Rantings Diversified

There appears to be a big brouhaha going on in the Irish blogisphere. Grandad wrote a post and then another post about how ridiculous PC speak has gotten recently and a few folks have taken it in completely the wrong way and accused him of being ageist and racist and sexist and a few other -ists. I added my two cents to the original post in a humorous way because I knew what he was talking about. I find it amazing that others did not.
Now in deference to the PC crowd I guess I need to refer to Grandad as, “The male parent of a child with children” or as I prefer, TMPOACWC. Ya’ know I wouldn’t want to lower his self esteem by pointing out to everyone he is a man and of such an advanced age that his children now have children. Oh horrors, I should never do that!
Horse Hockey!
In my humble opinion this whole thing has gone mad. I will never forget the time a few years ago I was coaching a little league team and after practice one day one of the children’s mom gathered all the kids together for me and she asked all the kids to sit down, “Native-American style”. I shit you not! She really said that, out loud! Every single one of those kids stood there and looked at her…and I wish I had had a camera. None of them had any clue as what she was talking about. She asked again and got the same reaction. Finally one of the dads helping me out walked over to the kids and said. “Everyone sit down, Indian style.” As if on cue the kids all sat down cross legged. It took almost everything in me to keep from laughing out loud. The majority of the other parents didn’t have such control. Afterwards the aforementioned mom came over and castigated me for promulgating racism by the use of ‘sitting Indian style’. Typical for me I let her rant on and on. When she was finished I rolled my eyes and said, “Thanks for the input”. Then I turned and walked away.
One of the funniest commentaries on PC speak was put on film by, of all people, Michael Moore in the movie Canadian Bacon.

They are closing my High School and building a new one right down the street from where I live.  What kind of shite is this?
We’re talking about Bishop McDevitt High School formerly known as Catholic High School.  The castle on the hill.  BMcD.  Marian Hall, Tracy Hall, Aquinas Hall and St. John Hall.
This place was built in 1929 and my Mom graduated in 1940.  There was at least one of my siblings in school there from 1964 until I graduated in…..the plesticine era of the mid to late 70’s.  My little sister’s daughter even went there.  Three generations of my family were educated in this building.  The twin towers and those huge red doors are now being sloughed off.  No more trying to find a parking space in Bellevue because you’re late for school.  No more sneaking ‘round back of Tracy Hall to smoke cigarettes.  I would even bet that TJ is still teaching there.  TJ was Sister Theresa Joseph she was there when my mom went to school and was still there when I did.  She taught typing and business.
As I write this it has dawned on me that this is the second time in my life this has happened.  You see I went to Progress Elementary School for 4th and 5th grade.  It was closed years ago and today is an office building with an auditorium and a basketball court.  I wonder if they are still using those really small chairs.
I have mixed feelings about all this.  They are planning on turning a perfectly good field into a new high school.  What’s wrong with the field?  Now I know the building is WAY too small for the needs of the diocese but C’mon!  Generations of people around here have called that old building school.   Why not do what Central Dauphin School District did and turn it into a Junior High School or something like that?  Will the new school have twin towers?  If it does will they be as daunting as the originals or will they be dryvit and aluminum, cheap shit renditions of the originals  Will there be a Tracy Hall with an Olympic sized swimming pool in the basement?  I didn’t think so!  Well hell, there isn’t even an O.L.B.S. school anymore.  We use to call them the Old Ladies Barber Shop but it in fact stood for Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament and when I played basketball for St. Margaret Mary’s, O.L.B.S. were our sworn enemies.
I have such mixed emotions about this.  Will the new school have chandeliers in the hallways like BMcD does and will the twin towers survive the move or will they be reduced to a cheap shit visage of their former selves?
I don’t know.  The diocese will do what they damn well please.

I clicked over to another blog this evening and got this message.

I’m a Supreme Nerd.

I read today’s installment of Grannymars Monday recipes. It is a celery and apple soup. It sounds like a great soup. I may have to try it. There is one bit in the recipe that struck me as odd. In her post was this line. ”Bring to the boil reduce heat and simmer for another 30 minutes transfer the soup to a food processor and blend until smooth”
Ok, so I get the boiling and simmering parts but I’m not so sure about this whole food processor thing. I have a whole bunch of food processors. I have a 10” chefs knife and a 12” one too. I have mashers and smashers and both plastic and wooden spoons. I have great big long fork things and even a bread knife. These tools were all meant to process food. Well heck I even have a tomato coring tool. (Imagine a saw toothed melon baller but smaller)
Now I’ll admit I do have some kitchen gadgets. I have a rice cooker and two crock pots and a really nice electrical meat slicer but that’s about it. Oh wait I have an expresso machine too even though I haven’t used it in years. I don’t drink coffee anymore.
A couple of months ago my friend Jim and I went to the restaurant supply store cleverly called, “The Restaurant Supply Store”. It’s a great big store dedicated to all things cooking. It’s a bit on the expensive side but all pretty top notch items. He needed a new potato smasher because his wife broke theirs. While there I was amazed at all the electrical thing-a-ma-jigs for use in the kitchen. I kinda’ wonder if anyone uses knives, forks and spoons anymore. They even had machines that make bread for ya’! What kind of high tech laziness is that?
I have a sister than makes the BEST bread I have ever eaten. She has a breadmaker although she calls it two hands and an oven. I can’t imagine how this machine thing even works. Apparently you put flour, salt, water and yeast into it and it does everything else. Doesn’t make any sense to me.
I’ll just stick to hand tools. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

I have mentioned in a few previous posts that I have one of the coolest neighbors around.  Today at about 1600 my neighbor Jody called me and told to meet him, in ten minutes, on his porch, the one on the woods side of the house not the one by the kitchen, and he also asked me to measure the width of my TV stand kinda’ furniture cabinet thing that my TV sits on.  Jody has asked some odd requests in the past but they always end up being for a good reason so I complied.
This mug just gave me a 32 inch color TV!  Hence the name of this post, Holy Shit, Batman!
I had to help carry it over from his porch.  Which I did.
A bit of background is in order first.  You see, I have never bought a TV in my life.  Ever!  Until 1996 when I bought the 25 inch Toshiba color TV I used up until this afternoon.  Before this I have always had a 13 inch TV that was a hand-me-down.  The first color TV I ever owned was a 13 inch Toshiba my X-wife brought with her into our marriage.  It even had a remote control.  After I had moved out she gave it to me because she bought some kind of big-ass TV.  I used this for four or five years until the day in 1996 that I got a wild hair up my butt and bought what I always considered a big-ass TV, my 25 inch Toshiba.
Now know that my friends all have laughed at me because they all have 40 inch or 52 inch TVs and high definition and cable channels and surround sound and they just can’t understand how I watched my 25 inch TV with rabbit ears.  The Whacko has some kinda’ 60 inch monster sized flat screen TV hanging on her wall.  TV’s have never been a big deal to me.
For two weeks after getting my 25 inch TV I felt like I was in a movie theatre every time I turned it on.
Well let me say that old feeling is back again.   Geez!  I have a 32 inch TV sitting in my living room.  It’s like a flippin’ movie theatre in here!
I’m gonna’ watch two movies tonight and I can’t wait to see the race tomorrow.
Hehehehehehe!  I’m like a little kid with a new toy.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=526655&in_page_id=1770

Go read the story in the link before continuing. It is an article I found in today’s The Daily Mail.
It is an article by Andy Dolan.
In this article Mr. Dolan pulls numbers seemingly out of his ear in an attempt to alarm everyone about an overly expensive and silly little revolver.
In this article he refers to the speed of the ammunition as…
270mph
300mph
399 feet a second
Now let’s look at this. 270 mph equates to 396 feet per second and 300 mph is 440 fps and 399 fps is 272 mph. There is an awful lot of different numbers there.
Let’s put this in persective, my favorite handgun caliber .45ACP throws a 230 grain bullet at 850fps.  That’s 579.5 mph!  A NATO standard 9mm throws a 125 grain bullet at 1250 fps.  That equates to 852 mph!  A standard .223 (5.56 mm NATO) 63 grain bullet comes out of an M16 at about 2850 fps or 1943.18 mph!!!
Do ya’ think maybe just maybe Mr. Dolan has an agenda here?
My favorite bit is where he compares this tiny little revolver to a machine gun.
“…and in the eyes of the law was as dangerous as a machine gun”
Hahahahahahahaha!
That’s my favorite part of the whole article.
I have a challenge for Mr. Dolan. He and I will stand 30 yards apart (that’s 60 cubits or 27.4 meters) and he will be armed with this little revolver (remember it’s just as dangerous as a machine gun) and I will use an M16A2 machine gun. I will even allow him to shoot first and empty his gun and reload before I shoot.
Just to make it fair he will have an unlimited supply of ammunition and I’ll have one round
Who do think will walk away and go have a pint afterwards?
I’ll buy the first round.

The Irish Blog Awards were last weekend. Most people missed it but I for one wish I had been there. I read a bunch of blogs every day and I find about a third of them are Irish blogs. Most if not all of them are fun and funny and very well done.
Kathy Foley wrote an article in the Irish Sunday Times the following day and it wasn’t very well received.
Why do we blog? Why do you blog? Why do I blog? Why is one blogger referred to as a legend and another called a hack? Why did Sweary stop blogging? Why are people busting on Twenty’s book?
So many questions have been raised.
It was January of just last year when Jefferson Davis talked me into starting this experiment in journaling my thoughts and opinions. I like it. That probably more than any other reason is why I have continued. I have written a few posts that I look back on and say, “Damn, that was good!”. Mostly though I couldn’t care less if people like what I write or don’t. A bunch of folk have told me the series I wrote that I called Arabian Daze was very well done. As I re-read it I don’t think so. I could re-write it and think it was better but it is what I wrote at that time so it is what it is.
This is also why I like so many different and varied blogs. Most of the blogs I haunt on a regular basis are just folks who write what they want as opposed to someone writing an article for public consumption.
I liked Twenty’s book. I could sit here and pick it apart but I won’t because at the end… I enjoyed reading it. I hope to someday find the infamous Ron’s Bar and have a pint. Don’t we all?
So use the comments and tell me why you blog.
What’s with Sweary? I wish she would resume her blogging duties but that’s just me ya’ know.
If I want my daily fix of politics there are so so many blogs out there much better than anything I may put together. I love reading Debbie Schlussel, Monica Crowley and Michelle Malkin. That and I try to listen to Glenn Beck every morning. If I want Irish politics I have any number of blogs to peruse. My favorites are Grandad, Bock, Off the Meatrack, and Politics.IE. I also get emails from the IAIS so as to keep me current on what’s going on in the occupied counties of Norn Iron.
Tiocfaidh ár Lá
When I want news I go to the wires. The hell with CBSNBCBBCFOXSKYABCCNNMSNBCCNBC.
Yahoo News and Breitbart are great jumping off points. Oh and yes I check Mr. Drudge a few times a day.
Now you see many folks read my blog and some like it and come back and some never return. That’s OK. That’s how it’s supposed to work. I really like all the blogs who won their respective IBA’s but I just got an award that means a lot to me. I received a “You Make My Day” award from K8 the Gr8.
What more do I need?

Ná cailligí an craic