Random Musings of a Ramblin' Fool XIV

Hello Again!

Yeah, I know, how many times have I said I'm back again and will start posting regularly.

This blogging thing is much like weight loss, it takes a lot of mental discipline to do it right which is to say do it consistently well.

Anywho, all I can say is I'm back and intend to blog daily or close to that for the foreseeable future.

Given that my last installment of this column was November 18, 2008, I'd say we have a lot of catching up to do so here goes the Mother Of All Random Musings.

New Year's Day 2009

We spent New Year's Day sick at home watching on television the Rose Parade occurring in our hometown of Pasadena, CA. Following that we watched a lot of football, but mainly the Rose Bowl which again this year featured a USC team hell-bent on proving it belonged in the national championship picture looked for respect at the expense of an over-matched Big Ten Conference Champion (well, in 2007 it was the Big Ten Runner-Up Illinois).

Fight On!

Well, my USC Trojans won another Rose Bowl this year, their third in a row and third in four years following their loss to Texas in the 2006 BCS Championship held at the Rose Bowl.
This followed USC's winning another Pac-10 Conference Championship, this time without sharing it with another co-champion as they did the year before with Arizona State.

Without the University of Oregon at Eugine blowing out Oregon State University at Corvallis in Corvallis the last game of the regular season for both and at a venue where OSU upset USC earlier in the season in USC's 2008 installment of their yearly let-down game against an inferior opponent which keeps them out of the BCS National Championship they would actually have been in that game against either Florida or Oklahoma and would have no doubt beaten whomever they faced.

The game was 31-7 at halftime against an over-matched Penn State team which finished their regular season like USC at 11-1 and like USC would have been in the BCS National Championship game were it not for a let-down game against Iowa late in the season.

USC spent most of the second half celebrating on the sideline which allowed a well-coached Penn St. team to make the final score a respectable 38-24 which game was not as close as that score might lead one to believe.

The final BCS standings put 13-1 Florida at #1 and 13-0 Utah at #2 and 12-1 USC at #3.

A few weeks later, that game's offensive MVP, USC junior quarterback Mark Sanchez opted to not come back for his senior year as he will graduate in May of this year and could be the second quarterback picked in the draft whereas if he returned for his final year of eligibility he would be competing in the draft with Florida's 2007 Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow and Oklahoma's 2008 Heisman Trophy winner Sam Bradford and Texas' Colt McCoy.

Jury Duty Follow-up

That jury duty thing I mentioned last time didn't work out.

The prosecution nuked me while the defense wanted me to stay.

The Machiavellian reasons for this seeming illogicality are due to my feeling that active gang membership should be illegal and that active gang members are untermensch and that I would have no qualms with a policy wherein active gang members were ground up and used for fertilizer on public highway landscaped right-of-ways (although I didn't exactly phrase it that dimly).

During the questioning phase for prospective jurors this bigoted and close-minded attitude of mine came to light as well as the fact I know more about gangs, particularly the Mexican Mafia, than most folks (that's because I have a close friend who is a corrections officer who shares with me a lot of what the Corrections Department teaches him).

The prosecution seems to have taken a dim view of this as their case was heavily dependent upon prosecution witnesses who were gang members in or out of incarceration who had copped pleas to get their sentences reduced or were even active gang members or their affiliates who were not facing incarceration.

It appears they feared I would doubt or down-right disbelieve any such testimony for which I don't blame them although they needn't have feared such as the defendant, Abiel Ayala was and is as guilty as sin as was clearly apparent by his visage and behavior in court.

I was ready to convict him for just looking the way he did, to wit, a slouchy, punky piece of human excrement and the living embodiment of the expression "untermensch".

They should execute folks for just looking that way, regardless of ethnicity of course.

Mr. Ayala looked all the part of a Neanderthal, replete with hairy, protruding eyebrows and a simple yet feral face that belied a man not on trial for singing too loud in church.

Given he committed his crime of murdering a fellow member of the Nipomo 13 gang while tweaking and not under orders from above he stands a good chance of being murdered after he begins his sentence which otherwise might be up to 52 years.

However, he may have begun to try to earn a reprieve by showing his willingness to stupidly make trouble and thus give those higher up in the Mexican Mafia gang structure a reason to keep him alive by way of his attacking an alleged child molester in court the morning of and right before his sentencing. Read all about it here.

Frak Me!

For those of you who don't know it the "re-imagined" Battlestar Galactica is making its final season final run with this next Friday night at 10 P.M. debuting the third episode of the second half of the fourth season of the third run of the concept; follow me?

The interruption in this season was caused by the recent writer's strike.

Thus far this second half of the final season has been typically dreary and wonderfully intense as we have come to expect from this epic television series.

With the declaration that this will be the final season of the series I'm glad they are going to end it on a high note while it is still at its peak but I'm nonetheless bummed to see this happen as I am going to terribly miss this show, one of my favorite television series of all time.


The powers that be are going to create at least one spin-off television series. However, I fear that will be a step down from the current series although I have hope I will be wrong. This next show is tentatively entitled "Caprica" and will cover the events prior to those covered in the current series.

What the Frell?!

We finally got around to finishing the entirety of another science fiction vice we share, Farscape. This vice takes the form of a serious addiction much like our relationship with BSG.
We both are now seriously bummed at having no more episodes to watch together and with the completion of watching the subsequent mini-series The Peacekeeper Wars we are now hoping the franchise reemerges in either mini-series form again and/or big screeen form and/or webisode form. We hope the execs at Sci-Fi Channel have the mivoks to get something going along these lines.

It's The Stupid Economy

All this talk about this no longer being a recession but a depression and that we have a long way to go down makes my butt pucker.

I wish these fracking/frelling talking heads would just shut the frack/frell up and stop psyching folks up any further into a tizzy than they already are.

We all need to take a deep breath and just get a grip. The sky may be cloudy but it's not falling (yet).

President Obama

We now have our 44th President and it isn't Clinton 44 as I was sure was going to be the case and as perhaps should have been the case had the American people not been so gullible but what is, is and I accept it.

Of late I pray to God every day that He motivates Obama to make as many of the correct choices as possible and causes Obama's advisor's to give him as much good advice as he can get and that he follows it as often as possible.
We can't expect perfection but I just want our guy to make fewer and lesser mistakes than our rivals and enemies and successfully lead us the next four or eight years and that He keep Obama safe from assassination, especially by a white guy(s).

Pole Shift 2008

Well the paranoidiac pseudo-intellectual/anti-intellectual ideologically-demagoguish conspiracy theory whack-job political hack polarization field has shifted back to the cultural Right with my poor, sweet Conservative friends and acquaintances now beginning to make complete asses out of themselves suggesting and believing every sort of malevolent, seditious, illegal motive or action imaginable and even unimaginable.

The latest one is that Obama never actually took the oath swearing on the Lincoln Bible but they don't offer proof or explain how such an important book was taken out of the Library of Congress and under close supervision used in the swearing in and returned to the Library and yet nobody saw it happen or if they did they are all a part of the conspiracy.

This is of course married to and rooted in the oldest conspiracy allegation about Obama which is that he is a closet Muslim replete with belt bomb hanging in his White House closet waiting to be used at appointed time.

Of course, this is a complete pole (political polarization) field reversal/shift from the previous eight years when Dubya was variously dumb as mud with Dick Cheney as Puppet Master and Power Behind The Throne or Dubya was dumb like a fox and behind 9/11 so he could justify stomping all over the Constitution and leading us into Iraq so we could take all their oil as if we needed it nearly that badly (actually the Europeans and Indians and Chinese do).

And of course before that it was eight years of hearing about how many people Bubba had murdered or shagged and how he dodged the draft and it was Whitewater ad infinitum ad nauseum. Oh, and lest I forget, there was all the talk about how real or not his marriage to Hilary was and questions about his having a sex addition and Hilary being bisexual or Lesbian.

The amazing thing is it is always the same sorts of personalities that promulgate this stuff and the same sorts of personalities that buy into this stuff.

All these people are actually very much alike and in the same group in reality when it comes to what actually counts and unfortunately these people regardless of political alignment are anti-intellectual extremist nit-wit ding-dongs.

I'm in the Tucson Show (Sort of)

Well, okay, I'm actually not.

My large Sikhote-Alin meteorite is now safely in the hands of Geoffrey Notkin of Aerolite Meteorites in Tucson, AZ.

He and I have entered into a contractural agreement wherein he will display it and otherwise promote it in the course of selling it for me in return for a reasonable percentage.

Not only will it be on display at his noteworthy location at the Tucson Show but he will promote it on his blog and website and perhaps elsewhere as opportunity provides.

When we talked about it yesterday right after he had received it and gotten it out of the box, he was very impressed with it and said it was one of the largest nicest one's he'd come across in a while and was very pleased to be able to handle it for me.

Given that Sikhote's are his specialty and fave and that he's such a nice guy, not to mention such a reputable dealer with great connections I'm so very pleased to be working with him on this matter.

K&K Earthwerks News

Our business and particularly our Ebay Store, K&K Earthwerks, continues to grow in spite of the current economic distress.

Given this is the quiet time of the year for us with no shows to speak of I am pleased to say that Ebay is keeping us going almost single-handedly and continues to pick up momentum as we expand our Ebay Store inventory.

Surpringingly, foreign sales are almost what I'd call brisk.

We have now shipped to Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal. Netherlands, Malta, Hungary, Russia, Japan, Taiwan, and probably some more I'm not thinking of at the moment.

Much of our business also comes from repeat customers, especially some of the foreign customers, particularly a nice Japanese woman named Kazue.

About Those Missing "Bloggings"

Yeah, I know I never posted blog entries about the 2008 Placerville and Lancaster shows.
I have them in the queue ready to go when I've finished with them and when that happens I'll post them on the dates they covered.
When that happens I'll announce it on this blog and provide links to those blog postings.

And Last But Not Least!

Things have changed with me.

I'm talking about change that is not self-perceived or even delusional but the real deal.


My walk with God is getting healthier and stronger all the time and I don't remember when I last felt this way or if I even ever did but I don't care because I'm alive now and I'm living better all the time.

I feel I've really finally gotten my head wrapped around what the hell happened to me since high school as well as to my family during the same period.

I fear I have to have one more heavy talk with my family before I can let it all go and move on but at least I feel the onion is almost completely peeled and my anger is completely gone.

The anger was directed at myself and at loved ones for being just like me: flawed human beings with Old Sin Natures.

It's this realization that has helped me forgive and move on because I failed God just as monumentally as they and I surely want forgiveness and how can I hope to gain that from God if I won't show the same to others for being no worse than I?

Another thing that has helped me forgive is the fact I feel more love in my heart for my family (or at least particular members) than I have ever felt before and that in spite of our differences that I mostly expect will never be fully reconciled but now it doesn't matter with me and I'm okay with it.

Life is too ephemeral to hold onto poison and pain and variously holding onto and running away from both of those things is the explanation of what the hell happened to my family over the past 15-20 years.

I need to start living again for the first time in my life since I was a child and encourage the rest of my family to join me out in the light and if they don't accept the offer then I need to accept that and still love them and be available to them if they ever ask for a helping hand out into that light and life.

If not then I won't judge or hate them but I surely won't follow them anymore into that place.

I'm going to focus on taking care of my business and if by finding the path God has established for my life I can help them find their's then maybe this story will have a happy ending after all.


Kimmer

2008 San Miguel Rockhound Tailgater

Today was Santa Lucia Rockhounds member Cliff Bowen's tailgater in San Miguel which seems to just get bigger and better every year.
This year was my second time doing it and it was a rousing success for me personally.
I showed up earlier than last year when I learned I had missed a pretty good surge of visitors earlier in the morning after I showed up to set up. This year I showed up earlier but there was no such surge. In fact, there was no one big surge but a steady stream of visitors kept me reasonably busy the entire six hours or so I was there.


My booth, pictured above and below, was the largest set-up but hardly the only one as we had both some returning dealers as well as at least one new one in the persons of Santa Lucia Rockhounds President Gene Bilyeu and his lovely wife Barbara who is also a club officer.
This was the Bilyeu's first foray into being INSIDE the sales booth as opposed to OUTSIDE and they seemed to enjoy it and have reasonable success.



A lady I had never met before showed up part-way into the day and wanted to know if I wanted to purchase any of her jewelry. Some years ago she said she started to get into selling jewelry at shows but got out of it due to health issues.
On this day she was on her way back from selling what she could to a jeweler in San Luis Obispo.
She heard mention of this event on the radio or saw a flier and dropped by to sell what she could to dealers present at this tailgater.
I told her I wasn't interested in what she had but that she was welcome to use my small back table to sell her stuff herself to the visitors at this tailgater.
She gratefully accepted my offer and proceeded to do land office business.
On the inside I was a bit bummed at all the business she was doing while I seemed to get ignored by everybody.
That was until she started spending most of the money she was making at my booth purchasing items from me and the rest over at the Bilyeu's booth.
That was a classic example of good karma at work. ;-p

My hope (and Cliff's as well) is that this event becomes bigger and bigger and develops into an important regional rockhound tailgate event.

Kimmer

Random Musings of a Ramblin' Fool XIII

We're Out of Our Misery (Well, Sorta)

Isn't it nice that the election is over and all the political advertising and grandstanding and posturing and jabbering is finished other than the Prop. 8 losers whining and clogging streets in L.A. at Rush Hour?

It appears the gay community is given a free pass when it comes to throwing a collective public hissy-fit when they don't get their way.

If this were a case of Evangelicals having lost the same contest and they pulled this stunt there would be howls of outrage and talk of "intolerance" and "sour grapes" and they'd be told to "get over it".

Obama is Different How Now?

For those of you who are missing it, Obama is turning out to be just another politician like any other: run on the fringe to win the primary, run closer to the middle to win the general election, and then govern from the dead center like Bubba and Dubya done.

Yep, folks, both of them really were rather centrist, for better and worse.

Want to argue that with me? Don't make me go down the list of similarities between the two that also happen to be pretty much middle-of-the-road, now, ya here?!

Of course, Obama, is now looking to pull Hillary into his cabinet not to mention a whole host of other Clintonites like Rahm Emanuel while making overtures to McCain.

Myself, I like seeing it and feel it is honorable and commendable and indeed his only option.

However, it isn't change as it is the same "more of the same" that Obama campaigned against when he accused McCain of being "four more years of Bush."

How is it his only option, you ask?

From where else is he going to get the talent he needs that is Left-of-Center?

To be a successful President he must look within the talent pool of the Democratic Party which is dominated by Clinton People.

An analogy would be comparing the occupation of Germany in 1945 with the occupation of Iraq in 2003.

In the former case we necessarily utilized the services of former Nazi Party members as the only qualified civil servants around to manage the nation had been members of the party as that was required to be a civil servant under the Reich.

In contrast, in the latter case we refused to utilize former Baathists and that cost us dearly as they were the ones running the country before we showed up and thus were the only ones around qualified to do so after the Baathists were deposed, but in our stubborn principle we iced them out of civil service jobs and the military initially and paid dearly for it.

Obama is doing the only competent thing he can do, but that flies in the face of his campaign rhetoric which makes him just like any other politician and expect more such occurrences.

I Gotses Jury Duty

Oh joy! I've been called in for jury duty and for a gangland murder trial no less.

Some Mexican gang (Nipomo 13) member got himself whacked by another member of his own gang back in late 2006.

No honor among thieves (nor gang members), eh?

Apparently, most of the cast of characters in this trial are going to be gang members or associates.

I've got an idear that will save the Treasury a lot of money and make society a whole lot safer: execute the entire gang ASAP and be done with it!

Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out!

Sounds draconian I realize but what we're doing now as a society is failing miserably in case any of you haven't noticed.

It would be presumptuous of me to post all this here if I were actually serving on this jury.

However, I'm 99.9% certain they will boot me out of this jury pool due to multiple factors.

First, my connection to one of the D.A. investigators (went to school with him and played football for Larry Welsh with him. Also, his girlfriend at the time lived up the street from where I live now and I have met her father).

Second, back when I was in high school the D.A. investigator's dad represented Carl Webber, the man who was injured in the same freak accident that killed my father in his lawsuit against us for injuries in sustained in the accident. Needless to say, we were not amused although I never told the son as I didn't want him to feel awkward and bad about something his dad had done.

Thirdly, my connection to the judge's son with whom I also went to school and played football.

Add to all this my whack 'em and stack 'em attitude about gang members and I feel I have a snowball's chance in hell of making it on that jury although doing so would be interesting.

If I do get selected to serve on this jury it will not be as much a hardship as I would have imagined as it will run from 1:30 PM to 5 PM Monday through Thursday and Fridays 8 AM to 5 PM so I will be able to do my Ebay stuff and do a couple of local shows during the time of the trial worse comes to worse although I will have to go to Plan B for my Thanksgiving.

Oh, and they will pay me $15 a day which for a trial slated to last into next month and maybe the month after that would add up over time.

I'll keep ya'll posted on this.

That Ranch Hand Thang Didn't Work Out

As some of you may recall here I got a job back in September as a hand on an alpaca ranch east of Templeton, CA.

Well that lasted less than a week due to the Sherrill's and I not having good chemistry as they annoyed me and I rubbed them the wrong way.

I won't go into detail here as they are members of the community and I don't wish to slam them in public, but needless to say it was a great relief being let go as I was miserable working for them. In spite of that I enjoyed learning how to operate a John Deer tractor.

Kimmer

K&K Earthwerks New Ebay Offerings

We welcome everybody to check out the K&K Earthwerks Ebay Store as we have made some notable additions to our growing inventory.

Most notable of all is the rather large Sikhote-Alin meteorite we purchased from David and Becky Richter of Rocks & Relics back in 2004.

The price given is not unreasonable but we will seriously consider any serious offers for less.



We have also listed a large selection of Cave-In-Rock Illinois fluorites in all shapes sizes, and colors, as well as Arizona Petrified Wood and other miscellaneous specimens including some pieces from Dale Harwood.

Kimmer

Californiadisasters Calamity Coverage

Californiadisasters did it again!

We gave you live, up-to-date coverage of the recent spate of wildfires that afflicted Southern California from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles to Orange to Riverside to even a wee bit of San Bernardino Counties.

Those of you who are already members of this nearly 1100-member Yahoo Group already know this but we invite the rest of you reading this to visit our home page right here and from there you can join if you wish.

I am very proud of how the group functioned during this time of disaster in Southern California.
I thank all the members for their contributions and even the lurkers did their part in not cluttering the group with unnecessary chatter.

We highly suggest that join even if you don't wish to follow the group on a day-to-day basis as you can set your membership to not receive email messages accept for emergency notices we can send out such as in the case of a tsunami warning for the California Coast or a notice of a volcanic eruption in the Southern Cascade Range or a major earthquake in California my might not have felt due to your distance from it.
Furthermore, you can always set your membership to receive all messages just during major incidents like this past weekend to keep abreast of events when something interesting is going on and then set it back once things return to normal which in California is the period between major disasters.
If you prefer no activity in your email inbox ever you can simply visit the group homepage and read the messages off of there no matter what is going on or not going on.

Kimmer

Group-owner

My Santa Ana Wind Walk

Today we here in San Luis Obispo County on the Central Coast of California experienced an unusually intense Santa Ana Wind event following last night's Sundowner Wind-driven Tea Fire in Montecito and Santa Barbara that has hurt people and destroyed a lot of homes.

Earlier in the day the 60-acre wind-driven El Cerritos Fire started by a powerline on the eastern margin of the City of San Luis Obispo (SLO) forced evacuations for a time this morning.

It wasn't worth driving down to see while it was going on as it didn't last long and was more smokey than firey as it was mostly burning on rocky grass-covered hillsides, but coupled with the intensifying winds here in the North County that I knew were warmer and stronger on the south side of the Santa Lucia Mountains due to compressional heating I wanted to experience that plus see the aftermath of the fire.

Therefore, I decided to drive over the Cuesta Grade and down to SLO to experience the winds and see the fire.

I took mom with me as well as my little dog Tequila and decided to take a walk at Laguna Lake Park in SLO.

The winds had been going pretty good all day here on the north side of the grade but were slightly cool albeit much warmer than you'd expect winds to be in mid-November around here.

However, once we hit the area around the Cuesta Pass and Cuesta Summit (elevation 1,522 feet) the winds were howling through there headed over the grade to the south due to the Venturi Effect.

As we descended down the grade southbound on Highway 101 it became noticeably warmer throughout the descent.

By the time we arrived in SLO it was downright hot, but we saw no sign of this morning's brush fire which was clearly out.

The winds were extremely strong in SLO which combined with the unseasonable temperatures made for the sort of day one wants to get out and exercise and many folks seemed to have the same thing in mind as the park was very busy with activity.

The views of the surrounding landscape and geography were splendid with Bishop Peak, one of the Nine Sisters, looking unusually beautiful.

I decided to take my camera long and shot some images to share with you.

Although I can't capture in a photo the feel and sound of the wind or the warmth and dryness of the air, I can still give you some sense of how it was through these photographs.

Trailhead at the back of the park (Tequila at bottom left).

The wind roared through these eucalyptus trees.

The sky was incredibly clear in spite of the dust from the wind.

Santa Ana Winds raked these Eucalyptus trees.

This haze was actually an intense glare over the Irish Hills.

Beautiful Bishop Peak

Looking south back towards Laguna Lake Park.

The winds made a loud rushing noise passing through these reeds.

Winds raked the trees and the water's surface.

The winds upon the surface of Laguna Lake.

Bishop Peak, Chumash Peak, and Cerro Romauldo.

When we were done walking (which came out to about a mile and a quarter we think) we drove across the street to the shopping center and mom got a couple of things at Gottschalks department store.

We did get a chance to check out this morning's fire from a distance as we drove home along Highway 101 and it was clearly out with a couple of red CALFIRE engines visible at different locations on the charred mountainside.

We were all fortunate that no other fires started in the area during this weather event unlike Montecito last night and Sylmar tonight which is burning.

Driving back over the Cuesta Grade on the way home we experienced the reverse of our drive south as it got cooler and cooler the higher we climbed up the grade and the winds howled the most through the Cuesta Pass and over Cuesta Summit which gave us quite a headwind.

Back in the North County, it was noticeably cooler although nonetheless unseasonably warm and certainly a bit less windy.

Mom and I both agreed that was well worth the time and fuel we spent down there.

Kimmer

Great Southern California ShakeOut

This morning at 10:00 A.M. Southern California conducted the Great Southern California ShakeOut, a massive earthquake drill that involved both government and the scientific community and the general public that is the largest such drill ever undertaken. 

The drill scenario involved a 186-mile rupture of the San Andreas Fault Zone (SAFZ) from the Salton Sea in eastern Riverside County to Lake Hughes in northern Los Angeles County which generated a Magnitude 7.8 earthquake which ultimately kills 2,000 people, injures 50,000 others, and causes in excess of $200 billion.  

For my part I am always as ready for a major earthquake as I reasonably can be and I recently went through my supplies to update them. 

The most interesting part of this drill this morning to me was listening to a couple of online scanner feeds over which I was able to listen to the fictitious damage and casualty reports on the fire department radio channels. 

The folks on the radio did an incredible job of creating the feeling and reality of the immediate aftermath of a major earthquake.

Time and again there were references to well-known landmarks that were adversely affected from transportation infrastructure to schools to dwelling units  to commercial structures to even fire stations and the like as well as major fires, fuel leaks, and HazMat situations. 

They even had a scenario of a major bluff-top collapse at Portuguese Bend on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. 

I certainly hope this drill helped even a little bit in bestirring a complacent populace to even a little bit of action in becoming better prepared for this event when it actually does happen because it really will happen one day just as it really did happen the last time sometime in the 17th Century. 

Today's scenario involves part of the SAFZ which ruptured in that quake as well as part of the SAFZ which ruptured in the Fort Tejon Quake of 1857 which ran from Central California into Southern California. 

With that I ask you: Are you prepared?

Kimmer