TV....now I love watching tv.  Especially in the winter I spend a  lot of time watching tv.  Movies, oh yeah.. the western is probably my favorite then comes comedy then action flicks.  Not into cry in your beer kissy kissy love stories and these tear-jerker stories...leave them for the paperbacks.  Unfortunately Hollywood  doesn't make many good new westerns and when they do they have circum to making some kind of "social point" out of it..I am sorry folks but why does a movie always have to have some message to society weaved into it.  Now don't get me wrong I think TV does have some responsibility to the viewing public to provide some educational factors in its programing but why cant they just make a good shootem up western or a comedy that is made just for entertainment value.  Today's comedy seems to be centered around sex and vulgar language, that's sad.  Sitcoms are about as bad as I can recall, who told Hollywood that smart mouth children saying one liners that are way out of there age comprehension was funny, not only is it not funny it is a bad influence on children watching it.
PARANOIA, YOU AND THE TV... The media thrives on keeping you paranoid.  If you paid attention to the TV and actually were sucked into what they are trying to convince you, you would be afraid to open your eyes of a morning.  The commercials tell you your breath stinks, your an embarrassment to society cuz your hair is falling out, your laundry isn't clean, your skin isn't socially acceptable, you need to lose weight, you are hip if you eat at McD's but doesn't matter because at some point in time everything you eat will kill you anyway.  Don't drink and drive...this message brought to you by "Billy Bobs" convenient drive through liqueur store.  They now have a pill for an ailment you have never heard of but you will wake up with it tomorrow cuz now you can go get a pill for it but side affects will include bad breath, baldness, weight gain and if spilled on your shirt may leave a stain....My suggestion is get up go to Billy Bobs and get a beer..Damn..I seen a commercial about "Bitter beer face"..sure don't want that... 

ON DISABILITY... well at liest thoughts as they relate to My disability.  Please understand these comments are as they pertain to me and My disability and  I do not intend to present it as a universal opinion.  First of all what the heck is with this politically correct nomenclature crap.  Years ago people in my "condition" were cripples, then for some reason some emotional therapist decided the word Handicapped was less obtrusive (to whom ... them or us ?), well next we become Disabled followed by Physically Disabled and now we have progressed to Physically Challenged .  At no point in this progression of verbal description have I gained any physical abilities .. gotten anymore intelligent or seen my wages go up. I have never been a wheelchair militant, My disability was not caused by you as a society, it was a result of my own actions and so I don't expect you as a society to be responsibility for my life or the world I live in. Handicapped parking is nice but I am not going to cry if it isn't there or unusable.  On that note..worthless handicap parking, now this does bug me..If your going to make a handicap parking spot, make the dumb thing usable I will venture to say that 80% of designated handicap parking spots are useless to most handicapped people. The number one problem I find with the "token" spots are they are built on an angle, either slanting so your van or car is not level.  This creates havoc with wheelchair lifts and getting on or off them. A person with a walker or bad balance it is dangerous as heck and to add to that...throw a little snow or ice on.  I think sometimes our society gets a little carried away with "accessibility" .  I read something some time ago about Braille being on a drive through teller at a bank...I thought it was just a joke but low and behold one day I was going through the bank and stopped at the electronic teller just to see if I could reach it and there it was...Braille..now that is going overboard.   I do feel uncomfortable when someone refers to my dealing with the disability as "having courage", as I see it there is nothing courageous about it, this is just life.  Courage is these very young children born with or otherwise contracted a crippling disease or disability that they had no input what so ever, dealing with the unfairness of that is courage .  I also feel uncomfortable with being around someone who cant see the humorous side of the situation.  Now There is nothing funny about any handicap condition BUT the condition leads to some humorous situations at times.  I once decided to wash my car at a do-it-yourself car wash, I must explain that I have no hand function, I can't grip worth a darn. So I got out in my chair, shut the door and rolled over to the doober you put the money in.  I took out the washing wand and put it under my arm and of course had to use both hands to stick the quarter in the machine, well when the second quarter went in the thing fired up and that wand promptly flew out from under my arm like a scud missile, on the way by it smacked me in the head and darn near knocked me out. That thing flew around like a snake on steroids beating the crap out of me, the side of the car and anything else it could reach.  There was a lady observing all of this and she finally got the nerve to attack the spray demon and finally got a hold of it but not before soaking her and me.  She was trying to be polite but I could see she was just about to split wide open with laughter and I made the wise remark about "You can dress us up but you can't take us out in public" and she cracked up all the time apologizing for laughing but she said it was the funniest thing she had seen.  Well it was funny even from  my side and you can bet I would have laughed seeing something like that.  My point is life has its funny moments and I think if you can see the humorous side life is much more enjoyable.  You can laugh with me or at me as long as you do it with  some element of respect .
Life insurance ... weird idea, You betting your going to die, they are betting your going to live and all the time you hope they win the bet !

OF HOSES,TRAINS AND SPRINKLERS.
Being in a wheelchair one of the many more bazaar findings of this rolling along life style is the realization that inanimate objects are always thought of as mindless pieces of something or another that just provide their appointed function and that’s it. Well not true. Point in fact is water hoses, power cords and sprinklers. I have often said that a water hose or power cord will attack a wheelchair and wind itself up on every possible wheel or brake lever as possible and do it from several feet away. Honest truth. Sprinklers have adjustments on them that do nothing more than keep you playing with them just to try to figure out what they are suppose to do.

I use those “rain bird” type that the water slappes this little arm and it makes it move back and forth, how it works no one knows, just one of those mysteries of life. Now I am not a stupid person by far but adjusting one of those things to shoot where you want them is a new learning experience every time I do it. There is just some mental block there that I can’t ever get past. I use this type because I can set them from the driveway or sidewalk and not have to roll out in the middle of the yard as you would with the circular or wave type.

The objective today was to set the sprinkler on the back yard, There is a spot on the driveway in back where if I set the sprinkler it will hit about 80% of the yard and only have to move it once. So here we go, now the hose has a mind of its own and it is one of those that kinks at the slightest touch. Well after a bout with getting the 50 foot of kinks out of it I managed to get it strung to the “spot” 50 foot from the faucet, I know this because the hose is 50 foot long. Anyway I take an eyeball at the needed directions and make the appropriate settings. Lay down the sprinkler and cruise 50 ft back and turn it on only to find out that in the process of laying it down I got it 180 degree backwards and it was shooting over the drive and fence and hitting the neighbors car. Now I have 3 valves in front of me with hosed connected to all 3. What are the odds of getting the right knob the first try? Not good so thank God the window on this side was rolled up. Back up the drive and turn the sprinkler around, back down the drive and turn it on again. Bummer it is missing the corner by the dead rose bushed. Turn it off, back up the 50ft of drive drag it up on my lap whilst it promptly pee’s all over my lap while I adjust it. It does this on purpose because before I drag it up there I shake it so the water is all out but yet the whole time I am trying to adjust it it is dribbling and an occasional “squirt”. OK now BACK down the drive, turn on the water and S & $ T I adjusted the wrong side, not only is it still missing the dead roses but now it is flying across the drive and hitting the Ranchero and its $1200 wheels. Damb..wrong knob again. Got it off. BACK UP the drive once again. Knowing it is going to pee on me again I drag some extra hose, hold it up high and shake the heck out of it. Up on my lap it goes re adjust the little slide goobers…eyeball the settings, set it down and wheel back down the drive. Turn it on and man just almost right but it is over shooting the roses on one end but just short of hitting the edge of the grass and drive on the other. Well easy fix. Turn it off….BACK UP THE 50 FT AH but this time no messy with the adjustments, just turn the sprinkler a little…pretty darn smart. So I turn around so I can reach the hose with a bent close hanger and get the hose up on my lap and carefully tweak the sprinkler just enough. Now the situation is this, the hose now is pretty stiff due to the water running through it so when I go to lay it down it tries to move the sprinkler, well the only way around this problem was to lay the hose back over my head and drop it so it would lay flat without moving the sprinkler. No problem, very carefully doing this and as the hose hit the ground the sprinkler stayed put…got it. Back down the drive I go. Now I bet you wonder where the train fit into all of this. Well as you know I am real close to the train tracks and when they come through it is sometimes deafening, you couldn’t hear your head blow off until you noticed your lower lip laying on the ground in front of you. Well here come the train, anyway down the drive I go and crank on the water, looking up as I do I discovered the sprinkler was nowhere in site but soon found out it had tagged along behind me about 8 ft as the hose had hung up on my Wheelie bars on its way down over my head and I didn’t feel the drag as it is downhill to the faucet and with the train clambering by I didn’t hear the thing skidding along the cement. As I said there are 3 valves in front of me and none of the three seemed to turn that heathen sprinkler off until it had shot me multiple times. I know I heard laughter and there was no one here…I pushed over 400 foot to set a sprinkler 8 foot away from the faucet that watered the back of my head……..its that sprinkler I tell ya.
True story....notn.

On...Men from Mars, ET and intelligent life... Is there intelligent life other than mankind out there?  Well now I have never personally seen an alien from another planet that I know of but just because I haven't seem one doesn't mean they don't exist.  If you look at the research it shows more pro than con.  I look at it this way, can mankind be so arrogant as to believe that we are the most intelligent being in the whole existence of millions of solar systems.  We  destroy our own habitat, kill our own out of greed, sometimes shear pleasure and at times just for kicks.  All done intentionally and even though we see the problem we continue to act.  It could be questioned we are not even #1 on the planet.  Think about the fact mankind belief that we are the most intelligent life form is defined by a word that was coined by...yes..mankind.   What if a dog had coined the word, might take on a little different light.  Lets see I as a human spend my money to buy my dog Buzzard's food, I prepare my dogs food , my dog sleeps in a house out of the cold and rain and snow that I spend my money on to heat and cool.  My dog has her medical bills paid by me, she don't work, sleeps all day and here is something to think about, my dog can understand english.  I say "you hungry" she heads for the food bowl wagging her tail, I say "want to go for a ride" she gets all excited and runs to the van, I say "want out" she runs to the door. Now I cant understand dog..I try to speak her language ...bow wow.. she perks her ears and cocks her head and looks at me like I was a victim of a head injury at some point in time.  She barks or whines and I have no idea what she is saying until she starts to squat and then its too late ... then I yell at her cuz I was not intelligent enough to understand "dog" ..Now if she coined the word intelligent where would we rank?

Bottom line is yes I do believe there is an intelligent life form other than mankind out in the vast spaces somewhere.  Have they visited our planet? For sure possible and I even lean a little to the probable side.  Should we fear them?  Well if they don't exist there is nothing to fear, if the do exist then I think understanding why they are here would be more important than fear.   Mankind by nature of rejects and fears anything we don't understand. Kind of a bad habit we have, if we don't understand something we usually first reject it then fear it then usually try to destroy it.
                isn't it interesting that all research for intelligent life has a antenna or dish pointed into space..

On Music... Ahh I do enjoy music. Country, gospel, classical, rock,  I can listen to about any kind of music except Rap, if I understood how it relates to music maybe I could listen to it.  I had trouble for many years with enjoying Lawrence Welk stuff, you know that "Champaign" music then in my collage years I found the trick,  Kill about 3 bottles of the bubbly and the "Welkster" becomes Led Zeppelin with a squeeze box.  Mood music, now there is a concept that is odd.  Isn't all music "mood" music? I mean isn't that kind of the whole thing with listening to music, to create or change your mood?  Now lets say I find I am just too darn happy, well we whip up a little older "there is a tear in my beer" country stuff on the stereo, brings ya down just right.  Feeling a little mellow...hey a little Chopin fix ya right up.  But now when I get up in the morning I need a picker upper.  That means ROCK and by that I mean ......
ROCK..60's, 70's, 80's, country rock, SCREAMING  GEE TAR...     THUNDER DRUMEN ROCK....you know that crank up the volume knob and base till the windows shake, the dog heads under the bed and the goldfish on the other side of the room is holding onto the side of the fishbowl, eyes the size of a set of "56" Buick hubcaps kind of rock...CAN YOU DIG IT MY BROTHER..GOD BLESS AMERICA,  ROCK-N-ROLL, AMERICAN IRON AND 100 WATT WOOFERS...DO I HEAR AN AMEN...
ooops sorry got a little carried away there. Buddy, John and Elvis aren't dead..they just went home.....

ON SPORTS...I enjoy sports, in my younger years I played most of the major sports in school.  I wasn't exceptionally good at any of them but usually made the team.  I do believe that sports in our schools play an important part in the mental as well as the physical development of young people. The physical stuff is pretty much self explained and understood  but if coached correctly there are mental attributes that result from sports that young people may never be subject to that might just make an impact in life down the road. The interesting thing here is that some of what they learn they are not even aware they are learning because they are for the most part thinking about the running, shooting or whatever.  When I graduated from High School if you had ask me what useful lessons I had learned in my 4 years of sports well I probably would have come up with "don't say YES MAM to a 6 foot 280 pound coach?" one  that is old school..you know..pain stays in the brain type.  When I got injured I remember laying face down on a striker frame starring at the floor and having the doctor tell me that I had broke my neck, this was a real bummer cuz I always thought you died when you did that.  Anyway I remember thinking of the stupidest sports saying that ever fell out of a coaches mouth "when the going gets tough the tough get going" what a lame bunch of words.  Oddly enough it must have triggered something because other little mental ditties.  One thing that my coach taught me was  knowing the difference between winning, losing and being defeated which may sound mundane but lets look at it.  The world of sports is not unlike the real world.  It is a steady state of competition.  You compete in the job market, politics, love ( oh yes..don't kid yourself) and in some cases your in a deadlock game just to get through the day. The mental preparation, mental toughness and understanding the game becomes very important.  Now there are three endings to any competition, win, lose, and being defeated but only two ultimate results in life's little competition, you win or your defeated. Now waite ..you can lose and you can be defeated, same thing ? Well that depends on what you did with the loss.  Winning is not always defined by the scoreboard numbers or the finnish line or whatever benchmark is used nor is defeat.  Winning and Defeat is more defined by what you learned from the loss.  If my team loses a game by 2 points on the scoreboard then the real game of winning and defeat is now a factor of by the next game did we learn and understand WHY we lost, WHAT to do about it and NOT make the same mistakes. Now if all this was understood and rectified in reality you won. If on the other hand if not then you were defeated..actually you defeated yourself.  This principal shadows life.  Now you might think I am referring to a more material win or defeat scenario, well no not so..think about it...
(hint..you either go out smiling or you go out cussing..bet I go out smiling, thank you coach T.Neel)).  Well I got a little long winded there but will be back with my thoughts on professional sports

PLEASE COME BACK AGAIN ....I AINT DONE YET.........
FLAME-at-WILL.