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ANDREW'S
RANTS ARCHIVE #1 THE ANDREW' RANTS ARCHIVE OF PAST COLUMNS CURRENT ANDREW'S RANTS ANDREW'S RANTS ARCHIVE #2 ANDREW'S RANTS ARCHIVE #3 ANDREW'S RANTS ARCHIVE #4 ANDREW'S RANTS ARCHIVE #5 ANDREW'S RANTS ARCHIVE #6 ANDREW'S RANTS ARCHIVE #7 ANDREW'S RANTS ARCHIVE #8 |
OCTOBER
4th, 2004 |
SCREAM
THE WATER DRIPPING Scream the water dripping, dripping, dripping, late at night. Resounding drumming, throbbing, pounding through the walls. Dripping, dripping, dripping echoing down the halls. You need to rise and turn it off yet the floor is very cold, Still that faucet just won't quit it's worn out and it's old. Dripping, dripping, dripping each drop sounds like a gun, Will it never stop? Your head feels like a drum. At last you can't take, that noise through the wall. You fling yourself from the bed and run screaming down the hall. With a mighty surge you smash into the room. Your voice thunders loudly, "Prepare to meet thy doom!" Grabbing up the plunger and with a demonic swing, You begin to lay about you like an insane thing. Finally when your spent, you sink sobbing to the floor. Tomorrow, you promise yourself, you will fix it, and slam the bathroom door. |
SEPTEMBER
20th, 2004 |
DUMB
ASSES IN CARS This past week we spent a while in the local hospital with a relative who is a Dumb Ass. His is a situation that so many people find themselves in. He is 16 and his parents bought him a Corvette. He immediately went out and began to engage in races with other Dumb Asses in the area. This city I now find myself living in has a mind numbing fascination with car racing. In the next city over is what is termed the fastest track on the NASCAR circuit, The Bristol Motor Raceway. So every weekend during the Spring and Summer there are hoards of red necks in campers doing the tailgate party thing along the Bristol highway and filling up all the hotels and local campgrounds. All the local populace might not be able to tell you who the Cabinet Members of the current Administration are, or even who the Vice President is, but they can list every driver on the National Circuit and what they had for lunch. All the local punks deem themselves professional racecar drivers just due to proximity association. My nephew was no different. We begged and pleaded with him to stop hotroding but the skinny little mouth just postured and said, "What use is a fast car, unless you drive it fast?" There are places to race don’t get me wrong. In fact, the local raceway provides several nights a week in between the regular events when locals can run drag races with whatever they can drive onto the track. Cost 10 dollars per race. Betting is not officially sanctioned but happens anyway. But Mr. Know-it-all, like many others of his age group, spurn this safer environment to race in and choose instead the twisty winding back roads of the local countryside. You will come around a corner doing the speed limit minding your own business and be facing two Dumb Ass teenagers who are racing taking up both lanes. Needless to say it has caused many deaths, wrecks and boundless loss of property. My wife’s nephew, who I now refer to as "Dumb Ass", was on a road that is generously called "two lanes" but falls far short of the actual measurements. It has turnouts to pull over on when you meet oncoming traffic. He was racing an opponent, another Dumb Ass teenager, and somehow became airborne as he shot off the road and flew over 90 feet through the air to embed his car in the side of a 2-story brick house. He broke his back in three separate places and it is still to be seen if there will be permanent loss of motor control. The house obviously suffered extensive damage and his car is totaled. His cohort in stupidity managed to escape relatively unscathed taking out only a yield sign and causing minor damage to his car. Dumb Ass is sticking to his story that he was just passing the other car. First of all it was a no passing zone and second according to the police examination he had to be doing in excess of 85 MPH in a 20 zone. Just the week before we had been questioning Dumb Ass if he had purchased insurance and given him advice on not racing. His reasoning was he was young and his reflexes were so fast he could extract himself from any situation and didn’t need insurance. He denied the accusations of racing even though we had reports to the contrary. Now the stupid fool will have his license suspended for a minimum of 2 years and since he had no insurance he will have to pay off the new car and the damages to the home as well as any fines levied by the courts. What else is a fast car for if you aren’t going to drive it fast? Hell, I have a gun, it’s made to shoot people but to date I have yet to do so. It’s called common sense and restraint. Just because a car will drive 130 miles per hour doesn’t mean you blast around all day trying to prove it can go that fast. I think this preponderance to be a Dumb Ass with a car must be inherited. Because his father was the same way, His father, Jim, had a Dodge Shelby Cobra when he was 18 if you can believe that. What a fantastic car. A collector’s item. His father, a hard working man of impeccable morals and values, allowed him to have an open line of credit at a local service station under his father’s name. Jim racked up a five hundred dollar tab at the local convenience store on gas because he was out racing that cobra. When the store called his father about the size of the bill he confiscated the car and sold it to the first buyer for the cost of the gas. $530.00, Can you imagine the luck of the person who picked that beauty up for that price. It just goes to show you that he was a Dumb Ass when it came to cars and now his son has proved himself likewise. Fortunately he didn’t kill anyone. If someone had been in the room his car smashed they would have been killed. I am all in favor of teenagers being restricted on their driving privileges. For instance several states are trying to pass laws to prohibit 19 and under drivers from driving after dark. Or changing the driving age to 18 instead of 16. Hell, my kid is turning 15 this month and will be eligible to get a Learners Permit and he can’t remember to flush the commode or put the milk away. I am positive he won’t be able to remember what a Stop Sign is or any of the dozens of rules involved with the operation of a motor vehicle. I told him he could drive when I was dead. Case closed. One less Dumb Ass out there trying to kill me on the road. But not all Dumb Asses in cars are teens. Many that manage to not kill themselves off in the early years manage to learn enough to survive and become a bigger danger to the rest of us than teens ever were. Case in point, the little old geriatric ladies in their huge land yachts. A huge 4 door mid 80s Cadillac or Buick Roadmaster. They are hunched forward in the seat and peering over the wheel. Their eyesight gone, the reflexes nonexistent, driving a virtual tank of a car and woe and be damned anything that gets in their way. If you think I am kidding just go to Scottsdale, Arizona on one of those rare days when it rains. This happens about twice a year there. I have seen this phenomenon myself and was warned about it and didn’t believe it until I actually saw it happen and was almost killed in the process. All the nearly dead mummified old people who move out to Scottsdale for the dry air and year round warmth drive huge lead sled cars. The roads are always hot and the tires get really good traction. As a result none of them ever change their tires when they get bald because they never notice a loss of traction. It’s like having racing slicks on a hot track. But when it rains the ground is so dry and hard packed the water just stands on the surface rather than soak in. The roads have a film of water on them and the tires have no tread. You see where this is going don’t you? They all get out after a rain and its hydroplane city. Crashes and pile-ups everywhere. The best any sane person can do is run inside the nearest building when it rains and stay there for hours after it stops until the living dead crawl back home that evening to go to bed. Others that pose a threat to us all are the ones that have a cell phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other trying to juggle them around constantly and drive in traffic at the same time. Or perhaps the Pompadour Lady with the Poodle on her lap bouncing around while she is trying to drive. Then you get the Soccer Moms who are trying to retrieve something constantly from the back of the vehicle by twisting around and even though the vehicle is still traveling forward. They are looking in the backseat digging around for who knows what or perhaps beating a kid. Or the couple so interested in sucking face they pay no attention to the world around them. My God people, if there is something that important that you need to be distracted from the task of driving then pull over and take care of it. I’m not saying that accidents don’t happen; but, that’s what they are . . . accidents. Just don’t increase the chances of you having one at my expense. Pay attention and don’t be a Dumb Ass. |
SEPTEMBER
6th, 2004 |
STUBBING
UP Have you ever noticed how most people will just stub up when they walk into a store? A big example is when you are behind a group of Inbred, Slope-headed Degenerates and you are entering Wal-Mart or K-Mart. As soon as they are inside the door they stub up and crane their necks back and begin to stare around. Kind of like a bear coming out of hibernation in the Spring. They begin to gawk and wave and point out items of interest while their feet remain stubbornly motionless. They show no consideration for those behind them who are in the same position they were mere moments before. Namely trying to get into the store, make a purchase and get back out. Now suddenly you are faced with the Clampets in front of you, drool and spittle leaking from their lower lips as they stare in wide eyed wonder at all the bright colors and marketing materials. Perhaps the bright lights numb their brains further than they already are. You have to push past them and elbow them aside as you attempt to retrieve a cart to do your shopping. Most stores have so much trouble with this phenomenon that they hire someone to stand by the door and greet these snapper heads and help direct them along, handing them a cart and booting them deeper into the store with an obligatory "Welcome" on their lips. For Gods sake people, it’s freaking Wal-Mart! Most of you have been here countless times before and you still act as if it is some New Grand Experience. That’s kinda sad when you think about it. These are the same people who slow down on the Interstate when it is one lane. Now follow this reasoning. You have two lanes of traffic and it’s traveling along at 65 to 70 miles per hour. Signs appear and you find that the road will narrow to one lane for whatever reason in a few miles. Everyone consolidates down to one lane and you’re still zipping along doing 55 to 60 MPH. Then "Blammo!" you are going 15 because some Dumb Ass way up the line has stubbed up. This persons pint sized brain couldn’t cope with the road narrowing and assumes that it is less maneuvering room and therefore he must slow down. Yet this same Bubby Joe will readily do 60 on a one lane twisty country back road that is much narrower and much more precarious. There is no perspective in the myopic view of this brain dead Neanderthal. As soon as you’re past the constriction its back up to 70 MPH. Dumb Ass has found the accelerator again. It’s the same mentality that caused trouble on the mountain roads in Eastern KY when I was growing up. Most roads are only two lanes even the highways because of the tremendous cost in building them. You literally have to move mountains to create a flat spot to drive on. But the area is filled with Coal Trucks, huge 40 plus ton Behemoths that slow to a crawl when they hit a hill. As a result the Highway Department usually has a passing lane on the uphill side of the mountains, it narrows to two lanes at the top then the oncoming traffic has the passing lane on their uphill climb. Now these same snapper heads that stub up in the grocery store when faced with a new display for Hemorrhoid Treatment are the same ones that will drive 30 MPH on the downhill side when you are faced with 2 lanes of oncoming traffic. But as soon as they get on the up hill section and the road widens out to two lanes they speed up to 70 and you have to gun your engine and work at it to pass the Bastard. There are several theories as to why they do this. One is they see the road get wider and think "Oh, it's safer now, I can speed up!" regardless that they were just traveling 20 MPH below the speed limit while using the same amount of space. The other school of thought is that they are such Bastards they want to have the power rush of keeping everyone behind them. It’s a trip for them because their life is so magnificently insignificant that the only perceived importance they will ever have is that of keeping you behind them on the highway. These pathetic wretches of human trash will do anything to feel like they are in control of any aspect of the Universe around them. So they strive to keep you behind them on the highway by speeding up in the passing zones and then slowing down to their actual IQ ratio somewhere around the mid 40s when they are in an area where it is impossible to pass them. The third theory is that they have no idea what they are doing. It’s amazing that their brains can even generate enough processing power to walk, let alone drive a vehicle. They are just drifting along on the road varying their speed and position as a pure visceral reaction to the environment they find themselves in. Sort of like brine shrimp or those little microscopic Creel Critters in the ocean. They just drift through life letting instinct take over and shunt them around with no conscious thought of what they are doing. This last theory is my explanation of choice. Most people are not malicious enough to want to keep you behind them and the same applies to the first theory. There are not enough of those stub-up drivers with a high enough intelligence quota to justify the idea that they are making a conscious decision to slow down and speed up. No, it's just basic animal instinct. If you were looking at a Chart of the Human Evolution from Monkey to Present, these people would be about 4th from the left. I know it’s not right to classify people and to make stereotypes of certain groups; but, My God! some people are just so stupid its amazing they even manage to breed, but somehow they manage to do so without hurting themselves too much. Stubbing up, what can you do other than push on past them and hope that life will say, "Hey look this guy evolved and you didn’t, you loose". The entire situation is often summed up by me in a statement I yell at my cats as they get underfoot . . . "You have the Entire World to be in . . . why do you want to be right where I am?" |
AUGUST
30th, 2004 |
I
WANT MY NICKELS BACK When I was a child in the early years of Grade School I remember a lot of news that was delivered to us in a weekly circular called a Weekly Reader. It is what probably made me the news junkie that I am today. In fact I keep THE DRUDGE REPORT as my homepage on my Internet browser. I cant turn the fool thing on without spending a half hour reading the current headlines and clipping the interesting ones to folders on my jump drive to read later in depth. My Weekly reader had up to date stories about President Nixon when he went to China. It was even worded it so all of us little screaming idiots in the first grade could understand how important it was for us as Americans to open up new trade avenues so that we would have even more poorly made cheap plastic junk products to buy from yet one more third world underdeveloped country. I remember reading all about the Alaskan pipeline and how it was going to solve the energy crises especially the gas crunch. This was back when there was actually gas rationing and you couldn’t take vacations because of the shortage and people waited hours in line in California to buy gas. This pipeline was supposed to be a modern engineering miracle. It was going to pump billions of barrels of oil down south to the refineries so that America would be freed of its dependence on foreign oil. Each week we would see pictures of this massive pipeline traveling through the wilderness and occasionally there would be the obligatory shot of a polar bear to reassure us that the local wild life was not being harmed by the project. We were all so excited. The news each night went on and on about the gas crunch and how there was no end in sight. We were taught that the oil would run out in just 20 years at the present rate of consumption. Looking back now more than 20 years later I realize it was just supply and demand economics and we the consumer paid the price of international politics shaking hands with the big oil companies. But back to this pipeline in Alaska. Here we were reading about it each week in our Weekly Reader and watching on TV as various talking heads would expound on their views about how it was going to solve America’s dependency on foreign crude. We were encouraged to collect nickels in a jar and bring them to school so that they could be sent to help fund the pipeline project. That’s right we little first graders were hit up for our candy money and meager allowances to help pay for the Alaskan pipe line. I remember being all worked up to do my part after the pep talk from the Principal in our classroom. I went home and asked my mom for some nickels so I could help America be a great country free from the scourge of foreign oil. She put me to work in the back yard pulling dandelions. We had a bumper crop that year and she told me that for each 50 dandelions I pulled up I would get a nickel. She handed me a fork and showed me how she wanted it done by digging the fork into the ground just below the stem right into the roots and prying upwards so that the roots were yanked up as well, this was to prevent the weed from growing back. I worked like a mad monkey all that weekend and yanked up dandelions by the hundreds. Being only 6 I had no idea of the value of a nickel and its relationship to the work I was putting in. All I knew was that I was working so very hard and that my hard work was going to help America be a better place. My knees were grass stained and my little hands had blisters from prying with the fork over and over again. Monday came and my mother gave me two one dollar bills and told me to have them changed into nickels at Ms. Turners store on the way to school. I went into the old country store just one block from the school and changed my money into a glorious handful of shiny bright new nickels. I had 40 of them. Forty! I had never seen so many nickels in one place before. I was so excited as I ran on to the school. During the first period the teacher placed a large glass jar on her desk and called each student up where she would count the nickels into the jar and write the total on the board. The first kid up had 5 dollars and placed the entire treasure into the jar I was mortified by how many nickels there were and how hard he must have worked to get that many. But soon I came to realize with a dawning horror that I had been short changed literally by my mother. These kids had just asked their parents for the money and vast sums totaling sometimes more that 20 dollars had been handed over to fill the jar with a virtual fortune by my calculation. They had each not worked one whit for their nickels and as a result it didn’t really matter to them how it was earned or really what it was used for. It was all just a game to them to see if they could outdo one another with their parent’s money. When my turn came I placed my paltry 2 dollars into the jar. Someone sniggered and I felt mad because I had worked my hands until they had blistered digging up over 2000 dandelions by the roots with a small fork. I felt that my portion of the total was just as important as any of theirs even if it wasn’t nearly as much but the snide comments hurt non-the less. The nickels were all taken away and that’s the last I remembered of the incident until this past week. What I want to know now is whatever happened to the oil in that pipeline. Here we are in another gas crunch. It takes me almost 40 dollars to fill my tank as gas nears 2 dollars a gallon here and is already well beyond that in some of the urban areas. Where is all that American oil that was supposed to ease the gas crunch? Why does OPEC even affect us at all? I got to thinking about that pipeline and did some research on the net and found that we are selling all of that oil to Japan and other nations that we have trade agreements with at a far lower cost than what they could purchase it from OPEC. We are practically giving it away and not using it ourselves. Why? Because some environmentalist wacko decided that some chemical levels in the American crude were detrimental to the environment without a variety of pollution controls in the refining process. So the cost to comply with clean air standards when processing the oil would prohibitive. Did they not know this little fact before they started the multibillion-dollar pipeline project? So to summarize America sells its oil reserves to foreign interest at cut rates while the American consumer (namely me) gets screwed by huge oil companies who are in bed with OPEC and the government. In fact this past quarter Mobil and Exxon both reported all time record profits for their shareholders, yet they claim they are not sticking it to the American consumer and profiting from the higher crude prices. Right, like any of us really believes that. I didn’t used to believe the rhetoric about the government being in on the whole deal and that certain politicians were letting the situation continue because it profited them personally. But now I see how it is and I am no longer blinded by an altruistic belief in my government’s desire for what is best for its citizens. And speaking of innocent altruism I remember that little 6 year old red headed kid who worked so hard for that handful of nickels, so that he could make his world a better place. It was all a scam and I was had. I was taken advantage of and lied to and not one bit of my hard labor and hopes came to anything. Not due to lack of faith and trying but because my teachers my government and my parents all lied to me. The money more than likely went to pay for an expensive lunch on Capitol Hill for a Senator meeting with the President of Mobil Oil and some Sheik while they discussed how to further advance their own bank accounts at the cost of the American public. I tell you what I want! I want my nickels back. That’s right I want my Damn nickels back. Do you hear me George Bush? Nixon can you hear me in your grave? The Exxon Valdez didn’t spill oil along that stretch of coastline it was the black vile blood from the hearts of all those who stole the hopes and dreams of a younger generation all those years ago. I want my 2 dollars in nickels back. GIVE ME BACK MY NICKELS !!! |
