Monsters Inside of Me

I usually enjoy watching programs on The Animal Planet channel, but they have a new one that is really gross that is called “Monsters Inside of Me” the commercials are bad enough but I’ve watched a few of their episodes and really didn’t enjoy it enough to keep watching after about 10 or 15 minutes.

My favorite show on The Animal Planet is “It’s Me or The Dog” this lady named Victoria does wonderful things for these people that have some major issues with their dogs. I think she has a great television career ahead of her and she is teaching nothing but good things for dogs and people a like here folks. That’s is good thing!

Gonzalez Reeds And Other Family Dinner Chit Chat

Since I’ve never even had the opportunity to actually see or place in my hands any type of Clarinet, much less the Gonzalez reeds that my sister’s middle son was trying to explain to me at dinner at their place over the weekend. It felt good to get away from the house and the farm, with no major holiday or family events being celebrated, just a night away from all the critters and chores that keep me pretty chained to the old homestead the majority of the time.

A nice home cooked meal is always a welcomed change. One that wasn’t placed into some type of Tupperware and brought over for me to re heat by one person or another, usually my sister. I was able to sit and watch TV with my nieces and nephews, while smelling all the wonderful aromas that were floating out of the kitchen. It’s the small things like that which people that are suddenly on their own and secluded from most of the world.

Dinner was awesome, sis is a wonderful cook, something that my mother spend a lot of her time teaching her to do. So most of the dishes are from our mother and they taste just like home!

Hands-On CPR

Did you know that a victim of a cardiac arrest could die within four – six minutes if they are not treated the right way and in a timely fashion? And that today’s studies show that by providing CPR to an adult that has collapsed due to a sudden cardiac arrest can more than double or triple a person’s chance of coming out of  type of arrest alive. What really bites is that less than 1/3 of these people, that are not in the hospital at that precise moment, don’t even receive CPR.

I know that way too many people are not comfortable performing CPR on anyone – especially on some one that they don’t know for a various reasons. Since the 1980’s what with the AIDS/HIV epidemic people are really scared about getting that close to anyone and have really shied away from the whole CPR idea, big time and not just because they are afraid of doing something wrong. It is such a shame.

I’m so glad that there is a big new ad campaign going on right now with the American Heart Association and the Ad Council that is introducing the Hands-Only CPR technique that hopefully will have a positive impact on people and get people to start saving lives and reducing the number of people that are dying each day because of heart failure. This Hands-Only CPR is a simple 2 step process, the first thing you do is call 911 and the second being to push hard and fast on the chest, right in the center of it, until help arrives.

Infomercials

Could not sleep last night, so I turned on the TV and thought it might bore me back to sleep. I rarely stay awake past the late night news. Every once in a while I try to watch a little of the David Letterman Show. But honestly, it’s hard to stay up that late and be productive the next day.

For some reason I could not sleep and the Letterman Show was long over with. After his show was another talk show / variety show kind of thing with a guy named Craig Ferguson. He was funny, but in a forced and giddy way. I don’t know that I liked his show much. Then, after that is some celebrity gossip show. I could care less which celebrities are arrested for DUI or getting divorced. I thought surely that would put me to sleep. But no.

Then, they ran an old episode of Star Trek the Next Generation. I could not believe that clock said it was after 2:00 am and I’m still awake. So then, they started a commercial to sell something to do with buying and selling foreclosed homes. That’s what finally did it – that infomercial put me to sleep within the first couple minutes of that boring show.

Got Milk?

Was watching the news yesterday morning (I’m thinking it was The Today Show) and they were running a story about how within a short period of time milk is going to cost $6.00 a gallon! They were blaming the increasing cost of fuel for the increase, which is the reason that the price is rising on just about everything.I think that is horrible! Milk is going to become a luxury item at that price! For many years there has been a huge campaign about how healthy milk is, but I think that people will end up drinking more sugary fruit flavored drinks like kool-aid instead of drinking milk if it gets that expensive! If milk gets that expensive, I imagine the milk related products like cheese, ice cream, butter and yogurt will rise in price as well!

Again, I think that is going to be driving people towards eating the cheap junk food instead of dairy product.

love me some milk
Got Milk?

4 Years Old & Playing Jambalaya!

Don’t miss this. The kid playing the “Button Accordian” is 5 years old and is Hank Williams Jr’s son. The little guy is awesome.

Turn the volume to its highest and enjoy the jambalaya!

This little guy is simply fantastic. Turn on your speakers and enjoy.

Bulletproof Microphones

Since both of our parents were killed over five years ago now, my oldest sister is always stuck playing hostess for most of the major family holiday dinners and get-togethers. Since I am on my own and live the closest to her and her family it only makes sense for me to pitch in where the others really can’t manage to do for a variety of reasons, I try and help out in any way that I can.

Over Christmas it was mentioned that we should try doing some karaoke at the next family dinner, which just so happens to be Easter and that believe it or not,  is only a few short weeks away. My sister does have a karaoke machine but it’s been around the block a few times from the look of it and it doesn’t have the microphone that used to go with that particular karaoke machine. I have been looking at various microphones online in my spare time and have been totally surprised at how many microphones are really out there.

I think I finally decided on the right one, the sm57, but what freaked me out was in the description part of the add it boasts that it is bulletproof and how it stands up to road travel and abuse. Guess these are just an added bonus to the whole deal, I really don’t think anyone in my family would get that crazy during karaoke at my sisters on Easter, but in case they do I will know that the microphone will make it through all right! I can’t wait to share this story on Easter day with the family members that manage to find their way there this year.

He’s Large!

There’s a scene in the movie, Popeye, where Olive Oil is hanging out with her girlfriends and she starts to sing a song about her fiancé, Bluto. She tries to sing of his virtues, but the song ends up, “He’s large,” and the girls sing along like backup singers, “Large.” That was the polite way, back in the 1980’s, to describe guys like me. I’m large and I’m not all that worried about losing weight. I’m not fat. There is a difference between large and fat.

My problem with being large is finding clothes that fit. For some reason a lot of U. S. manufacturers have decided that men who are wide must also be short. If I can find clothes that fit me around the waist, the legs are too short. If I find a shirt that is large enough for my barrel chest, then the sleeves are too short. That is why I shop for Large Men’s Clothing online. I know the measurements that I need and I can usually get enough details from the web site to know if the clothes will fit me.

Enjoy the video, thanks to YouTube! I’ve always been a Popeye fan and was thrilled when this movie came out. I think it’s time to dig that movie out and watch it again, probably been ten years since I’ve seen in last!

Box Office Failure

One of my favorite action movies by someone other than Mel Gibson has got to be the original “Speed.” The movie had a great cast: Keanu Reeves – gorgeous, intense, the clean cut, cop-type everyone loves to love Dennis Hopper – one of the best bad guys EVER – Sandra Bullock – America’s darling – Jeff Daniels – Imaginative casting – from slapstick to a cop – and it worked! Can you believe it has been 19 years since that movie came out? IT was released in 1994. Now that certainly makes me feel so OLD!

One of the worst sequels of all time, Speed 2 was made with a lot of the same people, with the noticeable absence of Keanu Reeves, and released in 1997. It was a box office failure – and rightfully so. The movie was a money grab and had so many technical inconsistencies that it was neither believable nor entertaining. The set for the huge crash ending was supposed to be the Caribbean town of St. Martin, but according to Wikipedia, there is no town by the name in the movie and there is not town that looks anything like the scene in the movie. So I stand by my original comment that the Isla Moin Marina in Costa Rica was used as the basis of the movie set in Speed 2. Unless this town did not exist in 1996, in which case I wonder if the architect was inspired by the movie?

Running Up That Hill, Without the TV Set

With everything that needs to be done around the farm and the house by me, myself and I, I don’t usually have a whole heck of a lot of down time, but when I do I really like to kick back with a cold beer and watch an hour or two of some good action or comedy shows and/or movies. You would think that with all the channels that I get with my current Direct TV package that there would be several things on tonight, but that just wasn’t the case.

I started to watch a movie on one of the Showtime channels called Bellflower but after staring at the screen for over 10 minutes and still not catching on to the plot or being entertained at all I couldn’t deal with this movie another minute. The good news is that at the beginning of the movie they played a song that I swear I haven’t heard or even thought about in well over 15 years “Running Up That Hill” but I they only played about 45 seconds of it, just enough to tease me into turning off the TV and turning on my computer to try and find this song on YouTube. I had no idea that there were several versions of it, but it didn’t take too long to find the one that I was used to hearing, the one by Kate Bush.

For some reason this song just moves me, not in a bad or depressing way, mind you. I really can’t explain the feeling, but it is a good one and those feelings are hard to come by lately so I’m going to take it and run up that hill!