James Rising

Lawyers.

Modern life has all sorts of interesting ways to stress you out that our ancestors didn’t have to deal with.

When Og the caveman had a dispute with somebody he clobbered them over the head with his trusty club and then they were gone. No more dispute. Nowadays of course we are more civilized and instead of clubs we use…lawyers.

20 years ago I had the unhappy experience of going through a divorce. Kids were involved so there were seemingly endless meetings with domestic relations and lawyers were always part of the festivities. My ex-wife chose a legal beagle that I now see almost every day. Now I am sure this is a highly qualified member of the bar. I am positive that he does his job well and is a credit to his profession. I know the fact that he made me crazy back then is my fault and none of his.

But I didn’t care for him then and I haven’t warmed to him since.

So why do I see him everyday? Well I don’t see him in person. I see his 14 foot high mug on billboards all over town. And I must say he looks the same as he did 20 years ago. And he still raises my blood pressure when I look at his unsmiling face. It takes me right back to those less than pleasant days when I was chewed up and spit out by a legal system endorsed by the Commonwealth.

The last time I saw this guy the most vivid memory I took away was the layer of egg he had on his tie. Of course I left those meetings with empty pockets and egg on my face so who came out better?

You have to wonder. What would Og the caveman have done. Put another way. WWOD. What would Og do?

This was a Christmas gift from my daughter.

Grow your own fireflower!
Fire Pepper!

As confirmed by the Guinness Book of World Records, the hottest peppers in the world are the Naga jolokia. LIAR – it was just dethroned on 12/3. However, this is still the hottest pepper you can grow yourself. These peppers also go by the names Bhut jolokia and Ghost Pepper. Let’s examine these names. Jolokia is very similar to jalopy – a broken down vehicle. So, eating this pepper (Bhut jolokia) could lead to you having a broken down backside (Butt jalopy). Also, it could make you wish you were dead (Ghost Pepper). Time to grow your own now, with the Grow Your Own World’s Hottest DIY Pepper kit!

And starting your Grow Your Own World’s Hottest DIY Pepper is super easy. You pop open the tops and bottom like you would a soda. Then add water and stick in happy sunlight. You’ll have sprouts within about two weeks. Just remember, once your Grow Your Own World’s Hottest DIY Pepper kit grows peppers – be careful. Eat at your own risk and all that (we’ve seen the YouTube vids, and it ain’t pretty). Because these puppies are over 1 million SHU – and that is a small sun in your mouth!

Grow Your Own World’s Hottest DIY Pepper

Just add sunlight, water, and love, and you’ll begin seeing sprouts within about 10-15 days (of course, actual pepper cultivation will take longer than that and require more care).
You’ll be growing your own Naga jolokia (aka: Bhut jolokia; aka: Ghost Chili).
Scoville Heat Rating: 1,001,304 SHU (confirmed by the Guinness Book of World Records).
Can Dimensions: 2.6″ diameter x 3.75″ tall

I planted (heh, opened the can and put it on the shelf) a month or so after Christmas. It’s now almost September.

Here is the progress:

For reference, “Figment” the purple guy one the left is about 3″ tall.

Look close:

Little, tiny peppers. Yum, I can’t wait for chili this fall.

Did you ever get a song stuck in your head for days at a time? Most of us have. Why is it that it’s always the dumbest song? It’s a small world after all comes to mind. NOT THAT SONG AGAIN!

Or the Monty Python spam spam spam spam song.

But it goes away eventually. Except for a few unlucky enough to have…musical hallucinations.

It’s an actual diagnosable disease that doctors are studying. The conclusion by the boys the white coats? The brain in folks who hear Christmas carols and Cabaret songs with no radio in the room is malfunctioning. Gosh it’s good to know we have Doctors to figure that one out.

The Docs also have decided that this phenomenon has been around for many years. Towards the end of his life, composer Robert Schumann wrote down the music he hallucinated. He thought he was taking dictation from Schubert’s ghost.

To give you the readers digest version of the medical research, there is a part of the brain that turns sounds into music. It’s always trying to do this and when it doesn’t hear any in some people it makes up its own. Even deaf folks, especially deaf people are not immune.

This problem is not the same as hearing voices in your head. Or like David Berkowitz, the son of Sam killer, thinking that the neighbors German Shepard is giving you orders to kill people. That’s just schizophrenia. Whew!

The Doctors have also found out that the tunes people are most likely to hear on the private radio station in their head are those that they have heard repeatedly or are emotionally significant to them. Often the music has religious overtones.

It happens most often to folks in their 70’s.

This is going to be interesting. An entire generation of baby boomers in the nursing home, listening to Stairway to Heaven in their heads.

Parking lots shouldn’t cause your blood pressure to rise.

What is it with some people and parking lots?

The spaces are clearly marked at one place where I park daily.

It’s a medium sized lot that is never full but gets crowded in front of the business I frequent. Why does this person who parks every day ignore the lines? They consistently park with the line running right down the middle of their behemothmobile SUV effectively taking up two parking spaces. In fact because there are two rows of spaces and they park in the middle of the two rows they eat up four spaces.

And another thing. Why do people speed in parking lots? Ever see that National Lampoon Summer vacation movie? There is a scene in there where Chevy Chase is driving the family truckster sound asleep on a sidewalk at high speed. A guy walks out of a door and is almost clobbered by the car. That’s the way it looks to me as I watch some people at racing speed in the narrow rows of some lots. If you walk out from between cars you may become another notch on their grill. What would it say on your tombstone? Flattened at the Wal-Mart?

And why is it so important to get that space? I have fallen into this kind of behavior myself. You see someone vacating a space. You wait patiently with your blinker on while they back out. Someone zooms into space before you. I have seen fights erupt over this.

Why? It’s just a parking space?

Why does it make us so furious?

The old saying goes that “old age and treachery beats youth and skill every time.”

Someone should probably have let 20-year-old Cole Whitt know.

The native of Alpine, Calif., is the youngest driver in the top 10 of the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series standings, and is holding down the fifth spot in front of such seasoned veterans as Todd Bodine, Ron Hornaday and Matt Crafton…
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Rant D’Jour is about my resignation…

Last year I left a job in radio for what I thought at the time were some pretty good reasons. I still do.
It left a lot of people scratching their heads and…more

With apologies to Dave Letterman

ED NOTE: I escaped from radio nearly three years ago.

Last year I left a job in radio for what I thought at the time were some pretty good reasons. I still do.
It left a lot of people scratching their heads and questioning my sanity.
There really is no percentage to be gained in questioning my sanity.
With that in mind here are the top ten reasons why I quit my job:

10: Resign? I thought it said re-sign!
9. Got a great job selling Amway
8. Got a great job selling Mary Kay
7. Making comfortable living off pictures of high ranking Entercom brass with farm animals
8. Devoting full time to weight loss. Now down 300 pounds! Eat your heart out Karen Carpenter!
7. Wanted to sell water and salt door to door
6. Found a job with even more meetings
5. Two words. Free time
4. Two more words. No Salespeople
3. Resign? I thought it said re-sign!
2. Wanted to see more daytime TV
and the number one reason Jim quit

1. Freedoms just another word for nothing left to lose.

Tuesday Review: Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base by Annie Jacobson

There are several reasons why you must read this book.

First of all you want to know about the aliens, right? Come on, admit it. If you have a shred of curiosity in your mind about what really happened at Roswell then for the sake of your peace of mind read this book. I won’t spoil it for you but the author sites Occam’s razor which she defines as “simpler explanations are, other things being equal, generally better than more complex ones” to justify her revelation that there were indeed little beings with bug heads and large eyes that crashed , alive in a saucer shaped craft.

How about that? When you read what the author claims really happened you will be amazed. Is it the truth? It appears well documented. She has footnotes an’ everthing! But really-it seems plausible and makes more sense than many other theories.

But the book is far more than just the revelation about the crash. Area 51 has a rich and checkered history and Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base manages to de-cloak much of it, at least the portions that amazingly enough, have been declassified and made public.

Amazing stuff, really. Giant spaceships powered by nuclear bombs. Spy planes flying 80,000 feet high at mach 3.5 taking photos in such detail that you could read license plates. Fusion bombs set off that were so powerful that scientists fled in fear that the atmosphere would be set on fire.

Whew!

And that is just a small part of the wonders that Jacobson uncovers. Reading the book is a serious undertaking, it’s over 400 pages (544 if you count all those footnotes) but it moves right along and to me was a page turner.

Some great photos, many never published before, are part of the allure.

But the real story here, and the main reason why you and every American should read this book is to see your guvmint in action.

To see the deals, the egos, the power struggles and the just plain stupidity of the military and the CIA intertwined with dumb, greedy politicians is eye-opening and depressing. The most important take away? You will be astounded to learn the most secretive organization of the U.S. Government. CIA? Military? FBI? National Security Council? Nope. An organization that thumbed it’s nose at Presidents seeking the truth and still does it today.

The Atomic Energy Commission.

Read it and tremble. What hath God wrought? Nothing compared to what man has and is hiding.

Rant D’Jour Calling George Orwell.

Soon in downtown Wilkes-Barre he will have over 500 eyes. The Mayor has decided that a system of security cameras is a fine idea…more

Big brother is watching you.

And soon in downtown Wilkes-Barre he will have over 500 eyes. The Mayor has decided that a system of security cameras is a fine idea.

Mayor Tom Leighton says: “If you’re not doing anything wrong, you shouldn’t be worried about being watched.”

It was put another way to me by the Sisters of the Perpetual Agony. “God is watching you” the nuns would say. And they didn’t mean it in the general sense. They meant the Supreme Being had his eyes on me. It was a heavy thought for a six year old.

Catholic guilt aside most everyone probably has no objection to the idea of surveillance in downtown Wilkes-Barre. When he was a city councilman Jim McCarthy described some of the night time denizens as “creepy-crawlies” and looking at the police blotter you can’t really argue that some folks would be better off caged.

The city has been boasting about its state of the art monitoring system for some time now. 10 wide screen monitors connected to an unknown number of cameras in undisclosed locations are watched 24/7 by a policeman. How do you get that job? I am guessing that if they expand to more than 500 cameras that a few more eyeballs will have to be assigned to the task.

It brings up a whole bunch of questions. Like who does get to watch?

ED NOTE: This was written in 2008-now in 2011 the controversy is who was really watching? It’s alleged that the folks tasked with peeping were sleeping or playing games. Go figger.

Why shouldn’t the cameras be put on a public access TV Channel so the taxpayers who foot the bill can get some entertainment for their money? Or at the very least post them on a web-site. Gosh some of the results could even make it to you-tube!

The “Creepy Crawler” show could be the next “Big Brother” if we handle this right. See real life drama in the city. See creatures of the night doing unspeakable acts under the cloak of darkness. See actual crime as it is actually being committed. And all from the comfort and safety of your own home.

I remember years ago when commercial radio scanners were all the rage. You could listen in to Police and Fire department radio communications. Every kitchen had one and all the blue hair set knew all the police and fire codes by heart. It was a form of entertainment for them and it made them feel as though they had some insight into what was happening down the block and around the corner.

I can’t see any real difference in putting the camera’s on public view. What did you say? Invasion of privacy? Come on! That ship sailed long ago.

We don’t see him every year. Or that often when we do. He is elusive and fearful and seems to know when he is being watched and scurries away. Last year I don’t recall seeing him at all.

In reality he is probably here all the time with a burrow on the wooded part of the ranch. We just don’t see him because he is FAST and shy. He will show up for a few days or maybe a week or two and then go about his groundhog business elsewhere.

The long-suffering wife named him “badgie” or maybe I did. He is definitely not a badger but he needed a name and Phil was taken.

The picture was taken from the kitchen window in 2008, three years ago. He is poking his head out on the wooden sidewalk that abuts the Hosta, which he likes for an appetizer. While we don’t know how old he was when he posed for the photo he is getting to be a senior citizen in groundhog years. The critters can live six years in the wild so he is at least 4, more likely 5. If it is the same beast, and I think it is, he has become much more grey in color, seems a bit thinner and if possible, even cagier, as I was unable to snap a picture of Badgie 2011.

Most of the Badgie sightings have him in full speed across the back yard:

The LSW does not like him. She fears him and his claws and teeth. I don’t think he is much of a threat but I encourage him to do his foraging elsewhere. He is so skittish that usually just opening the kitchen door will send him away in a hurry. It’s a big ranch and he can find any number of places to munch the foliage without using our deck or yard.

In my younger, darker years I would have cheerfully shot him before he had grown grey. Now I don’t even own a gun, much less the resolve to point it at a living thing and send lead on it’s way.

Yesterday I spared a spider.
I grow older, but wiser? Not sure.

Rant D’Jour Is about the difference between doctors and Disc Jockeys.

It’s OK to bribe doctors but don’t try to get a song played on the radio by using any coercion…more

It’s OK to bribe doctors but don’t try to get a song played on the radio by using any coercion. Maybe it’s just because I worked in radio that I find this a little ridiculous but bear with me here for a moment.

A Disc Jockey named Alan Freed, who many believe came up the term “Rock and Roll”, was hounded out of the industry and ended up drinking himself to an early grave after he was convicted of taking bribes of various types to play records. In 1960 the F.C.C. made this practice illegal. But Under US law, a radio station can play a specific song in exchange for money, but this must be disclosed on the air as being sponsored airtime.

Confused yet? It gets worse.

Because of some recent attention drawn to this issue radio station’s have to log every contact with record companies and report it to the F.C.C. who should be worrying more about Janet Jackson showing off her mammary glands. If a record company sends a stick of gum to a program director they must make full disclosure.

But doctors are under no such compulsion. Medical industries like those who make drugs or medical devices are free to wine and dine, give free samples to doctors and even take them on trips. In one survey taken by the New England Journal of Medicine 78% of all doctors say they get free drug samples from Pharmaceutical reps. 83% admit they have received free food or drinks.

If a radio person is taken out to dinner by a record company employee the event must be logged sometimes even to the point where the items ordered must be disclosed. They have to sign many forms assuring everyone that no matter what they will not be influenced to play any songs on the radio.

Now I am not saying the idea of paying off or bribing a Program Director to play a song that sucks on the radio is a good thing. It’s not. But a pharmaceutical rep can and did go your Doctor and got him all liquored up and then asked him to prescribe more Vioxx. He gave the doctor bushel baskets full of Vioxx which was supposed to be a great drug for arthritis. Nothing wrong there? Vioxx has been shown to cause heart attacks and strokes and has been banned. But has anyone of the Pharmaceutical industry been hounded out of a job and forced to drink themselves to death? It’s to laugh.

No one is going to die because a bad record got on the air. Especially now that radio guys can’t even break wind after a record company dinner without recording the length, volume and odor. But bribing Doctors is OK.

Is this a great country or what?