D-Day June 6, 1944

Let us not forget those men and women who gave the ultimate sacrifice to keep us JT Irregulars free!

Thank you vets.........

.......SER

Out and about tonight

Yes, your favorite Angel will be out and about tonight. My usual offer of a free drink applies, if you coreectly identify me. Of course, my fellow Irregulars are always welcome.

Grammy Awards to Snub Polkas

"Polka fans are used to being mocked and maligned, but now things have gone too far.

"The Recording Academy, which doles out the annual Grammy Awards, has announced it's eliminating the polka category after 24 years."

http://www.jsonline.com/entertainment/musicandnightlife/47111252.html


Meanwhile, some people have been updating the venerable polka:

"Hot dog cart gets the runaround"

"RACINE — Since he opened Top Dog Hot Dogs a week ago, Caleb Robinson’s mobile business has gotten a lot of customers — and a little unwanted attention from the city.

"Robinson, 24, has been told he can’t sell on Monument Square. He said he’s also been told he can’t sell from the sidewalk. His options were difficult to determine Friday.

"City ordinance apparently forbids peddlers — and Robinson operates under a peddler’s license — from selling in a city park without that department’s permission. Monument Square is a city park, and that’s primarily where he had hoped to sell."

http://www.journaltimes.com/articles/2009/06/06/local_news/doc4a299bbb793a3713407391.txt


Monument Square is a city park? And it's OK to blast music at a memorial for war dead, and it's OK to sell beer there and get drunk and dance and puke and pee on the monument for war dead, and it's OK for a farmers' market to sell vegetables there and other vendors to shill cheap trinkets on a Saturday morning there, but it's NOT OK to sell hot dogs there.

This is what occupies our civic leaders. A lot of big pigs in a very small sty.

Party on!

Saturday car repairs

Sorry folks, things came up. Hope you were able to fin a shop that didn't take you to the cleaners. And Abby, I know you arn't a lush. You are a bar tender though, and in high demand for those important times when your services are in need.

GREAT DANE NEEDS OUR PRAYERS

Some of you are aware of who Great Dane is. She is currently in Intensive Care in the Hospital in Florida. Her son found her lying on her kitchen floor, helpless. She has MANY CRITICAL health issues and needs the prayers of ANYONE wishing to do so. She is NOT a terribly religious person BUT I have faith that some good comes from others, weather they know the person or not, or even if they care. Please find it in yourself to say a word for her.

THANK YOU,

GREAT DANES LITTLE BROTHER TOAD.

Hiroshima 63 Years Later

Hiroshima, Nagasaki 1945

We all know that Hiroshima and Nagasaki
were destroyed in August 1945 after explosion of atomic bombs.
However we know little about the progress
made by the people of that land during the past 62 years.

National Donut Day

Well, my attempt to get everyone all geeked up for National Running Day didn't fly too high, so let's see how we do with National Donut Day. It started surprisingly early , 1938, as a fundraiser by the Chicago Salvation Army.

Of course, now it has been co-opted by Big Donut. Dunkin Donuts is offering a free donut with beverage purchase and will announce the winner of its Create Dunkin's Next Donut Contest.

I went to college in small town Iowa. The local bakery would leave its back door open at night for students who got the late night munchies (for whatever reason!) and you could walk in and get fresh donuts. The Bakery Run is an official event on the schedule at all college reunions.

Me? I am still running tomorrow.

Rock and Roll Revival

Hello everybody! Welcome back! Summer is coming around the corner. The green grass, barbeques, and plenty of sunshine! And yes...cool cars! As I'm driving around town I'm seeing more of these shiny and beautiful machines on the road. That gets me jealous. I would love to trade in my hunk of junk jalapoly for a restored 1971 Dodge Superbee. All painted orange with black hood. (With a Hemi engine of course) Heck, I will even take a 1974 Plymouth Cuda. If I had one of these cars-well can you say speed demon? :P

So my friends, what is your fantasy car?

The destruction of success and the gimmee mentality

I read with interest the comments following this RJT article detailing the upcoming cuts at Twin Disc.

http://www.journaltimes.com/articles/2009/06/04/local_news/doc4a26e7beed2ab059700441.txt

A dangerous gimmee mentality has evolved in this country that stands to destroy any benefit of working hard and becoming successful.

Lets say you want to be a hair stylist. You have some natural talent that you leverage by attending the best beauty schools. You sacrifice your time and energy to become one of the best stylists in town.

You get a job in a salon and soon attract a strong customer base. You notice that there are three other stylists employed there that mostly sit around, read magazines and gossip. They really don't have any regulars and make their money off the "walk ins". They never went to beauty school, nor keep up on the latest styles. They're satisfied making a tenth of what you make.

After a while, you are promoted to Head Stylist and oversee the day to day operations. Even though you have been doing well, the salon, due to the economic downturn, begins to struggle financially.

One day, the owner comes in and states that there will be layoffs and some cutbacks in services. Two of the stylists are let go.

The next day, you read in the RJT how unfair it is that these people lost their jobs. After all, look at how much money you are making. There in the article is a breakdown of your salary and tips. Why couldn't you give up half your earnings so these people could still have a job?

In the comments section of the article, the usual idiots complain about what a terrible person you are for making that much money. How can you possibly live with yourself when these people are losing their jobs?

This attitude has to change. We should applaud success, not deride it. If not, the Orwellian concept of 1984 may become harsh reality.

RIP Koko

Koko Taylor, The Queen of Blues has passed away. How sad. I had the opportunity to see her in Milwaukee at an afternoon concert. A guy in the audience had a heart attack. (He was transported and turned out to be ok) She stopped the concert and did everything she could to ensure the guy got the help he needed.
Saw her again at Harbor Fest.

She was one great singer........

If you have never heard her music, I recommend searching for it. Even if you don't like the blues.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31093789/

Dear Madame Zoltar

Hello, my children! How are you? Have you been enjoying Wisconsin’s version of spring so far? I hope you didn’t put away your long johns.

I’m in a bit of a rush today as I’ve been hired on as a consultant to the Beckerphile defense team in their quest to obtain a fair trial for the poor, beleaguered former mayor of our fine city. It seems that many of Racine’s residents are prejudiced against pedophilia. Such a bias would certainly taint any jury pool from our area. How can anyone expect this man to receive a fair trial in a city that doesn’t embrace child molesters? Personally, I think he should request a change of venue to some place controlled by the Taliban. They have the proper attitude regarding children: disposable. Or maybe he could request a pardon from the Pope. In any case, this insistence by some Racinians that diddling kids is wrong, or even evil, just shows how much more work the Beckerphile had to do in our city before his term was cut short by the kiddy Nazis who are always preaching about the well-being of children. I believe that if the Beckerphile had been allowed to finish his term as mayor of Racine, we could have made great strides towards accepting the politically correct view that children should be screwed, and not heard.

I’m also thinking of coming to the aid of that new hot dog vendor in downtown Racine. You can read his story in the Journal Times online here: “Layoff leads to new Top Dog Hot Dogs”. This enterprising young man took his misfortune in hand and turned it into a business opportunity that many in Racine seem to appreciate, except for the Downtown Racine Corporation (my, this town has a lot of Nazis), who are already shooing him away from publicly owned property. Or does DRC own Monument Square now, too? Shame, shame on the pretentious dowagers and self-appointed arbiters of arrogance that infect and infest our inner city. If you little piggies keep acting like this, I may just have to make your curly tails actually sprout on the back of your trousers and skirts. Oink-oink, you wine-soaked sows, oink-oink.

Finally, speaking of pretentious dowagers and self-appointed arbiters, we have Racine’s Landmarks Preservation Commission trying to foist Gestapo-like rules and regulations on the property owners of the south side. Once again, as bullets fly and people die all over our once proud city, our leaders have provided us with more intrusion into the affairs of people who obey the laws while they absolutely ignore those who don’t. I know that it’s really hard to catch and punish lawbreakers. I know it’s really, really hard, but that doesn’t mean you should lean on decent people just because it’s easier. If our publicly paid porkers would just stop trying to wish our city into some sort of Shangri-La and instead focus on the problems at hand, perhaps we could all come together to work toward common solutions. As it is, a small clique of the powerful derisively and divisively force their agenda upon us over and over again, regardless of the realities of day-to-day life in Racine. The average person in Racine is hard pressed by the criminals at the bottom of our social strata and constantly bullied by the elitist thugs at the top. Stop it, NOW, or we will have to do something drastic.

Sorry for the political diatribe this week, my friends, but the class lines are being drawn in Racine while the demagogues and demigods of paid political influence blabber their nonsense at us. The good old boys and gals of Racine are so vacuous, so personally impotent, that the only way they can convince themselves that they are still alive is by pushing around others. How pathetic. Party on, you pigs and piglets! Madame Zoltar has a big surprise waiitng for you.

Please send your comments, questions and suggestions to me at: madamezoltar@jtirregulars.com.

See you next week, dearies. Be good, say your prayers every night, and don’t let the Beckerphile get you. Boo!

Laughing -------- are we not men?

Can’t embed, but worth a looksee

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbt30UnzRWw

Lost in Cyber Space

Abby, I just got an E you sent Feb 26. I've heard of lost snail mail, and letters locked in storage, but four months roaming cyber space is a record.

Don't Throw Rice in Zero-G!

There are few firsts left when it comes to marriage and we are about to enter the final frontier. Weddings in space aren't quite there yet (although a Russian cosmonaut on the ISS got married via video conference in 2003) so Noah Fulmor and Erica Finnegan decided it would be an acceptable compromise to get married in weightlessness. They are getting married aboard the legendary Vomit Comet, a plane that can simulate weightlessness in about 30 second increments by flying in a series of parabolas. They used the Vomit Comet to film the weightless scenes in the movie Apollo 13 and astronauts have trained in these types of planes for many years.

A zero-g wedding has some logistical issues to consider. For instance, you need to consider the design of the wedding dress as gravity won't serve its normal function of pulling the dress down. You probably don't want to throw rice or the garter in zero-g. I have to admit the idea of floating down the aisle is kind of cool.

The ring is made with pieces of a the Gibeon meteorite, another nice touch.

I am not going to reveal my cool geeky wedding ideas any more since it seems people are starting to steal them!

Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicist Blog.

Run, Baby, Run

Because June 3rd is National Running Day. Time to lace up those running shoes and take off for a quick run around the block or farther. Trust me, I have been running since 1991 and if time is tight and I have to choose between my run and dinner, the run wins every time.

The best way to start is find a friend. Talk during the run. You want to maintain a slow pace at first and a good way to do that is make sure you can chat with someone. You can work on speed later after you start getting addicted. Next, pick a local short race, say a 5k, to run. Send in that entry form. Once you have paid for it, you got some extra motivation. Always have in mind that next race or next event you want to do.

Don't give me I don't have a runner's body excuse. Neither do I. I have a build much closer to football player but I get out there and have done a reasonable number of marathons.

I'll be in Racine later this month. I am looking forward to running some of my old routes along the Lake. Running lets you experience the world at a different pace. You see things you never would while driving. You see everything when you run and learn a lot about the community. When I moved to Tucson, I never made an offer on a house until I went to the neighborhood and started mapping out running routes.

Get out and run...try it, you might like it.

Hey Drew car repairs

I'm pretty good... If you have a manual and can take direction, we could probably fix it. Electrical problems are major bucks to fix because trouble shooting takes so long. I do all my own car repairs. It helps keep money in the bank. If all your windows stopped all at the same time, a likely culprit is a plug that came unplugged. Or a main feed wire broke. A manual with a wiring diagram will show all connectors and feeder lines. A Saturday afternoon should find/fix the problem. Maybe Abby will come by and mix drinks. If so it could take the weekend to do....

THE YEAR 1909

One hundred years ago.
What a difference a century makes!
Here are some statistics for the Year 1909 :

************ ********* ********* ******
The average life expectancy was 47years.
Only 14 percent of the homes had a bathtub.
Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.
There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads.
The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.
The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower!
The average wage in 1909 was 22 cents per hour.
The average worker made between $200 and $400 per year .
A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, A dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.
More than 95 percent of all births took place at HOME.
Ninety percent of all doctors had NO COLLEGE EDUCATION! Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press AND the government as 'substandard. '
Sugar cost four cents a pound
Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.
Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.
Most women only washed their hair once a month, and used Borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from Entering into their country for any reason.

Five leading causes of death were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke

The American flag had 45 stars.
The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was only 30!!!!
Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and ice tea hadn't been invented yet.
There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.
Two out of every 10 adults couldn't read or write.
Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school...
Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores. Back then pharmacists said, 'Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health'

Eighteen percent of households had at least
One full-time servant or domestic help.
There were about 230 reported murders in the ENTIRE !U.S.A. !

One for Beckerfile

Star Wars Grinnell

I haven't posted much recently since I was at my college reunion and am catching up after getting back. While there, I found Star Wars Grinnell, a film that was made for (and won) the Titular Head Film Competition.

When I was there, Titular Head was a live competition that was part of the drunken Relays. The drinking age was raised, Relays was changed and died along with the original Titular Head (I arrived just in time to witness the retched wreckage of Relays).

Titular Head was revived as a video competition that has grown into a tradition in its own right. Youtube has allowed Grinnell students to subject the world to their creations.

I don't know how this will go over with a non-Grinnell crowd, but I thought it was fun.

We were young, there was a war.

I enlisted because that's what you do for your country. I didn't believe in the war, but I believed in duty. The songs of the time spoke for peace and understanding. J. Lennon would be in with these, but by request, you cannot link to Give Peace a Chance.

GFR



Edwin Star



John Lennon



Hendrix



ELP

GFR

Grand Funk Railroad. It seems like they weren't getting any air time on the oldy stations while I could hear, and I wonder if they do now? They out sold the Beatles for concert attendance and their Shea stadium concert still holds the record for attendees. Nope, no links, although Youtube has a bunch of live ones.

The Monday pet peve or bitch session

My only one afor not mentioned is CITY WORKERS...............

The city tore up about 12 driveways on our block..........

2 weeks ago they did the end of the blocks 1st - 5 driveways.Wed they tore them out Thursday the dropped the cement by the weekend they could us their driveways.................So I had high hopes for ours being done in a timely manor as well................HA!

Our 7 driveways got toren out LAST WED>and we haven't seen hide nor hair of them since.........I hate not having my driveway and fighting to park on the street SUCKS.


OK thats my bitch for the week WHAT YOU GUYS GOT?

Soul Music

Oh gosh, the ol head Juke box is cranking the old good ones. Feeling kind of melancholy and the weatherman says rain.

Happy Birthday JT Irregulars!

Maybe not so serious after all...

One year ago today, the picture at left was posted, along with our first blog, on the JT Irregulars. The blog was entitled WELCOME.

Back then, our address was jtirregulars.blogspot.com. We weren’t quite sure who or what we were yet, but we were pretty sure that we weren’t going to be regulars at the old site again. So we created our own. The rest, as they say, is history, or infamy, or irony, or tripe, or something.

Happy First Birthday JT Irregulars! May we see many, many more! Thank you to everyone who has contributed to, commented on, read, cast aspersions on, or spread false rumors about, the site. “Please join the conversation” at anytime. We meet online to post and chatter about whatever is making our day or pissing us off. Who would have thought that it would grow to this? Congratulations to everybody!

I just have to do a recap of that freaky video from SER’s birthday blog:



Here’s a still as a memento:

Listening to the Police Scanner on a Saturday Night

Over on the Racine News site, they have a live, Racine police scanner on the lower right of the page. Last night, a little after 11 PM, I decided to listen to what was happening in Racine on a Saturday night. I listened for about half an hour. All I can say is, "Wow . . . "

When I first turned on the scanner, there was about thirty seconds of silence. I wasn't sure if it was working. Shortly, though, it became, and stayed, busy. Dispatch was continually directing officers to new calls. Domestic violence. Burglar alarm. Fights. Injuries. Suspicious persons. More fights. More injuries. More calls. On and on and on.

No major crimes were dealt with while I was listening, but the volume of calls for service stunned me. The men and women in blue are very busy in Racine on Saturday night. Very, very busy. And summer isn't even officially here yet.