Howdy Mam Can I Give You A Ride

As a candidate, Barack Obama promoted hybrid cars. As president he will be riding around in an overweight vehicle that burns almost as much diesel as a 18 wheeler does. Part car, part truck, part tank, the Presidential Limo is a bunker on wheels. We might as well transport the president around in an Abrams tank. At least an Abrams comes in several colors not just the "available in any color just as long as it's black". I don't think the Secret service knows the meaning of imagination! Whats the point of driving a bad ass car if it looks like every other Cadillac on the road? I mean this baby is going to be the car our Top Dog rides around in, it should be awesome. Yes it need to be able to stop a direct hit from an asteroid but that's a one in a Zillion kind of thing. The Secret Service better worry about a spitball being launched from a twelve year old. Are the windows spitball resistant? How about putting some lightning bolts on the side or maybe some monster truck tires on it. Can't we make a hotter ride for the Pres?
Obama probably does not care what the car looks like because the car he drove before he was elected President was a 2005 Chrysler 300C sedan. I'm sure he had only four questions before his first ride in America's Numero Ono. Will my Black Berry work inside this dam thing, is there room for a basketball goal in the trunk, where's the smoking section and can it brew a mean cup of java?

Dividing Night into Day

Growing up I do not ever remember my Mother standing over me literate screeching "Make Your Bed". If she hadn't preached that chore to me why else would I make my bed each morning? Whats all the fuss about an unmade bed anyway? I don't know anyone who claims that making a bed is a fun chore and others who make their bed only when they change the sheets. Those kinds of people thrive on a little chaos each and every day of their lives, finding a disorderly room comfy and casual. I am not one of those people, preferring to live in orderly surroundings. I love a calm environment and making the bed is one of the quickest and easiest steps to keeping my life orderly. A real feeling of accomplishment can come from such a simple task. It is nice to start the day feeling that I've crossed something, however minor off my list. That small simple task can make a productive, disciplined and efficient person out of a complete slob. The fact of the mater is that when a bed is made there is a scene that arrives from that island of order. Coming home each day the sight of that island makes the rest of my cluttered life seem not so chaotic and it gives me incentive to take care of all the other thing in my life that need attention. Well almost everything! Sometimes the toilet leaves a little bit to be desired but thats kind of a smelly subject so I'll save that story for another day.

And Now The End Is Near.

And now the end is near and so I face the final curtain. My friend, I'll say it clear. I'll state my case of which I'm certain. I've lived a life that's full. I've traveled each and every highway and more, much more than this. I did it my way.
Old Blue Eyes must have had George Walker Bush on his mind when he sang My Way or maybe he was thinking of Richard Nixon. Both Bush and Nixon had several of the regrets that Frank sang about. In Richard Nixon's farewell address he had to convince us all that he was not a crook. He was certainly dishonest,an abuser of the Office of the Presidency and truth was surly not his shinning suit but a crook he was not. President Bush on the other hand is too honest to be a crook but his over confidence and arrogance was in full view for the last eight years. In President Bush's farewell address he spoke about his disappointments of not finding weapons of mass destruction and the atrocities at the Abu Ghraib prison, blaming the failures on bad information. He did not think it was his fault things turned out as they did but it was a disappointment just the same. I don't know about you but I think both of those issues were giant mistakes not disappointments. A disappointment is when the Dallas Cowboys don't go to the Super Bowl not when you try to drown the enemy or dig up half of Iraq looking for buried treasurer and come up empty handed.
In a few days a historic Presidency begins and a tarnished Presidency ends. The inauguration of Barack Obama can not come soon enough for the vast majority of Americans. Our new President begins with high hopes, goodwill and a never ending list of problems stacked high on the Oval Office desk left there by a president who was determined to do things his way.
How will George Bush be ranked as a President? We won't know the answer to that question for two or three decades but if history is any indication, his presidency will get upgraded over time just as many Presidencies do. The last verse of the song "My Way" describes George Bush perfectly so I'll let Old Blue Eyes sign off this post with his lyrics.
For what is a man, what has he got?
If not for himself, then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels;
And not the words of one who kneels.
The records shows I took the blows;
And did it my way!

Number 1

Turn on the TV or open a newspaper and you will hear someone calling for the current complex NCAA polling system to be replaced with a NFL like playoff system. Today's NCAA football champion is determined in a game between teams ranked number 1 and number 2 in the polls run by the Bowl Championship Series. When you have several teams with one defeat, the polls can't deal with that complexity very well causing a lot of teams to get mad.
Some say a playoff system would destroy College football as we know it but before the Bowl Championship Series got into the act there were many competing polls with no single poll determining the number 1 team. The old decentralized system looked better, was a lot more fun and better for college football fans. I never cared if the Championship was official, all I ever cared about was that I got to watch six games on New Years day. Now all the games are spread out from January 1 through January 8 and in 2011 they will move to ESPN with none of them on free TV. Anyone without Satellite or Cable TV will not be able to watch any of them.
The desire to have an official champion has taken the fun of of football. That desire did not come from college football, it came from Television. Both the BCS and Television want to scrap the complete Bowl system and replace it with one big game. You can bet your pom-poms that students, alumni and the general public will never get a ticket to such a game. All tickets will go to corporate sponsors just like the tickets for the Super Bowl game do. Adding insult to injury, such a game would probably be pay for view, causing the Satellite and Cable TV subscribers to pay even more. No thanks, I'll keep my pom-poms and hang them from my rabbit ear antenna.

56 going on 30

Every year when the New Year is rung in I seem to think about my age more so than when my birthday rolls around every year. For the first time in history people 30 and younger are more comfortable in who they are and more knowledgeable and literate than their parents. People under 30 were born into the digital age giving them a head start in life. No other generation has made such a difference as the net generation has. If I had been born into that generation my life would be completely different but these days even at the age of 56 I think like a 30 year old of the net generation. Some where around the age of 50 give or take a year, my physic changed. I began to prize freedom of choice more than I ever had before. I wanted to customize everything and started complicated projects with out the felling of being overwhelmed. It became a lot easier for me to deal with information overload and accept constant innovation. Instead of gaining knowledge passively through television I learned to access, sort and categorize knowledge through the ways of the net generation. Searching for knowledge rather than simply looking it up was the starting point for my physic change. It's almost like my brain is in it's second development phase similar to the way your thinking changes between the ages of 20-30. This second development instilled a real time access to deep layers of information giving me a sense of creativity.
Don't misunderstand me I like being 56 rather than 30. Most people would like to be 30 physically and 56 mentally but I like being 56 physically and 30 mentally. If I live to be 75 maybe I'll have a third development phase, wouldn't that be scary! Maybe I'll decide to get married at the age of 75. Now that would be the biggest physic change of all.