Bad Cat Food

Hills, the maker of Science Diet has recalled one of its DRY cat food brands. Likewise, Purina recalled some Alpo brand dog food - with certain date codes.

Well I decided to read the ingredients of the two brands of cat food currently in use here. Purina "One" food for fat orange cats, and Eukanuba kitten food for little furry cats.

Eukanuba dry foods contain NO wheat gluten. At all. In fact, the dry foods are not even made by Menu Foods. So I concluded that Cleo's kitten food is in fact safe.

The Purina One food for fat orange adult cats who like to bite if you do the slightest thing to upset them (FRED!) lists "wheat gluten" as an ingredient. Now to be fair the Purina web site says that its dry foods are safe. And Purina is a good company that has been making animal food for a very long time. They make food for pets, farm animals, and even zoo animals. I have seen Purina cat chow, dog chow. CATFISH chow, monkey chow, and so on. Everything.

in other words, Purina is a company that has a lot to loose by risking its brand name. The company says that its dry foods are safe, and that only the "wet" Alpo with specific date and plant codes are now part of the massive recall. So I tend to believe them.

However, I concluded to stop using Purina "One" dry cat food. I will go back to the store and buy some Eukanuba dry food for fat adult cats. Fred is on a diet, and the other two adult cats are as well - even if they are not fat. Gigi the calico cat is not at all fat. Sake the long haired siamese looking cat is not skinny, but not fat. She is actually at the top end of what her weight range should be. Fred is the fat ass of the bunch. I will use Eukanuba until this "wheat gluten" thing blows over.

In other news, the flea market was OK. I looked at a bunch of junk. Some of it was good junk, some was just the garden variety junk. I did pick up a few little things. Like a new tackle box for lures. Now I have two tackle boxes! One for hooks and leader wire and swivels and sleeves and weights and sabiki rigs and shit. The other is for lures, plugs, spoons, and other assorted artificial baits. Slick.

I also got this "magic cloth" stuff. It is some sort of super "micro fiber" with magical properties that trap dirt without using any cleaning type chemicals. The gut doing the demo of the stuff scribbled on glass using a crayon, and then using just the magic cloth dampened with water cleaned it off. Just like that. So I bought two pieces of this magic cloth for $10.

And what do you know, it works! The glass sliding doors are filthy. Terrible. Horrible. But just like the guy said, one cloth with some ordinary water cleaned it up. No Windex or anything. And it worked on the truck windshield too. The inside of the windshield was in need of a cleaning. Not anymore however. The magic cloth is pretty cool.

New Stuff

I was thinking there is not enough crap here, so I added more. The terror alert status thing. As you can see, we are at "Ernie" level for all commercial flights and "Bert" level for everything else. The highest alert level is "Elmo". Below "Bert Level" is "Cookie Monster", and then the lowest alert level is "Oscar". Pretty simple huh? I think so.

And that is not all. Seeing as how it is Good Friday and stuff today I figured - why not go to the Daina Beach Marine Flea Market? The flea market needs a new name. You see, it used to be at the Daina Beach Jai-Alai / horse track place. But then Broward voters approved evil Las Vegas style slot machines - Dade County voters PUSSIED OUT and fell for the ad campaigns paid for by SUN CRUZ CASINO BOATS and various religious groups who hate casinos and think that gambling will "ruin the family friendly environment" but they LOVE all the money those evil casinos gave them to make propaganda! Also there is not a "family friendly" environment here. South Beach is very gay and nothing but bars and nightclubs. Not that there is anything wrong with this. People like nightclubs - and the clubs on the beach are among the hottest in the Nation. And bars - well people like to drink! At least on the beach they do. As for the gay part - well when the area was run down and crappy they moved in for cheap. Then they fixed the place up, and got some of the Art Deco buildings restored. So good for them! At least someone did what needed to be done!

But that is off topic. The casino expansion at the horse track place displaced the marine flea market. So now it is at JOE ROBBIE stadium. The bald menace can rename it anything he likes, but it is and will always be named after Joe Robbie - the owner of the Dolphins that had hair and everyone liked. GOT THAT BALDY!!!

This is what an asshole looks like. Notice the ass like head. You can buy up all the crap you want Wayne, but if you must go around renaming things then BUILD THEM YOURSELF without asking for WELFARE from people who do not give a shit about the Dolphins or Marlins or Panthers or whatever. Use your own money to build your own for profit business. But what do I know about that - I am probably some sort of communist. So yea, build your own stadium and name it whatever you want.

In your honor Wayne, brand new Iguana Music.

The flea market is in the parking area of the stadium. The plan is to get there early, before the "good stuff" is sold. If there is any "good stuff" there. These flea markets tend to feature a lot of junk. Plain old junk. You have to sift through the shit to find the good stuff. So I get there early on the first day, do the sifting thing, possibly find stuff, and then go home. Saturday there is usually a lot of people at the thing. I am hoping to beat some of the crowd, unless EVERYONE is going to skip work tomorrow.

Ever notice how everyone is "religious" on religious holidays that are not already paid days off? Funny how that happens. But I have been working with the local public school system - so work is pretty much canceled for people like me for the next week. It is not so bad, and it passes the time till I can find more full time employment I deem to be worthy of my abilities and skills.

Translation - no good offers yet. But if I make it like "I am too good for that crap job anyway" then it makes you feel better. Pint of view is everything.

Things I Never Knew Existed, But That I Needed.

I should know better than to look through a catalog. The "Sportsmans Guide" people love to send me catalogs. Of course they know I buy stuff from them. Like all sorts of LED flashlights. I also bought a 20 LED lantern, a set of 4 smaller LED lanterns, a cool gun cleaning kit, and probably some other crap I have forgotten about it.

But I think LED things are cool. Batteries last forever. Really. LEDs are the ultimate light source - and they keep getting brighter all the time. Hell I may even replace some real light bulbs with LED things. Yea they cost $50 - $75 a pop but you get maximum bang per watt. For the amount of light I get from a 100 watt bulb, with a LED replacement I might use 10 watts. Or less. Really. And they last forever too. 100,000 hour average life per LED. I may never have to replace them. Imagine a light bulb you pass on in your will.

Anyhow, I found these things in the catalog.

How cool! Shit this solves the "cant see shit behind me when I tow the boat" problem. Really - with the factory mirrors on the truck all I see is this giant thing really close behind the truck. And the side of the hull. Some of it anyway.

So I went on a quest to find these items locally. And I found a place that sells them. So I bought a pair. They clip on the factory mirror, and strap on using these rubber strap things. They are fully adjustable, and about the same size as the factory mirrors. So the end result is that with these things, my mirrors extend twice as far. And I can take them off so I do not smack things with em.

Of course I COULD have just adjusted the factory mirrors and maybe been able to see better. I never tried that. But now I do not have to. I can just use the clip on things. Something I needed, but did not know about. Catalogs rule.

MOVIE REVIEW! Pursuit Of Happyness was a change from the last few flicks I got - which were sort of dark. It is a true story about some dude who buys into a company selling portable bone density machines which he can then not sell. His bitch wife ditches him but he keeps the kid. He goes to work as an unpaid intern for Dean Witter, selling machines on the weekend. He looses all his money and has to sleep in bus stations and homeless shelters and stuff. But it all works out. He ends up with a better job, making real money, and eventually becomes a multi-millionaire. I hope he remembers where he once was and is very generous giving to that homeless shelter.

The next three movies in the way are Mean Creek, Midnight Cowboy, and The Royal Tenebaums.

Of Mice And Pandas

This is just too much. Either mice in Waterville Maine are really smart - or the people are really dumb.

Mouse Makes Off With Waterville Man's Teeth.

It seems that some dude who we will just call Bill Exner had a little problem. A mouse problem. A cute little mouse set up house in his house. But this was no ordinary cute little mouse! OH NO! This was a super evil genius mouse. It would come out and "taunt" the man, according to him.

So one day he captured the mouse. And he put the mouse in, of all things, a pickle jar. And it jumped out and escaped. Then it stole his false teeth. The man had eaten peanut butter, set his teeth beside the bed, and went to sleep. GROSS! Dude - there is this stuff called Efferdent! Use it man! You eat peanut butter then just set your teeth down without soaking them in something?!?! No wonder you lost all your teeth dude - HYGIENE! Look it up! It means "take a bath, clean your ass, and brush your teeth".

So yea, the mouse stole his teeth. And he had to take apart a heating duct to get them back. So the man set out more traps, captured not one but TWO mice, and is now keeping them as pets in what appears to be a 10 gallon aquarium with a mouse escape proof lid. I am rooting for the mice to escape again, and steal something else. Like the man's TV remote control. THAT would be very funny.

Of course this would never happen to me. I brush my teeth at least once a day. And I have four cats. At least one of them would not be too fat and lazy to hunt some mice. FRED! You fat ass! I am looking at you, or at least what appears to be a fuzzy basketball with feet. Roll your ass off my feet and waddle down the hall - your big fat mass is making my feet hot.

In other news, those wacky and crazy Chinese have discovered how to turn PANDA POOP into high quality paper! What the hell? Panda Poop Paper? Ill admit it has great alliteration. But is there really a market for this crap? However China has an abundance of this natural resource. The Panda Research Center produces a TON of panda shit a day. That probably smells really bad. But the high quality paper will not stink at all. Origami anyone?

MOVIE REVIEW!

The Machinist. Pretty strange movie. The lead character is this dude who works at a machine shop. He has not slept in a year. Dude is really thin (it seems the actor lost 60 pounds to get the role) and is probably going insane. OR IS HE!?!?!?! What is real, and what is he just in his head? You just have to watch it. Good movie - but something you have to pay attention to when you are watching it.

Vindication

The Blogger Team people spied on this site and were able to figure out it is not "spam". Now if you define spam as "unimportant, useless, annoying bullshit" then that means this blog is important, useful, entertaining GOOD STUFF! This puts a hell of a lot of pressure on me to keep posting stuff that lives up to the new standards imposed on this site.

So this means I can post You Tube videos here. but I forgot what the hell I was going to post in the first place. Seriously. I forgot. And now I am going crazy trying to remember what the hell it was that I was going to post. OH YEA! I remember now! THE FREAKING BROTHERS!

These guys are great. Bet you never knew you could play the piano with....uhhh...that. NOTICE TO KIDS AT HOME! Do not try to do this with your grandmother's piano. She has to touch the piano keys you know.

Onto the Netflix list! Someone posted a comment asking if I can review movies. Why not! Last night I watched Brazil. This Terry Gilliam (the guy who did the wacky animations for Monty Python) flick is very strange - yet somehow VERY RELEVANT to the world today. A "bug" causes government records to get the name of a suspected terrorist wrong, and as a result an innocent man is arrested. The "terrorist" turns out to be a renegade plumber who swoops in, fixes ducts, then leaves before the stooges from Central Services can arrive. But that is not important really. The world of Brazil is one of a HUGE all powerful and very inefficient government.

So much crazy crap happens that you just have to see the movie yourself. Plan to watch it more than once - you will need to. I saw Brazil before so I knew what to expect. When the movie came out it was just a crazy "1984" type movie - but in light of the crap going on today (secret courts, secret jails, legal torture, a government that you can not question too much lest you be accused of being a terrorist, etc) it really packs a punch.

DO NOT GET THE "LOVE CONQUERS ALL" VERSION OF THE MOVIE! That version sucks. They change the end and leave a lot of stuff out. The editor responsible for this needs to be shot. Get the regular version. Trust me here - it is a good movie.

Netflix is sending me "The Pursuit Of Happyness" instead of "Midnight Cowboy". The sidebar list is updated to reflect that.

Bush Administration Tribute Song Monday

This is supposed to be a song, so make up a tune that the words fit into and sing along!

A is for the anuses you hire
SS is for your Nazi point of view,
HO is for the hose you used to soak us
L is for the losers all of you....
E is for the enemas you give us
S is for the shit we have to take.

Put it all together it spells ASSHOLES, a word that sums up your regime (yes your regime....)

Thank you, thank you. Ill be here all week! Do not forget to tip your bartender and servers!

NOTE TO BLOGGER - if you are reviewing this site to see if it is a SPAM BLOG our not, please skip this post and go directly to yesterday's post - Slanderous Sunday! Read the part where I suggest you change the "word verification" to "a series of random letters verification" and my joke about the "technical" guys that you know are smoking a fat one behind that closed door.

I did not steal this song from Guitar Man who used to make song parodies for the Neil Rogers Show on local Miami AM radio.

Slanderous Sunday - This Is Not A Spam Blog

Well I WAS going to post this very funny You Tube video - but it seems Blogger has decided that this is a SPAM BLOG! What the crap?! So if you want humor, you will just have to make do with my latest Paint creation - which can be viewed AT THIS LINK or by clicking the link directly below the Senor Caiman 2006 blog award.

So I had to do more of this word verification crap to send a request to have someone from Blogger review my site to see if it is a spam blog or not.

By the way, did I mention I am selling penis enlargement pills? Oh yea! It is a new side business. I have 100% natural herbal pills that will increase size and girth. You will be like King Freaking Kong down there - only less foreskin if you have been clipped. Speaking of penis pills a few years ago I knew this chick that has since moved out of Miami (GOOD IDEA). Anyway she made a comment to me about getting tons of spam about penis enlargement pills. This was funny because at the time I was getting spam about breast augmentation. Anyway - I found some humor there.

Now that I can't have the YOU TUBE video posted here because of the word verification shit, I have to just do this instead. Ridicule Blogger. I will start with the "word" verification thing. Since when is "zlbgzjpr" a word? Huh? You tell me? But yet this is the "word" I have to enter to publish this post. They should call it "a series of random letters verification". If someone from Blogger reads this run my name change idea past the technical nerds in the back room smoking pot and watching Star Trek re-runs ok? Tell them to "make it so" or you will shoot them with a plastic phaser.

And also notice my cool pimping THREE COLUMN template! Can't get that from the standard Blogger templates! OH NO! I had to steal it from somewhere else, then modify it so that it had all my crap, Would a spam blog bother to do this? No chance!

So what is a spam blog, and how does Blogger identify them? I decided to find out! This is from Blogger.

"The ease of creating and updating webpages with Blogger has made it particularly prone to a form of behavior known as link spamming. Blogs engaged in this behavior are called spam blogs, and can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site."

OK OK OK! So I may do this. I like to think my text is relevant to something, but lets be honest here - it is not. in fact, I submit to you that 90% or more of the internet is irrelevant. When did home internet access become the thing to have? Mid 1990s? It is amazing that humanity had some form of civilization for THOUSANDS OF YEARS before Al Gore created the internet. And it is a good thing Gore did create the internet - if he did not can you name ONE single Republican with the brain power that could have done this? I can't!

Anyway I have a lot of links to www.lazyiguana.org. But what do you expect? See the relation here? We have lazyiguana.blogspot.com and lazyiguana.org and my email address posted above as a jpg so that spam bots can not harvest my lazyiguana.org email address - see a pattern here? I bought the lazyiguana.org domain so that I will have a place to post photos, MP3 files, and whatever else I want to put here. I put my crap on my domain, then link to there from here. I put the crap "over there" so that it can also be here. If this a veiled Bush joke? Probably.

I also have many links to many other blogs, off site video games, and other assorted crap.

I may also engage in keyword stuffing. But only for fun. Most recently I engaged in keyword stuffing by including "Uncle Fester's Meth Recipe" several times in a post. and Google did pick this up! I was, and my still be, the number one result for "Uncle Fester's Meth Recipe". But really - if you are searching for a meth recipe what the hell is wrong with you? Don't you know that shit is illegal? And are you some kind of idiot getting a recipe off the internet where any idiot can post whatever they want? Are you aware that the chemicals used to make street meth are dangerous and CAN explode? So my keyword stuffing is not a big deal. It is not like I am responsible for the White House biography of George Bush to come up as number 1 in a search for "failure". But that is funny too. The Republican internet nerd response to this was to make Michael Moore's site number 2 or 3 for failure. That is the best they can do - attack an overweight film maker who has nothing to do with anything.

But spam blogs can be a problem. For one, they like to steal content from other sites. Like NOBODY ELSE does this! Oh no, 100% of all content on all non-spam sites is 100% original! Nobody ever steals photos, text, ideas, or templates from other sites. They steal this content to make it seem like there is something you are looking for there - but there never is. And a spam blog can post a lot of stuff in a short time, clogging up service for other users. Like a toilet at a hot dog eating contest - it can get clogged!

Blogger does not like Spam Blogs. Nobody does really. So they are doing something to prevent them. Like the "series of random letters verification" thing. Also this blog is no longer listed in Nextblog or added to the "recently published" list.

For the record - I think it is a good idea to do something about spam blogs. Someone will review this site and determine that while it may be irrelevant and appear to engage in keyword stuffing and link spamming - it is not "spam". I am not really trying to sell penis enlargement pills. I do not harvest email addresses if someone sends me hate mail.

I expect to be able to post the You Tube video soon.

Weekend Madness!

Welcome to Saturday!

You may have noticed my Netflix movies on the side bar thing. Well I done watched em all. Memento is one crazy movie. It is in reverse. It begins with the end, and ends with the beginning. The plot takes place in reverse. It is a bit tough to keep up with what is going on.

But the DVD has a nifty feature that will play the movie in reverse, but since the movie is already in reverse it is double reverse - which means forward. Watch it the way it was cut first, and if you need to watch it in "reverse" after. It really is a good movie. I like movies one has to pay attention to in order to keep track of what the hell is going on.

Not everyone will like it. But this is why I like Netflix so darn much - they have everything. Even the stuff a regular video store will not stock. You put it on your list and it arrives in the mail. Pretty slick.

I will dump the movies in the mail today and they will arrive Monday, and I will get more movies Tuesday.

Blogger now has this word verification bullshit on new posts. What the hell is that for? Spam blogs? So now I have to word verify my own posts. That I write. What kind of bullshit is that?

It is high time I used the boat again. Maybe I should do this. But not this weekend! This weekend the wind is a bitch, and bay waters are "choppy in exposed areas". Not good. This means a lot of bow spray, and if the wind is into the bow then the wind will pick up that spray and soak me. This is why I need the next boat to have an enclosed helm. F the bow spray in the A. And FORGET ABOUT going offshore! Not unless you are insane! Saturday seas are 4 - 6 feet near shore and 6 - 8 feet in the Gulf Stream. Sunday we are looking at 5 - 7 foot seas near shore and 7 - 9 feet in the Gulf Stream.

Maybe next week. 9 foot seas means waves as high as half the length of the boat! And a choppy Biscayne Bay is no fun to be in either. The sea, she be a harsh mistress.

The fat orange cat just clawed me for messing with his foot. Fat bastard! See if he gets fed today. That will teach him. Anyone got some of that rat poison recalled food handy?

Good For Everyone Else - But Not Me

Yesterday Miami-Dade County officially went on level 1 water restrictions. This means that you can only water your lawn every other day EXCEPT for Friday. Friday is no watering day. Even number addresses get Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Odd addresses get Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.

Watering can only by done from the hours of 4 - 8 AM. Hand watering with a hose and an automatic shut off nozzle thing can be done on designated watering days from 5 - 7 PM.

OK so I can deal with that. No problem. Lawn dies and that means no mowing.

New landscaping planted less than 30 days can be watered Monday - Friday 2 - 8 AM. WHAT!?!?!? Those are unholy hours to be up, watering plants! So no planting stuff in the front yard where the neighbors and water police can see. The backyard is hidden from view.

Washing of cars is restricted to the the above guidelines for landscape watering times and days. But you can wash equipment from 5 - 7 PM, which is not such an unholy time to be doing things like that. Rinse water from equipment must drain onto an unpaved surface, so the water can soak into the ground.

The above applies to ALL sources of water except reclaimed water. Reclaimed water is unrestricted. But if you are one of those people that pump water from a canal or lake to water your lawn - better not use it! Or else you are a water criminal, and could be subjected to water boarding by the water police.

And I can deal with all of the above. I mean the lawn is a pain in the ass anyway. Always needing to be mowed. So if it gets a little brown then no big loss. It will grow back. It always does. And if I can not wash the truck life will go on. People waste too much water on stupid shit like that anyway. Who cares if my truck has dirt on it? IT IS A TRUCK! It is supposed to have dirt on it.

The problem I will have with the water police is the boat. The boat counts as "equipment", and can only be "washed" on designated wash/watering days and hours. And ONLY with an automatic shut off device or low volume pressure washer.

Uhhhhh...OK! So how do you water police suggest I flush the engine huh? My only option here is to put the ear muffs on the water intake of the lower unit, connect the hose WITHOUT any shut off device, turn the hose on full blast, and crank the engine. Not enough water flow = damage to the rubber water pump = overheated engine = engine damage = costly repair bill = sad me. And realize water police that the engine needs to be run at least every other week, watering day or not. I like to run it weekly. This keeps all engine parts coated in a two cycle oil / gas mixture.

The GOOD part is that I am allowed to wash down the boat every day at any time for 15 minutes after it has been in the salt water. Not a problem! I wash the trailer down for a few minutes, concentrating on the wheels. Figure 3 - 5 minutes here TOPS!

Then I fill a bucket 1/2 with water and add the boat soap. Swab the deck and gunnels with the soapy water, and rinse. 5 minutes here. I could forgo the soap and just wash everything down with fresh water and save some time.

Next the flushing of the engine. Another 5 minutes. This adds up to 15 minutes. But are the water cops going to be there with a stopwatch? If they are, I can guarantee a few "accidents" where the hose "gets away from me" and soaks them. OOPS!

And now the best part. The cool water saving rhyme. If it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down. Got it? If you just take a piss, it is OK to not flush, but if you crap then pull that handle! This will save 3 - 5 gallons per piss, unless you have a fancy new low volume toilet. Where I live the toilets were made by Ancient Romans - so they use at least 5 gallons per flush. Maybe more.

What I would like to do is install a pisser. That would be cool. Those things use a pint or less of water per flush. I can tell the water police that the water I save in the toilet can be used on the boat.

Aww Crap!

This is a good one. The other day I noticed that I was out of beer. Actually I noticed I was out of beer at least a week ago. I have probably been out for at least two weeks.

But never fear! There is always the bar that makes their own beer that I still go to.

Anyway, I was out of beer. So when I was at the supermarket I remembered to swing by the beer isle to resupply. And there it was - 12 pack boxes of Samuel Adams. So I grab one.

And what happens when I get it home? I drop the stupid box. There is this horrible breaking sound. And then this liquid starts to leak out of the box and all over the floor.

So I said a few of my favorite words, and open the box. There are two casualties. My 12 pack is now a 10 pack.

This pretty much sums up how my week has gone so far.

You Sir, Deserve A Pimp Slap!

This is a video of the Taiwan Parliament. Over there, political debates are often heated. Sometimes TOO heated. So every now and then a brawl breaks out.

A real brawl. With real fists and hair pulling and eye glasses flying all over the place. Tie vote? FIST FIGHT! The side with the last person standing gets to cast the tie breaking vote. I wonder what all those signs say. My guess is "Round 1" or "(party name) for kicking the ass of (opposing party)". Maybe they need to ban signs from Parliament.

I think this is the element that USA politics is missing. A good old fashioned fist fight. One is long overdue. I know the revisionist out there are always trying to make it sound like the USA is this perfect nation founded on high ideals and grand principles, but the fact is that at one time the USA was the world's best place to get your eye gouged out. Or to be killed in a duel. Or get stabbed by someone wearing a raccoon skin hat.Or maybe just get into a massive bar fight.

It is the British that were all civilized with their tea time and funny sounding curse words.

So I am sure that the hallowed halls of Congress have seen fist fights before. The White House too. I mean it HAD TO have happened. Back before the invention of TV and the film camera - what was to stop a law maker from getting shit faced and kicking someone's ass? Even a President. It is said that President Grant - the dude on the $50 bill - was a known drunk. Long before Bush Number 1 puked on the Prime Minister of Japan Grant was puking on everyone. But without CNN to show the video nobody knew about it. And even if they did - EVERYONE was a drunk back then! Drinking water was dangerous because bacteria that could make you sick or even dead lived in that water. Whiskey on the other hand was bacteria free. So was beer. Wine was for those wussies in more civilized nations - Americans were into Rye Whiskey, Burbon, and beer.

So get with it Congress! We the people demand a knock down drag out bar room fight in Congress. And we want to see it on CSPAN. Why should Taiwan television viewers get all the fun?

Muskrats.

You may have noticed that on more than one occasion I mentioned that Donald Trump wears a dead muskrat on his head. Donald Trump would probably try to sue me if he read this. So I will just post a series of photos to make my case here.

This is Trump with some random chick. The ugly one with the short hair that looks like a dead muskrat is Trump.

And this is a muskrat.

Notice how the muskrat is the same color as the hair in question. Huh. Imagine that. I am sure this is just a coincidence, and not because the hair in question used to belong to a muskrat.

Now that this issue is solved and I have the evidence that will prevent any lawsuits, time to jump to a whole new topic!

The Miami-Dade County Fair is in town. So Monday I went there with my parents. Why not. I should have lugged my camera there, but I did not. This is because the fair is mostly the same thing year after year. The carnival games, the fried food booths, the rides that look like a good way to make yourself puke - and so on.

But every year there are a few things I do at the fair. For one, I have to play the "shoot out the red star with a fully automatic BB gun" game. You get 100 shots to do this. It is darn near impossible. You have to fire in short bursts. To win the crappy prize you must shoot out every last bit of the red star. One of these years I will win - but not this year.

And of course there is skee ball! I like this game. Last year I kicked the skee ball machine's ass and won a giant stuffed alligator - but this year I just lost $3. I got close on the first and third game - but I sucked pretty bad at the second game. I could have won but it was a matter of how much did I want to spend to win some crappy prize. But it is fun to play skee ball - so I got my moneys worth.

I am going to have to buy (and drink) a single bottle of Corona Beer so I can practice the "stand the beer bottle up using a ring attached to a stick by a string" game. I want to kick that game's ass next year. The carnival people make it look so easy - but nobody ever wins. Someone needs to shut that booth down by winning all the crap there.

Ever had a fried pickle? Well there was a booth selling them, so I ordered one. I think it is going to be VERY EASY to use the toilet in a few hours. but I could not resist. Everyone knows that the best food is deep fried. I like dill pickles. So hell yea Ill try one fried! I also had a fried bologna sandwich. Like I said - using the toilet will be VERY easy. With all the oil I ate today I am like the Exxon Valdez here.

I also bought $10 in lottery tickets. I got 5 scratch off tickets - and won a free ticket. The other $5 is for a chance to win $250,000 OR one of my choice of 7 Ford cars/$35,000 in ca$h. You can choose either the car or the cash, unless you win the $250,000. They pull one number for the $250,000 and 7 numbers for the car/cash. Only an idiot would choose the car because:

A) The car is a Ford AND
B) You can buy a Ford for under $35,000

The Mustang Convertible looks nice - but I would rather have the money. I have a perfectly good car now. I could turn that $35k into something that floats and have plenty left over for ice, beer, and gas.

And if I loose - then it is a donation to Florida's Public School System. I live in a crazy ass state where casinos are bad yet the State's education fund is 100% from a lottery. It is the duty of every Florida resident to play the lottery from time to time - even if it is a bad bet. I call the lottery a tax on people bad at math.

Totally Recalled

What do you feed your pet cat or dog? Cause there is a major pet food recall going on. It effects that moist pet food in a can stuff. I feed my critters dry food because it costs less. And that canned stuff stinks. Anyhow if you feed your cat or dog mystery meat from a can, check out the link above.

Now continuing with the recall theme, we cut to the king of bad toupees, Donald Trump!

Darn! I think someone is upset because their dead muskrat hair glue was changed out with super glue and so he can not get the thing off and it is starting to stink. One would think someone with Trump's money would love the President and his awesome plan to cut taxes but only for people that make more than $75,000 a week.

I think it is funny that Trump can talk about everything Bush says as being a big lie, and yet he refuses to admit that is not his hair. It seems that Trump would fire Bush if he were a contestant on that awful show I never watch.

NOTE - the You Tube thing is not compatible with the NEW Iguana Music. Watch the video first then play the NEW Iguana Music. Or whatever.

Discovery

So an interesting thing happened Saturday. Because I am insane and have nothing else better to do with my time I volunteered to join the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary. Auxiliary means I am a civilian volunteer, not active duty. I can get a bunch of boat training and stuff out of the deal.

Anyway, the Auxiliary has a primary mission of getting the word out so to speak. We conduct boating safety classes for the public, so that people can be told in a classroom sitting that they need to have day and night emergency signal devices and things like how to read a marine chart. We also go to marinas and give free boat safety inspections. If the boat has everything the law requires, then they get this cool sticker that says "this boat has all the crap it needs". The real Coast Guard and other law enforcement agencies know what the sticker is, and have some respect for it. So if they stop you on the water and they see the sticker, they may not ask to see all the crap again. They know you have it.

So that is what I was doing today. Giving boat inspections. 4 out of 5 boats I inspected failed. But now the people know what they are missing and have a chance to get the equipment before they get stopped OR have a problem on the water and need something they do not have. Like flares or a fire extinguisher or something.

After we were done for the day, an old retired member of the flotilla said he was going to Jimbo's for a beer and did I want to come. Well let me think about that. Uhhhh....yea why the hell not! but where is this Jimbo's place? I had no idea.

Jimbo's is a place like NO OTHER! It is not a bar, but you can get beer and soda there. It is not a restaurant, but you can get smoked fish. It is a bait shack where you can buy live shrimp. Jimbo runs a small fleet of shrimp boats. It is also the only place I know of in Florida that has not one but TWO Bocce Ball courts. Jimbo build the courts himself.

Here is the place on a map.

Click the map for a larger view. It is not easy to find. There are no signs on the road pointing the place out. This is a pure word of mouth place. It is on Virginia Key, right next to....uhhh...OK it is right next to the main sewage treatment plant for Dade County. Virginia Key is where the black beach was back in the not so long ago days of segregation. The area of Virginia Beach closed down after segregation was ended, and was pretty much left alone - undeveloped. Back then there was no mad frantic land grabs - there was plenty of open space. So why bother with the old "black beach" and sewage treatment plant? As a result, the area is as it was. All mangroves and wetlands. And Jimbo's.

Jimbo used to keep his shrimp boats by where the Miami Herald building is now - PRIME water front property. But the boats stank like a shrimp boat and the city wanted to hand the property over to the newspaper. The Herald needed waterfront property with a deep channel to bring in barge that carried the blank newsprint. Government Cut, where the cruise ships are today - was the perfect place.

But Jimbo and his stinky nasty shrimp boats had to go. The problem was he had a perfectly legal claim to the area under maritime law. So the City Of Miami cut the man a deal - move to Virginia Key and he could have the land for as long as he lived. Well all his boats needed was a harbor - and the small lagoon was actually a better place to moor a boat than a seawall (the lagoon is well protected from wind). So he moved.

That was in the 1960s. Jimbo is still alive and well today, and the place is still his. The City wants the property back - but the old man told the City Commission to "go fuck themselves". They moved him from his original location to a place nobody wanted, and now they want it? Sit and spin City Of Miami!

Anyway, the place is something else. It is a series of run down looking shacks. Some of the shacks are actually parts of old television and movie sets. Others are shacks constructed by Jimbo and his customers.

This is the inside of the main shack. If you want a beer or a soda, you go inside and grab one from the vat of ice water. There is no bartender. You grab your own beer. Then on your way out the door you pay the guy standing there. Cash only. You also ask for the smoked fish here.

This is another photo of the beer vats. All that clutter and junk you see in the picture is just there. It is probably used for something. Who knows.

This is one of two Bocce Ball courts. The court is not level. I do not think it is supposed to be level. There are high and low points to the thing. To roll a good game, you have to know the court. Anyway, it is something drunk people can play without too much difficulty. And you can not destroy anything. This is important when the beer is self service.

This is one of those old run down looking shacks that is supposed to part of an old Miami Vice set. And that is a VW Beetle that has seen better days. People that go to Jimbo's sometimes bring lawn chairs and all kinds of crap and use the shacks as a place to hang out. Some are padlocked, some are not. There is also a school bus that looks similar to the bug, and people hang out in there. There was this odd smell wafting from the bus when I walked by it - and the people in the bus were laughing at something and eating A LOT of Doritos. But nobody cared - they were not causing any problems.

Anyway - I had heard of this place but had never been there. By car it is not easy to find, someone has to show you where it is. You have to drive into the old beach, and down this long ass road that ends at the water treatment plant. You can also get there by boat - but once again the place is not easy to find. It is not on the charts! There are no channel markers. You have to be able to "read" the water to find the channel that leads to the lagoon. Brown brown run aground - green green nice and clean. That is how to read the water here in South Florida. The channel is surrounded by rocks and the water is very shallow - so come in wrong and you may need a new prop. Or a new drive unit. But I know how to get in now. I took a sighting from the tree to the first cargo tower at the Port Of Miami. If I keep the bow pointed at the tree and the center of the stern pointed at the cargo crane thing then I will be in the green. No problem.

But even as far off the beaten path as it is, people know about it. Here is a list of some of the stuff that has gone down there. At least the stuff people can remember. There is a lot of beer there.

movies
Island Claws, Blood and Wine, Wild Things, Porky's II, Ace Ventura, True Lies, 2 Fast 2 Furious

tv
Flipper, Gentle Ben, Miami Vice, Glades, Going To California, Karen Sisco, CSI Miami

videos
Ziggy Marley, JayLo, Who Let The Dogs Out, Sugar Ray

photos
Maria Carey's first album cover, Jisel, Heidi Klum, Naomi Campbell

Visit Jimbo's Place website HERE.

Goings On

Got a whole load of stuff going on here!

First, I signed up for the annual County sponsored Biscayne Bay cleanup. Last year there were 6,000 volunteers who removed several tons of trash. I will of course be in my boat, acting as some sort of free water taxi for volunteers that need to get to various locations only accessible by sea. I will be based from this marina, located off the 79th Street Causeway - like anyone knows where the hell that is. And I will be taking people to the islands that you can see to the north and south of the causeway.

I never use the Pelican Harbor Marina. I need new charts for that area. My charts cover from Marathon in the Keys to just north of the Port Of Miami.

Second, Iguana Music is updated. Get money. New money. I just got a Cadillac, on which I am going to throw some D's on. Whatever the hell that means.

Third - I get to go scope out a boat today. A 22 foot 7 inch walk around cuddy cabin with a fully enclosed helm. I need this boat upgrade because it has a lot more freeboard than my boat. Freeboard is the distance from the gunnels to the waterline. The gunnels are the top of the side of a boat. The more freeboard you have, the safer the boat is. It takes a larger wave to swamp the boat. But freeboard comes at a cost. The boat is pushed around more by the wind. It could make it harder to get the boat back on a trailer at the boat ramp. If the boat passes my strict quality control inspection and the guy bites at whatever offer that me and my associates decide to make - then the weekend cruiser may come to live here for a bit.

Forth - there is no forth! Or is there? It is a mystery. There is some mysterious mysteries going on, so obscured by clouds that nobody really knows what it means. Except for me. I know what everything means. I have the secret decoder ring from the cereal box that allows me to decipher the secret message. A=Z, B=X, C=Y, and so on. But not exactly. I am not authorized to give the real secret decipher key out. But who knows. I have delusions all the time.

Unimportant Shit

So some of you might be wondering what the hell is up with the Iguana Music? So here is the straight dope.

Devo was a (mostly bad) music group in the 80s. They are known for wearing flower pots on their head.

Anyway, some wacky students at Kent State in the 60s came up with the idea of "devolution" or de-evolution. You know, all the shit that was going on then led to the conclusion that humanity was on a backwards evolution path. All kinds of crap was going on then, and some students thought society was regressing. So devolution was a campus joke.

Then some students were murdered by the National Guard for protesting a war. In 1970. One of the guys that later formed the band Devo knew some of the students killed, and even saw one dead student - shot by an M1 Garand rifle. Those things chamber a 30-06 bullet - which is a big ass bullet. So the sight must have been very gruesome.

At that point the concept of de-evolution was no longer a joke to the guy. A few years later the band Devo was formed. Jocko Homo was inspired by a pamphlet "Jocko Homo Heavenbound" distributed by some devolution people at Kent State. Jocko Homo is a science geek way to say "monkey man" or something like that.

So there you go. The story behind the Iguana Music - leading to a bunch of guys wearing flower pots on their head. But it was the 80s, drugs were good and cheap, and it was still OK to get drunk and drive (the cops would just tell you to go home and fine you $100- ask President Bush or Dick Cheney about that). So we can understand and forgive the flower pots thing.

Iguana Music will be changing soon. Maybe something more recent is in line. You know, something from this year. Something hip and cool. Just in time for the weekend!

Also you may notice that I added my Netflix selections to the sidebar - just in case anybody was loosing sleep wondering what DVDs I have from Netflix.

My New Favorite TV Show

This is Ninja Warrior. My new favorite TV show imported from Japan. My previous favorite TV show imported from Japan was Iron Chef.

This show is an extreme obstacle course. There are four stages. The final stage is the shortest, but it looks like a killer.

Out of the 2,000 (or more) to challenge Ninja Warrior - only two have been awarded the title. This is a reality show where most of the time there is no winner - only dishonor and shame. This is one hell of an obstacle course.

Anyway the video I posted shows one bad ass you would not want to get into a fight with showing you how to make the 4 stages your bitch. He makes it look easy, totally kicking the ass of obstacles like "Curtain Cling", "Pipe Slider", and "Metal Swing". If you listen carefully you can hear the Japanese announcer say pipe slider and curtain cling in English. It is funny cause the rest of the audio is in Japanese (with English subtitles for American TV).

By the way, the guy in the You Tube video tried three times. The first time he was short by 0.11 seconds on the final obstacle - the tower of death. The second time he screwed up the pipe slider. But in this video clip he makes it with 2.5 seconds to spare. No shame or dishonor here!

Japanese TV is so much better than the crap TV in the West. One of the things I want to do when I go to Japan is spend a day just watching the TV in my hotel room. Or better yet, watching Japanese TV at a sake bar. Living in Miami I am used to not being able to understand that the crap people around me or on the TV are saying.

You can watch Ninja Warrior every Monday and Wednesday on G4 network.

Mold In The Cuddy

From reading the comments, some people expressed concern about mold in the cuddy cabin. A good sailor knows how to prevent mold - with air circulation. The boat I will look at has an enclosed helm. If the door to the cabin is left open then air can circulate. You can also use Damp Rid in the cabin.

If you leave the boat under a canvas cover - no problem. The canvas can breathe enough to still allow for some circulation. And you can get a blower, some ducting, and a cheap timer to really circulate things. Attach the duct so it sucks air outside the cover, and set the timer to run the blower for a few hours every day.

And this much is already known. If when I get a cuddy cabin boat I will install a marine AC in it. I already found a sea water cooled 3500 BTU AC system that is small enough to fit in a battery box. I have a super quiet Honda generator that will power the thing without a problem. The unit is actually designed to run off a battery bank with a power inverter. It is made for boats with a small cabin. But it will require a somewhat complicated install job with a hole below the water line, a seawater pump, a return line for the sea water, and a drain for condensation. The seawater cooling is what allows the thing to be so small. But spring a leak in the plumbing and the pump will dump 250 gallons per hour in the bilge OR cabin. Not good. Spring a leak below the water line and the water will rush in with or without the pump on. Actually I will not need a 250 GPH pump, they say you only need 250 GPH for every ton of AC. One ton = 12,000 BTUs. So for a 3500 BTU unit I would only need....uhhh.....12,000 divided by 3500...take the result and divide 250 by it....carry the one....about 73 gallons per hour? So a 150 GPH pump will be plenty.

The other option is a 7000 BTU air cooled system that fits into a hatch that most cabins come with. The hatch is in the roof of the cabin to allow natural light in and provide for air circulation. It looks like an RV type AC, with most of the unit outside the boat. It is air cooled. It is not a fixed mount deal - you only run it when the boat is not moving. When underway you take the AC off the hatch, stash it in the cabin, close the hatch, and move. This unit will push my little Honda generator to its limit when starting up. I have the EU 2000i which produces a maximum of 2,000 watts - the portable AC requires 1,800 watts to start up and about 1,000 to run.

The smaller water cooled system would be my first choice. It is more complicated to install, but not too bad. The small unit can be placed almost anywhere in the cabin. The power drain is a lot less - leaning that the generator can run longer on a tank. Or I can get a bank of batteries and power the AC that way. It could run when underway.

And it will make it possible to camp in the boat year round. Even on a warm summer night - just set your anchor and kick it on. Nice cool refreshing AC. In the winter I may not even need it. On a nice cool night just leaving the vents, hatches, and door open will be enough.

Oh yea about the mold. Air circulation is the key! Ill probably rig up a blower motor on a timer or something.

But first I have to locate a used boat worth a shit. THAT is harder to do than prevent mold.

Boats.

So the Wellcraft Coastal 25 footer turned out to be a POS. The boat itself was in decent shape - or so it seemed, but the engines were both shot. One was stuck in the up position because the power trim pump died. From all evidence, the boat had been kept in the water for some time. It had a fresh coat of bottom paint. The corrosion on the outboards was pretty extensive. Who knows that kind of mess the wiring was in. The guy will never sell it for the price he is asking - except to an idiot.

So I need to keep looking. This weekend my dad and myself are going to look at this beast.

This is a 22'7'' Trophy with a single 225 HP outboard. It has a fully enclosed helm, which is cool. It also has a hard top which is cool. In foul weather the helm area will stay pretty dry. There is also a small cabin that will sleep 2 - or so the seller claims. It is a "walk around" design meaning that you can "walk around" the cabin to get to the bow. The boat has an 8.5 foot beam and is only 22 feet long. So this means that the cabin can not be any wider than 8.5 feet, and no more than 10 feet in length. And since the cabin is in the bow, it comes to a point. So the average width of the thing is probably around 5 - 6 feet. Pretty small. But for a weekend cruise, it is enough.

And I could also enclose the entire boat in canvas, stretched from the hard top to the gunnels and stern of the boat. This would turn the entire space into a sleeping area. Add some cots and there you go. I could even set my little Honda generator on the bow safely, as it will be in open air even if I enclose the whole boat. Of course I would put in a few CO detectors if I did this. But here is the cool part - and this is critical - the little generator will run a small marine AC. And with such a small cabin, I would not need a very large AC.

The engine is newer than the boat, and still has a year and a half in the warranty. This may be a winner here. Maybe. It all depends on what I see when I look at it, and if the guy will play with the asking price a little.

New Iguana Music thanks to a suggestion from Senor Caiman

Monday Madness

Is this a good idea?

PMS Guns and hearing protection. Who are they trying to sell to here? Cause you could take this in two ways.

1. Get a gun and some excellent hearing protection, cause it is PMS time for someone else. You may need to block out a lot of noise and/or possibly defend yourself.

2. Someone else is making your PMS worse, so you need a gun and some hearing protection so that you do not have to hear all this shit about "is something wrong"? OF COURSE SOMETHING IS WRONG! And what are you anyway? Some sort of "pick up the dry cleaning" machine? Hell no! Someone else can get the damn dry cleaning!

Anyway, I think I would avoid that gun store. I would go somewhere else for all my gun needs. No matter how small the town is - there is not going to be any less than two gun stores. People seem to need a lot of guns! And for good reason.

BERSERK HOUSE CAT ATTACKS OWNER

HAILEY, Idaho (AP) -- A house cat attacked its owner, sending her to the hospital by ambulance with more than 20 bite wounds.

The cat, a black and white domestic male, went on the rampage Wednesday when a neighbor showed up at the door with a different cat, mistakenly thinking it belonged to the woman.

"She went to the door, and her cat went berserk," Jeff Nevins, assistant fire chief for Wood River Fire and Rescue, told the Idaho Mountain Express.

The woman in her 60s was taken to St. Luke's Wood River Medical Center with what Nevins described as "pretty serious puncture wounds." Neither the hospital nor the fire department would provide any details to The Associated Press on Saturday, or say whether she has been released.

The owner said in a statement that she recently had the cat declawed, and she thinks it is still pissed off about that. "I think it was a mistake to declaw Mr. Tibbs. Every since the operation Mr. Tibbs seemed to be plotting something."

By the way, this is a true story. That lady has a mean ass cat. Like this one, only not as orange.

PS that is not Fred. Fred has more white on him than this cat. But Fred has a mean streak in him. If he is hanging out somewhere and you try to move him - he bites. If he is laying next to you and you disturb him - he bites you. They say fat cats are jolly. THEY are wrong. Fred is here with me now, and I am afraid to move or put away the laptop. He is purring now, but I know that is just a ruse.

Whose Brilliant Idea Was This?

I am NUMBER ONE in Google! Oh Yea!

I hope you all sprung forward. THREE WEEKS EARLY! So if you have a fancy electronic device that knows when it is time to change the clock - HA HA! It is not going to work! You see, this year some fucking dumb ass decided to make the change early. So unless your electronic device can accept software updates - you are boned. Cause it will not know to change the time today! So you will have to change it yourself - defeating the whole point in paying for a device that changes the time on its own.

NOTE - I do not know if the dumb ass featured in the above link is the dumb ass who hatched this brilliant idea, but I can see it being true. Notice that the lens caps are still on. What a goof.

And if that were not bad enough, in three weeks it will think "HEY! Daylight savings time time!" and spring forward ANOTHER hour. So you will have to change the time back to the correct time, or change the time BACK one hour before you go to bed so the device will spring forward to the correct time.

Confusing huh? Your automatic time changing device will not have to be changed TWICE - by you. Now not all devices are going to be effected. Computers and PDAs can download and install a patch. Cell phones can be set to accept the time sent by the service providers.

OH SHIT! My GPS devices may not know that some dumb ass changed the date to change the time. Not a huge deal for my handheld GPS but the boat GPS needs to know the local time so that the tide chart works. Fuck. I need that tide chart feature to work.

But what the hell is up with DST anyway? Well I went to find out! THIS is investigative reporting.

Daylight saving time (DST), also known as summer time in British English, is the convention of advancing clocks so that evenings have more daylight and mornings have less. Typically clocks are adjusted forward one hour in late winter or early spring and are adjusted backward in autumn. Details vary by location and change occasionally; see When it starts and stops below.

Governments often promote DST as an energy conservation measure because it substitutes summer afternoon sunlight for electrical lighting. However, in some cases DST can increase energy costs.

Pretty good so far huh? Nice and objective!

In a typical case where a one-hour shift occurs at 02:00 local time, in spring the clock jumps forward from 02:00 standard time to 03:00 DST and the day has 23 hours, whereas in autumn the clock jumps backward from 02:00 DST to 01:00 standard time, repeating that hour, and the day has 25 hours. A digital display of local time does not read 02:00 exactly, but instead jumps from (say) 01:59:59.9 either forward to 03:00:00.0 or backward to 01:00:00.0.

Clock shifts typically occur near a weekend midnight to lessen disruption to weekday schedules. A one hour clock shift is customary, but Lord Howe Island uses a half-hour shift. Twenty-minute and two-hour shifts have occurred in the past.

What?!?!? Where the fuck is "Lord Howe Island"? And why do we give a crap what time shift it uses? Everyone that lives in an island nation is ALWAYS late anyway - so who cares what a clock says. Island life is laid back and not rushed. Time and being on time is for the mainlanders. Those sorry pathetic on time fools.

Start and end dates and times vary with location and year. Since 1996 the European Union has observed DST from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October, shifting clocks at 01:00 UTC. Starting in 2007, most of the United States and Canada observe DST from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November, shifting clocks typically at 02:00 local time. The 2007 U.S. change was part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005; previously, from 1987 through 2006, the start and end dates were the first Sunday in April and the last Sunday in October, and Congress retains the right to go back to the previous dates once an energy consumption study is done.

Beginning and ending dates are switched in the southern hemisphere. For example, mainland Chile observes DST from the second Saturday in October to the second Saturday in March, with transitions at 24:00 local time. The time difference between the United Kingdom and mainland Chile may therefore be three, four, or five hours, depending on the time of the year.

Argentina, Iceland, Saskatchewan and other areas skew time zones westward, in effect observing DST year round without complications from DST shifts. The United Kingdom and Ireland experimented with year-round DST from 1968 to 1971 but abandoned it due to its unpopularity, particularly in the north. Alaska, France, Spain and other areas both skew time zones and shift clocks, in effect observing double (or more) DST in summer.

DST is generally not observed near the equator, where day lengths do not vary enough to justify it

OK I am loosing myself here. Do I really care about any of this horse shit? Not really. So shall I continue?!?! Those wacky French, always observing double secret DST. It must be all that French Wine. People do funny things when they are drunk. VIVE LE FRANCE! And pass me the wine, for I am thirsty.

Now for the MEAT OF THE STORY!

DST was first proposed in 1907 by William Willett. An avid golfer, he disliked cutting short his round at dusk. The proposal attracted many eminent supporters, including Balfour, Churchill, Lloyd George, and MacDonald. Edward VII also favored DST, and had already been using it informally at Sandringham. However, Prime Minister Asquith opposed the proposal and after many hearings it was narrowly defeated in a Parliament committee vote in 1909. Willett's allies introduced new DST bills every year from 1911 through 1914, to no avail.

GOLF!?!?!?! Fucking GOLF?!?!?! We are doing all this because some ASSHOLE was too damn lazy to start his game of golf one hour earlier?!?!?! You got to be shitting me here! GOLF?!?!?!?!? Another reason for me to HATE THIS STUPID GAME!

DST was first enacted by a national government by Germany during World War I, starting April 30, 1916. The United Kingdom soon followed suit, first observing it on May 21, 1916. On June 17, 1917, Newfoundland became the first North American jurisdiction to adopt DST with the Daylight Saving Act of 1917. On March 19, 1918, the U.S. Congress established DST from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October. The wartime measure, however, proved unpopular among farmers, and Congress repealed it in 1919. Woodrow Wilson, another avid golfer, vetoed the repeal twice but his second veto was overridden.

By Germany huh? Weren't we at WAR with Germany in WWI??!?! And did you catch the part about it BEING UNPOPULAR WITH THE FARMERS?!?!? And Woodrow Wilson was an AVID GOLFER and tried to keep Congress from repealing DST in 1919? There we go again! Another golf asshole trying to make ALL OF US modify our lives so they can play a stupid game. How about this golf boy! CRY to your country club to operate during daylight hours! On the weekends get to the course in time to play your round. Or skip out of work early enough to play your round.

So who benefits from DST? Well I went to find out!

Golf courses, convenience stores and other businesses benefit from extra afternoon sunlight. The primary funding for the Daylight Saving Time Coalition that successfully lobbied to extend U.S. DST in 1987 was provided by The Clorox Company (parent of Kingsford Charcoal) and 7-Eleven, both of which benefit from DST, and both Idaho senators voted to extend DST on the basis of fast-food restaurants selling more French fries made from Idaho potatoes.

DST can adversely affect farmers and others whose hours are set by the sun. For example, grain harvesting is best done after dew evaporates, so when field hands arrive and leave earlier in summer their labor is less valuable.

Clock shifts disrupt sleep patterns, and correlate with decreased economic efficiency. Researchers estimated in 2000 that the daylight saving effect implies a one day loss of $31 billion on the NYSE, AMEX, and NASDAQ alone.

GOLF COURSES again! So we are doing this for the benefit of golf??? It seems so. And I would like to know the logic behind the thinking that changing the time on a clock will cause people to eat more French fries made from Idaho potatoes.

I hate Daylight Savings Time. And golf.

Now some of you who hate your pets had have horrible surgical procedures done to them and then wonder why your pets retaliate by doing things like taking a leak on your bed - it could be worse. THIS could be your dog.

Thanks to Wikipedia for letting me steal all this content for my report.

More traffic

I am now number 4 on Google for a search containing "cute chick nice pussy". Not bad for only 24 hours! But it seems that sites number 1 - 3 have the same photo I have. Site 5 is some kind of porn index or whatnot. So I am going to say HOT chick with nice pussy this time. But do not worry, there are no photos of a baby chicken on fire. That is just wrong.

No, what I wanted to talk about today is peeing into the Grand Canyon. I mean why not? It is a big hole in the Earth right? All the camping books say you should dig a latrine to mess in. Cats are not the only creatures that should bury their crap you know. But what if nature already provides you with a ditch? Why not use that? Can YOU dig a ditch a mile deep and 20 miles wide? I did not think so! So if you are at the Grand Canyon and need to take a leak, just piss off the rim. No problem. Really. You will feel really stupid digging a pathetic little ditch barely a foot deep when you are only 100 feet or so from a ditch 5,280 feet deep.

And this brings up Uncle Festers Meth Recipe. Good old Uncle Fester and his meth recipe. Man what fun times that stuff is. That is fun if you want your teeth to look like this.

Holy crap man! TOOTHPASTE! Use it dude! I mean, if you can afford Uncle Fester's Meth - which happens to be the best meth recipe of all, then you can afford a $2 tube of toothpaste. And maybe even a tooth brush. And at the rate Mr. Meth Mouth here is going - that is all he will need. A TOOTH brush. Cause he is only going to have one single, solitary, tooth.

Personally, I use a TEETH brush. As in more than one tooth.

So yea, if you are going to use Uncle Festers Meth Recipe be safe! Brush at least 4 times a day.

Another thing Uncle Fester's Meth Recipe may cause is the sensation of "Meth Mites". This is cause Uncle Fester's stuff may cause damage to nerve endings, creating the sensation of mites just under your skin. You itch. And of course if you itch you scratch. And scratch. And scratch. And if you break the skin you pick at that spot cause it still itches. And as Uncle Fester's Meth Recipe can keep you high for days, this happens.

DUDE! Calamine lotion! Use it! Or at least quit scratching when you see blood.

So there. Now I have all sorts of cool tags for Google to index. There are hot chicks, meth recipies, and an in depth discussion of why the Grand Canyon makes for a good toilet. Pretty much something for everyone! Kind of.

It will be fun to see what my ranking is when I Google "Uncle Festers Meth Recipe" tomorrow.

What I Learned Today

You know, I learned something today.

You should remove all jewelry when you go out on a boat. Yes - this is what I learned today. Wedding rings, or ANY ring for that matter - have NO PLACE on a boat. So take it off before you get on board. From now on I will require all people who step on my boat to remove and stash ALL jewelry. Mostly rings.

Why is this? CAUSE I AM THE CAPTAIN - thats why! Maritime tradition calls for never questioning the Captain. This is because even if you do not understand why the Captain says to do something, there is a reason.

WARNING - these are not exactly pretty pictures. But who ever said reality is pretty?

GRUESOME PHOTO 1
GRUESOME PHOTO 2

Ugly huh? Well here is what happened. The guy in the photo was handling lines while wearing his wedding ring. Somehow (probably due to improper line handling) a line got caught on his ring. Now consider that a boat can weigh many thousands of pounds, and that force can be transfered from the boat to a line to a ring to the skin on a finger and.....well it is ugly.

See? You learn something every day. The subject in the photo learned the painful way. Tis better to learn the non painful way says I.

And in other news, in order to drum up more traffic to this site I decided to throw in a few words likely to get Googled.

Cute chick with a nice pussy. Yes I typed that. Cute chick with a nice pussy. Google will pick this up and add it to the vast search engine. The more I type cute chick with a nice pussy the more Google will index this site for those words. And I will even throw in a photo of a cute chick with a nice pussy!

What is that? Not what you were expecting? Well then I do not know what to tell you here. That is a cute chick with a nice pussy. I defy you to say it is not.

Lazy Movies

I love Netflix. It is perhaps the greatest thing ever invented. You sign up, pick a bunch of movies, and DVDs start to show up in your mailbox. Watch them then mail them back. Then they send you more.

Anyhow, sometimes I still go to the real movies. Like on Tuesday. I went to see Pan's Labyrinth.

Pan's Labyrinth is a good movie, but not for everyone. First off, it is todos en Español. Not that this is a big deal - it has subtitles. And it is set in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. So what language do you want the movie to be in? How about Russian!

Oh yea and it was a Spanish/Mexican production.

Anyhow, it is a somewhat dark and disturbing movie. It has an R rating for language (they say conio a lot) and some violence. And here is another cool thing - the creatures are NOT CGI! It is a guy wearing a lot of makeup.

So go see the movie before it is out of the theaters.

Anyhow - here is what I have right now from Netflix!

1. La Vallee. This is a French film.
Viviane (Bulle Ogier), a straightforward young woman, sets out on a birding
expedition in New Guinea, where she meets Olivier (Michael Gothard), an adventurer
who's about to leave with some friends on an expedition into the jungle. The goal
is to discover an unknown valley in the phantom regions of the island marked only
by blank spots ("obscured by clouds") on the map. Only the natives suspect the
valley is where the gods live. …

Oh yea, the soundtrack to this film is contained on the album "Obscured By Clouds" by Pink Floyd. Good luck finding this in a video store - it is a foreign movie and therefore nobody wants to see it. But Netflix has it. And now I have it.

2. Tideland. This is a Terry Gilliam movie. You know, they guy from Monty Python who wrote and directed such films as Time Bandits, Jabberwocky, Brazil, 12 Monkeys, The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen, The Brothers Grimm, and some other stuff I am forgetting about. I missed this one when it was in theaters, but now I have it.

3. Jesus Camp. A documentary featuring "an unfiltered look at a revivalist subculture where devout Christian youngsters are being primed to deliver the fundamentalist community's religious and political messages. Building an evangelical army of tomorrow, the Kids on Fire summer camp in Devil's Lake, N.D., is dedicated to deepening the preteens' spirituality and sowing the seeds of political activism as they're exhorted to "take back America for Christ." On a side note, the formerly reverend and currently VERY fabulous Ted Haggard is in it, spouting off about something. Probably about how terrible gay people are.

Plus 95 more movies in queue, and another 11 in the "saved" list. The "saved" list is where you can add movies that have not yet been released on DVD. Tideland was once there.

Netflix is great.

How To End All The Problems In The World

I have said many times that if more people would just listen to me, there would be fewer problems in the world. A lot of times I say this and people just laugh it off as delusions of grandeur or a joke. They are all like "ha ha ha that is really funny" then they do what I just told them they should not do. And then 5 minutes later I am calling EMS because someone cut their hand off or something.

For example, here are just a few of many stories that are all 100% true.

I used to know this chick. Lets just call her "Karen" so I do not have to type "this chick" so many times. Anyhow Karen had to move into an apartment due to various problems that are not important to the story. Anyhow the apartment had an automatic dish washer. Karen decided to clean some dishes - but there was no automatic dishwasher detergent. So Karen starts to put liquid dish soap in the thing.

At this point I tell her "Karen, that is a bad idea - I would not put any of that stuff in there. Lets go to the store so you can buy the correct stuff and I can buy more beer". But no, Karen decided that just a little soap would be OK. So she put a few tablespoons of liquid soap in the machine. I grab a beer from the fridge (I had a supply there because I was helping her move out after a marriage went bad) and make my way to the couch.

It was not my place. I did not live there. And I did warn her!

So I finish the beer, and decide that what I want is another one. I do to the kitchen and......

Suds are EVERYWHERE! They are flowing out of the machine like it is a rave suds party. The shit was everywhere. So I stop the machine and say "Uhhh Karen - you need to see this". Then I decide I do not really need that second beer, it is late, I am tired, and I should go home.

Another time the house next door sold and new neighbors moved in. It was a couple with a very young child. Anyhow everything was fine will one day I hear the woman scream. I go to see what the problem is and she is all hysterical and going on about a "monster" in the backyard. She describes the "monster" and I determine it is this critter.

So I tell her that there is a whole family of possums living under this large shed in her new backyard, that they are very ugly - but very harmless. They will not hurt her little rat dog or any human - but they might eat the dog's food or rip open garbage bags not placed in a garbage can. So she says she will call "an exterminator" to get the things out of there.

At this point I say "that is a bad idea. It is July, and there are a whole family of possums living under there. Generations of possums have lived there. And mama possum is pretty big - maybe as much as 20 pounds".

But the lady is terrified of the possums (they do look ugly and nasty) and so she got someone to set out some poison. The possums ate the poison and....

Died UNDER the big ass shed. In South Florida. In July. it was a whole family of possums. At least 30 pounds (maybe more) of possums.

Needless to say, the stench was horrible. And it lasted a long time. It was THICK for the first 5 or 6 days. It stand up 4 yards - one of them being mine.

Another time I was eating some food with some friends. Someone decided they wanted ketchup, but you know how it is - the stuff would not come out of the bottle. So the dude decided to stick a straw in the bottle to equalize air pressure or whatever.

I say "that is not going to work", but nobody ever listens to me. So the guy stuck the straw in and nothing happened. So he decides he is going to blow air into the straw. I say "that is a very bad idea - you should not do that". But he does it anyway.

Half the bottle is instantly emptied onto the plate.

There are many more examples I could go into. But as you can see in each case I wrote about here a lot of problems could have been avoided if only people would listen to the words that I speak. When I say "that is a bad idea" you should not just dismiss what I say.

Because chances are, you are about to lop off a body part or something. And I will stand there and watch you do it - after warning you of course.

Animals Gone Wild

Time for another installment of "Animals Gone Wild!" In this installment we will investigate the previously unknown "Moose Against Technology" faction, why squirrels can party extra hard, rats out of control, and terrible wastes of money.

First up - "Charging Moose Brings Down Hovering Helicopter". Apparently some asshole biologist in a helicopter decided it would be a good idea to harass innocent moose in a place where moose outnumber humans 2 to 1. So the moose was just hanging out, doing moose stuff, when suddenly this noisy chopper swoops out of the sky and some jerk shoots it in the ass with a tranquilizer dart. Well the moose was having none of that. The moose had to wake up early and go to work, and we all know how much noise a low flying chopper makes. How many times has a police chopper waken YOU up? Were you ever happy about it? Of course not.

So the moose charged the chopper and hit it in the tail rotor. The rotor was taken out, and the pilot had to land the bird and cut off the engines. Ahh, peace and quiet! The moose's plan worked out great.

Except for one thing. The tail rotor blades are metal and spinning REALLY fast. So the moose got chopped up pretty bad. Hey - it is called a CHOPPER. But the moose did not know that. Moose can not read because of a terrible moose public education system. So the moose died.

Next up - "Squirrel Birth Control Aims To Curb Breeding Frenzy". Yes, it seems that the squirrels in Santa Monica California parks have discovered that hot squirrel on squirrel sex is a good way to pass the day. They have nothing else to do really. Thanks to people all their natural predators are not there anymore. Ceiling fans and plate glass windows have done a number of the birds of prey, and the mountain lions have been chased away by cars and random gun shots. Food is not a problem, thanks to all the people who like to feed the cute tree rats. So what else is left to do?

Anyway it seems the city has tried everything. The squirrel abstinence program was a horrible failure. It seems that squirrels have no concept of morality. So they tried to give away free squirrel condoms. But that did not work either, as squirrels did not want to use them. Squirrel genocide was not a good option, because it got all the hippies upset and the squirrels just formed an underground and started to commit acts of sabotage.

So now the city will try a birth control injection that works in male and female squirrels. This means they can party 24/7 and not have to worry about who the squirrel baby daddy be.

The question is why the city is so concerned here. Are they expecting some kind of militant squirrel uprising?

Next up - "Rats chew nose off baby sleeping in crib". Now this one is sad. A baby had its nose and lip gnawed on by a rat. A big nasty rat. According to the urban rat control expert, up to 10,000 people a year in the USA are bitten by rats. Most are the very old and the very young. Inner city / urban areas are more likely to have heavy rat infestation due to things like garbage, abandoned buildings, and population density, slumlords who do not maintain their buildings, and so on. The baby was not living in a dirty house - state officials said the place was very clean.

Anyhow, all sorts of methods were suggested to get rid of rats. Like rat proof garbage cans. But I have another idea.

Cats. If you are worried that you might get bitten by a rat in your home, get a cat. I have 4 cats and have never had a rat bite me. I think there may be a connection there.

And finally - "Kayne West gets $3,900 meal (chef travel extra)". This gets filed under "people with too much money". It seems that a record company is paying an assload of money to fly dinner for 8 people from London to New York. The place the food is from is called "Raj's" and is located in Whles. The food is to be prepared in the restaurants kitchen, shrink wrapped, packed in dry ice, flown by helicopter to LHR airport, then flown to New York. The head chef will travel with the food, monitoring the temperature along the way. The cost of the meal if you are at Raj's is about $17.50 per person. But the record company will have to pay for the food, the shipping, the chef's airfare and hotel in New York, and of course the take the place would have made in the two days it will have to be closed because the chef is gone.

Meanwhile, illegal MP3 downloads are supposed to be putting record companies out of business. YEA RIGHT! When rappers can get record companies to fly in dinner from across the Atlantic Ocean I do not want to hear any bullshit about how much music downloads are costing the industry.

Days.

Welcome to Monday! Yea I know - a lot of people hate Monday. It is the start of yet another work week - unless you are retired, so rich you do not have to work, or have strange days off like Wednesday and Thursday. Having Wednesday and Thursday off sucks the most, because on Friday everyone is all like "YEA! Today is Friday" while you are like "Crap, it is Monday".

But before you think you are going to have a shitty day, consider the day this guy is about to have.

I have done shift work. It really is not that bad. And even if it is, what choice do you have? Not a whole lot except for quit and look for another job. And chances are it will involve shift work too - so you will not be any better off.

But who really wants the same days off as everyone else? I always thought it was kind of cool having weekdays off. The boat ramps were always clear! On the weekends they can be swamped.

Anyhow, the point is that I think people create their own shitty days. Yea every so often crap is going to happen that you have no control over that will make for a shitty day. But those days should not be the norm. In some way, we can create our own reality. Not totally, but in some capacity.

So what kind of day are you going to have today? Mine will be OK. Not great, not shitty - but OK. Unlike the guy digging the tunnel.

Ann Coulter Proves Again She Is A Twit

So you probably heard the story by now. Ann Coulter was asked so speak at a campaign thing for Republican Mitt Romney. Ill bet he is sorry he did that! Allowing Ann to speak is a dangerous thing for someone running for elected office to do. Unless of course you are running against someone and you book Ann to speak at your opponent's rally!

This time, Ann Coulter flat out called John Edwards a "faggot". But Edwards is married, and seems to have had sex with a woman seeing as how he is a baby daddy. Ann - not married and no offspring. HUMMMM.. Of course just because you are a woman, never married but known to have dated a few guys, no kids, and 45 or 46 years old does not mean you are gay. It probably DOES mean you are a total bitch however. Or it could also mean.......

A picture speaks a thousand words. Nice Adam's Apple there "Ann". By the way, here is the entire statement.

"I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards."
* Conservative Political Action Conference, 20

She also made a bunch of jokes about Obama. You know, such highbrow things like making fun of his name! I remember that when I was in THIRD GRADE this was a popular thing to do, but not so much after that. By fifth grade we had progressed to other things.

But what other things has Ann said? Well lets find out! I found a wealth of things.

"I think there should be a literacy test and a poll tax for people to vote."
* Fox News; Hannity & Colmes; August 17, 1997.

"Liberals' only remaining big issue is abortion because of their beloved sexual revolution. That's their cause: Spreading anarchy and polymorphous perversity. Abortion permits that."
* Slander (2002); ISBN 1400046610

LAZY IGUANA OBSERVATION - Ann has never had any kids, and never been married. So is she:
A) Not having sex
B) having sex but using contraception devices she is against
C) having secret abortions
D) A man in drag

"Liberals hate America, they hate flag-wavers, they hate abortion opponents, they hate all religions except Islam, post 9/11. Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like liberals do. They don't have the energy. If they had that much energy, they'd have indoor plumbing by now."
* Slander (2002) ISBN 1400046610, p. 5-6

About 9-11 widows:
"These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis... These self-obsessed women seemed genuinely unaware that 9/11 was an attack on our nation and acted as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them... I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much."
* Excerpt which caused most media controversy Godless: The Church of Liberalism June 2006

"I don't know if [former U.S. President Bill Clinton is] gay. But [former U.S. Vice President] Al Gore - total fag."
* Media Matters; July 26, 2006.

Ann seems obsessed with who is and is not gay huh? Kind of like that Ted Haggard guy was.....

"[Canadians] better hope the United States does not roll over one night and crush them. They are lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent."
* Fox News; Hannity & Colmes, November 30, 2004.

On desegregation:

"Few failures have been more spectacular. Illiterate students knifing one another between acts of sodomy in the stairwell is just one of the many eggs that had to be broken to make the left's omelette of transferring power from states to the federal government."
* Ashcroft And The Blowhard Discuss Desegregation

On what God wants us to do with his creation:

"The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man's dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet--it's yours. That's our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars -- that's the Biblical view."
* Oil Good; Democrats bad; October 12, 2000.

God wants me to have a wet bar? Well OK - I mean if God wants me to have one I better build one! But it would help me a lot Lord if you could send some bucks my way. And a good carpenter, my skills are limited and building a nice wet bar is beyond my abilities.

On science:

"I would like evolution to join the roster of other discredited religions, like the Cargo Cult of the South Pacific. Practitioners of Cargo Cult believed that manufactured products were created by ancestral spirits, and if they imitated what they had seen the white man do, they could cause airplanes to appear out of the sky, bringing valuable cargo like radios and TVs. So they constructed “airport towers” out of bamboo and “headphones” out of coconuts and waited for the airplanes to come with the cargo. It may sound silly, but in defense of the Cargo Cult, they did not wait as long for evidence supporting their theory as the Darwinists have waited for evidence supporting theirs."

Uhhh..Ann - that was an episode of Gilligan's Island. Gilligan tried to make a radio out of coconuts to call for help. What does a TV show have to do with scientific theory?

On Freedom Of Speech

"They're [Democrats] always accusing us of repressing their speech. I say let's do it. Let's repress them. Frankly, I'm not a big fan of the First Amendment."
* University of Florida speech

Ann On Law!

"The presumption of innocence only means you don't go right to jail."
* Fox News; Hannity & Colmes; August 24, 2001.

NOTE - Ann voted in Florida during the 2006 elections. Problem - she did not actually LIVE in Florida at the time. So it was an illegal vote. Illegal means "against the law". So Ann, when are you going right to jail - after a "fair" trial of course!

Ann on politics!

"You don't want the Republicans in power, does that mean you want a dictatorship, gay boy?"
* In response to a student's question: "You don't want the Democrats in power, so does that mean you want a dictatorship?"
* Liberals Are Wrong About Everything; Indiana University, February 23, 2006

Again with the gay cracks! From a "woman" with an Adam's Apple bigger than mine

And my favorite Ann Coulter quote!!!

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."
* This Is War; September 12, 2001.

I like this one so much I made stole a poster from the internet with part of this quote!

Miss September 1939. Of course this poster assumes Ann is actually a "Miss". She claims to be.

Anyway, in spite of all the stupid things this twit of a man/woman/beast thing has said over the years, maybe the Romney speech will finally get her kicked out of the movement. Maybe.

The Eclipse!

To properly read this post you must click the "play" button thing in the right sidebar, under the heading "Iguana Music". I updated it just for this post.

So tonight is some sort of Lunar Eclipse or some such foolishness. We humans have come a long way in our time on the planet. We no longer think that the moon turning red is some sort of horrible sign - we know it is because the Earth is blocking out direct sunlight on the lunar surface. But the moon is not dark because Earth has an atmosphere, and that atmosphere scatters and refracts the sunlight. The refracted light strikes the moon, and is reflected back to Earth. So during the lunar eclipse, the moon turns red. Kind of like how the sunset is red.

Not because some supernatural being is telling us he/she/it is pissed off. No need to start the human sacrifices, or some animal burnt offerings. Just kick back in a lawn chair, sacrifice a beer or whatever your favorite eclipse beverage happens to be, and the moon will return to its normal color is short order. As soon as our planet gets the hell out of the way and stops blocking the sun. How rude! Blocking all the moon's sunlight without even asking. Like a fat guy at the beach when you are trying to catch some rays.

Anyway, it is worth looking at. On the east coast, the moon will rise already into the eclipse. So all of us in North America will miss a portion of this eclipse - you have to be in Africa, the Middle East, or Europe to catch the whole thing.

Those on the West Coast will probably miss the entire event. Sorry! Better luck next time. Lunar eclipses are fairly common - at least more common than solar eclipses so hang in there - you will see one eventually.

What amazes me the most is that so few people bother to catch events like eclipses and comets and stuff today. I will make a thingie out of cardboard to watch even a partial solar eclipse, and weather permitting I watch lunar eclipses too. Is everyone so darn busy that they can not look up for a few minutes every few months? Really. All sorts of crap is up there you know. Nebulas, star clusters, planets, galaxies, double stars, triple stars, double double stars (4 stars very close together), satellites, and so on.

When the comet Hyutake in 1996. The nucleus was so bright I could see it from my front yard in light polluted Miami. So one night I drove for a few hours out to the middle of the State, somewhere in the Everglades between Naples and Miami. The sky there is somewhat dark - or at least as dark of a sky as I can get to without going very far away. It was amazing. The tail of the comet seemed to stretch across the entire sky. It was worth the trip out to Big Cypress Swamp to see that.

I also went out to the swamp to catch comet Hale-Bopp. It was a perfect comet, but not nearly as impressive as Hyautake. Hale-Bopp's tail was a good deal shorter, but it seemed brighter. And you could see the blue ion tail with a pair of binoculars or a small telescope.

And if you were too busy to take a few hours out of your day to get out of town to a dark sky location to see Hyautake - well you missed it. You will probably never get another chance to see something like that in your lifetime. Nobody knew this comet was going to be here, it was discovered shortly before you could see it without a telescope. Same for Hale-Bopp. This is because Hale-Bopp has an orbit that brings it near Earth only once every 3 - 4 THOUSAND years. If you live to see it return, you will be one crusty old fart. I can not seem to find information about Hyautake's orbital period, but I seem to remember it is many thousands of years too.

So when something happens in the sky, if you miss it you miss it. Forever. Except for lunar eclipses. Those keep happening.

These sorts of things should be very popular. First off all, they are free. Looking at the moon does not cost any money. Looking at anything in the sky is free. There are probably astronomy clubs in your area that offer free public viewings on a regular basis. Members of such clubs often have very expensive telescopes that you can look through for - you guessed it - free.

You tell me - is there any better "family" activity you can take part in? The cost is free, the stuff in the sky is amazing, and what the hell you may learn something in the process.