So, there's this yellow toad wandering around in the forest kinda pissed off because he doesn't want to be yellow. Life would be easier if he were brown like the other toads.. He'd sure be less visible to predators for one thing.
Anyway... this yellow toad bumps into a fairy godmother.. He begs her: "Fairy godmother, please make me brown like the other toads. I am tired of being so visible to predators and such."
The fairy godmother whips out her magic wand and says "Abracapokus! You're brown!"
The toad looks down and sees that he is brown except for his package, which is still yellow. He says to the fairy godmother: "Wait a minute! My pecker's still yellow!"
To this the fairy godmother replies: "I don't do hardware. You will have to go see The Wizard of Oz for that." The toad thanks her and hops off on his way.
There is also a purple bear wandering about the very same woods. As luck would have it, he encounters the very same fairy godmother. He implores her: "Fairy godmother, please make me brown like the other bears. None of the lady bears want to be seen with me on account of the hunters can spot me from a mile off."
She, being a nice fairy godmother, takes out her magic wand and says: "Pokuscadabra! You're brown!"
The bear looks down and sees that he is, in fact, brown with the exception of the ole twig and berries,they remain purple. He says: "My wang is still purple!"
She says: "I don't do units, you will have to go see The Wizard of Oz for that."
To this the bear replies: "Well that's just dandy, but how the hell do I find The Wizard of Oz?"
The fairy godmother answers: "That's easy... just follow the yellow dick Toad!",
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
THE BEST OF THE WURST
THE BEST OF THE WURST
I have been trying to figure out for some time the difference between wurst and brats. My wife has informed me that--
- The wurst are generally smaller.
- Conversely, the best brats are larger.
- She says the wurst are often not as firm
- She likes her brats very firm.
- She also says she likes the brats that have a slight bit of the covering removed from one end.
- She says that sometimes the wurst pop too early or they don’t pop at all.
- She mentioned that the best brats don’t pop for quite a while.
- She says she doesn’t like old wurst, but prefers young brats.
- She says old wurst are often wrinkled while brats a generally smooth.
I agreed that these things might be true, but there were some things to remember—
- Wurst and brats like new pots.
- Sometimes it is necessary to replace the pots since the frequent use with brats tends to make the pots get bigger.
- It has been said that the smaller the wurst, the better the taste.
- There is ample evidence that removing part of the covering from the wurst is also good, but it needs to be done while the wurst is fairly new.
- Sometimes wrinkled wurst can be rejuvenated if they are subjected to a warm, moist environment.
- The fact that wurst doesn’t pop can be a good thing.
- Some studies have shown that once you try an older wurst, you won’t ever want to go back to a younger brat.
I have been trying to figure out for some time the difference between wurst and brats. My wife has informed me that--
- The wurst are generally smaller.
- Conversely, the best brats are larger.
- She says the wurst are often not as firm
- She likes her brats very firm.
- She also says she likes the brats that have a slight bit of the covering removed from one end.
- She says that sometimes the wurst pop too early or they don’t pop at all.
- She mentioned that the best brats don’t pop for quite a while.
- She says she doesn’t like old wurst, but prefers young brats.
- She says old wurst are often wrinkled while brats a generally smooth.
I agreed that these things might be true, but there were some things to remember—
- Wurst and brats like new pots.
- Sometimes it is necessary to replace the pots since the frequent use with brats tends to make the pots get bigger.
- It has been said that the smaller the wurst, the better the taste.
- There is ample evidence that removing part of the covering from the wurst is also good, but it needs to be done while the wurst is fairly new.
- Sometimes wrinkled wurst can be rejuvenated if they are subjected to a warm, moist environment.
- The fact that wurst doesn’t pop can be a good thing.
- Some studies have shown that once you try an older wurst, you won’t ever want to go back to a younger brat.
No Pigs=More Trash
Forrest Gump said it best: "Stupid is as stupid does."
Belatedly, Egypt Spots Flaws in Wiping Out Pigs
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
Published: September 19, 2009
CAIRO — It is unlikely anyone has ever come to this city and commented on how clean the streets are. But this litter-strewn metropolis is now wrestling with a garbage problem so severe it has managed to incite its weary residents and command the attention of the president.
Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times
A zabaleen carrying a load of cardboard. The zabaleen no longer go door to door collecting organic waste, which they fed to pigs.
Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times
A woman picked through garbage in Cairo. A delicate balance of trash collecting has been upset, and garbage is everywhere.
“The problem is clear in the streets,” said Haitham Kamal, a spokesman for the Ministry of State for Environmental Affairs. “There is a strict and intensive effort now from the state to address this issue.”
But the crisis should not have come as a surprise.
When the government killed all the pigs in Egypt this spring — in what public health experts said was a misguided attempt to combat swine flu — it was warned the city would be overwhelmed with trash.
The pigs used to eat tons of organic waste. Now the pigs are gone and the rotting food piles up on the streets of middle-class neighborhoods like Heliopolis and in the poor streets of communities like Imbaba.
Ramadan Hediya, 35, who makes deliveries for a supermarket, lives in Madinat el Salam, a low-income community on the outskirts of Cairo.
“The whole area is trash,” Mr. Hediya said. “All the pathways are full of trash. When you open up your window to breathe, you find garbage heaps on the ground.”
What started out as an impulsive response to the swine flu threat has turned into a social, environmental and political problem for the Arab world’s most populous nation.
It has exposed the failings of a government where the power is concentrated at the top, where decisions are often carried out with little consideration for their consequences and where follow-up is often nonexistent, according to social commentators and government officials.
“The main problem in Egypt is follow-up,” said Sabir Abdel Aziz Galal, chief of the infectious disease department at the Ministry of Agriculture. “A decision is taken, there is follow-up for a period of time, but after that, they get busy with something else and forget about it. This is the case with everything.”
Speaking broadly, there are two systems for receiving services in Egypt: The government system and the do-it-yourself system. Instead of following the channels of bureaucracy, most people rely on an informal system of personal contacts and bribes to get a building permit, pass an inspection, get a driver’s license — or make a living.
“The straight and narrow path is just too bureaucratic and burdensome for the rich person, and for the poor, the formal system does not provide him with survival, it does not give him safety, security or meet his needs,” said Laila Iskandar Kamel, chairwoman of a community development organization in Cairo.
Cairo’s garbage collection belonged to the informal sector. The government hired multinational companies to collect the trash, and the companies decided to place bins around the city.
But they failed to understand the ethos of the community. People do not take their garbage out. They are accustomed to seeing someone collecting it from the door.
For more than half a century, those collectors were the zabaleen, a community of Egyptian Christians who live on the cliffs on the eastern edge of the city. They collected the trash, sold the recyclables and fed the organic waste to their pigs — which they then slaughtered and ate.
Killing all the pigs, all at once, “was the stupidest thing they ever did,” Ms. Kamel said, adding, “This is just one more example of poorly informed decision makers.”
When the swine flu fear first emerged, long before even one case was reported in Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak ordered that all the pigs be killed in order to prevent the spread of the disease.
When health officials worldwide said that the virus was not being passed by pigs, the Egyptian government said that the cull was no longer about the flu, but was about cleaning up the zabaleen’s crowded, filthy, neighborhood.
That was in May.
Today the streets of the zabaleen community are as packed with stinking trash and as clouded with flies as ever before. But the zabaleen have done exactly what they said they would do: they stopped taking care of most of the organic waste.
Instead they dump it wherever they can or, at best, pile it beside trash bins scattered around the city by the international companies that have struggled in vain to keep up with the trash.
“They killed the pigs, let them clean the city,” said Moussa Rateb, a former garbage collector and pig owner who lives in the community of the zabaleen. “Everything used to go to the pigs, now there are no pigs, so it goes to the administration.”
The recent trash problem was compounded when employees of one of the multinational companies — men and women in green uniforms with crude brooms dispatched around the city — stopped working in a dispute with the city.
The government says that the dispute has been resolved, but nothing has been done to repair the damage to the informal system that once had the zabaleen take Cairo’s trash home.
The garbage is only the latest example of the state’s struggling to meet the needs of its citizens, needs as basic as providing water, housing, health care and education.
The government announced last week that schools would not be opened until the first week of October to give the government time to prepare for a potential swine flu outbreak, a decision that could have been made anytime over the past three months, while schools were closed for summer break, critics said.
Officials in the Ministry of Health and other government ministries said they had not made this decision — and that they had counseled against pre-emptive school closings.
It appears to have been ordered by the presidency and carried out by the governors, who also ordered that all private schools, already in class, be shut down as well.
“We did not propose or call for postponing schools, so the reason is not with us,” said an official in the Ministry of Health who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak to the news media.
The heads of three large governorates, or states, in Egypt announced Wednesday that their strategy for keeping schoolchildren safe was to take classes, which on average are crowded with more than 60 students, and split them in half and have children attend school only three days a week, another decision that was criticized. There have been more than 800 confirmed cases of H1N1 in Egypt, and two flu-related deaths.
“The state is troubled; as a result the system of decision making is disintegrating,” said Galal Amin, an economist, writer and social critic. “They are ill-considered decisions taken in a bit of a hurry, either because you’re trying to please the president or because you are a weak government that is anxious to please somebody.”
Cairo’s streets have always been busy with children and littered with trash.
Now, with the pigs gone, and the schools closed, they are even more so.
“The Egyptians are really in a mess,” Mr. Amin said.
Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting.
Belatedly, Egypt Spots Flaws in Wiping Out Pigs
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
Published: September 19, 2009
CAIRO — It is unlikely anyone has ever come to this city and commented on how clean the streets are. But this litter-strewn metropolis is now wrestling with a garbage problem so severe it has managed to incite its weary residents and command the attention of the president.
Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times
A zabaleen carrying a load of cardboard. The zabaleen no longer go door to door collecting organic waste, which they fed to pigs.
Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times
A woman picked through garbage in Cairo. A delicate balance of trash collecting has been upset, and garbage is everywhere.
“The problem is clear in the streets,” said Haitham Kamal, a spokesman for the Ministry of State for Environmental Affairs. “There is a strict and intensive effort now from the state to address this issue.”
But the crisis should not have come as a surprise.
When the government killed all the pigs in Egypt this spring — in what public health experts said was a misguided attempt to combat swine flu — it was warned the city would be overwhelmed with trash.
The pigs used to eat tons of organic waste. Now the pigs are gone and the rotting food piles up on the streets of middle-class neighborhoods like Heliopolis and in the poor streets of communities like Imbaba.
Ramadan Hediya, 35, who makes deliveries for a supermarket, lives in Madinat el Salam, a low-income community on the outskirts of Cairo.
“The whole area is trash,” Mr. Hediya said. “All the pathways are full of trash. When you open up your window to breathe, you find garbage heaps on the ground.”
What started out as an impulsive response to the swine flu threat has turned into a social, environmental and political problem for the Arab world’s most populous nation.
It has exposed the failings of a government where the power is concentrated at the top, where decisions are often carried out with little consideration for their consequences and where follow-up is often nonexistent, according to social commentators and government officials.
“The main problem in Egypt is follow-up,” said Sabir Abdel Aziz Galal, chief of the infectious disease department at the Ministry of Agriculture. “A decision is taken, there is follow-up for a period of time, but after that, they get busy with something else and forget about it. This is the case with everything.”
Speaking broadly, there are two systems for receiving services in Egypt: The government system and the do-it-yourself system. Instead of following the channels of bureaucracy, most people rely on an informal system of personal contacts and bribes to get a building permit, pass an inspection, get a driver’s license — or make a living.
“The straight and narrow path is just too bureaucratic and burdensome for the rich person, and for the poor, the formal system does not provide him with survival, it does not give him safety, security or meet his needs,” said Laila Iskandar Kamel, chairwoman of a community development organization in Cairo.
Cairo’s garbage collection belonged to the informal sector. The government hired multinational companies to collect the trash, and the companies decided to place bins around the city.
But they failed to understand the ethos of the community. People do not take their garbage out. They are accustomed to seeing someone collecting it from the door.
For more than half a century, those collectors were the zabaleen, a community of Egyptian Christians who live on the cliffs on the eastern edge of the city. They collected the trash, sold the recyclables and fed the organic waste to their pigs — which they then slaughtered and ate.
Killing all the pigs, all at once, “was the stupidest thing they ever did,” Ms. Kamel said, adding, “This is just one more example of poorly informed decision makers.”
When the swine flu fear first emerged, long before even one case was reported in Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak ordered that all the pigs be killed in order to prevent the spread of the disease.
When health officials worldwide said that the virus was not being passed by pigs, the Egyptian government said that the cull was no longer about the flu, but was about cleaning up the zabaleen’s crowded, filthy, neighborhood.
That was in May.
Today the streets of the zabaleen community are as packed with stinking trash and as clouded with flies as ever before. But the zabaleen have done exactly what they said they would do: they stopped taking care of most of the organic waste.
Instead they dump it wherever they can or, at best, pile it beside trash bins scattered around the city by the international companies that have struggled in vain to keep up with the trash.
“They killed the pigs, let them clean the city,” said Moussa Rateb, a former garbage collector and pig owner who lives in the community of the zabaleen. “Everything used to go to the pigs, now there are no pigs, so it goes to the administration.”
The recent trash problem was compounded when employees of one of the multinational companies — men and women in green uniforms with crude brooms dispatched around the city — stopped working in a dispute with the city.
The government says that the dispute has been resolved, but nothing has been done to repair the damage to the informal system that once had the zabaleen take Cairo’s trash home.
The garbage is only the latest example of the state’s struggling to meet the needs of its citizens, needs as basic as providing water, housing, health care and education.
The government announced last week that schools would not be opened until the first week of October to give the government time to prepare for a potential swine flu outbreak, a decision that could have been made anytime over the past three months, while schools were closed for summer break, critics said.
Officials in the Ministry of Health and other government ministries said they had not made this decision — and that they had counseled against pre-emptive school closings.
It appears to have been ordered by the presidency and carried out by the governors, who also ordered that all private schools, already in class, be shut down as well.
“We did not propose or call for postponing schools, so the reason is not with us,” said an official in the Ministry of Health who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak to the news media.
The heads of three large governorates, or states, in Egypt announced Wednesday that their strategy for keeping schoolchildren safe was to take classes, which on average are crowded with more than 60 students, and split them in half and have children attend school only three days a week, another decision that was criticized. There have been more than 800 confirmed cases of H1N1 in Egypt, and two flu-related deaths.
“The state is troubled; as a result the system of decision making is disintegrating,” said Galal Amin, an economist, writer and social critic. “They are ill-considered decisions taken in a bit of a hurry, either because you’re trying to please the president or because you are a weak government that is anxious to please somebody.”
Cairo’s streets have always been busy with children and littered with trash.
Now, with the pigs gone, and the schools closed, they are even more so.
“The Egyptians are really in a mess,” Mr. Amin said.
Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
A Wedding at 12042 Kahns Road
Well, October 10, 2009 will see another wedding in our home. Our Number 3 granddaughter, Allison Wynn Luckett is marrying Joshua Klein. This make the third wedding in our home and we hope that it is the start of a "tradition"! Her parents, Tracey and Randy (Raymond) Luckett were married in our home 26 +years ago as were we.
Weddings are one of the ways of reaffirming the Circle of Life. They bring joy and expectation for the future. They can be big extravaganzas or they can be very simple. But the result is the same--two people have taken a vow to spend their lives together and work together to make it work. Marriage means the first steps on what everyone hopes will be a long lasting journey through life, taking in the good, the bad, the happy and the sad. All of these make up the recipe for a good life. It is not all roses and it is not all thorns but some of each.
Carrie and I are wishing Allison and Josh the very best as they begin this life's journey together.
Weddings are one of the ways of reaffirming the Circle of Life. They bring joy and expectation for the future. They can be big extravaganzas or they can be very simple. But the result is the same--two people have taken a vow to spend their lives together and work together to make it work. Marriage means the first steps on what everyone hopes will be a long lasting journey through life, taking in the good, the bad, the happy and the sad. All of these make up the recipe for a good life. It is not all roses and it is not all thorns but some of each.
Carrie and I are wishing Allison and Josh the very best as they begin this life's journey together.
Friday, September 11, 2009
September 11, 2001, A Date Which Will Live in Infamy
On December 8, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt told the Congress and the citizens of this country that December y7, 1941, would be, “A date which will live in infamy…” The Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and sunk most of the Navy’s Pacific Fleet and destroyed many aircraft on the ground at then Army Air Corps bases. The Navy and Marine Corps suffered a total of 2,896 casualties of which 2,117 were deaths (Navy 2,008, Marines 109) and 779 wounded (Navy 710, Marines 69). The Army (as of midnight, 10 December) lost 228 killed or died of wounds, 113 seriously wounded and 346 slightly wounded. In addition, at least 57 civilians were killed and nearly as many seriously injured. (World War II History Info)
Little did we realize that 60 years later our Nation would suffer another, “Date which will live in infamy…”. Nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners. Two were crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. One was crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed into a field in near Shanksville, PA while a group of passengers tried to overpower the terrorist hijackers.
A total of 2,993 people were killed, including the 19 terrorists--246 on the four planes (from which there were no survivors), 2,603 in New York City in the towers and on the ground, and 125 at the Pentagon. Some 411 of the rescue workers who ran into the Trade Center towers were killed when the towers collapsed.
This tragedy and Pearl Harbor will always be remembered as “dates of infamy”. Take time today to pause and remember those who were lost on September 11, 2001. Take time to remember those who are seving in our military, police and fire departments.
Little did we realize that 60 years later our Nation would suffer another, “Date which will live in infamy…”. Nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners. Two were crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. One was crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed into a field in near Shanksville, PA while a group of passengers tried to overpower the terrorist hijackers.
A total of 2,993 people were killed, including the 19 terrorists--246 on the four planes (from which there were no survivors), 2,603 in New York City in the towers and on the ground, and 125 at the Pentagon. Some 411 of the rescue workers who ran into the Trade Center towers were killed when the towers collapsed.
This tragedy and Pearl Harbor will always be remembered as “dates of infamy”. Take time today to pause and remember those who were lost on September 11, 2001. Take time to remember those who are seving in our military, police and fire departments.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Life--who knows what it brings?
This past week has been one of happiness, shock, and sadness,. Just some of the many emotions that life can throw at us.
Happiness--Granddaughter Allison Luckett is engaged and is to be married to Joshua Klein on October 10 in our home! The beginnings of a tradition--we were married in our home, Tracey and Randy Luckett were in our home and now a new generation will be married here. What a great thing! Do you suppose we might be here to see another generation married here? The good Lord should be so gracious.
Shock and Sadness--On Friday, we found out that one of our friends, Kathy Janeczek, had died of lung cancer--she never smoked! Kathy and Carrie had worked together at George Washington University. Kathy left GWU several years ago and moved back to her hometown, Kingston, NY where she became the Town Clerk and according to her obituary, she was the heartbeat of Kingston. We loved her dearly and will miss her warm smile, her laugh and her true friendship.
Today, we received a call that another work mate of Carrie's died about 18 months ago. Peter Aspesi worked with Carrie at GWU also. Only 49, Peter died of cancer.
And to close on Happiness--
Today, while our dog Jake and I were out for his morning constitutional, we chanced upon a friends and their children who were waiting for the shcool bus to take the kids off to their very first day of school. What great happy memories were evoked by this scene. As we stood and talked, it suddenly dawned on me that 70 years ago, yes, nearly three-quarters of a century, my mother walked me to school for the very first time to Pershing Grade School where Mrs. Laura Odneal would be my teacher. Later on in the day, Carrie and I suddenly realized that 50 years ago, her mother had performed the same task--walking her youngest daughter to Edgemont Elementary School in Montclair, NJ. Oh, how time does fly!
And so, this past week, the circle of life was working its way around and so life goes on.
Happiness--Granddaughter Allison Luckett is engaged and is to be married to Joshua Klein on October 10 in our home! The beginnings of a tradition--we were married in our home, Tracey and Randy Luckett were in our home and now a new generation will be married here. What a great thing! Do you suppose we might be here to see another generation married here? The good Lord should be so gracious.
Shock and Sadness--On Friday, we found out that one of our friends, Kathy Janeczek, had died of lung cancer--she never smoked! Kathy and Carrie had worked together at George Washington University. Kathy left GWU several years ago and moved back to her hometown, Kingston, NY where she became the Town Clerk and according to her obituary, she was the heartbeat of Kingston. We loved her dearly and will miss her warm smile, her laugh and her true friendship.
Today, we received a call that another work mate of Carrie's died about 18 months ago. Peter Aspesi worked with Carrie at GWU also. Only 49, Peter died of cancer.
And to close on Happiness--
Today, while our dog Jake and I were out for his morning constitutional, we chanced upon a friends and their children who were waiting for the shcool bus to take the kids off to their very first day of school. What great happy memories were evoked by this scene. As we stood and talked, it suddenly dawned on me that 70 years ago, yes, nearly three-quarters of a century, my mother walked me to school for the very first time to Pershing Grade School where Mrs. Laura Odneal would be my teacher. Later on in the day, Carrie and I suddenly realized that 50 years ago, her mother had performed the same task--walking her youngest daughter to Edgemont Elementary School in Montclair, NJ. Oh, how time does fly!
And so, this past week, the circle of life was working its way around and so life goes on.
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