Hey, I was 12 and 4 this weekend! Now I wish I was putting money on these things.

For the season, I’m up to 35 and 29. Getting better.

Over at Pepper Spray Me, a tale is told of how a bunch of gang-banger knuckleheads decided to target a police precinct for retribution. I imagine they felt the good men and women who served there were doing their job too well, and wanted to send a message ala Mogadishu or Sicily.

The police apparently were able to recognize what was going on and take appropriate action to discourage these wayward young men from carrying out their nefarious plans. But what if the first sign that there was a problem was several officers in the hospital or the morgue?

If street gangs, even in what we would consider bad neighborhoods of big cities, feel they have a shot at taking on the police in gangster style hit and run tactics, then we have a bigger problem than we thought. The fear of the consequences of personally attacking an officer of the law just for being an officer of the law is a big thing to lose.

If thugs like this feel they can take on the defenders of our day to day world, then the rest of us need to watch our backs as much as the police do. If they think they can attack the police, they won’t think twice in attacking those of us who don’t wear a badge and have a group of armed and trained friends to back us up.

Let’s face it, even in suburbia there are gangs now. Our neighbor’s oldest decided to go out of town for college rather than stay around when he ran afoul of the local gang of morons. If this can happen anywhere, it can happen everywhere.

Scum like that need to have their heads cracked, figuratively and literally, and the lesson that messing with the police and our society in general has dire consequences.

In Louisville, the police are attacked every time they give a gang member a traffic ticket, much less arrest them for warrants or whatever. If something happened here, would the police feel justified in taking similar measures to protect themselves and the community?

OK, people two things I need to make sure everyone understands here:

1. Animals that are normally considered “wild” should not be taken in as pets, and should always be treated as if they will attack. Last year, a woman was attacked and killed by a chimpanzee that her friend had raised as a human child. Recently, a woman was killed by a black bear that her husband was keeping in some kind of personal menagerie, which also included lions, tigers, and bears. Oh my, what a dunce.

Wild animals, especially carnivores or omnivores, should be considered dangerous, left along in the woods or the zoo, and never be taken in as pets.

The following sets of animals should never be kept as pets: snakes that can grow larger than your thumb in width or longer than your arm in length, canines that are closer to wolves than you are to chimpanzees, felines that you might see being used to adorn some 3rd world dictator’s outfit, primates of any kind unless you or someone in your species birthed them, lizards that are bigger than the space between the base of your thumb and your elbow, things that are considered predators of humans, and anything with hands.

That means no monkeys, no chimps, no bears, no leopards, and especially no raccoons.

Which leads us to

2. Wild animals, no matter how cute or anthropomorphized by Walt Disney should be treated as dangerous. Dangerous animals should be dealt with with nothing lighter than a stout broom handle. Firearms are preferred. Do not try to shoo away a pack of raccoons you see in your yard. Thanks to 80 years of propaganda that makes woodland creatures seem to be harmless and cute, someone’s grandmother is in the hospital, covered in stitches and staples.

Come on people, we’re smarter than this.

Well, I guess practice makes perfect, or at least sort of.

Last time I swapped out the starter on the minivan, it took a day to get it out and another to get it back in.

This time it took less than 90 minutes from start to finish.

While I had the beast up in the air on jack stands, I changed the oil.

It’s running OK now, or at least as OK as it ever does.

When the Irish Woman picked up the part from the dealership this week, the parts clerk mentioned that it had a one year warrantee. I still have the receipt from last year, so I’m going to mosey out there and see if I can get at least part of my money back.

What’s the over and under on how long this son of a gun goes without needing another major repair?

OK, here we go. This week, I try to regain .500.

Detroit at Chicago – Da Bears
Seattle at Indi – Indi
Tennessee at Jacksonville – Tennessee
New York Giants at Kansas City – New York
Tampa Bay at Washington – Washington
Baltimore at New England – Baltimore. Tom Brady sucks
Oakland at Houston – Raiders, of course
Cinci at Cleveland – Cinci
Buffalo at Miami – Miami
New York Jets at New Orleans – J E T S Jets Jets Jets!
Dallas at Denver – Denver
Saint Louis at San Fransisco – San Fransisco
San Diego at Pittsburg – Pittsburg
Green Bay at Minnesota – Got to love this game. This is the matchup that I absolutely have to watch every year. I’m a fan of both teams, so this is a tough one. I’ll go with the Vikings on this one, just because they’re the home team. I think the teams are pretty even at the moment. It all depends on whether or not Favre can keep up.

So, any predictions on how I’ll do this week?

Now my day is complete.

I’m glad that Rio got the Olympics. It’s time the 3rd world learned what a pain in the butt things like this are.

OK, you all should know how I feel about the Olympics.

I won’t bore you by re-hashing what a waste of time, money, and effort they are.

I have another problem now: The President of the United States is in a foreign country, on the taxpayer dime, campaigning for his home town to get the 2016 Olympics.

I’ve read the Constitution several times, and I never saw anything that said it was the President’s job to pressure international organizations to hold sporting events in his political backyard.

I’m pretty sure his job is to govern the country, make sure the laws are enforced, and to command the armed forces.

So now the prestige of his office, and through him the rest of the country, is riding on the decision of a wholly corrupt body. And he’s making a fool of himself and the country by wasting time and money on this.

I hope that Chicago doesn’t get it. I hope they don’t even come close. Maybe then Obama will learn to stay in Washington and do the job he’s getting paid to do.

Well this weekend didn’t go so well. I was 7 and 9 this weekend. So far this season I’m 23 and 25.

I thought the steelers were going to pull that one out.

When your lovely wife asks you if there’s anything you want her to do today, the correct response is “Whatever you want to do, sweetheart”. Then stop talking.

Last year, I replaced the starter motor on my mini-van. Actually, it was almost exactly one year ago.

At the time, I chalked it up to normal wear and tear. Hey, things wear out. No biggee.

Yes, it was a pain to replace it, and an expense that I hadn’t planned for. But these things happen.

On Friday night, it happened again.

Turn key, everything works, I can hear whirring from under the car, but no cranking. Exact same symptoms as last fall.

So I got it towed home. I should ask if they have a frequent flyer program.

I called around, and have to special order a starter from the dealer. It’ll be here sometime this week.

I guess I could rehash my rant about Chryslers, but I won’t. I just plan on paying this thing off, then driving it until something major breaks. Then I’ll trade it in on a Ford.