A feline is unable to digest pine needles.

That is all.

Geek humor, but good geek humor.

Just wanted to with all of y’all a Merry Christmas.  Have a safe and fun weekend!

No snark here today, sorry.

To the receptionist who was able to squeeze BooBoo into an appointment today, thank you.
To the adults who shared a waiting room with us for almost an hour and a half, I’m so very sorry.  Thank you for your patience while I tried to keep a cranky two year old entertained.
For the nurse who took us back to the smaller interior waiting room and put on cartoons for BooBoo, thank you oh so much.
To our wonderful family doctor who gave up half her lunch break today to see BooBoo, thank you.

Today I was reminded why I love going to a small practice in our neighborhood.  Turns out Boo just has the ick, and will be fine in a couple of days.  We were just worried it was something that would get worse over the holiday weekend.

When I was in the Army, one of my favorite marching cadences was “The Army Colors”.  This is slightly different.

The zombie colors
The colors are red
To show the world
That we’re undead

The zombie colors
The colors are black
To show the world
We’ll eat your back

The zombie colors
The colors are blue
To show the world
We shamble on through

The zombie colors
The colors are white
To show the world
We own the night

The old warrior slowly ran the stone down the length of his sword.  This weapon had been made for his grandfather, and he was planning on passing it along to his own grandson.  He could be buried with some of his lesser weapons, but this piece of family hardware would pass down the line along with the strong bodies and tough minds that had set him and his brothers apart during the wars.  Once the edge was sharp enough to shave with, he ran an oiled rag down its length to protect it from the elements.

Next came the shield.  He polished the leather, wood, and iron of it lovingly.  He noted every chip and dent, remembering the blows that had made their mark over the years.  He would need this old friend’s protection again today.

Next came his war kilt, chain mail shirt, and helm.  He strapped his sword across his back, and attached his long dagger to his ankle where it would make a good back up weapon.

Bowing his head before starting his march to battle, he prayed to the gods, both old and new, to protect him as he faced the ravening hordes he was sure to encounter today.  He thought of all the old comrades who had gone before him, and the young men who had come home half mad from the sights he was heading towards today.

Once both his body and spirit were armed and armored, he stepped out onto the black plain that lead to his goal.  He squared his shoulders, but knew that today might be his last.  Too many gray hairs graced his head, too many battles over the years ran through his memory for him to expect to see the sun set on this day.

As he walked forward to battle, the sights and sounds of this day burned into his soul.  The high pitched ringing of a bell, the soft music that filled the air, the old warrior knew they would be the sounds that would take him to Valhalla.  The red and black clad herald of  the madness within greeted him as he walked through doors that magically opened for him.  The noise of the horde immediately pressed on him like a wave.  Undaunted, he waded into the lair of the enemy, intent on his purpose.

The last thing he heard before the noise drowned out all sanity was the merry calling of the door keeper:

“Merry Christmas!  Welcome to Walmart!”

So no kidding, there I was.

Just prior to Christmas 1991, I was assigned weekend duty as the driver/runner for our battalion’s Staff Duty NCO (SDNCO).  Basically, a Staff Sergeant and I  spent Friday night and Saturday sitting in the basement of our battalion’s barracks, answering the phone, signing personnel in and out of the unit, and making sure that the revelers in the Op Stop battalion bar didn’t get too rowdy.

Yes Virginia, my battalion operated a bar in the basement of our barracks.  Our commanders made the sensible decision sometime in the 1970’s that it made more sense to fill the unit’s morale fund by selling beer and well drinks to the soldiers in the barracks than by holding bake sales and car washes.  Also, this kept that group of burgeoning alcoholics out of the bars and off the roads.  This kept the SDNCO and the battalion leadership from having to bail soldiers out of jail for fighting and DUI.  As a matter of fact, prior to the Op Stop being shut down in 1993, our unit went 12 years without a DUI.  Considering that the majority of the battalion was aged 20 to 25 and were being set free in a country where alcohol in all its forms ran freely at periodic festivals designed specifically for drinking them, that’s quite an accomplishment.  The weekend after we pulled down the bar in the Op Stop, we had 4 DUI’s.  That’s probably something to consider when you try to keep people from doing things you don’t approve of. They’ll probably still do them, but probably won’t do them in as safe a place as you’ve just taken away.

Anyway, that December weekend saw our valiant troops doing their best to drink Bavaria dry, and I was sent down the hall several times to turn down the music and the drunks.  About 3 AM the sergeant I was working with went down and shut the lights off.  A crowd of about 50 rather inebriated, highly trained, and motivated soldiers then tromped upstairs.

It had been snowing all evening and into the night.  I went out every so often to sweep the snow from the walk in the front of the building and the front steps.  I planned to shovel the parking lot after breakfast on Saturday.

Saturday morning came with a brilliant winter’s sunrise, and was followed very closely by the battalion’s Command Sergeant Major.  This senior NCO was feared and loved by us all.  He was what we called a Tusker.  He was an old elephant who had come home to Augsburg to finish out his career.  He had probably lived in about half of the barracks on our little post over the course of his 30 years.  Only the occasional inconvenience of being sent back to the States for a year or so had kept him away from Augsburg. He was also one of the few people I ever met with an Army Security Agency combat patch.

After checking in with us and chatting about how bad the roads were and how glad he was that he lived within walking distance to post, the Sergeant Major walked upstairs to his office on the third floor.  Moments later, the phone rang.

“What the !#$!@# is going on down on the battalion square?” this normally calm, composed old soldier was yelling into the phone.  A quick look out the back door let me know that my Saturday was going to be long and difficult.

After leaving the Op Stop that morning, the dedicated warriors of our battalion had neither walked home nor gone upstairs to their rooms.  They had taken advantage of the cover of darkness and the newly fallen snow to erect an erotic winter wonderland in the battalion square.  Every conceivable sexual position had been crafted in snowpeople.  They must have worked at it for several hours, because there were about 25 snowpeople engaging in a frozen orgy.

The SDNCO gave me charge of the desk and ran upstairs to wake up everyone he could find.  Over the next hour or so the still drunk and hung over soldiers of our little intel unit obliterated their works of art under the watchful eye of an irate Command Sergeant Major   While no pictures were taken that morning, I later saw several Polaroids of the figures as they were being constructed. A military operation of such stealth and social worth has not since been accomplished.  While there was some grumbling about innocence and being made to knock down such fine works of sculpture, there was also quite a bit of giggling as the obscene statuary was destroyed.

In memory of this wonderful holiday memory, I give you this:

Yesterday afternoon the United States Postal Service dropped a week’s worth of bills, junk mail, mail-order boxes, and Christmas cards in my mailbox.  It’s the first mail we’ve had since last Tuesday, but I digress.

Amidst the Christmas packages and credit card offers was a small envelope from the bank.  It contained the title transfer document for the van.   We recently paid it off, which means that we paid off all three vehicles early.

I took a moment to think about that.  For the first time in a decade, I do not have a car payment.  The truck, the Irish Woman’s little beep-beep, and the minivan are all paid off.

It feels very liberating to be able to look at my budget for January and see that nice chunk of a few hundred dollars that can be directed somewhere else.  My plans are to put about a third of it into the general budget to ease up some of the restrictions I’ve put on our expenditures.  The rest will be used to pay off other debt we have run up over the years.  If I play my cards right we will be debt free except for a mortgage in twelve to eighteen months.

This makes me think about our government and its seemingly endless inability to stop spending money like water.  Every year it seems there’s another reason to borrow an even higher level of debt.  One year the Air Force wants a whole new fighter fleet, the next it’s a president’s pet social project.  My grandparents’ generation set up a basic social safety net in the 1930’s.  This was expanded greatly in the 1960’s, and President Obama is doing his best to expand its scope beyond even FDR and LBJ’s wildest imaginations.

Look, I have compassion for poor people and old folks. But I’m also a realist.  Unlike my parents, I fully expect to pay into Social Security and Medicare my entire life and never see a dime for it when I finally stop working.  Unlike the Baby Boomer generation, I understand basic economics to some degree.  I realize that we as a nation can’t continue to spend the money our grandchildren will be making and expect for there to be anything left in a few years, much less the two to three decades I plan to continue to work.

Austerity is needed.  Across the board, the government needs to at the very least stop the growth in spending.  Every program that takes money from the public kitty needs to be scrutinized and pared down or eliminated.  The military, as much as it pains me to say this, needs to swallow hard and cancel programs that replace systems that are still serviceable.  There probably needs to be a needs test for Social Security and Medicare.   The money being spent on the wars on drugs and terrorism needs to be evaluated.   All of those nice pet project earmarks in legislation need to be stripped out. Even normally untouchable popular expenditures like student aid need to cut back for the good of the country.

Austerity programs are rarely popular, and usually hurt some more than others.  Life’s tough, and it’s rarely fair. We’ve been on a drunken bender of spending for two generations in this country.  We need to wake up, sober up, and grow up.  Until our financial house is in order, we need to be honest with ourselves and stop spending money on things we can live without.  Some will suffer, but we will all benefit.

Local basketball coach and Italian restaurant trawler, Rick Pitino, has been selected to coach the Puerto Rican national basketball team as it tries to qualify for the 2012 Olympics.

Congratulations to Mr. Pitino.   Coaching at the Olympics would be an honor to anyone, and working with these athletes to get them there will be a feather in his cap even if they don’t make it.  Good luck to all of you!

But this begs the question:  Why does Puerto Rico have a national basketball team?  Last I checked it was still a territory of the United States.  Heck, they’ve had several votes to either try for statehood or go on their own during my lifetime and decided to stay right where they are.

For some reason, the fact that there is a Puerto Rican national basketball team seems to catch in my craw.

The United States provides the people of Puerto Rico with the protection of our military.  Our laws, including NAFTA, have special provisions giving some industries tax breaks for setting up shop on the island.  Heck, when goods are imported onto the island from other countries, the import duties are paid to the territorial government, not the U.S. 

By some economists Puerto Rico’s economy is considered somewhat fictitious. Puerto Rico has very few natural resources of economic value and its economy relies mainly on Federal Aid from the United States Government, which depends on the industrialization programs and the tax incentives that U.S. offers.

In 2002, the Federal government sent $4,793,333,000.00 to Puerto Rico in the form of direct aid to the Territorial government.  To put that in perspective, Puerto Rico received five times as much from the Federal government as all other U.S. Territories combined.  Another thing to consider is that Puerto Rico received more federal aid than the District of Columbia.  DC is almost fully supported by the Federal government, and it still didn’t get as much money as this one territory.

Apparently Puerto Rico wants to have their cake and eat it too.  They want the money and safety of being part of the Land of the Round Doorknob, but don’t want the responsibility of being a state.  They want the ability to act like a sovereign nation but don’t want to take the responsibility of feeding themselves.

I’m not sure if the United States has the power to tell a territory that they’re on their own, but if we do, then maybe it’s time to pat the Puerto Rican Territorial government on the butt and watch them leave the nest.  No more tax breaks.  No more free military protection.  No more monthly check from Uncle Sugar.  You want to have your own treasury, laws, culture, and national basketball team?  Go ahead.  Good luck in trying to drag yourself up from being a Caribbean backwater.

When writing a note to your Congressman, using the salutation “Dear Thieving Bastard,” is probably not conducive to getting cooperation from your elected official.