Expand my strength

...for the size of the life You've planned for me.


There's No App For Depression from Keystone Church on Vimeo.

A couple of quotes I really liked from this sermon:

• "Every pastor/mom/dad plays hurt."
• "Sin is fruit forward, with a bitter finish."

For you adrenaline junkies

Wanna try this?

Psalm 19:14

Haven't posted any Linda lately:



With harmony vocals from the late Messrs. Kenny Edwards and Andrew Gold.

Taggers is just cold, man...

This is for Corner...

A few feet from where I was parked one day this week.

Once again, I did not see him at the Stock Show (on a different day).

Well, isn't this special?

As if anyone needed more evidence the Occupy movement are just a bunch of boorish hooligans.

Even a liberal PR flack should know that this won't gain much public support.

Idiots.

Is this the quick-build kit?

How to build a 737 in under three minutes:

Sheer lunacy

I have hiked mountain ridge lines like this, with a full backpack, and 100%+ grades on either side, near Innsbruck. A slip would have resulted in a fall/slide of several hundred feet or more.

Another song for you

Pursuant to Chupacabra's comment that composer Leon Russell's is the better version of this song, I hereby offer the dear reader the opportunity to make his/her own choice:



I do believe we can agree Mr. Charles has the better fashion sense, and he wasn't even looking at what he was wearing (I don't understand why he [Charles] used the Casio, when there's a real piano right next to it)...

Truth withholding nothing

Of late, blogger Thunder Tales has posted quite a few Leon Russell clips.

Here's one of Leon's best, performed immaculately by the incomparable Ray Charles (I've kinda fallen behind in my posting of songs by dead guys...).



I heard Russell's version before Ray's, and Karen Carpenter's before that.

No App for Angry Old Men [or Women]

This week's installment from Keystone:


There's No App For Anger from Keystone Church on Vimeo.

While you can't see it in the video (the auditorium screens are, well, off-screen, Brandon starts the sermon by playing 'Angry Birds').

Wanna trade?

How about we fire the 100 idiots and their staffs in D.C. , and replace them with the residents (if there are any) of this community?

I bet we'd be 100 times better off!

An AntiqueStore

Todd, maybe your buddy's been hanging out here:

Cultural Obsexxion?

Pastor Ed Young of Grapevine's Fellowship mega-church has followed up his advice to his congregation two or three years ago, where he suggested to his married congregants to practice boinking for seven days in a row, by staging a 24 hour 'John & Yoko' bed-in atop his church under the DFW air traffic flight path, to raise awareness of the importance of intimacy in marriages.

OK, I think it get that, kind of.  But it does make me question whether it's about healing marriages or creating a bit of sensationalism in our already sex-obsessed culture.  Pastor Young says that Church is the logical place to discuss sex, after the home, and I agree that it's surely a better place to hear God's plan for human intimacy than seeing it on TV, the movies, and the internet.  I'm just not sure if God's trying to put it as much in the spotlight as Pastor Young is trying to do.

The pastor at my Church doesn't shy away from the subject, calling sexual intimacy between a man and a woman one of God's great gifts.  But, so far, he hasn't challenged the congregation to a stamina-fest, passed out little blue pills, or made it the centerpiece of the message.

About three years ago, I signed up for one of those online dating services - never dated anyone from there (that I hadn't already met), and finally decided to turn off my profile.  But, occasionally, I still get emails telling me I have new 'matches' that I should check out.

So, I logged onto the site, which displays thumbnails of the gals it thinks I would be compatible with.  Some of the screen names lack images, but I notice one that has an image unlike the others - it's a tray of cupcakes with cherries on top of them.  Of course I wonder "what's up with that?" and click on the link to find out.

The profile in question says the woman's 51 or 52 - no spring chick, but neither am I, so it's all good.  The self-description is rather sparse, includes the typical caveat 'must not be looking for intimate encounter', and under Interests lists only 'ANR'.

ANR?  Active noise reduction - is she a Dolby fan?  Alaska NORAD Region - an Air Force vet?

No.  I'll save you the Google search...it's apparently Adult Nursing Relationship - an alternate name for erotic lactation fetish.  I guess that explains the Latte in her screen name, huh?

But, I was a bit confused, as back in my dating days, if one got so far as to, uh, you know, check out the nursing goods, one was probably as good as home to having an intimate encounter.

There's a whole world out there I know nothing about.

And, lastly (for this post anyway) on the subject of obsession, we hear that Steven Tyler has issued sort of an amicus statement in favor of curtailing the language and prurient content of broadcast TV.
As a libertarian/conservative, I generally favor minimal government intrusion into our daily lives.  But, as Paul Harvey used to say "Self government won't work without self discipline."   The producers of 'entertainment' on the left and right coasts seem to have little use for self discipline.

Many evenings I have the TV on, and hear a constant stream of (OK, I'm gonna sound like a prude here - get over it) trash from such programs as How I Met Your Mother, 2-1/2 Men, Whitney and others.  Maybe I'm overly sensitive, since my daughter does not live with me, that I don't know if she's  being exposed to this kind of fare.

The libs and Larry Flynt types will surely scream that they have a First Amendment right to fill our airwaves with as many of George Carlin's Seven Words (I've written elsewhere that as a high schooler, I could recite, spot-on, several Carlin and Pryor routines - ultimately, that wasn't much of an accomplishment) as they wish.  I disagree - let them do as they wish on cable and dish, but as long as the airwaves are deemed 'public', then 'community standards' apply, and I'm part of the community.

Isn't it interesting that even Steven Tyler, who I think we can agree has more than a passing familiarity with Sex, Drugs, and Rock-n-Roll, says prime-time TV has crossed the line and needs to be dialed back?

What's this?

Seen the other day near Boyd, looks like a stage from an Atlas 5 rocket, but made of steel.

I'm thinking it's maybe a pylon base for a wind turbine - any other guesses?

When I was a kid, our first-order Metromess suburban neighbors across the street had a 'ranch' near Jacksboro (that's Jackistan for RPM), northwest of Barton's Chapel (Hwy 4 & FM 2210).  It wasn't so much a ranch, as a little under a half-section, where we'd spend many weekends a year riding horses, motorcycles, or deer hunting (I never got a deer on that property, but did run over a rattlesnake with my Suzuki). 

Never been there, but I want to vacation in Wizard Wells sometime.

Since 114 and 183 both ran through our town, we'd sometimes go out there via 114/380, and other times by 183 to 199 and 2210.  Before I was a licensed driver, it was always a treat when Dad would let me drive from 380 south, or from 199 west, out to Tom's ranch.  In the intervening 30-35 years, I've been out in that general area maybe 4-5 times.  (To give you an idea how long it'd been - one of the last 'ranch' trips was an aerial visit in Dad's Sundowner, flying from Amon Carter/Greater Southwest Airport, before it closed to general aviation.)

So, last week, I'm out in that area, and looking south from 380, notice a line of wind turbines.  Checking the Bing.maps birdseye from home that evening, I found that some of the eastern towers are on our old friend's former property, at the southern edge of a ridge/plateau line that, if my Texas hydrology hypothesis is correct, divides the Brazos and Trinity river basins.

If you look close/enlarge, you can see the turbines on the horizon.

Is this what defense cutbacks entails?

Recently, military spending cutbacks were announced.

Not to worry, there are many ways to practice for global preparedness that are cheaper than outfitting F4-Phantom II jets as R/C models and blowing them out of the sky.

Here's what our friends in India are doing (scroll past the India Gate video to the motorcyle stunt vid).

Yeah, that ought to work well if we ever have to fight the 'Battle of the Circuses'.


You know, India and Pakistan both have the Bomb.  If they had a big-time war with each other, we could move tech support back to Topeka.  I just wanna make sure to save Ranjit and Chad first, though - they keep my cellphone working.

Oh, and Johnny-5, too:

Speaking of Bakers...

Has the restoration effort stalled again?

And another...

This could also be the guy who makes the doughnuts:

Dew, do you have this inflatable?

Seagulls or Pigeons?

I don't know which, but this group was shopping at the Sam's Club in NRH a couple of weeks back.

It appears that a couple of them, with a good dry rub of jalapeño and sage, and wrapped in bacon, could make a meal.  They're huge.

I tried to find some info on the interwebs, but it didn't help much:

Gulls are a taxonomic family while 'sea-gulls' are a generalisation based on morphological similarities in predominantly coastal and pelagic gull species.

The term ''sea gull' is erroneously used to describe many species of gull seen in both coastal and inland habitats. The gulls most commonly referred to as sea-gulls in the UK include the herring gull, the lesser black-backed gull and the greater black-backed gull. Worldwide there are probably many more such generalisations.

Pigeons are near-passerine (perching) birds and are not related to gulls except in the most distant sense.

I think they look like gulls.  Maybe David Lee Roth knows...

Gov. Wm. J. Le Petomane Tollway construction?

Is Mel Brooks behind this?  Stop lights - in Cottondale?  Really? Cottondale?!

Does the toll booth go up next week?

BTW/Consumer Tip - The breakfast burritos at the c-store in Cottondale are Mongo-excellent!

Mellow oldie...

An interesting update to a very old song.  I think Chicago X was my first CTA album - I used to mow the lawn of a family friend who was an executive with a record and tape distributorship - I'd get 3-4 LPs or 8-tracks each time I mowed for him.  I later filled in my Chicago collection on my own.

The Apocalypse must be near...

I was going to write that people are stupid, but that seemed overly broad.

However, this guy is stupid.

You are as shocked as I to learn that he was arrested for weapons and drug possession.  It also seems Mr. Zopittybop-Bop-Bop lists among his favorite activities: Thinking.

I don't think so, Tim.

You're probably right if you surmise that when he's in trouble his mother calls him by his middle name.

Random Shots

Culled from the cobwebs of my mind, and other places:

• Noted über-geek Stephen Hawking, turning 70 (and I thought he had died) says that he spends most of his time pondering...women.  They are a complete mystery to him.
• Well, duh.  They are a mystery to me, too.  Wonder if that makes me a deep thinker.
• Probably not.
• The art of editing news stories seems to have died.  Yahoo mobile news had a headline up all day saying that the dispatcher in Oklahoma said it was OK for the 18 year old mother to shoot an intruder.
• The dispatcher specifically stated that she couldn't give permission, but advised the girl to do what she had to to protect her infant. 
• Pesky details.
• On New Year's Day, Daughter & I missed going to church - we didn't realize they'd cancelled the 12:30 service.  So, she suggested we go to Cabela's.
• Love that girl!
• She wanted to see the full size big game room and shoot in the arcade/gallery.  She's a good shot.  She asked if I would take her hunting - I explained that she couldn't shoot big game with a .22 - the only firearms she's shot so far.

• No particular reason to mention this, but the LOP above is 11-1/4".   ;-)    Edit: OAL is 36-1/4"
• I did some shopping the day after Christmas.  Maybe it's the kind of stores I go to (I wasn't @ SLTS), but I think if I'd spent just a couple more hours shopping, I could be fluent in Spanish.  Not saying that's a bad thing - just not what I would've expected when I was younger.  It's a different world now.
• On NYE, we went hiking in the woods to recon the 'campsite' we'd created over Thanksgiving break.  We were able to find the site, but unfortunately, vandals had removed the two stumps and the 2x4 and plywood table we'd set up as a picnic table.
• We later found the stumps where they'd been cast off in a dry creekbed, about 100 yards away, but never located the 'table top'.
• Neither of us could understand why someone would do that, and besides, all of those pieces were pretty heavy to be carting or pulling through the mesquite and briars.

Our camp table, in November.

• In the above picture, we had set up the table a couple of days earlier, and subsequently made two timed runs, on successive evenings, to see how quickly we could reach our 'site' from civilization, with no/minimal use of flashlights.
• A week or so ago, there was some celeb dude who had some kind of writing on his torso, kinda like Megan Fox.  I don't know what it said.
• I've never had any desire for that sort of thing, but if I were going to do something like that, I'd put the 27 words - 2A.
• But for now, since I can still remember them all, I don't have any need to make a cheat sheet of my armpit.
• Oldest son starts college this month.  He's very excited, and I'm very happy for him, though I wonder if he'll enjoy the night classes or switch next semester to day and find an evening job.
• Middle son purchased an electric bass over Thanksgiving break, or maybe early December.  Last weekend, he stayed up into the wee hours practicing with a small amp I put in his room.
• No, he played quietly - no rattling the walls.
• Daughter and middle son and I saw Courageous last Thursday.  It's not Oscar material, but we all liked it - a lot.
• Consumer Tip - I've said it before: I'm tight with a dollar.  But recently, I bought WalMart brand Velveeta substitute.  Mistake.  Kroger brand is OK, but the WalMart brand misses the mark.
• Thought you'd like to know.