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Vacation Rules

I’m taking a few days off while the kids are on spring break.  I’ve been informed that my plans for a free-flow, do what feels good week of relaxation are probably not going to come to fruition.  Here are the rules for the week as I understand them:

  1. I am not allowed to spend the week smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo.
  2. Yard work will be done.  Rain is not an excuse.  I am not made of sugar, so I will not melt when I get wet.
  3. Not all animation is appropriate for watching while the children are awake.  Neither are all television shows involving puppets.
  4. Going to the NRAAM for the weekend means that I really don’t need to spend a day at the range this week.
  5. I may not spend the week watching documentaries about Stalin and Hitler and make fun of the interpreters and narrators.
  6. I am not allowed to make a fort out of my poncho liners and the dining room tables and set up a defensive perimeter against the estrogenical foe.
  7. I am not allowed to refer to my wife as “the estrogenical foe”.
  8. I am not allowed to subsist on a diet of beer, coffee, easter eggs, and jelly beans.
by daddybear71 on April 7, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in silliness

Posted by daddybear71 on April 7, 2015

https://daddybearsden.com/2015/04/07/vacation-rules/

100 Years On – Stalemate

I’ve struggled with how to approach the battles of the First World War.  They seem to take on a ghastly, but wholly predictable pattern:

  1. A general and his staff point to a line on the map.
  2. Massive supplies of arms and men concentrate on both sides of the front line.  Both sides can see what the other is doing, making the element of surprise almost worthless.
  3. Artillery preparation, sometimes lasting days, sometimes lasting weeks, is made in an attempt to soften the enemy lines.
  4. Waves of infantry attempt to get across to the other side’s trenches.  Enemy artillery, machine guns, and infantry emerge from dugouts to slow down or stop the attackers.
  5. The enemy counter-attacks and attempts to retake any trenches that have fallen to the attack.

Progress was measured in hundreds of yards and thousands of lives.   From the safe distance of a century, the various battles on both fronts begin to blur into a melange of mud, blood, and suffering.  There was always an almost static level of dead and wounded from such things as artillery and sniping, but that steady flow would become a torrent when the whistles would sing and men would go over the top to run into the teeth of a sophisticated, well-prepared defensive line.

I will be talking about major battles and events in the war, but to discuss each and every one of them would numb me to the importance of what happened on those fields of France and Poland.  I’m going to discuss the battles that were turning points, either in results or method, and major events.  But, please, keep in mind that the fighting never stopped, and the armies never stopped grinding against each other.

by daddybear71 on April 7, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in 100 Years On

Posted by daddybear71 on April 7, 2015

https://daddybearsden.com/2015/04/07/100-years-on-stalemate/

Musings

  • I started writing an uber-post about the Sad Puppies controversy, but like most things, others have said what I want to say and said it better.
    • Let me say this:  I would rather be entertained than be knocked over the head with the message an author wants to convey.
    • Also, word-smithing and being clever are secondary to telling an engaging and entertaining story.
    • I read what I enjoy, write what I enjoy, and watch what I enjoy.  I used to play what I enjoy, but to be honest, I haven’t pulled my bag of dice or the controller to the game system out of the closet in years.  Everything that I don’t enjoy gets discarded and forgotten. This is all regardless of the politics and demographics of the creator.
    • Example:  2001, A Space Odyssey, is at least 50% literary and cinematic navel gazing.  It was good for a single read of the book and a couple viewings.  2010, the sequel, on the other hand, is one of my favorite movies, mainly because it doesn’t descend into an esoteric exploration of the author’s third eye.
  • When the tire on a garden cart has a catastrophic failure due to dry rot and over-inflation, it sounds a lot like a shotgun.  Also, Girlie Bear can scream as if she were shot when that happens.
  • Beaver droppings are full of sawdust.  If you think about it, that makes sense.  It just never occurred to me before I saw it.
  • Irish Woman has started watching a television show about people hunting alligators.  It would appear that the .22 Magnum is the caliber of choice for large reptiles, but the .223 Remington and .45 Colt seem to get the job done quite well.
  • It’s a lot more fun to acquire, haul, and stack a couple ricks of firewood in April than it is in July.
by daddybear71 on April 6, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in Uncategorized

Posted by daddybear71 on April 6, 2015

https://daddybearsden.com/2015/04/06/musings-127/

Today’s Earworm

Today’s a two-fer.  Louisville was ‘blessed’ with several inches of rain last night, and creeks are turning into rivers and roads are turning into creeks.

Next, to commemorate the rather large fire at the GE appliance plant a few miles from where I work, we have this:

If we get locusts next, I’m going to start packing.

by daddybear71 on April 3, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in Uncategorized

Posted by daddybear71 on April 3, 2015

https://daddybearsden.com/2015/04/03/todays-earworm-623/

Musings

  • What a day.  I haven’t had this much fun since the day one of my soldiers told me that the rest of the squad was betting him that he couldn’t drink a canteen of diesel fuel and wanted to know if I wanted in on the pool.
    • This was the same blunt skull who, when asked by our commanding general if he was OK after she saw the bandage on his head, told her, and I am directly quoting here, “It’s OK, ma’am.  Chicks dig scars.”
    • He got said head wound because when Sergeant DaddyBear says “Put on your helmet before you put the camouflage spreaders up.”, he means, “Please don’t let the semi-sharp edge of a camo spreader fall on your rather useless brain pan and spray blood all over the side of my track.”
    • Honestly, I thought I was a hard drinker when I was a private in Germany.  Then I got to Arizona and had to ‘lead’ those rejects.  That’s when I learned about real hard drinking.
  • I need to start writing down ideas for writing before I take my allergy medicine.  When I’m in the shower or on the way to work, I’m writing the Great American Novel.  When I take a moment at lunchtime or after dinner to get them down on paper, my head seems to be full of cotton.
  • It also doesn’t help that there isn’t room for a laptop and Derby the Wonder Dog to sit in my lap at the same time.
  • One good thing about my method for landscaping is that I can solve a lot of problems with post hole mix and a shovel.
  • It’s amazing how efficiently the USPS gets a letter to you when you give the sender your correct address.
by daddybear71 on March 27, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in Thought for the day

Posted by daddybear71 on March 27, 2015

https://daddybearsden.com/2015/03/27/musings-126/

Bend Like A Reid In The Wind

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, current Minority Leader, former Majority Leader, and internationally recognized champion in Olympic pig calling, has announced that he will not seek re-election in 2016.  I’d like to thank Senator Reid for his long years of government service, and wish him well as he retires from 32 years in Congress where he accomplished…..  Well, there’s that one time he got….  Hmmm, well, as Majority Leader he…..  Well, he must have done something to rise through the ranks of his party other than being able to get the people of Nevada to keep re-electing him, and we thank him for that.

Since Mr. Reid is a go-getter kind of guy, I can’t see him joining the rocking chair brigade.  Here are some suggestions for what he can do after he leaves Washington:

  • Work at the Walmart in Pahrump.  However, instead of being a greeter, Harry can stand in front of the checkout lines and prevent shoppers from completing their purchase.
  • Join the crew at the Bellagio, where he will spend his time putting dry wall screws into the wheel of fortune and the roulette wheel so that they can’t spin.
  • Stand at the top of Hoover Dam and push people over the side just before they finish the tour.
  • Earn that NRA rating by traveling to golf courses and shooting the balls just as they make that last chip onto the 18th green.
  • Stand on the Las Vegas Strip and hand out “business” cards featuring pictures of his former female Democrat colleagues, including Dianne Feinstein, Hillary Clinton, and Nancy Pelosi.
  • Work with the monorail company in Las Vegas to make sure that an efficient, cost-effective, and convenient mass-transit system never extends to McCarran Airport from the Strip.

Anyway, we here at DaddyBear’s Den wish Mr. Reid a pleasant retirement.  Thanks for all the blog fodder, Harry!

by daddybear71 on March 27, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in news, Politics

Posted by daddybear71 on March 27, 2015

https://daddybearsden.com/2015/03/27/bend-like-a-reid-in-the-wind/

Today’s Earworm

Irish Woman saw this commercial the other night and it set her to laughing until she had a stitch in her side.

She says it looks like something we would do.  I told her she’d never get that much air.  My opinion is that she’d hit me like a line backer trying to knock Troy Aikman out of a playoff game.

by daddybear71 on March 25, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in Earworm

Posted by daddybear71 on March 25, 2015

https://daddybearsden.com/2015/03/25/todays-earworm-622/

Justice – Grinding Slow, Yet Grinding Fine

Today, the Army announced that it was charging Bowe Bergdahl with desertion and misbehavior before the enemy.  If convicted, he faces life in prison, reduction in rank, and a dishonorable discharge.  At first, I was going to rail about how I feel about his guilt in these crimes and the punishment I believe he deserves, but that puts the spotlight right back on Bergdahl.  I was going to shout to the mountain tops about the role politics played in his release, but that also detracts from what should be remembered in all this.

This is what we should remember:

SSG Clayton Bowen
PFC Morris Walker
SSG Kurt Curtis
2LT Darryn Andrews
SSG Michael Murphrey
PFC Matthew Martinek

These are the six soldiers who died during the operations that were launched to search for Bergdahl.  Can I guarantee that they wouldn’t have been killed had he not walked away from his unit?  No, of course not.  But he did, and they were killed looking for him.

These are the people I want to hear about.  These are the men who deserve the spotlight in all this.  These are the soldiers who deserve our attention, not Bergdahl.

Let justice grind him beneath its wheels.  I wish him a fair trial and all the justice he can handle.  I also hope that he is forgotten, but these men never are.

by daddybear71 on March 25, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in military, news

Posted by daddybear71 on March 25, 2015

https://daddybearsden.com/2015/03/25/justice-grinding-slow-yet-grinding-fine/

Today’s Earworm

by daddybear71 on March 24, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in Earworm

Posted by daddybear71 on March 24, 2015

https://daddybearsden.com/2015/03/24/todays-earworm-621/

Free AudioBook Follow-Up

Just a quick follow-up while the antihistamine fog clears in the morning sun.

If you’d like one of the promo codes to get a free download of the Minivandians audiobook, please drop me a line at daddybear@daddybearsden.com.  I forgot to mention that in my earlier post.

I still have lots and lots of semi free ice cream for anyone who wants some, so just drop me an email.

by daddybear71 on March 23, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in book

Posted by daddybear71 on March 23, 2015

https://daddybearsden.com/2015/03/23/free-audiobook-follow-up/

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