They do custom t-shirts there. I was thinking of getting a Jack Kennedy graphic on the front, like this:
On the back of the shirt, it would say:
"Hey, terrorists! I banged all 72 of your 'virgins'...
Have fun with your Heavenly sloppy seconds."
Haha - because, you see - JFK is dead up there in Heaven with all of the virgins the martyrs are promised... ahhh, and ole Jack had a rep for being a ladies' man...
I think it's friggin' hi-larious.
Bacchanal & Milk of Human Kindness
Bow, once more, to the gods of modern rock-n-roll...
Bacchanal by Clutch
Temptation of indulgence
Divides and conquers my mind
An elegy for fading youth
Welcome to mankind
If you provide the spleen
Then I'll provide the ideal
If I provide a puppet
Will you provide the strings?
Revel in the glory
Of a coming of age
Decades of suppression
Released in a rage
Have mercy
How can I seize the day when it is dusk?
You provide the pull, and I'll provide the thrust
Romance is nothing but a sack of lies
But it is truth which I have come to despise
Bacchanal
If I provide the scene
Will you provide the ordeal?
If I provide a crown
Will you provide a queen?
Milk of Human Kindness by Clutch
Fine swine, wish you were mine bite the apple of my eye
This little piggy never made it home
Helter skelter, run for shelter, can't escape the boiling swelter
Beat you like the dog that you are
Oh, I could kill you if I wanted
Kill you with my own two hands
Oh, I'm so happy I could kill you
Kill you like a sacrificial lamb
Because you, you are nothing but an animal
Panting, lying on your back
A sight so obscene, a sight so absurd
So many ways to skin a cat
Everything tastes better now
My hands, these tools, the fatted cow
The swine, the wine, the coming feast
Your Jesus Christ has canine teeth
Fine swine, wish you were mine bite the apple of my eye
This little piggy never made it home
Helter skelter, run for shelter, can't escape the boiling swelter
Beat you like the dog that you are
Because you, you are nothing but an animal
Panting, lying on your back
A sight so obscene, a sight so absurd
So many ways to skin a cat
Everything tastes better now
My hands, these tools, the fatted cow
The swine, the wine, the coming feast
Your Jesus Christ has canine teeth
Bacchanal by Clutch
Temptation of indulgence
Divides and conquers my mind
An elegy for fading youth
Welcome to mankind
If you provide the spleen
Then I'll provide the ideal
If I provide a puppet
Will you provide the strings?
Revel in the glory
Of a coming of age
Decades of suppression
Released in a rage
Have mercy
How can I seize the day when it is dusk?
You provide the pull, and I'll provide the thrust
Romance is nothing but a sack of lies
But it is truth which I have come to despise
Bacchanal
If I provide the scene
Will you provide the ordeal?
If I provide a crown
Will you provide a queen?
Milk of Human Kindness by Clutch
Fine swine, wish you were mine bite the apple of my eye
This little piggy never made it home
Helter skelter, run for shelter, can't escape the boiling swelter
Beat you like the dog that you are
Oh, I could kill you if I wanted
Kill you with my own two hands
Oh, I'm so happy I could kill you
Kill you like a sacrificial lamb
Because you, you are nothing but an animal
Panting, lying on your back
A sight so obscene, a sight so absurd
So many ways to skin a cat
Everything tastes better now
My hands, these tools, the fatted cow
The swine, the wine, the coming feast
Your Jesus Christ has canine teeth
Fine swine, wish you were mine bite the apple of my eye
This little piggy never made it home
Helter skelter, run for shelter, can't escape the boiling swelter
Beat you like the dog that you are
Because you, you are nothing but an animal
Panting, lying on your back
A sight so obscene, a sight so absurd
So many ways to skin a cat
Everything tastes better now
My hands, these tools, the fatted cow
The swine, the wine, the coming feast
Your Jesus Christ has canine teeth
24 July 2009
Catch Up Ball and the Divorce
I haven't posted in a while. Haha - like anyone has noticed! That's okay... I write here to purge and get things straight in my own mind as much as anything else.
Well, without going into any of the gory details, I've become separated from my wife. Irreconcilable differences, I guess. I don't think either of us really wanted it deep down, but we just couldn't overcome a couple of problems.
So, I've moved back in with my folks out in Barboursville. My two oldest kids (from my first marriage) are moving with me. During the summer they stay with their Mom and visit me on the weekends. This weekend will be the first where they get to see their new digs.
I'm actually kind of excited. I think I'm realizing that, much like Papa, I'm a rolling stone. I enjoy change on some level no matter what kind of change it is. It's the same here. There's a lot of pain, of course, but most things painful also cause you to grow. "Look at the bright side whenever possible" is becoming my new motto.
One of the things in the "plus" column is the room in which my kids will be staying. It's my sister's old room and is easily the coolest room in the house. It's huge with a loft and the sweetest walk-in closet a girl could ever want under that loft. My daughter (11) will be getting the closet except for one rack so my son (14) can have some hanger space. He has a nice big dresser out in the room for his stuff.
Another thing in the "plus" column is the lake on my folks' property. It needs to be stocked, but it does have a small and very fiesty largemouth bass population. I've been fishing twice since I moved in on Saturday and these ferocious fish have given me many needed hours of peace and relaxation.
Four years ago there was a drought which just about drained our little 3/4 acre pond. The opportunity was taken to completely drain the lake and rebuild our aging dock. The pond was never restocked.
In steps Mother Nature... the pond seems to have been naturally restocked with largemouth bass. From what I've been told and what I've read this is likely to have been done by geese. We have a family of geese which visits our pond each year in their migrations. Evidently these geese will eat fish eggs if they stumble upon a nest. Some get digested and some just pass right through. They ate some eggs at another pond along their route and then pooped them out in our lake. Either that or their legs brushed some eggs which stuck and then upon landing in our lake the eggs were deposited.
Either way, natural bass stocking! Our bass are suffering from a lack of their normal food sources - usually bluegill or some other form of sunfish. Evidently these geese ate no bluegill eggs. The bass in our lake were surviving off of tadpoles for a while and now seem to have switched to surface feeding on bugs since the tadpoles matured. Tuesday night I was out at the lake at around 6:30 or so and witnessed a number of surface strikes, including an eating of a post-coital dragonfly who flew too close to the surface after his mid-air whoopie was done.
The end product are bass that simply stay hungry - surface feeding on bugs is a much more energy-intensive venture for less food in return for their effort than bass are used to. I'm telling you these bass bite at about anything. From what I've caught, there seems to be five or six bass with most of them being in the 8-10 inch range and one down at around seven inches or so. I think their diet is limiting how much they can grow.
So I've done some research on stocking the pond. For less than $150 I'll be able to get 10 more largemouth (at 5 inches), 10 catfish (at 10 inches), and 90 bluegill (at 3 inches). This should keep the proper ratio of predator to prey in the bass/bluegill equation. Some sources say the ratio should be five bluegill to each bass, some say seven to one. I split the difference and said six to one (5 native bass + 10 stocked = 15 bass times 6 = 90 bluegill). These numbers are a quarter less than the numbers the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries suggests for a warmwater pond an acre in size.
As long as I harvest bluegill at a five or six to one ratio to the bass, the poulation should be fairly self-regulating after one season. I may even look into some minnows. That bears some more research, though.
Well, without going into any of the gory details, I've become separated from my wife. Irreconcilable differences, I guess. I don't think either of us really wanted it deep down, but we just couldn't overcome a couple of problems.
So, I've moved back in with my folks out in Barboursville. My two oldest kids (from my first marriage) are moving with me. During the summer they stay with their Mom and visit me on the weekends. This weekend will be the first where they get to see their new digs.
I'm actually kind of excited. I think I'm realizing that, much like Papa, I'm a rolling stone. I enjoy change on some level no matter what kind of change it is. It's the same here. There's a lot of pain, of course, but most things painful also cause you to grow. "Look at the bright side whenever possible" is becoming my new motto.
One of the things in the "plus" column is the room in which my kids will be staying. It's my sister's old room and is easily the coolest room in the house. It's huge with a loft and the sweetest walk-in closet a girl could ever want under that loft. My daughter (11) will be getting the closet except for one rack so my son (14) can have some hanger space. He has a nice big dresser out in the room for his stuff.
Another thing in the "plus" column is the lake on my folks' property. It needs to be stocked, but it does have a small and very fiesty largemouth bass population. I've been fishing twice since I moved in on Saturday and these ferocious fish have given me many needed hours of peace and relaxation.
Four years ago there was a drought which just about drained our little 3/4 acre pond. The opportunity was taken to completely drain the lake and rebuild our aging dock. The pond was never restocked.
In steps Mother Nature... the pond seems to have been naturally restocked with largemouth bass. From what I've been told and what I've read this is likely to have been done by geese. We have a family of geese which visits our pond each year in their migrations. Evidently these geese will eat fish eggs if they stumble upon a nest. Some get digested and some just pass right through. They ate some eggs at another pond along their route and then pooped them out in our lake. Either that or their legs brushed some eggs which stuck and then upon landing in our lake the eggs were deposited.
Either way, natural bass stocking! Our bass are suffering from a lack of their normal food sources - usually bluegill or some other form of sunfish. Evidently these geese ate no bluegill eggs. The bass in our lake were surviving off of tadpoles for a while and now seem to have switched to surface feeding on bugs since the tadpoles matured. Tuesday night I was out at the lake at around 6:30 or so and witnessed a number of surface strikes, including an eating of a post-coital dragonfly who flew too close to the surface after his mid-air whoopie was done.
The end product are bass that simply stay hungry - surface feeding on bugs is a much more energy-intensive venture for less food in return for their effort than bass are used to. I'm telling you these bass bite at about anything. From what I've caught, there seems to be five or six bass with most of them being in the 8-10 inch range and one down at around seven inches or so. I think their diet is limiting how much they can grow.
So I've done some research on stocking the pond. For less than $150 I'll be able to get 10 more largemouth (at 5 inches), 10 catfish (at 10 inches), and 90 bluegill (at 3 inches). This should keep the proper ratio of predator to prey in the bass/bluegill equation. Some sources say the ratio should be five bluegill to each bass, some say seven to one. I split the difference and said six to one (5 native bass + 10 stocked = 15 bass times 6 = 90 bluegill). These numbers are a quarter less than the numbers the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries suggests for a warmwater pond an acre in size.
As long as I harvest bluegill at a five or six to one ratio to the bass, the poulation should be fairly self-regulating after one season. I may even look into some minnows. That bears some more research, though.
18 June 2009
Reservoir Dogs
Tuesday night my brother, his wife, and I went canoeing on the Rivanna Reservoir. "D" (my bro's wife) bought my borther a canoe for his last birthday. Best. Birthday. Present. EVER!!!!
I took off work an hour early and swung by the grocery store to buy some beer (for the canoe), some OJ, and some bread (the latter two for home). I met B (my bro) and D outside of the sporting goods joint, which was in the same shopping center.
We caravaned up Route 29 a bit and left my car at Harris Teeter, since parking at the boat ramp is limited. We then got in D's Xtera and headed out to the reservoir.
B and I easily hauled the 14 foot canoe off the roof and put it in the water and away we went! We put in at around 5 PM. With B and I paddling we got the canoe going at a pretty decent clip. Diesel power!
I brought my little Zebco 33 rod and my vest (which serves as my tackle box). It was so quiet out there where we were paddling. We paddled back into the backwaters of the reservoir where at points the water was only inches deep. It was so quiet, as a matter of fact, that the clicking noise of my closed face Zebco was really annoying me.
I've been meaning to get a decent open faced reel anyways. I got the Zebco because it was cheap and at the time I wasn't sure if I was going to be getting back into fishing seriously or not. That question is answered, I guess! I now have a 4 wt fly rod, a 6 wt fly rod, a large Penn open-faced rod-n-reel setup, and the Zebco.
I was tempted to bring the fly rod, but I think with three people in the canoe that casting would have been difficult, especially with the fact that I'm fairly new at fly casting and hadn't been in a canoe for well over a decade. I tell you what, though - the insect activity on the water was robust to say the least. We were seeing tons of surface strikes all evening. I bet some caddis and anything mimicking a dragonfly would have torn it up out there.
In any event, we saw quite a bit of wildlife while we were out on the water. We saw a couple of herons (that's what we think they were, anyway), geese, a couple of beavers, turtles, and some deer.
All evening only B was able to catch a fish. A glorious bluegill! It was of moderate size and he released it.
Towards the end of the evening, some good ole boys in a nice jon boat were tearing up some bass. They caught one that was at least two feet long as we were watching them from a distance.
By nine o'clock we took out and headed back to their place for dinner. My brother has a garden that has really taken off and he's a top-knotch chef, to boot. You know dinner was good!
I took off work an hour early and swung by the grocery store to buy some beer (for the canoe), some OJ, and some bread (the latter two for home). I met B (my bro) and D outside of the sporting goods joint, which was in the same shopping center.
We caravaned up Route 29 a bit and left my car at Harris Teeter, since parking at the boat ramp is limited. We then got in D's Xtera and headed out to the reservoir.
B and I easily hauled the 14 foot canoe off the roof and put it in the water and away we went! We put in at around 5 PM. With B and I paddling we got the canoe going at a pretty decent clip. Diesel power!
I brought my little Zebco 33 rod and my vest (which serves as my tackle box). It was so quiet out there where we were paddling. We paddled back into the backwaters of the reservoir where at points the water was only inches deep. It was so quiet, as a matter of fact, that the clicking noise of my closed face Zebco was really annoying me.
I've been meaning to get a decent open faced reel anyways. I got the Zebco because it was cheap and at the time I wasn't sure if I was going to be getting back into fishing seriously or not. That question is answered, I guess! I now have a 4 wt fly rod, a 6 wt fly rod, a large Penn open-faced rod-n-reel setup, and the Zebco.
I was tempted to bring the fly rod, but I think with three people in the canoe that casting would have been difficult, especially with the fact that I'm fairly new at fly casting and hadn't been in a canoe for well over a decade. I tell you what, though - the insect activity on the water was robust to say the least. We were seeing tons of surface strikes all evening. I bet some caddis and anything mimicking a dragonfly would have torn it up out there.
In any event, we saw quite a bit of wildlife while we were out on the water. We saw a couple of herons (that's what we think they were, anyway), geese, a couple of beavers, turtles, and some deer.
All evening only B was able to catch a fish. A glorious bluegill! It was of moderate size and he released it.
Towards the end of the evening, some good ole boys in a nice jon boat were tearing up some bass. They caught one that was at least two feet long as we were watching them from a distance.
By nine o'clock we took out and headed back to their place for dinner. My brother has a garden that has really taken off and he's a top-knotch chef, to boot. You know dinner was good!
Let me see if I can remember it all: bed of butterleaf lettuce, radishes, finger carrots, beets, chicken, and an avacado/onion salad on top. The beets, radishes, and carrots were tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper, and a crushed garlic clove and then cooked in the oven until slightly tender. Everything except the chicken and the avacado was from my brother's garden, too.
(heron)
(geese)
(geek)
(bow-chicka-bow-wow)
ps - dealing with image placement in Blogger is teh ghetto...
06 June 2009
Memorial Day Weekend @ Smith Mountain Lake
This last weekend my friends Mark, Earl, Sam, Adam, Anna, and I went to Smith Mountain Lake State Park for the weekend.
Friday, 22 May 2009
I got over to my friend Mark's joint at around 9 AM and we loaded my gear into his truck. Sam was easily convinced to come with us. Earl got off work at 11:30 or so and we met him at his place. After loading his gear and his brother Adam's gear and gathering Anna, we were on the road.
It was about a two hour trip. Not too bad, even with a couple of Google Maps induced fits of directional confusion. We set up the camp first and then headed out to Mango's Bar and Grill. It was a total tourist trap Jimmy Buffet-esque joint complete with totally mediocre food and overpriced drinks. The shot "Sex with a Catfish" is to be avoided at all costs!
I could see Mango's being a good choice for a family outing. There was putt-putt golf right there, an old-school video arcade, and some shops all situated right around Mango's. Mom and Dad could send the kiddies off to play putt-putt or video games or shop while they had a drink and enjoyed some music. Although the act they had for a big weekend like Memorial Day weekend was fucking terrible. The Breeze Boys. Two dudes in their late fourties with receeding hairlines, a karaoke machine, a bass guitar, and very little talent. They ended up driving us out of there early.
That was okay, we went back to camp and partied like a mahfukkah! I brought a bunch of homebrews (California Commons and Oaked Imperial Stout) and whiskey and store beer was also present. We ended up staying up real late and making a lot of noise. I mean, not a terrible ruckus, but we weren't exactly whispering.
Sam and Earl stayed up pretty late that night, annoying the hell out of the people in the campsite next to ours. I love hanging out with these guys... it's always a lot of laughs.
Saturday, 23 May 2009
We got up around 7 the next morning. I made breakfast - camp slop, what else? This time it was about a dozen eggs and a dozen sausage links, though.
After getting everything sorted out concerning the day, Earl, Mark, and I headed out to Parrot Cove Marina to get the boat. I felt kind of bad to leave Adam, Anna, and Sam out of our boat trip but we hadn't originally planned on them coming, so Mark rented the 17 footer. It turned out that the marina wasn't open until 8 anyways, so we were right on time, really.
A word of advice to anyone thinking of renting a boat to fish at Smith Mountain Lake: you're only going to get good evening and morning fishes in if you rent the boat for two days. All the marinas down there open at around 8 and close at around 6 or so. This means you can't get your boat until after the morning fishing is pretty much done and you have to return it just as evening fishing is heating up. It's a bit of a scam in that way.
That being said, we had a lot of fun, even with just having the boat one day. Being Memorial Day weekend, there was so much boat traffic that all the big fish in the main lake were driven down deep. We saw plenty of them on the fish finder - big fish down at 120 feet to 160 feet, but they weren't biting on anything.
We ended up hitting the coves and trying to find spots where there were no other boats. We'd cruise up in these quiet coves and cast under overhanging trees. Those were the only spots we found any action all day - either way up north in coves or in coves off the state park. I ended up getting the big fish for the day - a 17 or 18 inch catfish... probably around 2 lbs. It was good eating, too! Mark caught a small largemouth and then we all caught a bunch of tiny sunfish.
Sunday, 25 May 2009
Not much on this day. We got up, brewed coffee, broke camp, and went to the White House Restaraunt for a good southern breakfast buffet. Simple and delicious - the selection consisted of biscuits and sausage gravy, sausages, bacon, french toast sticks, and scrambled eggs. That's it.
After that we were on the road again - this time heading home.
Friday, 22 May 2009
I got over to my friend Mark's joint at around 9 AM and we loaded my gear into his truck. Sam was easily convinced to come with us. Earl got off work at 11:30 or so and we met him at his place. After loading his gear and his brother Adam's gear and gathering Anna, we were on the road.
It was about a two hour trip. Not too bad, even with a couple of Google Maps induced fits of directional confusion. We set up the camp first and then headed out to Mango's Bar and Grill. It was a total tourist trap Jimmy Buffet-esque joint complete with totally mediocre food and overpriced drinks. The shot "Sex with a Catfish" is to be avoided at all costs!
I could see Mango's being a good choice for a family outing. There was putt-putt golf right there, an old-school video arcade, and some shops all situated right around Mango's. Mom and Dad could send the kiddies off to play putt-putt or video games or shop while they had a drink and enjoyed some music. Although the act they had for a big weekend like Memorial Day weekend was fucking terrible. The Breeze Boys. Two dudes in their late fourties with receeding hairlines, a karaoke machine, a bass guitar, and very little talent. They ended up driving us out of there early.
That was okay, we went back to camp and partied like a mahfukkah! I brought a bunch of homebrews (California Commons and Oaked Imperial Stout) and whiskey and store beer was also present. We ended up staying up real late and making a lot of noise. I mean, not a terrible ruckus, but we weren't exactly whispering.
Sam and Earl stayed up pretty late that night, annoying the hell out of the people in the campsite next to ours. I love hanging out with these guys... it's always a lot of laughs.
Saturday, 23 May 2009We got up around 7 the next morning. I made breakfast - camp slop, what else? This time it was about a dozen eggs and a dozen sausage links, though.
After getting everything sorted out concerning the day, Earl, Mark, and I headed out to Parrot Cove Marina to get the boat. I felt kind of bad to leave Adam, Anna, and Sam out of our boat trip but we hadn't originally planned on them coming, so Mark rented the 17 footer. It turned out that the marina wasn't open until 8 anyways, so we were right on time, really.
A word of advice to anyone thinking of renting a boat to fish at Smith Mountain Lake: you're only going to get good evening and morning fishes in if you rent the boat for two days. All the marinas down there open at around 8 and close at around 6 or so. This means you can't get your boat until after the morning fishing is pretty much done and you have to return it just as evening fishing is heating up. It's a bit of a scam in that way.
That being said, we had a lot of fun, even with just having the boat one day. Being Memorial Day weekend, there was so much boat traffic that all the big fish in the main lake were driven down deep. We saw plenty of them on the fish finder - big fish down at 120 feet to 160 feet, but they weren't biting on anything.
We ended up hitting the coves and trying to find spots where there were no other boats. We'd cruise up in these quiet coves and cast under overhanging trees. Those were the only spots we found any action all day - either way up north in coves or in coves off the state park. I ended up getting the big fish for the day - a 17 or 18 inch catfish... probably around 2 lbs. It was good eating, too! Mark caught a small largemouth and then we all caught a bunch of tiny sunfish.
I even did a little flycasting from the boat. A lot of fun. It's really the only way to fly fish on a lake!
At around 4 or so, we cruised up into a cove in the State Park and called Sam. He answered and said he was just done with a shower. He took the path directly behind our campsite down to the water and there he was! We had successfully picked the right cove and everything. Earl ended up getting off the boat and Sam got on. We goofed around a bit more on the water and then took the boat back at around 5:30 or so.
Sunday, 25 May 2009Not much on this day. We got up, brewed coffee, broke camp, and went to the White House Restaraunt for a good southern breakfast buffet. Simple and delicious - the selection consisted of biscuits and sausage gravy, sausages, bacon, french toast sticks, and scrambled eggs. That's it.
The waitress was very nice and asked us if we wanted eggs cooked any other way. I had mine over-medium. That, and some coffee hit the mutha-jumpin' spot.
After that we were on the road again - this time heading home.
18 May 2009
Catch Up
I've been doing a lot of fishing lately. I used to go fishing with my Dad quite a bit as a kid, but after I went to college, I just stopped going for whatever reason. In any event, my recent trip to the Rapidan WMA rekindled my interest in the sport.
Also, fishing is a good survival skill to have. This coming up fall and winter I intend to pickup hunting as well. I will bag a freaking rabbit this season! I also intend to go deer hunting for the first time ever. A bit late to start, I'll admit, but starting at 36 is better than never starting at all. My Dad lived in suburban Maryland while I was growing up and my Step Dad never was much of a hunter, so I never was really exposed to it as a kid.
Sugar Hollow Reservoir
In any event, the weekend of May 9th I went fishing at Sugar Hollow Reservoir and the Moorman River. Rainbow and Brook Trout are stocked here every year in addition to the reservoir's native smallmouth bass population. I hear there are crappies and bluegill as well, but I've never seen them.
I got up at 5:30 in the morning and was on the road by 6. I got lost on my way out there (thanks, MapQuest!).
It had been nearly two decades since I'd been to Sugar Hollow. Haha - the last time I was up there was just after high school for a "hike-n-hump" with a girl named Casey. Ahhh, memories! That was a fun but short-lived relationship.
I was on track to be out there by 6:30 AM, but ended up making a wrong turn and arriving in Crozet by 6:45. I stopped by a gas station to see where I went wrong, but no one there (not even the employees) were actually from the area. Great. So I headed back the way I drove in and just happened to luck into an older gentleman checking his mailbox. I pulled over and he was glad to give me directions.
By 7:30 I pulled up to the reservoir just in time to see a guy with a string of six or eight trout loading his car up. I asked what they were biting on and he said "green eggs and bloodworms, but they stopped biting about thirty minutes ago." I thanked him and he was on his way. Thanks again, MapQuest. I would have been right on time...
I fished for a while and then a gent by the name of Aaron pulled up. I picked his brain about the tricks to fishing this reservoir. He suggested eggs, bloodworms, and mealworms after it had rained and lures for when it had been dry for a while. The reason for this, he said, was that during rainstorms, things get swept into the water and so the fish are looking more for live bait. During dry spells I guess the lures work a bit better because the fish aren't expecting to see any live critters floating through the water.
I drove back up along the reservoir a ways and rediscovered the Moormon River upstream from the reservoir. It's a pretty little river... more of a big stream, really. It looked like good trout waters. I dipped my hand in - chilly. Perfect. Aaron said they stocked these waters every two or three weeks. During the height of the summer the waters get too warm for the trout and they retreat to the depths of the reservoir. The trouts eggs don't live in the reservoir. I don't know if that's because of predation or inhospitable circumstances or both.
Anyway, I didn't catch anything. I chalked this trip up to a learning expedition.
Also, fishing is a good survival skill to have. This coming up fall and winter I intend to pickup hunting as well. I will bag a freaking rabbit this season! I also intend to go deer hunting for the first time ever. A bit late to start, I'll admit, but starting at 36 is better than never starting at all. My Dad lived in suburban Maryland while I was growing up and my Step Dad never was much of a hunter, so I never was really exposed to it as a kid.
Sugar Hollow Reservoir
In any event, the weekend of May 9th I went fishing at Sugar Hollow Reservoir and the Moorman River. Rainbow and Brook Trout are stocked here every year in addition to the reservoir's native smallmouth bass population. I hear there are crappies and bluegill as well, but I've never seen them.
I got up at 5:30 in the morning and was on the road by 6. I got lost on my way out there (thanks, MapQuest!).
It had been nearly two decades since I'd been to Sugar Hollow. Haha - the last time I was up there was just after high school for a "hike-n-hump" with a girl named Casey. Ahhh, memories! That was a fun but short-lived relationship.
I was on track to be out there by 6:30 AM, but ended up making a wrong turn and arriving in Crozet by 6:45. I stopped by a gas station to see where I went wrong, but no one there (not even the employees) were actually from the area. Great. So I headed back the way I drove in and just happened to luck into an older gentleman checking his mailbox. I pulled over and he was glad to give me directions.
By 7:30 I pulled up to the reservoir just in time to see a guy with a string of six or eight trout loading his car up. I asked what they were biting on and he said "green eggs and bloodworms, but they stopped biting about thirty minutes ago." I thanked him and he was on his way. Thanks again, MapQuest. I would have been right on time...
I fished for a while and then a gent by the name of Aaron pulled up. I picked his brain about the tricks to fishing this reservoir. He suggested eggs, bloodworms, and mealworms after it had rained and lures for when it had been dry for a while. The reason for this, he said, was that during rainstorms, things get swept into the water and so the fish are looking more for live bait. During dry spells I guess the lures work a bit better because the fish aren't expecting to see any live critters floating through the water.
I drove back up along the reservoir a ways and rediscovered the Moormon River upstream from the reservoir. It's a pretty little river... more of a big stream, really. It looked like good trout waters. I dipped my hand in - chilly. Perfect. Aaron said they stocked these waters every two or three weeks. During the height of the summer the waters get too warm for the trout and they retreat to the depths of the reservoir. The trouts eggs don't live in the reservoir. I don't know if that's because of predation or inhospitable circumstances or both.
Anyway, I didn't catch anything. I chalked this trip up to a learning expedition.
- Get up there early (don't trust MapQuest if you can help it!)
- Live bait after a storm, lures during a dry spell.
- Wyant Country Store has all the bait you'll need for Sugar Hollow.
- Use smaller hooks if you're after trout - their mouths are much smaller than those of bass
All in all it was a lot of fun. Peaceful, beautiful country out that way. Albemarle County is a huge county and it's easy to think of it as just the Charlottesville area and Route 29 corridor. It's so much more than that. I intend to hit every public lake in Albemarle County over the course of the summer.
Fly Fishing Adventures
I just got a fly rod setup for my birthday. My wife was kind enough to buy it for me. Thanks, hon! Last Saturday morning I decided to try my hand at fly casting at my parents' pond in Barboursville before embarrassing myself in public.
I had watched a ton of tutorials on YouTube over the past few weeks while waiting for my rod (it was on backorder), so I had a basic idea of what I was doing. I knew it would be a matter of getting the feel for it and after about an hour of casting with no fly on my line, I decided it was time to graduate to some real casting; fly and all.
I attached a dry fly, a black gnat, and looked around the lake. I saw a group of little black bugs buzzing around the water by a bush hanging over the pond. I cast right into the middle of it and bam! My first cast ever with a fly attached and I hooked an eight inch bass!
It was exciting because the fight was different. With most rods you use a combination of the reel and and rod to tire the fish and eventually pull him in. With the fly rod, it's much more about using the rod to tire the fish and drawing in slack with your hand, keeping the line pinched against the rod with your index finger. It's a more personal, manual fight.
Seeing the actual strike didn't hurt, either! All other fishing I had ever done, the strike happened below the surface - you didn't get to actually see it. Very cool. I think I'm hooked. Okay - I just realized that was a terrible pun. It was unintentional.
04 May 2009
Ragged Mountain Reservoir
Sunday morning I got up bright and early and went fishing at the Ragged Mountain Reservoir. It's only about 6 or 8 miles from my house.
It's amazing how on the south side of Charlottesville when you leave town you're immediately in BFE. Like the instant you clear the city limits - bam! - Outer Mongolia. It's one of the many things I love about my hometown. Many, many of the perks of a big city with almost none of the drawbacks.
In any event, I got clear of the house by 6 AM and drove out to the reservoir. Just gorgeous. You drive a couple of miles back into a valley and up a ridgeline and then you come to a small parking lot near an old abandoned house. The place looks completely habitable... I think maybe it was once the house for the reservoir attendant. It's probably still maintained by the City and County governments (the reservoir being a joint venture between the two).
I only ran into one group of two guys the whole time I was up there. It was quiet and the lake had a mist rising off of it. Geese and frogs were about the only creatures that broke the near-silence.
The other fishermen were on a john boat with an electric motor, so even they were quiet. There are no combustion motors allowed on the lake. This is probably a good thing, since the Ragged Mountain Reservoir provides a large portion the drinking water in the Charlottesville/Albemarle area. I don't much like the taste of motor oil in my water. Meh, call me a snob, I guess.
It started raining about half an hour after I arrived, but it didn't matter much. The Natural Area around the reservoir is completely undeveloped, so the trees come right up to the shoreline. Side-casting, anyone? The rain came down, but very little fell on me under the trees. I found a really nice spot and settled in.
There was a relatively flat rock next to the shore that I sat on. I set my line with a bobber and some powerbait, cast in, and commenced to relax. After enjoying the sounds of nature for a good thirty minutes I put on my iPod. Pink Floyd's Meddle was on tap - the chillest of the chill. When I need to relax, that album is the Alpha and the Omega.
If anyone wants to hear this album, here's a link: Pink Floyd's Meddle. You'll need the Rhapsody Player - no big deal if you have high speed.
I was looking out over the lake, mist rising, a light rain falling, and geese calling in the pale early morning light and I just felt so calm. The Pink Floyd, playing softly in one ear, added an extra touch of peace. I could have dozed off right there.
As tempting an idea as that was, I decided to switch out to a lure so I'd have to be a bit more active. I think my second cast with the lure I hooked into something. It was a fighter, that was for sure. My cheap-ass Zebco 33 was bent way down and even when I cranked the reel, the line still went out when the fish wanted to run.
I thought I had something huge. I was pretty excited. It took about five minutes to reel him in. I'd pull and crank for a bit and then let him run. Pull and crank, let him run. When I pulled him in I was a bit disappointed with the seven inch or so bluegill all that work had yielded. Disappointed, but with a respect for this tough little bugger. I freed him from the hook and returned him to the water.
I didn't catch anything else, but that was hardly the point. I left the reservoir feeling relaxed and calm.
It's amazing how on the south side of Charlottesville when you leave town you're immediately in BFE. Like the instant you clear the city limits - bam! - Outer Mongolia. It's one of the many things I love about my hometown. Many, many of the perks of a big city with almost none of the drawbacks.
In any event, I got clear of the house by 6 AM and drove out to the reservoir. Just gorgeous. You drive a couple of miles back into a valley and up a ridgeline and then you come to a small parking lot near an old abandoned house. The place looks completely habitable... I think maybe it was once the house for the reservoir attendant. It's probably still maintained by the City and County governments (the reservoir being a joint venture between the two).
I only ran into one group of two guys the whole time I was up there. It was quiet and the lake had a mist rising off of it. Geese and frogs were about the only creatures that broke the near-silence.
The other fishermen were on a john boat with an electric motor, so even they were quiet. There are no combustion motors allowed on the lake. This is probably a good thing, since the Ragged Mountain Reservoir provides a large portion the drinking water in the Charlottesville/Albemarle area. I don't much like the taste of motor oil in my water. Meh, call me a snob, I guess.
It started raining about half an hour after I arrived, but it didn't matter much. The Natural Area around the reservoir is completely undeveloped, so the trees come right up to the shoreline. Side-casting, anyone? The rain came down, but very little fell on me under the trees. I found a really nice spot and settled in.
There was a relatively flat rock next to the shore that I sat on. I set my line with a bobber and some powerbait, cast in, and commenced to relax. After enjoying the sounds of nature for a good thirty minutes I put on my iPod. Pink Floyd's Meddle was on tap - the chillest of the chill. When I need to relax, that album is the Alpha and the Omega.
If anyone wants to hear this album, here's a link: Pink Floyd's Meddle. You'll need the Rhapsody Player - no big deal if you have high speed.
I was looking out over the lake, mist rising, a light rain falling, and geese calling in the pale early morning light and I just felt so calm. The Pink Floyd, playing softly in one ear, added an extra touch of peace. I could have dozed off right there.
As tempting an idea as that was, I decided to switch out to a lure so I'd have to be a bit more active. I think my second cast with the lure I hooked into something. It was a fighter, that was for sure. My cheap-ass Zebco 33 was bent way down and even when I cranked the reel, the line still went out when the fish wanted to run.
I thought I had something huge. I was pretty excited. It took about five minutes to reel him in. I'd pull and crank for a bit and then let him run. Pull and crank, let him run. When I pulled him in I was a bit disappointed with the seven inch or so bluegill all that work had yielded. Disappointed, but with a respect for this tough little bugger. I freed him from the hook and returned him to the water.
I didn't catch anything else, but that was hardly the point. I left the reservoir feeling relaxed and calm.
28 April 2009
North Cackalacky Visitor
My buddy from North Carolina came up to visit this past weekend. I lived in Raleigh during the dot com boom back around 1999 to 2001. I had my first tech job at that time and through a coworker I was introduced to a whole new crowd of folks. "E", as I'll call him, was one of those folks. He's the only one I still keep in touch with from those days.
In any event, once or twice a year either he'll come up to Virginia for a visit or I'll slide on down North Carolina-way. This time he paid us a visit.
Friday night we made the local brewery beer tasting rounds. We went to Blue Mountain Brewery and had many, many beers. We then swung on down to the South Street Brewery (affectionately known locally as the "Soussed Street Brewery"). After that it was off to Beer Run - not a brewery but a must on the beer Mecca rounds in the central Virginia area.
Saturday we mainly hung out around the house. E and I did some errands - got some lures at Dick's Sporting Goods, picked up a batch of California Common at the Fermentation Trap, dropped off recycling, and then went home. I whipped up the California Common and tossed it in the carboy to ferment.
We had a nice dinner - Apple Ginger glazed chicken on the grill, home made cornbread, and a salad along with multiple whiskey-n-coke drinks. Follow that up with some homebrew Oktoberfest, and then a sampler 12 pack of Victory Brewery beers and we were all lit up like three Christmas trees. Me, E, and the wife that is.
Sunday morning E and I went out to Barboursville to shoot some targets. I brought Hilda (SKS), Cletus (Remington D870 Express), and Harry (Ruger GP100 .357). Here are some pics:
Teh-hut!
In any event, once or twice a year either he'll come up to Virginia for a visit or I'll slide on down North Carolina-way. This time he paid us a visit.
Friday night we made the local brewery beer tasting rounds. We went to Blue Mountain Brewery and had many, many beers. We then swung on down to the South Street Brewery (affectionately known locally as the "Soussed Street Brewery"). After that it was off to Beer Run - not a brewery but a must on the beer Mecca rounds in the central Virginia area.
Saturday we mainly hung out around the house. E and I did some errands - got some lures at Dick's Sporting Goods, picked up a batch of California Common at the Fermentation Trap, dropped off recycling, and then went home. I whipped up the California Common and tossed it in the carboy to ferment.
We had a nice dinner - Apple Ginger glazed chicken on the grill, home made cornbread, and a salad along with multiple whiskey-n-coke drinks. Follow that up with some homebrew Oktoberfest, and then a sampler 12 pack of Victory Brewery beers and we were all lit up like three Christmas trees. Me, E, and the wife that is.
Sunday morning E and I went out to Barboursville to shoot some targets. I brought Hilda (SKS), Cletus (Remington D870 Express), and Harry (Ruger GP100 .357). Here are some pics:
Teh-hut!
09 April 2009
A Weekend with the Conway River, pt 3
Sunday, 05 April 2009
I slept like crap Saturday night. I dragged my arse out of bed at about seven-thirty. Coffee and camp slop. Mountain Dew (Electric Hillbilly Piss). In short order I was bright eyed and bushy tailed. Amazing how brisk air right off the bat along with massive doses of caffeine will utterly eradicate the effects of a bad night's sleep.
As I broke down my tent and gear I discovered my camera. It was in the foot of my sleeping bag. Who the hell knows how it got there? The only thing I could figure is that I must have bent over in the tent to pick something up and the camera fell out onto the sleeping bag. I must have then inadvertantly kicked it into the foot of the sleeping bag.
We had only two cigarettes left and those were gone in short order. So after breaking camp we headed out. At the entrance to the RWMA, we pulled over and Earl turned on his cell phone. Beep! Beep! Blip, beep!
Civilization had officially reestablished its noose on our necks.
<HAL>"Dave, you were away, Dave. Where did you go? I missed you. You should never leave me like that, Dave."</HAL>
Can I get a what, what from my sci-fi nerds? In the house with a 2001, A Space Odyssey reference! Oh yeah, and toss in an HTML reference for good measure. Dork-tastic!
We went for the first store we saw, needing nicotine by this point. Wolftown Mercantile Country Store to the rescue! It seemed like a cool little Mom and Pop operation. There was a large iron firestove in the middle of the room around which tables were situated. Some old men were at the tables drinking coffee, eating biscuits (they smelled delicious!), and playing cards.
There was a variety of ammunition under the glass of the counter - 12, 20, and 410 gague shot and slugs, 22 ammo, some 7.62 and .308. There was more, but that was all I got a chance to read. A variety of hunting and fishing gear adorned the shelves alongside normal convenience store fare. The door outside had a placard proclaiming this establishment as a Game Check Station. Cool. A great resource for future trips.
The lady that walked up behind the counter was kind of uncool, though. She either had a permanent sneer affixed to her face or she was doing a terrible job concealing her contempt for Earl and me.
I guess we didn't exactly look like the locals, but damn! I'm a Virginia native from Barboursville - not exactly a metropolis. Didn't she read my Hillbilly Haiku? Sure, I live in Charlottesville now. Yeah, it's a college town and, yes, I work for the University. But it's not like I'm a Professor of Gay and Bisexual Studies or even a professor, for that matter!
Maybe she was just having a bad day...
I slept like crap Saturday night. I dragged my arse out of bed at about seven-thirty. Coffee and camp slop. Mountain Dew (Electric Hillbilly Piss). In short order I was bright eyed and bushy tailed. Amazing how brisk air right off the bat along with massive doses of caffeine will utterly eradicate the effects of a bad night's sleep.
As I broke down my tent and gear I discovered my camera. It was in the foot of my sleeping bag. Who the hell knows how it got there? The only thing I could figure is that I must have bent over in the tent to pick something up and the camera fell out onto the sleeping bag. I must have then inadvertantly kicked it into the foot of the sleeping bag.
We had only two cigarettes left and those were gone in short order. So after breaking camp we headed out. At the entrance to the RWMA, we pulled over and Earl turned on his cell phone. Beep! Beep! Blip, beep!
Civilization had officially reestablished its noose on our necks.
<HAL>"Dave, you were away, Dave. Where did you go? I missed you. You should never leave me like that, Dave."</HAL>
Can I get a what, what from my sci-fi nerds? In the house with a 2001, A Space Odyssey reference! Oh yeah, and toss in an HTML reference for good measure. Dork-tastic!
We went for the first store we saw, needing nicotine by this point. Wolftown Mercantile Country Store to the rescue! It seemed like a cool little Mom and Pop operation. There was a large iron firestove in the middle of the room around which tables were situated. Some old men were at the tables drinking coffee, eating biscuits (they smelled delicious!), and playing cards.
There was a variety of ammunition under the glass of the counter - 12, 20, and 410 gague shot and slugs, 22 ammo, some 7.62 and .308. There was more, but that was all I got a chance to read. A variety of hunting and fishing gear adorned the shelves alongside normal convenience store fare. The door outside had a placard proclaiming this establishment as a Game Check Station. Cool. A great resource for future trips.
The lady that walked up behind the counter was kind of uncool, though. She either had a permanent sneer affixed to her face or she was doing a terrible job concealing her contempt for Earl and me.
I guess we didn't exactly look like the locals, but damn! I'm a Virginia native from Barboursville - not exactly a metropolis. Didn't she read my Hillbilly Haiku? Sure, I live in Charlottesville now. Yeah, it's a college town and, yes, I work for the University. But it's not like I'm a Professor of Gay and Bisexual Studies or even a professor, for that matter!
Maybe she was just having a bad day...
08 April 2009
A Weekend with the Conway River, pt 2
Saturday, 04 April 2009
I woke that morning at around nine o'clock to a very chilly 40 degrees. I got up, got dressed, and got motivated in short order. First thing was first - the GigaStove kicked out some boiling water quickly and coffee was set to brewing in my french press.
Next up was my patented "camp slop" breakfast. Cook up some sausage links, remove them from the pan, add butter and some whipped eggs, salt, pepper, cheese. I then cut up the links into bite-sized pieces and tossed them back in with the eggs. Cook and scramble them all up together. Voila - camp slop. Breakfast of Champions.
Earl and I ate breakfast and set about getting ready for a day of hiking and trout fishing. Here are some pics:
Earl sets up some bait
Earl and the Conway
Me all ready to go
Back at camp before we left
Oh, well. It was nice to be out in Nature doing some fishing. Very Zen, very calming. We lost a lure and a hook/bobber set to branches and rocks. That's kind of par for the course for a day of fishing, though.
As we hiked along the river, we ran across a campsite that looked abandoned. It had an awesome rock firepit and there was even some cut firewood piled up. We decided to see if the place was still abandoned on our way back and then come back with the car for the firewood. I could easily make kindling from this stuff with my hatchet.
On the way back there was a family setting up for what looked like a picnic. We decided to come back towards dusk and see if they were still there. They were. Oh, well. We returned to our camp and began gathering firewood from the wooded slope just up from our camp.
We found plenty of firewood and even rolled a six foot cedar log down the hill. It was actually pretty dry. We used more cattail to start the fire, but this time used a three phase ignition system - cattail to trioxane bar to camp fuel. Fwoosh! Fire!
More brews, more grub, and some campfire hypnosis. We played Texas Hold 'Em since the wind had died down, but it was kinda silly since we didn't have any money or chips to bet with. Earl bet heavy and I always saw his "bet." Why the hell not? We followed that up with some War.
CONTINUED...
I woke that morning at around nine o'clock to a very chilly 40 degrees. I got up, got dressed, and got motivated in short order. First thing was first - the GigaStove kicked out some boiling water quickly and coffee was set to brewing in my french press.
Next up was my patented "camp slop" breakfast. Cook up some sausage links, remove them from the pan, add butter and some whipped eggs, salt, pepper, cheese. I then cut up the links into bite-sized pieces and tossed them back in with the eggs. Cook and scramble them all up together. Voila - camp slop. Breakfast of Champions.
Earl and I ate breakfast and set about getting ready for a day of hiking and trout fishing. Here are some pics:
Earl sets up some bait
Earl and the Conway
Me all ready to go
Back at camp before we leftWe spent about six hours or so hiking up and down the Conway River and casting into the few calm pools we could find. It had been raining on and off all week, so the river was up quite a bit. After the trip I looked into the Virginia website for Inland Game and Fisheries and found that we needed to go further up the river to find the trout. As it was, we hiked downstream from our camp.
Oh, well. It was nice to be out in Nature doing some fishing. Very Zen, very calming. We lost a lure and a hook/bobber set to branches and rocks. That's kind of par for the course for a day of fishing, though.
As we hiked along the river, we ran across a campsite that looked abandoned. It had an awesome rock firepit and there was even some cut firewood piled up. We decided to see if the place was still abandoned on our way back and then come back with the car for the firewood. I could easily make kindling from this stuff with my hatchet.
On the way back there was a family setting up for what looked like a picnic. We decided to come back towards dusk and see if they were still there. They were. Oh, well. We returned to our camp and began gathering firewood from the wooded slope just up from our camp.
We found plenty of firewood and even rolled a six foot cedar log down the hill. It was actually pretty dry. We used more cattail to start the fire, but this time used a three phase ignition system - cattail to trioxane bar to camp fuel. Fwoosh! Fire!
Sometime after we got back from our hike-n-fish, I went to grab my camera to snap a photo of something. I looked in my breast pocket, which is where I remembered putting the durned thing last. No dice. I patted myself down and then looked in my rucksack and tackle box. Shit!
I actually got a bit "panicked," thinking of the last place I used it on the hike. I remembered fishing from a large rock and having to cut my line after getting hung up on some rocks in the river. As I redid my line I snapped a photo of the river and put the camera down on the rock. I was almost certain I had picked it back up and placed it in my breast pocket. Crap! Had it fallen out at some point, maybe when I bent over to pick something up?
I gave up looking and decided that, on the way out, we'd have to stop by a few of our fishing spots and try to find it. It was about dinner time.
More brews, more grub, and some campfire hypnosis. We played Texas Hold 'Em since the wind had died down, but it was kinda silly since we didn't have any money or chips to bet with. Earl bet heavy and I always saw his "bet." Why the hell not? We followed that up with some War.
CONTINUED...
06 April 2009
A Weekend with the Conway River, pt 1
Friday, 03 April 2009
My buddy and I (we'll call him "Earl") went camping this weekend in the Rapidan Wildlife Management Area. I met Earl at his house around 1 o'clock... a half hour ahead of schedule. We enjoyed a beer, gathered some gear, and hit the road. A quick stop at the grocery store to pack the cooler and we were on our way to BFE, or Outer Mongolia, as I like to call it.
About twenty minutes north of The Bavarian Chef we arrived in Wolftown, Virginia. We passed the Wolftown Mercantile Country Store and five minutes later we arrived at the park. My cellphone beeped right around the entrance to the RWMA - no signal. Ahhhhhh.... we were now out of the reach of civilization.
We drove into the RWMA along a ridge into a valley in Earl's Toyota Corolla. The road was sometime very rocky, often crossed by fast moving streams, and was gravelled in places. The Conway River was visible to our left for much of the drive.
It had been raining on and off for nearly a week before our trip, and we could see that the river was very swollen. We continued to drive into the RWMA until we finally ran into a stream crossing that looked too dicey for the Corolla's low undercarriage.
Fortunately we found a great little spot right near the uncrossable stream. It was about twenty five feet from the river on a solid piece of high ground. The wind was whipping along the river and buffeting our campsite.
I had brought my six person tent, thinking the extra space might be nice. It's about 8x10... kind of like a bivouac or mobile command post. With the wind gusting like it was, setting up this monster tent was challenging.
I had to break out my uber-stakes to pin the bad boy down - no whimpy thin little aluminum stakes would do this night.... oh, no. After Earl and I got the tent stood up and staked down, it was time to setup the rainfly, which promptly about blew off. We fastened every little piece of velcro strapping and tied down every cord on the thing, but I was still less than confident that the rainfly wouldn't fly away in the middle of the night.
So I used some rope to lash down one side of the rainfly to a tree next to the tent and we made a little side shelter on the other side of the tent under which we could stow gear. Some carbiners, a little rope and one tarp later we had the other side of the rainfly secured.
Earl's tent was a small, one-man arrangement that you could only really lie down in. His tent was setup in a flash.
After the site was all set, we got the fire started. Gathering wood wasn't really an issue. There was plenty of standing deadwood around, so we had a nice pile of wood in short order. I had brought a tin of cattail dander (fluff? seeds?) because I read in one of my Tom Brown books that it was an excellent firestarter.
Basically, you harvest a cattail head... that bit that looks like a corn dog, right when it looks like it's starting to burst, or go to seed. Then take it home, let it dry out a bit if necessary, and then use your thumbs to break it apart. Make sure you have a container that is at least twice the size of the cattail you're harvesting because the volume expands massively.
In any event, it lived up to expectations and then some! We piled up a bunch of it at the base of the fire and Earl hit it with a spark from his flint and steel set and fwoosh! The stuff went up like napalm! I mean it really flared up. Unfortunately the wind was so harsh that we had a to use a touch of camp fuel (for Earl's lantern) to get the fire going well.
The heat reflector wall we built did a damn fine job helping with the heat. Basically we hacked up a log into two pieces of roughly equal length and used stones to stand them up against the firepit and then tied a reflective emergency blanket in between. It held up surprisingly well against the gusting wind.
Shelter and warmth attended to, we broke into the beer. Fine ales were at hand, too. We had some homebrew Belgian Ales (14), homebrew Nut Brown Ale (2), a 22 ounce Double Bock homebrew from my brother, some West Coast IPA (3), some Left Hand Pale Ale (2), and a twelve pack of PBR for good measure. Not that we drank it all that night or anything!
We basically sat around the fire, bullshitted and drank and then went to bed. I turned in a bit earlier than Earl... I was looking forward to a good night's sleep with no kids to wake me up early the next morning.
The wind continued howling all night, with the river's rush heard in between gusts of wind. At one point I woke up, dreaming I was being rolled into a giant's cigar only to find out that the wind had blown the side of the tent almost all the way over top of me. Between my sleeping bag and the tent I practically was being rolled into a cigar!
TO BE CONTINUED...
My buddy and I (we'll call him "Earl") went camping this weekend in the Rapidan Wildlife Management Area. I met Earl at his house around 1 o'clock... a half hour ahead of schedule. We enjoyed a beer, gathered some gear, and hit the road. A quick stop at the grocery store to pack the cooler and we were on our way to BFE, or Outer Mongolia, as I like to call it.
About twenty minutes north of The Bavarian Chef we arrived in Wolftown, Virginia. We passed the Wolftown Mercantile Country Store and five minutes later we arrived at the park. My cellphone beeped right around the entrance to the RWMA - no signal. Ahhhhhh.... we were now out of the reach of civilization.
We drove into the RWMA along a ridge into a valley in Earl's Toyota Corolla. The road was sometime very rocky, often crossed by fast moving streams, and was gravelled in places. The Conway River was visible to our left for much of the drive.
It had been raining on and off for nearly a week before our trip, and we could see that the river was very swollen. We continued to drive into the RWMA until we finally ran into a stream crossing that looked too dicey for the Corolla's low undercarriage.
Fortunately we found a great little spot right near the uncrossable stream. It was about twenty five feet from the river on a solid piece of high ground. The wind was whipping along the river and buffeting our campsite.
I had brought my six person tent, thinking the extra space might be nice. It's about 8x10... kind of like a bivouac or mobile command post. With the wind gusting like it was, setting up this monster tent was challenging.
I had to break out my uber-stakes to pin the bad boy down - no whimpy thin little aluminum stakes would do this night.... oh, no. After Earl and I got the tent stood up and staked down, it was time to setup the rainfly, which promptly about blew off. We fastened every little piece of velcro strapping and tied down every cord on the thing, but I was still less than confident that the rainfly wouldn't fly away in the middle of the night.
So I used some rope to lash down one side of the rainfly to a tree next to the tent and we made a little side shelter on the other side of the tent under which we could stow gear. Some carbiners, a little rope and one tarp later we had the other side of the rainfly secured.
Earl's tent was a small, one-man arrangement that you could only really lie down in. His tent was setup in a flash.
After the site was all set, we got the fire started. Gathering wood wasn't really an issue. There was plenty of standing deadwood around, so we had a nice pile of wood in short order. I had brought a tin of cattail dander (fluff? seeds?) because I read in one of my Tom Brown books that it was an excellent firestarter.
Basically, you harvest a cattail head... that bit that looks like a corn dog, right when it looks like it's starting to burst, or go to seed. Then take it home, let it dry out a bit if necessary, and then use your thumbs to break it apart. Make sure you have a container that is at least twice the size of the cattail you're harvesting because the volume expands massively.
In any event, it lived up to expectations and then some! We piled up a bunch of it at the base of the fire and Earl hit it with a spark from his flint and steel set and fwoosh! The stuff went up like napalm! I mean it really flared up. Unfortunately the wind was so harsh that we had a to use a touch of camp fuel (for Earl's lantern) to get the fire going well.
The heat reflector wall we built did a damn fine job helping with the heat. Basically we hacked up a log into two pieces of roughly equal length and used stones to stand them up against the firepit and then tied a reflective emergency blanket in between. It held up surprisingly well against the gusting wind.
Shelter and warmth attended to, we broke into the beer. Fine ales were at hand, too. We had some homebrew Belgian Ales (14), homebrew Nut Brown Ale (2), a 22 ounce Double Bock homebrew from my brother, some West Coast IPA (3), some Left Hand Pale Ale (2), and a twelve pack of PBR for good measure. Not that we drank it all that night or anything!
We basically sat around the fire, bullshitted and drank and then went to bed. I turned in a bit earlier than Earl... I was looking forward to a good night's sleep with no kids to wake me up early the next morning.
The wind continued howling all night, with the river's rush heard in between gusts of wind. At one point I woke up, dreaming I was being rolled into a giant's cigar only to find out that the wind had blown the side of the tent almost all the way over top of me. Between my sleeping bag and the tent I practically was being rolled into a cigar!
TO BE CONTINUED...
02 April 2009
Camping in the Rapidam WMA
A buddy of mine and I are going camping tomorrow afternoon and through most of the weekend in the Rapidan Wildlife Management Area. Click the thumbnail below to get a map. It basically takes up parts of Greene and Madison counties bordering the Shenandoah National Park.
I just got my state wide freshwater fishing license and trout fishing license. It wasn't too expensive... $36 all told. The brook trout fishing at the RWMA is supposed to be great. I hope to land a few trout. Maybe enough to bring a few home with me for dinner with the family Sunday.
Since I got my license, I figured fishing would be a good hobby to get into with my kids. I got my two oldest fishing rods from Sportsmansguide.com. I got a great deal on some beginner's gear. Click here to take a look, in case you're looking for some cheap entry-level rod-n-reel setups for your kids.
I'm also trying to rope my Dad into coming down from Maryland for a fishing/camping trip later this year. Maybe drag a brother or two along with us.
My fishing gear is really lacking, but for this trip a buddy of mine is lending us some of his tackle. I bought a basic rod-n-reel for myself... a Zebco 33. I got mine at Dick's for slightly less than what BassPro has it listed for. It's a decent enough rod that I could hand down to one of the kids if I decided to upgrade later on.
As it stands now the gear I'll be dragging in with me is way too much to fit on my back. Soon I hope to be getting into more hiking/camping trips where I have to pack in all my gear. I know there are certain items that could be jettisoned with no worries, such as:
I just got my state wide freshwater fishing license and trout fishing license. It wasn't too expensive... $36 all told. The brook trout fishing at the RWMA is supposed to be great. I hope to land a few trout. Maybe enough to bring a few home with me for dinner with the family Sunday.
Since I got my license, I figured fishing would be a good hobby to get into with my kids. I got my two oldest fishing rods from Sportsmansguide.com. I got a great deal on some beginner's gear. Click here to take a look, in case you're looking for some cheap entry-level rod-n-reel setups for your kids.
I'm also trying to rope my Dad into coming down from Maryland for a fishing/camping trip later this year. Maybe drag a brother or two along with us.
My fishing gear is really lacking, but for this trip a buddy of mine is lending us some of his tackle. I bought a basic rod-n-reel for myself... a Zebco 33. I got mine at Dick's for slightly less than what BassPro has it listed for. It's a decent enough rod that I could hand down to one of the kids if I decided to upgrade later on.
As it stands now the gear I'll be dragging in with me is way too much to fit on my back. Soon I hope to be getting into more hiking/camping trips where I have to pack in all my gear. I know there are certain items that could be jettisoned with no worries, such as:
- Cooler full of homebrew!
- Camp chair
- Drop large 6 person tent in favor of a 2 person tent (saving about 8 lbs)
- Trim down on first aid kit - the one I currently have could easily service a family of six for a week barring major medical emergencies (go figure - I have a family of six!)
- Wool blanket (I have a sleeping bag)
- Hatchet (if my commando saw works out) (UPDATE: The commando saw was an utter failure. Go figure - the site I bought mine from no longer carries it.)
Other than the list above, I generally pack:
- An isopropyl cooker which folds up to about the size a large egg. My Giga Stove Titanium is very lightweight and extremely effective - one of the best camping gear buys I've ever made. I got mine at a local store for about 40% less than it's listed on the SnowPeak website.
- I only ever carry one fuel cell, which is very lightweight and easily lasts a weekend.
- My cookset is a lightweight stainless steel set (3 pans with lids).
- 2 titanium mugs. Very lightweight, but I could leave one if I had to.
- My plate and utensils are both lightweight. The plate could go if I packed some form of freeze dried food in pouches or MREs. But really, the plate weighs nearly nothing and takes up a negligible amount of space.
- 1 person self-inflating sleeping pad (only if I had to drop it. I love that thing!!)
- small coffee press (again - only if I had to. It's lightweight and takes up very little room)
- A bar of soap in a waterproof container.
- A small can of bugspray. It could go...
- some waterproof matches. One or the other between this and the flint.
- a flint and steel set (small). It would be more manly to keep this over the matches...
- a small whetstone (which could probably go)
- Roll-up, self-inflating pillow. Again - very lightweight and compact. It's not a necessity, but it has very little impact on weight or space and it fucking rocks.
- Buck knife. A must have. That bad boy stays above almost anything else!
- A zip-up journal pad with a deck of cards and pen. It could go, I guess.
- My trusty Fuji digital camera. Small and lightweight. It fits in a breast pocket with room to spare. It would be a shame to not take pics of the beauitiful places I like to camp. I have yet to find a camera that has a better size to picture quality ratio. Probably a keeper even on "hardcore" expeditions.
- 25' nylon rope. Never know when you might need some rope... pretty lightweight, too.
- Sleeping bag. Duh, gotta have it.
- A small LED lantern and a large LED lantern. I could choose one or the other. I'd probably choose the small one.
- 2 bandannas. Keepers for sure.
- Small hand-crank charged LED flashlight. Very dependable. A keeper even if I had to drop both lanterns to keep it.
- 5 plastic stakes. Very rugged. These have come in handy so many times that I couldn't ponder leaving them.
- Emergency insulation space blanket. Lightweight (like nearly nothing)... a keeper. A great insulator/heat reflector for the fire.
- a small roll of TP (for my bunghole)
- 2 gallon water bladder. Gotta have water.
- 2-3 nalgene water bottles
Damn. I think that's it... that's a lot of stuff.
That's why it's best to hike-camp with a buddy. You could share a tent, cooking gear, lanterns, camera, matches, and other stuff and split that gear between the two of you. That means after the communal gear split all you have to carry is your own sleeping bag, food, water, and knife. It makes the weight distribution much easier to handle.
11 March 2009
Ugly. Criminally Ugly.
In less than 18 months forty percent of global wealth has evaporated. Poof!
http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUSTRE52966Z20090310
That makes me think that forty percent (or more) of global wealth was pure bullshit.
In basic terms, this global economic crisis started in the U.S. housing market. Back during the late nineties, Phil Graham, a Senator, wrote legislation which majorly reduced regulation in the mortgage industry. This paved the way for the housing bubble.
People's income started going flat back around 2000. This meant that the housing party was going to be over and that housing prices would stop their meteoric rise and start to fall a bit as demand cooled. ARM and NINJA to the rescue!
ARM, as most people know, stands for Adjustable Rate Mortgage. This is a loan where you initially pay a lower interest rate. At a later date (2 years later, usually) the rate would increase, making mortgage payments as much as double in some cases. Designed for house flipping and speculation, many people were caught with these loans when the housing market started cooling off. Unable to sell, the higher interest rates kicked in and their payments went through the roof. Foreclosures by the millions followed.
NINJA is a less known type of loan. The acronym stands for No Income No Job Applicant. This initially started as a way to sell homes to illegal immigrants who could not legally be employed in America. They had jobs, they just couldn't claim them on the paperwork. The NINJA loan became a way for mortgage brokers to sell to any-old-body. Make a terrible loan, get your commission, and let the recipient of the loan deal with the fallout.
All of this was bad... oh, yes... but the worst has yet to be explained. Any idiot, even a Wall Street executive, could see that these were risky loans. There had to be some other way to make money off these loans aside from the monthly mortgage payment... let's think here, boys...
What Wall Street came up with was nothing short of criminal. Wrap these mortgages up into securities, price them at 20-30 times their value, break up the mortgages and slice them and dice them ten ways to Sunday so no one could tell what securities fund was comprised of what mortgages (and at what terms/rates), insure them, get them rated AAA, and sell them on the global markets.
All of this required massive collusion. The insurers had to be in on it. The rating agencies had to be in on it. Banks had to be in on it. Wall Street had to be in on it.
Massive. Criminal. Fraud. Conspiracy.
And now we, as the American tax payer, are expected to bail out the top 1%. Bail out the bankers. Bail out the insurance giants. Bail out Wall Street. And yes, it is the top 1% who dreamed up these loans and how to insure, rate, and sell them to make more money off of smoke and mirrors. Yes, it is the wealthiest Americans who are almost solely to blame for this mess we're in.
To top it all off, these same people are balking at a tax increase to help cover the fallout! Rich motherfuckers. Most of these people haven't been poor for generations and they have no idea what is is to live hand to mouth. They have no idea what it is like to have to scrimp and save for what they want or need. They have no idea what damage they have done.
Detroit is different. I have no problem bailing out Detroit, and here's why:
Without auto manufacturing in America we are no longer a superpower.
Never mind the fact that GM, Ford, and Chrysler are also victims of Wall Street's greed and incompetence. They are suffering from a lack of demand. Most of the green initiatives they are pursuing started long before the downturn. The Chevy Volt is a good example. They were in the process of changing their faulty business models when the recession hit.
The simple fact of the matter is that auto manufacturing is a matter of national security. It is this industry which provides the backbone for military industrial might. No modern nation can be a superpower without this component. It is a prerequisite.
But the right is using this as an opportunity to attack the unions. Yes, evil unions! Oh, noooo! They are responsible for such evils as child labor laws, workplace safety regulations, the forty hour work week, retirement and health benefits, and the list goes on. Do your research. Before unions, labor was exploited. It was during this time of rampant exploitation of labor that communist and anarchist movements in this country took hold.
Few people know this, but there was an anarchist movement and a communist movement afoot in this nation which was very strong around the turn of the century (1900). Much of their gripe was with industrial exploitation of workers. Horrible and dangerous working conditions where children worked like slaves, the hours were as long as the boss demanded, and the compensation incredibly low. This movement in America even managed to assassinate a President! William McKinley, to be specific.
Oddly enough, once the labor movement in this country started to gain ground and improve conditions for workers, the base for these more violent and destructive movements began to dry up. So why is it that unions get such a bad rap in this country?
Essentially, you can blame it on Jimmy Hoffa and the infiltration of some union shops by the mob. Much of this, at least on the larger scales, was cleaned up by the Justice Department under the RICO Act. However, the taint of this corruption provided the necessary "in" for some elements within our political establishment to go after unions and demonize them.
These same elements persist to this day. They are politicians in the pocket of the captains of industry and finance. These same politicians are eager to bail out Wall Street (no questions asked) and defuse any blame that anyone tries to place at the feet of these captains. At the same time they make Detroit grovel for an amount that was roughly 5% of what they approved for Wall Street with no strings attached!
All I am saying is that we have been taken for a ride. We've been pumped and dumped. Forces are at work that favor the extremely wealthy and screw the middle class and poor. And many of us still don't see it!
The American Dream once meant an honest shot at a decent life for anyone who would work hard and play by the rules. It has been hijacked to mean "wealth and glamor", or wild success. It is no longer good enough to simply own your home, raise your family without hunger or desperation, and retire with dignity. Now you have to have your ride pimped, granite counter tops, and take deluxe vacations to have attained the "American Dream."
By hijacking the American Dream to mean "extreme wealth" we have been made to think that any policies that do not favor the wealthy above all others are somehow unAmerican. We are meant to believe that tax policies that shift wealth upwards are fine, but that tax policies that shift wealth to the middle class or poor are "class warfare" or socialism at work.
Let me tell you something - America has never experienced class warfare. The French Revolution was class warfare. The Russian Revolution was class warfare. The American Revolution was not class warfare. The elite and wealthy in America lead a revolution against the wealthy and elite of England.
In France the wealthy were carted off and executed en masse at the guillotine. In Russia the ruling class was exterminated like rats. And so I say to you again - America has never seen class warfare. The wealthy are terrified of it here because the wealthy never win at class warfare. They die like rats.
Am I saying we should start killing rich people? Hell no! I'm saying that the wealthy interests in this country are doing everything they can to rip us off, to squeeze every last drop of blood they can out of us, and at the same time stave off retribution at the hands of the masses. These chickens always come home to roost, however.
One thing that France and Russia both had in common was an autocratic regime that ignored the people and favored the wealthy to the exclusion of everyone else. America is different in that we have a democracy which is at least marginally responsive to the will of the People.
We have flirted with open class warfare in the past and we were brought back from the brink by people like Teddy Roosevelt (Republican - trust busting) and Franklin Roosevelt (Democrat - New Deal). Regardless of whether or not you feel these initiatives were worthwhile or not, they altered public perception of the landscape and brought us back from potentially huge civil unrest as a result of the lower classes rebelling at their lot in society.
In both cases (trust busting and the New Deal), the public was outraged by the abuses of the wealthy. At the turn of the century it was the robber barons and industrial titans like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Schwab who used the Pinkertons and like methods to brutally suppress worker strikes and unionization.
In 1929, short selling and abuses on the stock market were the cause of massive hardships in this nation. Forces beyond the average man's control had ruined his life and they were rightly angered by this. These forces were again comprised of those who had wealth and wanted more and more and more and more.
Forty percent of world wealth lost. The poorest among us always bear the heaviest brunt of these downturns. Historically, when the better educated middle class starts to feel the pinch is when things get ugly. They "rouse the rabble", as it were, and with numbers they break the back of the wealthy establishment and, at least, force concessions.
So let's all pull together before it gets that bad, eh? We're rocketing in that direction, if you hadn't noticed. How many people do you know who have lost a home, a job, or both? I am lucky in that I live in Charlottesville. Between the University of Virginia, hospitals, NGIC, and other agencies and industries our area only tends to get hit by the worst recessions.
I will tell you one thing, however... I walk to work every day right through our downtown and Main Street areas and I've been seeing a noticeable uptick in the number of homeless people or people begging for change. Old ladies living in tents, people pushing shopping carts around picking up cans, disabled people in wheel chairs on the Mall asking for money.
It's getting ugly.
http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUSTRE52966Z20090310
That makes me think that forty percent (or more) of global wealth was pure bullshit.
In basic terms, this global economic crisis started in the U.S. housing market. Back during the late nineties, Phil Graham, a Senator, wrote legislation which majorly reduced regulation in the mortgage industry. This paved the way for the housing bubble.
People's income started going flat back around 2000. This meant that the housing party was going to be over and that housing prices would stop their meteoric rise and start to fall a bit as demand cooled. ARM and NINJA to the rescue!
ARM, as most people know, stands for Adjustable Rate Mortgage. This is a loan where you initially pay a lower interest rate. At a later date (2 years later, usually) the rate would increase, making mortgage payments as much as double in some cases. Designed for house flipping and speculation, many people were caught with these loans when the housing market started cooling off. Unable to sell, the higher interest rates kicked in and their payments went through the roof. Foreclosures by the millions followed.
NINJA is a less known type of loan. The acronym stands for No Income No Job Applicant. This initially started as a way to sell homes to illegal immigrants who could not legally be employed in America. They had jobs, they just couldn't claim them on the paperwork. The NINJA loan became a way for mortgage brokers to sell to any-old-body. Make a terrible loan, get your commission, and let the recipient of the loan deal with the fallout.
All of this was bad... oh, yes... but the worst has yet to be explained. Any idiot, even a Wall Street executive, could see that these were risky loans. There had to be some other way to make money off these loans aside from the monthly mortgage payment... let's think here, boys...
What Wall Street came up with was nothing short of criminal. Wrap these mortgages up into securities, price them at 20-30 times their value, break up the mortgages and slice them and dice them ten ways to Sunday so no one could tell what securities fund was comprised of what mortgages (and at what terms/rates), insure them, get them rated AAA, and sell them on the global markets.
All of this required massive collusion. The insurers had to be in on it. The rating agencies had to be in on it. Banks had to be in on it. Wall Street had to be in on it.
Massive. Criminal. Fraud. Conspiracy.
And now we, as the American tax payer, are expected to bail out the top 1%. Bail out the bankers. Bail out the insurance giants. Bail out Wall Street. And yes, it is the top 1% who dreamed up these loans and how to insure, rate, and sell them to make more money off of smoke and mirrors. Yes, it is the wealthiest Americans who are almost solely to blame for this mess we're in.
To top it all off, these same people are balking at a tax increase to help cover the fallout! Rich motherfuckers. Most of these people haven't been poor for generations and they have no idea what is is to live hand to mouth. They have no idea what it is like to have to scrimp and save for what they want or need. They have no idea what damage they have done.
Detroit is different. I have no problem bailing out Detroit, and here's why:
Without auto manufacturing in America we are no longer a superpower.
Never mind the fact that GM, Ford, and Chrysler are also victims of Wall Street's greed and incompetence. They are suffering from a lack of demand. Most of the green initiatives they are pursuing started long before the downturn. The Chevy Volt is a good example. They were in the process of changing their faulty business models when the recession hit.
The simple fact of the matter is that auto manufacturing is a matter of national security. It is this industry which provides the backbone for military industrial might. No modern nation can be a superpower without this component. It is a prerequisite.
But the right is using this as an opportunity to attack the unions. Yes, evil unions! Oh, noooo! They are responsible for such evils as child labor laws, workplace safety regulations, the forty hour work week, retirement and health benefits, and the list goes on. Do your research. Before unions, labor was exploited. It was during this time of rampant exploitation of labor that communist and anarchist movements in this country took hold.
Few people know this, but there was an anarchist movement and a communist movement afoot in this nation which was very strong around the turn of the century (1900). Much of their gripe was with industrial exploitation of workers. Horrible and dangerous working conditions where children worked like slaves, the hours were as long as the boss demanded, and the compensation incredibly low. This movement in America even managed to assassinate a President! William McKinley, to be specific.
Oddly enough, once the labor movement in this country started to gain ground and improve conditions for workers, the base for these more violent and destructive movements began to dry up. So why is it that unions get such a bad rap in this country?
Essentially, you can blame it on Jimmy Hoffa and the infiltration of some union shops by the mob. Much of this, at least on the larger scales, was cleaned up by the Justice Department under the RICO Act. However, the taint of this corruption provided the necessary "in" for some elements within our political establishment to go after unions and demonize them.
These same elements persist to this day. They are politicians in the pocket of the captains of industry and finance. These same politicians are eager to bail out Wall Street (no questions asked) and defuse any blame that anyone tries to place at the feet of these captains. At the same time they make Detroit grovel for an amount that was roughly 5% of what they approved for Wall Street with no strings attached!
All I am saying is that we have been taken for a ride. We've been pumped and dumped. Forces are at work that favor the extremely wealthy and screw the middle class and poor. And many of us still don't see it!
The American Dream once meant an honest shot at a decent life for anyone who would work hard and play by the rules. It has been hijacked to mean "wealth and glamor", or wild success. It is no longer good enough to simply own your home, raise your family without hunger or desperation, and retire with dignity. Now you have to have your ride pimped, granite counter tops, and take deluxe vacations to have attained the "American Dream."
By hijacking the American Dream to mean "extreme wealth" we have been made to think that any policies that do not favor the wealthy above all others are somehow unAmerican. We are meant to believe that tax policies that shift wealth upwards are fine, but that tax policies that shift wealth to the middle class or poor are "class warfare" or socialism at work.
Let me tell you something - America has never experienced class warfare. The French Revolution was class warfare. The Russian Revolution was class warfare. The American Revolution was not class warfare. The elite and wealthy in America lead a revolution against the wealthy and elite of England.
In France the wealthy were carted off and executed en masse at the guillotine. In Russia the ruling class was exterminated like rats. And so I say to you again - America has never seen class warfare. The wealthy are terrified of it here because the wealthy never win at class warfare. They die like rats.
Am I saying we should start killing rich people? Hell no! I'm saying that the wealthy interests in this country are doing everything they can to rip us off, to squeeze every last drop of blood they can out of us, and at the same time stave off retribution at the hands of the masses. These chickens always come home to roost, however.
One thing that France and Russia both had in common was an autocratic regime that ignored the people and favored the wealthy to the exclusion of everyone else. America is different in that we have a democracy which is at least marginally responsive to the will of the People.
We have flirted with open class warfare in the past and we were brought back from the brink by people like Teddy Roosevelt (Republican - trust busting) and Franklin Roosevelt (Democrat - New Deal). Regardless of whether or not you feel these initiatives were worthwhile or not, they altered public perception of the landscape and brought us back from potentially huge civil unrest as a result of the lower classes rebelling at their lot in society.
In both cases (trust busting and the New Deal), the public was outraged by the abuses of the wealthy. At the turn of the century it was the robber barons and industrial titans like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Schwab who used the Pinkertons and like methods to brutally suppress worker strikes and unionization.
In 1929, short selling and abuses on the stock market were the cause of massive hardships in this nation. Forces beyond the average man's control had ruined his life and they were rightly angered by this. These forces were again comprised of those who had wealth and wanted more and more and more and more.
Forty percent of world wealth lost. The poorest among us always bear the heaviest brunt of these downturns. Historically, when the better educated middle class starts to feel the pinch is when things get ugly. They "rouse the rabble", as it were, and with numbers they break the back of the wealthy establishment and, at least, force concessions.
So let's all pull together before it gets that bad, eh? We're rocketing in that direction, if you hadn't noticed. How many people do you know who have lost a home, a job, or both? I am lucky in that I live in Charlottesville. Between the University of Virginia, hospitals, NGIC, and other agencies and industries our area only tends to get hit by the worst recessions.
I will tell you one thing, however... I walk to work every day right through our downtown and Main Street areas and I've been seeing a noticeable uptick in the number of homeless people or people begging for change. Old ladies living in tents, people pushing shopping carts around picking up cans, disabled people in wheel chairs on the Mall asking for money.
It's getting ugly.
27 February 2009
Clutch - the best band in the world.
There is but one band on Earth whose albums I actually purchase. That band is called Clutch. Tremble, mortals, before their almighty throne of ROCK!!
http://www.pro-rock.com/
Here's a song of theirs titled Nero's Fiddle which should totally speak to all you preppers out there (of which I consider myself one):
Sick though it may seem, it has always been a dream
of mine to watch you drop like one million freezing flies
Psychopathic my mathematics, always sums to zero
Population your equation, always equals "hero"
Burn!
Burn!
So the fruit of your labors have fermented into wine
And the sweat that you dripped is now the honey of the hive
The city is a burning sun and I a blooming flower
The fire, the flame, the passion, the power
Burn!
Burn!
And you the kindling...
So the fruit of your labors have fermented into wine
And the sweat that you dripped is now the honey of the hive
The city is a burning sun and I a blooming flower
The fire, the flame, the passion, the power
Burn!
Burn!
The fire, the flame, the passion, the power
The fire, the flame, the passion, the power
Here's my interpretation of the lyrics:
Sick though it may seem, it has always been a dream
of mine to watch you drop like one million freezing flies
(In the context of this song, he's talking about the impending doom of modern civilization. Another word for this is " gridcrash", which, if it occurs, will cause cities to die off. He calls urbanites flies and later on he compares urban dwellers to bees, another insect. This implies a disdain for city life and those who choose it.)
Psychopathic my mathematics, always sums to zero
(He sort of thinks he might be crazy because he always sees things in decline)
Population your equation, always equals "hero"
(The "insects" always look to a savior - someone to come along and solve all their problems for them rather than being self-reliant)
Burn!
Burn!
So the fruit of your labors have fermented into wine
And the sweat that you dripped is now the honey of the hive
(Now that the "insects" [bees this time] have built their "hive" [cities] they will reap what they sow, which is to burn)
The city is a burning sun and I a blooming flower
The fire, the flame, the passion, the power
http://www.pro-rock.com/
Here's a song of theirs titled Nero's Fiddle which should totally speak to all you preppers out there (of which I consider myself one):
Sick though it may seem, it has always been a dream
of mine to watch you drop like one million freezing flies
Psychopathic my mathematics, always sums to zero
Population your equation, always equals "hero"
Burn!
Burn!
So the fruit of your labors have fermented into wine
And the sweat that you dripped is now the honey of the hive
The city is a burning sun and I a blooming flower
The fire, the flame, the passion, the power
Burn!
Burn!
And you the kindling...
So the fruit of your labors have fermented into wine
And the sweat that you dripped is now the honey of the hive
The city is a burning sun and I a blooming flower
The fire, the flame, the passion, the power
Burn!
Burn!
The fire, the flame, the passion, the power
The fire, the flame, the passion, the power
Here's my interpretation of the lyrics:
Sick though it may seem, it has always been a dream
of mine to watch you drop like one million freezing flies
(In the context of this song, he's talking about the impending doom of modern civilization. Another word for this is " gridcrash", which, if it occurs, will cause cities to die off. He calls urbanites flies and later on he compares urban dwellers to bees, another insect. This implies a disdain for city life and those who choose it.)
Psychopathic my mathematics, always sums to zero
(He sort of thinks he might be crazy because he always sees things in decline)
Population your equation, always equals "hero"
(The "insects" always look to a savior - someone to come along and solve all their problems for them rather than being self-reliant)
Burn!
Burn!
So the fruit of your labors have fermented into wine
And the sweat that you dripped is now the honey of the hive
(Now that the "insects" [bees this time] have built their "hive" [cities] they will reap what they sow, which is to burn)
The city is a burning sun and I a blooming flower
The fire, the flame, the passion, the power
(The city [the "hive"] is a powerful force, consuming its own fuel and, thereby, life. Despite his disdain for the hive, he is drawn to the power of it. He also sees himself as a rising force, while the city is the force in decline.)
Burn!
Burn!
And you the kindling...
(The hive will burn by the hands of the bees that built it - referencing the self-destructive component present in human nature. He consistently references masses of insects [one million flies, the hive] to illustrate disdain for group think or the behavior of humans in groups ["mob mentality"])
[the rest of the song is a repeat of earlier lyrics]
Busted Camping
So the last camping trip I told you about was a bust. Everyone that said they would go at one point backed out for some reason or another. I told my wife that I'd be going by myself and she looked at me like I was the Unabomber or something. Like a shack in Montana and a manifesto was in my very near future.
It wasn't like I was going into the Alaskan tundra by myself or anything. I was going to camp out on my folks' property. In the end I, too, backed out... on myself, I guess. I should have just gone.
This means that the first New Years Resolution that I've made in a decade is a bust. The resolution was to go camping every month. Previous to that, a decage ago, I had made a resolution that I wasn't going to make any more New Years Resolutions. I stuck to that one for a decade. This one lasted a month and a half... pathetic.
In any event, I am going to get this resolution back on track. This time I don't care if everyone backs out, I'm freakin' going.
Changing gears, tomorrow morning my brothers and I are going out rabbit hunting again. This time it'll be me and two of my three bros. Previously it had always been me and one other brother. And this time I have some sweet boots to wear instead of my Adidas sneakers. As awesome as those shoes are, they're really no good in the muck.
Changing gears again - I have been drinking my Nut Brown Ale - the one I kinda screwed up on and to which I had to make corrections. It's freaking delicious! I mean really good! You can taste the higher alcohol content which, in a heavier ale, I think is good. Fresh, rich, complex, and packs a punch!
<borat> Very nice! </borat>
It wasn't like I was going into the Alaskan tundra by myself or anything. I was going to camp out on my folks' property. In the end I, too, backed out... on myself, I guess. I should have just gone.
This means that the first New Years Resolution that I've made in a decade is a bust. The resolution was to go camping every month. Previous to that, a decage ago, I had made a resolution that I wasn't going to make any more New Years Resolutions. I stuck to that one for a decade. This one lasted a month and a half... pathetic.
In any event, I am going to get this resolution back on track. This time I don't care if everyone backs out, I'm freakin' going.
Changing gears, tomorrow morning my brothers and I are going out rabbit hunting again. This time it'll be me and two of my three bros. Previously it had always been me and one other brother. And this time I have some sweet boots to wear instead of my Adidas sneakers. As awesome as those shoes are, they're really no good in the muck.
Changing gears again - I have been drinking my Nut Brown Ale - the one I kinda screwed up on and to which I had to make corrections. It's freaking delicious! I mean really good! You can taste the higher alcohol content which, in a heavier ale, I think is good. Fresh, rich, complex, and packs a punch!
<borat> Very nice! </borat>
20 February 2009
Two Great Articles
Poverty Of Imagination - /// - President's Day
Both of the above articles are by Jim Kunstler. Excellent reads... He is about as close as anyone has come to encapsulating my own personally held views concerning the impending "realignment" the world is in for.
Both of the above articles are by Jim Kunstler. Excellent reads... He is about as close as anyone has come to encapsulating my own personally held views concerning the impending "realignment" the world is in for.
19 February 2009
Camping Again
I'm going camping again this Saturday out in Barboursville. Me and one or two friends will be camping on my parents' property. Nothing fancy. It's supposed to be a little chilly - 31 degrees.
12 February 2009
Stockpile Progress, Part 3
I have started to develop my food stockpile. I already had a dozen MREs and a handful of backpacker's meals, and some electrolyte gel packs. This, I figured, was a good 48-72 hours worth of emergency food for the family.
In terms of an emergency lasting longer than 3 days, I was in really bad shape. To that end, I have started a program of purchasing freeze dried and dehydrated foods. I am spending $25-$40 a paycheck buying these foods from Emergency Essentials (http://beprepared.com/). If you're looking for a site to buy supplies for long term storage, I haven't found any place better online (or anywhere, for that matter). If you know of a place, I'd gladly check it out.
This isn't much, I know, but it's what I can afford right now. That $25-40 translates into one or two cans of dehydrated or freeze dried foods depending on what you're getting. So far I have placed two orders consisiting of:
My wife is a vegetarian, hence the TVP chicken bits. Sounds yummy, right? Haha. Hippy-chow like that actually isn't too bad. Now, what's a crime is any tofu or TVP product that masquerades as bacon. Some things are just holy and shouldn't be messed with, ya know?
I figure I have roughly $800 more to go before I have a good month's stockpile for me and my immediate family. At this rate it should only take me somewhere just shy of a year to finish!
In terms of an emergency lasting longer than 3 days, I was in really bad shape. To that end, I have started a program of purchasing freeze dried and dehydrated foods. I am spending $25-$40 a paycheck buying these foods from Emergency Essentials (http://beprepared.com/). If you're looking for a site to buy supplies for long term storage, I haven't found any place better online (or anywhere, for that matter). If you know of a place, I'd gladly check it out.
This isn't much, I know, but it's what I can afford right now. That $25-40 translates into one or two cans of dehydrated or freeze dried foods depending on what you're getting. So far I have placed two orders consisiting of:
- TVP Chicken Bits
- Quick Oats
- Carrots
- Spinach
My wife is a vegetarian, hence the TVP chicken bits. Sounds yummy, right? Haha. Hippy-chow like that actually isn't too bad. Now, what's a crime is any tofu or TVP product that masquerades as bacon. Some things are just holy and shouldn't be messed with, ya know?
I figure I have roughly $800 more to go before I have a good month's stockpile for me and my immediate family. At this rate it should only take me somewhere just shy of a year to finish!
09 February 2009
Home Brewing Adeventures, pt 1
This Saturday I brewed up a batch of Nut Brown Ale. This is the most alcoholic beer available to home brewers. Due to a happy accident, it appears that my brew will be even more boozey than that.
Basically, you are supposed to start with one and a half gallons of water in your wort pot. For some reason, I thought 8 cups made a gallon (rather than the actual 16 cups). I corrected the error later in the carboy by adding more water. The initial specific gravity readings for this ale was supposed to be between 1.049 - 1.051. My reading, temperature corrected, came out to 1.055.
This error will more than likely translate into even more alcohol in this batch. Oh, darn. A pal of mine who is a master home brewer told me that the way I corrected this error was just fine and that he was currently brewing a batch of Nut Brown that looked just the same in the carboy.
So that makes me feel like a pretty smart guy. This is only my third batch. Even though I made an error I was able to correct the error midstream, thinking on my feet. I'm quite proud of myself. Below you can see the fermentation trap bubbling away with the byproducts of yeast makin' booze.
Basically, you are supposed to start with one and a half gallons of water in your wort pot. For some reason, I thought 8 cups made a gallon (rather than the actual 16 cups). I corrected the error later in the carboy by adding more water. The initial specific gravity readings for this ale was supposed to be between 1.049 - 1.051. My reading, temperature corrected, came out to 1.055.
This error will more than likely translate into even more alcohol in this batch. Oh, darn. A pal of mine who is a master home brewer told me that the way I corrected this error was just fine and that he was currently brewing a batch of Nut Brown that looked just the same in the carboy.
So that makes me feel like a pretty smart guy. This is only my third batch. Even though I made an error I was able to correct the error midstream, thinking on my feet. I'm quite proud of myself. Below you can see the fermentation trap bubbling away with the byproducts of yeast makin' booze.
02 February 2009
Rabbit Hunting
My brother and I went rabbit hunting this Sunday morning. I was at my brother's place out in the Stony Point area by 6.35 AM and we were on my parents' farm by 6.55 AM. Sunrise was 7.18 AM.
This is only the second time in my brother and I's lives when we've hunted anything. I have read some tips and tricks online and this is the only body of knowledge we have to draw upon. We may end up going to Bedford to hunt with my brother's father-in-law. He is a skilled and very experienced rabbit hunter.
In any event, we parked the car on the side of the driveway, gathered up our Remington 10/22s, and headed out. We walked a couple of brush piles, some woodlines, and a fenceline with no luck. We then headed out to the back 40 of the property where there is a buried natural gas pipeline.
This pipeline translates into a straight strip of cleared land in the middle of what would otherwise be a continuous patch of woods thousands of acres in size. We were encouraged when we saw some rabbit scat in three different places. We also came across a beaver dam and other clear signs of beaver activity.
There were a number of small trees that were obviously chewed off by beavers and we also observed a number of animal trails centering around a creek and the small beaver pond.
We were walking on this buried pipeline and I just happened to stop. When I did, I heard something behind me. Just as I turned to my left, the rascally little rabbit bolted for the woodline right in front of me. I had practically stepped on the guy!
I snapped up my 22, aimed, shot, missed and determined that the next shot(s) would have to be unaimed. All of this in less than a second. My first shot barely missed. Basically I misgauged the arc the bunny's jump and the bullet went just over the back of the rabbit's neck. The critter was just coming down from a hop - had he been on the upstroke of the jump cycle I think I would have hit him.
After the first shot, the rabbit was into the woods (fast!!) and I realized I wouldn't get another aimed shot, so the good ole Remington 10/22 went into "lead hose" mode. Yes, I went all spray and pray on that bunny's ass, but to no avail! I fired six more shots as fast as I could pull the trigger. None of the rounds missed by much - I saw the leaves leaping up all around the bunny. But, alas, he got away.
Meanwhile, back in the warren, there's a bunny with a war story that he'll be able to tell his baby bunnies for the rest of his life. ("There were bullets everywhere! I dodged left and right and then turned around and flicked that jerk the bird!")
If anyone has any rabbit hunting tips, I'd love to hear them. Like I said, I'm a total hunting newbie. This was only my second time hunting anything and it was a vast improvement over my first outing where I didn't even see a rabbit much less shoot at one.
This is only the second time in my brother and I's lives when we've hunted anything. I have read some tips and tricks online and this is the only body of knowledge we have to draw upon. We may end up going to Bedford to hunt with my brother's father-in-law. He is a skilled and very experienced rabbit hunter.
In any event, we parked the car on the side of the driveway, gathered up our Remington 10/22s, and headed out. We walked a couple of brush piles, some woodlines, and a fenceline with no luck. We then headed out to the back 40 of the property where there is a buried natural gas pipeline.
This pipeline translates into a straight strip of cleared land in the middle of what would otherwise be a continuous patch of woods thousands of acres in size. We were encouraged when we saw some rabbit scat in three different places. We also came across a beaver dam and other clear signs of beaver activity.
There were a number of small trees that were obviously chewed off by beavers and we also observed a number of animal trails centering around a creek and the small beaver pond.
We were walking on this buried pipeline and I just happened to stop. When I did, I heard something behind me. Just as I turned to my left, the rascally little rabbit bolted for the woodline right in front of me. I had practically stepped on the guy!
I snapped up my 22, aimed, shot, missed and determined that the next shot(s) would have to be unaimed. All of this in less than a second. My first shot barely missed. Basically I misgauged the arc the bunny's jump and the bullet went just over the back of the rabbit's neck. The critter was just coming down from a hop - had he been on the upstroke of the jump cycle I think I would have hit him.
After the first shot, the rabbit was into the woods (fast!!) and I realized I wouldn't get another aimed shot, so the good ole Remington 10/22 went into "lead hose" mode. Yes, I went all spray and pray on that bunny's ass, but to no avail! I fired six more shots as fast as I could pull the trigger. None of the rounds missed by much - I saw the leaves leaping up all around the bunny. But, alas, he got away.
Meanwhile, back in the warren, there's a bunny with a war story that he'll be able to tell his baby bunnies for the rest of his life. ("There were bullets everywhere! I dodged left and right and then turned around and flicked that jerk the bird!")
If anyone has any rabbit hunting tips, I'd love to hear them. Like I said, I'm a total hunting newbie. This was only my second time hunting anything and it was a vast improvement over my first outing where I didn't even see a rabbit much less shoot at one.
30 January 2009
Class Warfare? Yes, and We're Losing...
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE50T11420090130
This makes my blood boil. $14 B in bonuses paid while receiving taxpayer money to bail them out of gigantic losses? How is this possible?!
The last eight years have represented a major redistribution of wealth from the bottom and middle to the top. Millionaires have turned to billionaires and billionaires have become even more filthy rich. All the while the middle class has shrunk, poverty grown, wages stagnated, and expenses skyrocketed.
Maybe when they empty Gitmo of terrorism suspects they should fill it with robber baron CEOs. Fucking thieves!! They run their companies into the ground and still get billions in bonuses?! How the hell can any bonus be justified when they are laying employees off and losing money? My head is spinning... how can we tolerate this?
Thieves! Thieves! Oh, Christ! I'm infuriated. The only thing these guys are good at is stealing! They are incapable of running a company with competence, but man can they steal! Please explain to me how this is anything but out and out thievery. They get our money and put it in their pockets.
All the while the average American is losing their job, their home, their dignity, their healthcare... We are losing EVERYTHING, and these guys are getting even more rich!
How much damned money do they need? And to top it off they are utterly shameless about it. CitiGroup just was caught buying another corporate jet for $50 million. They didn't even have the decency to buy and American made jet (it was French) !! This after receiving $45B in taxpayer bailout money!
Shameless thievery!! Please, someone tell me why these guys shouldn't be strung up in the public square by their tender parts! I'm almost serious about this. In my mind this is nearly treasonous.
The nation is in dire financial straits and these guys are conducting business as usual - heaping money stolen from the public coffers on themselves, buying more jets and sacrificing nothing themsleves whilst laying off employees. The later of which has the effect of removing that much more money from the hands of consumers which further undercuts the segment of the economy (consumer spending) which accounts for 2/3 of all economic activity in our nation.
On top of it all, they get to keep their jobs!!! This blows my mind. If it weren't for these "economic geniuses" repackaging shaky mortgages into securities and selling them at 20-30 time their capitalization, we wouldn't be in this mess! They perpetrated fraud and then when the house of cards collapsed they got your money, my money, our money and proceeded to use it not to save jobs, not to keep credit flowing, but to put in their pockets!
Thank God I don't live anywhere near Wall Street. I'm so mad right now I just might do something stupid...
This makes my blood boil. $14 B in bonuses paid while receiving taxpayer money to bail them out of gigantic losses? How is this possible?!
The last eight years have represented a major redistribution of wealth from the bottom and middle to the top. Millionaires have turned to billionaires and billionaires have become even more filthy rich. All the while the middle class has shrunk, poverty grown, wages stagnated, and expenses skyrocketed.
Maybe when they empty Gitmo of terrorism suspects they should fill it with robber baron CEOs. Fucking thieves!! They run their companies into the ground and still get billions in bonuses?! How the hell can any bonus be justified when they are laying employees off and losing money? My head is spinning... how can we tolerate this?
Thieves! Thieves! Oh, Christ! I'm infuriated. The only thing these guys are good at is stealing! They are incapable of running a company with competence, but man can they steal! Please explain to me how this is anything but out and out thievery. They get our money and put it in their pockets.
All the while the average American is losing their job, their home, their dignity, their healthcare... We are losing EVERYTHING, and these guys are getting even more rich!
How much damned money do they need? And to top it off they are utterly shameless about it. CitiGroup just was caught buying another corporate jet for $50 million. They didn't even have the decency to buy and American made jet (it was French) !! This after receiving $45B in taxpayer bailout money!
Shameless thievery!! Please, someone tell me why these guys shouldn't be strung up in the public square by their tender parts! I'm almost serious about this. In my mind this is nearly treasonous.
The nation is in dire financial straits and these guys are conducting business as usual - heaping money stolen from the public coffers on themselves, buying more jets and sacrificing nothing themsleves whilst laying off employees. The later of which has the effect of removing that much more money from the hands of consumers which further undercuts the segment of the economy (consumer spending) which accounts for 2/3 of all economic activity in our nation.
On top of it all, they get to keep their jobs!!! This blows my mind. If it weren't for these "economic geniuses" repackaging shaky mortgages into securities and selling them at 20-30 time their capitalization, we wouldn't be in this mess! They perpetrated fraud and then when the house of cards collapsed they got your money, my money, our money and proceeded to use it not to save jobs, not to keep credit flowing, but to put in their pockets!
Thank God I don't live anywhere near Wall Street. I'm so mad right now I just might do something stupid...
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