PERSIAN CAT FIGHT

Every body knows you don't try to break up a "cat fight".

When something like that gets started you don't just jump in and stop it! Especially, if they start out the fight fully garbed and are not in the mood to quit till someone is expossed> For GOD'S SAKE!

Everybody, that is, except the military mind of Americans like John McCain. What in the hell is he thinking about!

I live in a house with two women. They squabble all the time. When I finally have had enough and I think I can gain some ground as to one point or another I stick my nose in only to have both of them gang up on me and hand me back a big hunk of my ass!

For Gods sake John let the women have it out.
We need the diversion anyway and what ever they come out with has got to be better than how the menfolk are operating it now.





This weeks SWINE article proudly brought to you by "HOT DOG TRAVELER"
It seems our sales rep for the Hot Dog Traveler has been on sabbatical in Papua, New Guinea then on to Borneo and then all of Micronesia.
He has brought with him some mighty fine ideas on how to define and improve his controversial product line. Be sure to look for Hot Dog Traveler in all department stores this summer. Employees at Hot Dog Traveler are happy to announce no government funding from any foreign country will be accepted and that only cash infusion from TARP via the United States of America will be accepted. A plan to renew the business has been accepted by the top thinkers who make up our heads of state in both the House and the Senate and funds to rebuild the failing company will begin immediately.

HOOKLESS MYSTERY BARB

PROLOGUE

Graduation night in Washington County, Oregon is usually followed shortly after by a trip to the Wilson River where the most drunken and courageous diploma holders jump off the Jordan Creek Bridge. Depending on the time of the year the surface of the river can be low enough where you can fall anywhere from 45 to 55 feet. It's far enough to have two or three regrets race through your head as you descend. You have to keep your arms and legs tight to your body and your entry pretty straight or you will thrash around under the water like you're in a washing machine spin cycle. It is hard to do when your belly is full of OC Henry's Warm Rhubarb Wine and your heart is filled with youth and false bravado.

"Smokin" Jimmy Johnson graduated High School in 1966, and had a class ring to prove it. Not a lot of guys could afford a class ring in those days, what with the strawberry picking jobs on the wain cause of some guy by the name of Mark Hatfield down at the Oregon State Capital in Salem. "Smoken" Jimmy had his ring though. He worked all summer at the gas station, there in Hillsboro, and saved up for it. He was planning to wear it proudly on the next coming Monday to his induction into the armed services.

It was the time of the Vietnam war. If you didn't have the conviction to find a way out of the war altogether you were going to be drafted into a grunt infantryman's job. The best thing you could do, in that awful circumstance, to save yourself, and the enemy from you was to volunteer. Everybody figured if you volunteered, the Army would know you were probably a pretty smart guy who could be trained for a technical job somewhere in Europe or maybe even Germany. There you could work a full 8 hour shift then go drink that dark beer they have over there.

Well, Jimmy fell for it. Just like falling off a bridge he unexpectedly landed straight from the Wilson River Jordan Creek bridge through a Coors Light and Henry's Rhubarb hangover and found himself on the ground in Vietnam.

"Well the hills were a burning and the bullets were a whirling and it looked like the fourth of July." The battle was churning and he was just a learning that he was probably soon going to die.

Jimmy raised up his hand to protect himself as he ran out from the bush into the open to get away. Just as he did, he saw a piece of a slow moving bullet cut off his ring finger right at the base. His finger spun in slow motion about itself while his brain, operating at light speed, wondered if the ring that he lost graduation night would have deflected this stray bullet that was about to enter his brain through his right eye.

EPILOGUE

Four years later almost to the day Joe was invited by some of his graduation buddies to go fishing down at the Wilson. Some one had made a little fishing dock where you could fish if you had a handicap of some kind. Lots of guys needed that kind of help after the war.

Jimmy let out a pretty fair cast with his brand new 9' Fenwick rod and his level wind Abu Garcia 5001C left hand drive Ambassador reel. The thing about a level wind reel is you have more control over the line than you do with the spinning reel your Dad taught you to fish with. More like the casting reels your Grandpa fished with but a whole lot better. Besides a one eyed short fingered Vietnam veteran fisherman deserved all the best you could buy.

The water was full of fresh ocean going rainbow trout; up there in Washington County they call them "Steelhead".

Jimmy nailed one on his fourth cast with a purple rooster tail and put him on the sandy beach just up river from the bridge. The bridge he has jumped off from so many times before, in his youth-------- just four years ago.

His high school buddies helped clean the fish to make it ready for an Indian tepee smoker made out of alder branches when somebody noticed a bright golden glint in the fishes gut.

They found a graduation ring in there with the letters "JJ" on one side of the big ruby red center stone and the numbers "66" on the other!

This summer please be sure to throw a case of GENERAL CHOW into your instant camp set up. It isn't exactly first class living with out it!

FANTASY PURSUIT OF HEAD CLOGGER

One day a friend called up and asked if I would like to go with him to an outdoor event somewhere down there in Lincoln County Oregon. He confessed he wanted to see a girl that was doing a new dance performance of some kind. Clogging! She was clogging down there somewhere near "Home Depot Bay" Oregon.

We drove straight through, barely stopping for breakfast and gas for fear of missing a single step of her performance.

We made it with about an hour and a half to spare so we were easily able to get a place to sit right close up in front, however my friend picked an inconspicuous spot midway in the assemblage of metal chairs. We took off our coats and left them on the chairs to hold our places so as not to be too conspicuous of fans.

The dance started up and I must say she was a pretty girl but somewhat a clumsy sort or at least she seemed unsure of her footing as she clogged amateurishly on the wet board walk of the little coastal towns sidewalk.

I saw her again at a dance where the street was shut down in front of a friend of mine's place called Barrel Head Lumber. Actually, she was a very pretty girl. I should have seen that right away. After all, that kind of dancing is very difficult especially for a girl with such lovely little ankles. She needed to wear and tap rhythmically those big wooden two clogged sandals to properly perform the clogging dance.

I saw her again clogging in front of Leonard Toates Insurance down in Waldport sometime after that. We left at the intermission because the announcer promised that the next session would include involuntary participation from some members of the audience. My friend sure didn't want to get caught in an embarrassing situation as he so awfully much wanted to make his first impression on her a most memorable one. I too did not want to make a bad impression either. I did not want her or my friend to see how so completely smitten with her I had so quickly become. I was simply there to accompany and support him in his first ovation to her. I did and would try to remember that as best I could in the future.

I noticed so great an improvement in her I wondered if anyone had considered making her the "head clogger" of the group. She should be put right out in front where no one could miss her!

In a week or so my friend called me and asked if I would like to see his little clogging darling stamp about up at the State Fair there in Salem, Oregon. Well, admission tickets are kind of high, but I must admit I did not want to miss a single performance by her, besides I really think my timid friend needed the moral support of a confident good looking fellow such as myself if the need arose for an introduction. I secretly held out the hope.

Our little lady had most assuredly gotten past the clumsy look of an amateur clogger and had advanced to the second row of a three row deep ensemble. Now, she held a position right in the middle of the whole group. Mind you she was quite a beautiful and clearly talented girl. I had no doubt that she would soon become the "head clogger" she deserved to be.

She was the kind of natural beauty you see at the coast or on the ski slopes with streaming blond brown hair and summer tanned skin so soft and lovely she would never need makeup too enhance her looks. God and mother nature had done all that for her. We had to leave before the end of the Salem performance due to an unfortunate incident that had occurred under the grandstand bleachers at Buckaroo Bills Beer Gardens. No further discussion was ever made as to the matter but basically it involved a strangers ill mannered comment about a big "breasted gal" who is soon turning "head clogger!"

The next performance was announced in the Newport Herald published in Newport Oregon once a week. It turned out our dancing heart throb was a local girl who had received general notice up at the big city of Salem and would be part of the featured event at the Tillamook County Fair the coming week.

I called my friend and asked if he had seen the favorable article in the paper about the "Cloggers of Lincoln County" and especially the good news about our gal moving up in the ranks. I asked if he would like to ride with me this trip. We agreed to meet at my house and drive up in my van right after work on Friday to get a good look around the fair grounds in the morning and get our bearings for the clogging event set to begin at 10:00 o'clock sharp!

How could I have missed the absolute beauty and living grace and sexuality of this young women. Her eyes were blue violet green depending on the light and the hand embroidery of her peasant blouse which she wore loosely bound at the bosom. The dance began and I was enraptured by her performance. She danced and whirled around and around all the while keeping perfect time to the music supported by her long legs spinning her lovely capable form about the floor. She had advanced to front and center of the dance group for all to see. How she bedazzled me. She had indeed made it to "head clogger" and what a sight she was.

We left without making an attempt to speak to her at the break. My heart was in my throat and I was afraid to speak as her eyes and mine had for just one precious moment found each others through the crowd. I figured she had recognized me from having been present at other performances and I did not want her to think I was being too forward. My friend agreed and we made our way home post haste.

I waited over a week before I looked up the location for the next performance. I found no notice in local advertisements or bulletins posted at gathering places. I went in to Kenny's IGA and bought a News Guard and read it clear through without finding a thing about my new girl dancing in any venue anywhere in Lincoln, Marion or Polk County.

I sent away for a Portland paper to see if the troupe had found fame well away at that "fare" city found at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia River. If she found her deserved fame in that big city I might very well loose her forever. For weeks I looked everywhere. I cruised the waterfront bars of Newport and Taverns of Lincoln City and occasionally hoped for a glimpse of her at Pirates Cove or at Garibaldi Days.

Rumors circulated that she had been "discovered" by the big city crowd and had been coaxed into posing part naked in one of those mens magazines. I do declare I spent too big a part of my paycheck each week looking for her there!

I looked for her for weeks on end then into months which turned into a year in vain.

Till it dawned on me.

SHE HAD BECOME A "HEAD CLOGGER"

This weeks article brought to you by GENERAL CHOW who reminds you GENERAL CHOW is all you will need at this years GLORY DAYS EVENT AT CANYON CREEK CAMPGROUND CAMP SHERMAN OREGON

WHEN PIGS GREW WINGS SWINE FLU

Well I guess it is safe to come out and play again. Big Brother has saved us once again from our miserable sickly selves.

What could we have possibly done without the help of our benefactor?
Somewhere around 35,000 people die of regular flu every year. We have known about this SWINE FLU out break for about 4 months now and it has already killed like 142 people. Some of them in the good ole United States of America. WHAT CAN WE DO? OH MY! No one wants to be killed by the SWINE flu how awful. I'll take my chances with the seasonal flu any day thank you.

We have learned to fight an epidemic by vaccination, and staying home when ill, and washing our hands, and covering our mouths when we cough and the like. We try to be considerate of others in this time of temporary illness.

It is well known in Machiavellian circles that to achieve coalition thinking you need to promote common goals. The best to way to get that is by having a common enemy. Best way to get that is by a common fear.
Now then, can you speculate with me for a moment who or what group might want us to be so fearful so as to unite us regardless of the need?

It is true; at the initial discovery and report of this SWINE flu strain it was not known if it was a dreaded virulent killer like back in 1918-1919. It is always good to have a movement of fearful obedient followers dependant on it's leaders armed with superior esoteric knowledge and understanding of some basic facts.

HERE ARE SOME

The flu of 1918-1919 is reputed to have killed as many people as socialists have killed while experimenting with governments over the last 100 years.
Hitler is reported to have killed 9 to 13 million is gas chambers and firing squads. Stalin may have killed as many as 20 million to get his collective ideas cooked up and then in China no one really knows.

The Spanish flu of 1918-1919 killed about 40 million people all together so Chairman Mao would have to gang up with Castro, Che Guevara, Slobodan Milosevic, and quite a few others to top that record of killing. It is a good bet that socialists models of government have killed a good many more people than any kind of flu strain.

Wonder, for a moment, if we will have a group emerge that will protect us.

They could hold up signs and be on General Electric's Katy Couric News Hour singing "SWINE FLEW"---- "YOU CAN TOO" --------------------------featuring Pogo and the Manchurians.

You can't really blame the SWINE flu. It is just trying to survive so it can get it's message across. It does this by mutating or morphing into something else so as not to become extinct. Just like any self respecting "SWINE" would.

What really bugs me is why did it come out as the "SWINE" FLU? I have not really found that SWINE has been all that infectious a brand name.

Oh! well yes it has it's audiences. As a matter of fact over the last 8 months more people have read the SWINE BLOG than have died of the SWINE Flu! Many many more in fact. Comparing the popularity of the SWINE BLOG and the SWINE FLU is like comparing the popularity of home grown tomatoes in Multnomah Village near Portland, Oregon to truck farming in Reykjavík Iceland.

"GENERAL CHOW" FOR THE MASSES

BUY A CAN OF THIS VERY FINE FOOD PRODUCT TODAY

RENDITION OVER AT BATTLE CREEK

My Uncle Helmer is sometimes perceived as kind of a conservative Dakota farm boy. Actually he was considered by the townsfolk as quite a progressive liberal sort of guy! In the classic definition that is.

Today if you're liberal you pride yourself in wanting more government stuff paid for by someone more willing or able to work harder and more successfully than you. It all gets worked out using a complicated government formula based on fairness.
That short sighted selfishness has lead a good country like Cuba, for example, to an early end. Cuba is operated by a totalitarian dictator who's legacy appears to be only one lifetime long.
Fidel Castro is effectively the Government there.
He operates the commerce system, the currency, the banks, the auto dealers, farming and manufacturing and he even suggests uniform outfits so everybody looks the same and gets treated fairly.

Anyway, Helmer was downtown one day and saw a new breakfast cereal box setting up in the store window of Red Tenor's General Store Tavern and Pool Hall.

"Snap Crackle Pop Rice Krispies!" WOW! Just pour on some milk and sit back and listen to the wonderment from Battle Creek Michigan. When it settles down some you can put a spoon of sugar on it to really make it good.

Now, in the beginning, early runs of the product would over heat or sometimes during shift changes at the plant some of the Rice Krispies kernels would get stuck in the oven for two or three times as long as the recipe called for.
They would come out resembling ---well; they looked a lot like mouse droppings!
Think about it in your minds eye. An overdone single Rice Krispie sure does resemble the stuff you sometimes find out in the barn, or over at Crazy Aunt Clara's place in the kitchen cupboards.

Well Helmer's first box, wouldn't you know, had a trace portion of the overdone kind. Like I said earlier Helmer was thought to be kind of liberal. Which used to mean patient and thoughtful and polite and considerate of others. Someone who was willing to give new things a try. So he sat down with a pen and paper and wrote a respectful complaint and offered a solution to the problem.

Dear Kellogg Company
Rice Krispie Division
Battle Creek Michigan;

"I recently had the honor of trying the first box of your fine product sold in our community. I found the vast majority of it's contents to be of excellent quality and the promise of a "snap crackle and pop" presentation far exceeded anything the local vendor Red Tenor had advertised."

"We also understand that government FDA standards allow a certain minimum amount of of rodent excrement in every box of your very fine cereal product. We understand that and will expect it when purchasing another box of your product."

"We suggest and only ask if you would mind putting it in a separate container!"

One Kellogg Square,
P.O. Box 3599
Battle Creek, MI 49016
http://www.google.com/www.ricekrispies.com/


Please understand any similarity of our product or advertising slogans are coincidental and are in no way to be considered a positive or negative comment regarding our or their "very fine food product" GENERAL CHOW

RE: HOT DOG TRAVELER Meanwhile no new sightings or eyewitness accounts as the the whereabouts of the principle of this company, but rumor has it, all is not lost. Stay tuned.

DEMON FRIEND

I want to tell you about a friend of mine that I wished I didn't know.
He comes inside and goes for a ride when I'm drunk and feeling low.
I've given all I can to him, surrendered everything.
but he makes me mean and vicious and hides me from my heart.

It scares me when he comes to call, but he is interesting it is true.
He's strong and bold and loud and tough, clever and bizarre.
While, I'm weak and soft and shy myself, I consider him a star.

I don't know why he loves me so, I've given him my life.
Now he wants to hurt my son and take away my wife!

I'll send him out a shaken and leave him on his own.
He can't come back to visit me if he is ruining my home.

I know that I might miss him, just occasionally, but when I do
remember, he's a no good friend for either me and you.

Folks say he looks a lot like me but his face is strained and gray.
Maybe some of his act I like. and maybe some is good.
He's funny as a ginny bird and clever as a fox
Maybe I can do some of those things without losing all I've got.

I've gone too long with this wicked song--- this dance with my demon friend
So I'll say so long and dance along

goodbye my demon friend

Gradients of Destiny and Crawdad Fishing up at Holy Camp

Back, quite a ways, my Uncle Helmer's kid got caught up in an economic downturn; kinda like the one were all in now. He decided to get into the wholesale fishing business.
He and the neighbor boy saddled up their ponies, put on their rubber cowboy outfits and cantered up to the rendering plant for a ride around piles of three day dead horses. You can catch a mess of crawdads if you choose the right "three day dead horse."

They pulled the best of the horse flesh up to Big Stone Lake on a skid behind a Farm-All Cub tractor the neighbor kids father loaned them. They set their baits in their traps out near "Holy Camp" and in no time at all had a pretty fair share of "mud bugs" to sell.

Helmer had a shirttail relation by the name of Seal over in Minneapolis who was a desperate fish monger. Seal was willing to do anything to create a market for the boys new fishing business and to keep up his own mortgage payments in the process.

After about a week they were getting low on bait so they went back to the plant to stock up. Greed set in and they piled extra "three day dead horses" on the skid and set them out off the shores of Lake Travis nears Browns Valley Concert Hall where Lawrence Welk played on the weekends.

They baited their traps all over the area but for some unknown reason the catch played out fast!
Then, they made and awful, great discovery. If a crawdads pincher gets knocked off for some reason it grows right back! They wondered if that fish monger, name of Seal, was desperate enough to take orders for just crawdad pincher's.

The concept of "sustainable yield" was born.

Now, this was way before old man Stimson from the logging company way out in Forest Grove, Oregon was preaching conservation for the future of the forest products industry, or the environmentalist movement had even invented itself. This is long before anyone knew that human liver could do the same thing if cut in two. This is way before that fellow wrote the book "Solent Green!"

Nobody to this day knows for sure what makes certain things just grow back the way they do. There are scientists researching stem cells harvested from little babies embryonic cord blood to learn what might be possible to regrow right now if we had to. There seems to be something inside certain genes that just wants to be. The little cells seem to have what they call "Gradients of Destiny."
The idea is, you could take one of these little stem cells and regrow Christopher Reeves broken spinal cord for example. One guy who has been messing with this stuff made up a powder for his brother to dip his finger stub into after he cut it off on the table saw. The finger hurt like the dickens but by and by, sure enough, it grew back!

Charles Darwin took a sail boat named the Beagle down to the Galapagos archipelago in the eastern Pacific and noticed that little finches on the islands grew specialized beaks for breaking up different size seeds to eat. These seeds are different depending on what part of the island they are growing at and what the weather is like there. Some are soft and large and some are small and hard etc. The beaks of the finches turn out different as well to serve better the birds that hang out in the differing areas.
He came up with a "natural selection" hypothesis that assumed over the course of thousands of years better beaks emerged because the birds that had inferior beaks died off faster and the ones with good beaks became more and more successful. Get it?

Now,the Beagle had to take off pretty quick for other parts of the world so what Darwin didn't know was that those beaks changed in a matter of just a few generations. If you don't believe it; read up on it in the National Geographic February 2009 issue or watch it on the TV. Those beaks just kind of want to change with the situation. The Gradients of their Destiny depended on the rapidly changing weather in times of drought or raining periods. This occurs in a relatively short period of time mind you NOT thousands of years!

Scientists are mapping the human genome. They know now that genes are like building blocks with differing shapes. Now, the weird part is if you stack them up different they turn into different things. There are at least 23 maybe 25 thousand of these building blocks. Geometrically that is a lot of possible combinations to understand but with the aid of computers it might be possible and useful to know. Lots of different combinations and rates of growth with mysterious built in on/off switches make different gradients of cell destiny.

If you stack them up a certain way you might get a crawdad pincher or stack them differently you may get a good singing voice. Works the same for birds and human tenors, if you know the right stacking order and how to turn on and off the growth recipe. No one knows just why this is or what makes cells know what they are to be.

The heavens have an inexplicable tendency to do things in an elegant order even though the mathematical tendency would be for things to be chaotic. Stephen Hawking the great wheel chair bound theist cosmologist synthesized voice of our age stated “ The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.”

By the way, these useful building blocks are still being used to regrow crawdad pinchers which can be purchased out at Gales Creek "Bargain Basement Bobs Bait Shop" just off the exit heading up to Scoggins Dam where the Stimson Lumber Mill once flourished. Crawdad meat is almost irresistible to "Sea Run" cutthroat trout. Next time you are heading for any Oregon coast stream get a mess of crawdad meat for bait. Old man Seal, the desperate fish monger, still enjoys the residuals from his early sales effort. You can also get a taste of pincher down in New Orleans at Crabby Cathy's Creole Castle on the way to Captain Terry's south of town across the big bridge crossing the Mississippi.

Back to these little building blocks. They can be stacked to create the mundane or the "God Particle" being assembled in Europe in a long tube which can accelerate particles in opposite directions to the speed of light. They collide them to create little black holes to simulate the start of the universe. They haven't connected yet but it is just a matter of time. Get it?

What makes these things want to be what they become?
No one knows; but it is increasingly cumbersome to keep referring to these Gradients Of Destiny.

A large number of folks just shorten it to the nick name G.O.D.

Now a word from our sponsor:

I wish I had better news about our old friend and former sponsor Hot Dog Traveller. After the court hearing it was reported to this office that credit card trails from the firm fell off somewhere down in New Guinea outside of the Port of No Return. We will of course keep you posted if we hear anything.

MEANWHILE OUR SPONSOR GENERAL CHOW REMINDS US THAT THERE IS A SUITABLE PORTION OF CRAW FISH MEAT IN EVERY CAN OF HIS VERY FINE FOOD PRODUCT.