post random babblings

while trying to install his satellite system for his TV. Apparent ly he didn’t have a drill bit or maybe he just didn’t want to use it. He chose intead to put the hole through the house for the wire by using a rifle. He said the first shot didn’t go through all the way, so he tried a second time. It went through all right, but he hit his wife in the chest and killed her.

I know that I’m a redneck, but NOT like that. And I suppose that she was standing there so she could tell him whether the shot went through or not. Authorities aren’t sure if they are going to charge him with manslaughter. Who knows, they might just charge him with 3rd degree, felonius stupidity.

Apparently the human race in its race to become increasingly dumber, has now reached a new low. People have been being stupid while walking down the street and texting, and consequently they have been walking into street poles (lights, signs, etc.), and injuring themselves. There has been such a problem with this that the Brittish government , in their crusade to aid and abed in people’s moronity, have begun padding the lamp posts and such, to protect people from their own severe air-headedness.

I would never have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. Well, maybe I would have believed it anyway. It is the Brittish government, after all.

Now I can do things online I wasn’t able to do before. Used to be if someone gave me a youtube link for instance I was only able to say thanks and just delete it. So after giving the thing a test drive I checked out some of that site. I followed some links and found some of the funniest commercials I’ve seen in a while.

Jack Link’s messin’with Sasquatch These things are killer. I don’t know how many of you have seen these as this is kind of a local company. Jack used to come up and fish with my cousin Jerry (the same one who lassoed a moose).

Check out the vids and have a good laugh. They are so ridiculous.

Computer’s been sick, and I gotta take it in tomorrow morning. Made the appointment today. Last time I brought it in for what should have been a day’s work, it took almost a week to get it back. So I might not be able to answer any posts for a while. Maybe that means I’ll actually get to sleep at a decent hour for a while. No. Doubt it. I usually stay up for one of the nights surrounding the solstice doing something or other. Not intentionally. It just happens.

One of the few flowers I can handle the smell of. Roses are great too.

The Lilacs are the true sign that summer is beginning in earnest. They bloomed here about three and a half weeks ago, and I took the pictures then. I was busy for a few days, and then Duke died an I didn’t feel like posting much. After that I got busy again.

So here they are, late, but still great.

This is the kind of entry I don’t like to write. Tonight I have to talk about my good friend Duke. He’s been with me here for about twelve and a half years. He was the best darn dog I ever had. He was a complete mutt. I used to tell people when they asked, that he was a Lotso. A lotso? Yes a Lotso-Kindso. He was born right here in a litter of eight pups. Mother was a greyhound yellow lab mix, and the father, a neighbor’s dog was Blue Healer, border collie, Husky cross. He was as big as a small horse. His back came up to my waist.

When he was a pup, he had three different run ins with timber wolves, and survived them. The last time he and his two brothers I still had here killed the wolf. Most of his siblings were given to homes, but the last two of them stayed here, but got themselves into mischief that got them killed while duke was still pretty young. He learned from their mistakes.

He was good with other animals. He left alone any of my livestock. He did protect them though. He was fascinated by baby animals of any kind, and would sit and watch them for hours, whether it was chicks, calves, kittens, or shoats. He used to go up to the neighbors and watch their lambs too. The neighbors knew he meant no harm and left him be when he did that. They said he would protect their lambs too. When a rabbit wandered onto my place here some years back, he would lie down and sleep next to them. He used to lie down with the calves or the chickens, or whatever. I used to joke that it looked like the pictures from the magazines the Jehovah’s Witnesses would try to leave.
One year he got fully adopted by one of my hens. wherever he would go, the hen would get up and follow.
He never chased deer. In fact the deer ignored him when they came up into the yard. I watched them sometimes step over him, as he lay there.

He was a favorite at the black powder rendezvous. He never barked like other people’s dogs. I always brought food for him, but he never had to eat it, because people always brought their leftovers for him. Sometimes he ate better than me. People from all over the encampment would come over just to pet him, or they would ask if they could take him for a walk. Teenaged girls seemed to just adore him. They would almost argue over who got to walk him next. Whenever they brought him back though he was just happy to sit as close as he could to the anvil in the smithy without getting burnt by flying sparks.
He always did the same here at my shop at home. No matter how late I worked, he would sit outside the shop and just be there for me. Hi did the same all last fall and winter when I built the addition to my shop. Night after night he was there. Many times he had to remind me to stop for the night and go in and eat and go to bed.

He was always on the building crew for the work weekends when we built Dun Gowan the historical site. He helped us by panting for us in the shade when we were too stupid to do so for ourselves. He always made sure to stand on our boards or logs we wanted to use, to hold them down and keep them from blowing away till we wanted to use them.

After the site was built he was the mascot for us at all the sieges here. He always made sure to get in as many group pictures as he could. He always made sure to be helpful to the enemy by following me out into the woods and showing them my hiding places.

I had many games we played where I would tease him, and then he would run around the yard and make me laugh like crazy. He would run as close to me as possible to see if I could catch him as he went by. Sometimes I would hide on him and jump out and scare him when he came close

He always accompanied me out into the woods, and even did so just yesterday. We were out scouting for where the edible plants are this year. We found lots of blueberry bushes, and some wild onions.

For a dog his size I knew that he would be dying sometime soon, and I knew that it would still shock me and make me feel bad. It happened just the way I always thought it would. I came home, and he was lying in his usual place in friont of the garage in the sun, right next to the driveway. For the last few months he was losing his hearing. So he didn’t get up as I drove in. Nothing new. I’d already been seeing that. But he still didn’t move when I got out of the truck. He had just laid down to take a nap in the sun, and never woke up.
For a dog his size I had to really dig a big hole. I was sweating like crazy in the hot afternoon sun, and even got a good layer of color in my skin, but for old Duke it was worth every drop of sweat.
He was so tall that I never had to bend over to pet him. That was good for the days I did strenuous work that tested the powers of my back. Today however it felt odd, in that after busting my back to dig a hole, he wasn’t there for me to pet.

I’m gonna post a couple pictures here of that hard working, Blacksmithing, construction forman, rendezvous dog.

This was in the news .

They’re saying that people weigh less in Canada, because there’s less gravity there, and that it’s caused by the ice that used to be there.

Sounds a little off kilter to me. I personally would think it has to do with the basalt and especially all the iron up there messing with the gravitational field.

Northern Canada, it’s not just a barren wasteland, it’s a weight loss program :)

“Colonel Shawn Gaffneys Regiment of Shotte and Pike”

She also asked me to post a little bit of an explanation about this: In 1630, Johan Spens was given permission from the English crown to recruit mercenaries for King Gustavus Adolphus II of Sweden to go fight in the “Holy Warres of Germany” which were later called the Thirty Years War. Between 30,000 to 40,000 of the severely economically depressed Scots were recruited, roughly one fourth of the population of Scotland. In May they shipped out, and after a brief training peeriod in Sweden, they landed in June to relieve the second siege of Stralsund, defeating Wallenstein there. Frome there they went on to releive the city of Stettin from their Hapsburg opressors as well. After this second major victory they settled in there for the winter.

This painting was modeled after the seventeen or so regimental group portraits that Rembrandt painted during that time (The Night Watch was only one of them). It was painted using the same techniques of the period, particularly the use of sfumato wherin a very dark brown underpainting is laid down first, and then the painting is “colorized.” The mixture is made up of Charcoal ground together with linseed oil, turpentine, and damar varnish crystals dissolved also in turpentine. The result is a chairoscuro creating a tonal atmosphere.

The background is taken from an actual engraving from a 17th Century Stadtkarte of Stetin. Each building across the way can be seen in this engraving, all the way down to the docks. The towers on the Stettiner Schloß (the palace on the right) are still bronze colored as they were only built a few years previous to the setting of this painting.

As in all the regimental portraits of the day, it is only of the officers of the regiment, particularly the company commanders, and others noteworthy in their service. They are all posing on the city’s ramparts after victoriously driving out the Hapsburg armies. There is even a blood stain on the rampart to the left. Also using 17th Century convention, there is something particular to the character of each of the commanders. The dark clouds on the horizon are an analogy for the fact that they are in year twelve only of a war that would last thirty years.

The company commanders are in the front. They are from left in the Swedish yellow, Seargent Major MacDoughal (he is separated from the rest and in profile, because he never finished his term of service – another period convention), Capt. Willim Adams, 4th Capt. Coy (my brother), Capt. Anndra Munroe, 2nd Capt. Coy, Capt. Seumas Stuart, 1st Capt. Coy, Lieutenant Ferguson, Col. Shawn Gaffney, Coy. Cmdr., Lt. Col. Jas. Fraser, Coy. Cmdr., Capt. Adelwulf von Stettin (Wulfy – Myself), 3rd Capt. Coy., Capt. Seumas MacLeod, 5th Capt. Coy.
Along the top and back are other various officers (musicians and drummers were considered officers in that time and were paid accordingly). Marc MacHannon, Ensign Fraser, Lieutenant Jaimie ?, Seargent Loric MacStyre, Seargent Doughal, Quartermaster Joseph Gunn, Lieutenant Corwin Campbell, Drummer Na’Wyck, Drummer Paul (my other brother), and Ensign Aileen MacLeod. The Gun commanders are Jay, Tracey, and Baethan.

The ineresting irony here is that Stettin is the home city of my German ancestry. Here we are portraying the very people who rescued my ancestors.

I just checked it to see who I could help out of a bind, and who was a spammer. I was very surprised to see me on the first page. A new automated program called “Robotscout”, thinks I’m a spammer.

I wonder if my account will exist by the time any of y’all read this?

I ran into today?