Come Again

People who know me also know I am genuine when I say, “You are welcomed back.”  I do not use those words with everyone or very often.
 

So, when I use the words, “Come again,” they need clarification.”  I say those words when I don’t believe I heard you correctly the first time and need clarification, not as an invitation.

 

In 2012, the electronics industry goaded America into buying HDTV’s to ensure you were compliant with the government’s switch from analog to digital broadcasting a few years ago.

 

They raised the prices of those televisions to artificial levels then, after Christmas of 2012, they lowered the prices by 50% and made us all feel like dupes.  Then, they introduced the “new” 3-D televisions.

 

Unfortunately for them, consumers were fresh out of cash and couldn’t buy any new fad junk.  After all, we already bought e-books, laptops, i-Pads, and were told we needed to buy health insurance, and gas was still hovering at $3.40 per gallon.

 

So the electronics industry decided they needed something besides the obsolete DVD, and something we need to replace our Blu-ray with.  It seems as though it is the Ultra HD.

 

Come again.

 

Ultra HD is “remarkably crisper than HD.  It displays richer skin textures, finer details and less pixilation…”  Yada, yada, yada.

 

These electronic consumer pukes are trying to market this stuff to a guy who used to watch television in black and white, with rabbit ears adorned with aluminum foil to enhance reception.  I thought a color broadcast was a Vatican miracle.  But, I digress.

 

The historical switch from analog to digital was meant to enhance the way we watched TV.  It actually cost me more money and ruined my life.  I was forced to buy a larger antenna plus an additional aerial, plus special low-loss RG-6 cable, F-type connectors and a new tool with which to attach them, all to the tune of several hundred dollars, only to experience what digital folks call “pixelation.”

 

Pixelation is when a song bird, such as a wren, flies within two-miles of the path of the signal and the television freezes for a time period anywhere between a few seconds and several minutes.  It only took about a week of this enhanced viewing experience before I realized a personal stroke or heart attack was on the horizon, and a subscription to a TV service would be far less painful and expensive.

 

Up on the roof went a satellite dish and my woes were over except for the tons of antennas, wires, masts, and various clamps that gave my residence the look of an NSA listening post.

 

In any case, if you don’t rush out and buy Ultra HD, we will be bombarded with something like TheBestest HD, next year.

Big Answer to Big Question

Probably the big question posed to us at www.EasternShoreFishAndGame.com is, “Why don’t you write more stories about Eastern Shore fishing and hunting?”
 

Fair enough.  Since I was a small child I was consumed by reading stories about big game hunting and the choice of guns associated therewith.  Way back when, writers didn’t refer to guns as “weapons” because weapons were tools to be used on bad guys as in times of war.  Even bad guys, as in “cops and robbers,” were not subject to having tools of their trade called “weapons,” but rather guns.

 

The “rule was always that a rifle was a rifle, a shotgun was a shotgun, and a pistol was a pistol.  And, all that changed, too.

 

A rifle was something that was shoulder-fired and generally required two hands to shoot.  Someone blurred the definition by insisting that a rifle was not a “real” rifle if it was not firing a centerfire cartridge.  That’s incorrect – if it shot a rimfire cartridge, it was called a rimfire rifle and dismissed as sort of a toy, rather than a real method of shooting targets or gathering food.

 

It should be kept in mind that shooting a rimfire rifle, accurately, at a 100 yard target requires genuine skill, and that is more than a “toy” can usually deliver.  Besides, rimfire rifles have been filling pots and freezers for generations with squirrels and rabbits and other critters, and those bunnies and bushy tails don’t consider them as child’s accessories by any stretch of the imagination.

 

Then we arrive at the controversy of pistols, and what to appropriately call them.  When first invented in the 1700’s, they were called “flintlock pistols.”  Eventually, they were modernized with new percussion firing mechanisms and renamed “percussion pistols.”  For your information, both of those pistols fired only one shot before needing to be reloaded.

 

Oddly enough, for all you self-centered jerks, the term “pistol” does not refer to semi-automatic handguns, only!  It seems as though any writer who refers to a revolver as a pistol has just committed a mortal sin.  Get a life. 

 

Eastern Shore farmers and land owners are quite the bunch of hypocrites.  They gripe about the wildlife decimating their crops of soybeans and corn season after season.  And season after season they are politely asked if they need their land eradicated of these pests and they decline the offer year after year.

 

Then there are “real” outdoor scribes who want their readers to believe they need to buy a .22/250, .257 Roberts, or a .25/06 rifle to shoot a 20 to 45 pound coyote.  They also pimp range-finding scopes that sell for “only” $850.  Not real world stuff for a small potatoes guy like me.

 

All this leads me to cringe when these buffoons spew their overly thoughtful comments to anti-gun folks in op-ed newspaper and magazine columns, and on radio shows.

 

They make my innocent .22 squirrel gun sound as though it came off the battlefield in the Middle East, or my wallet sound as if it was filled chock full of crisp fifties.  Neither is true.

 

My squirrel gun is a hold-over from 1970, my wallet is gasping for gas and bait money.

 

So, unless some Eastern Shore farmer allows us Virginia hunting space and the self-righteous outdoor writers cease alienating their base, we’ll be writing about anything but hunting and fishing.

Sign Here

Digital illuminati are clamoring for something new and exciting, and our children are the Guinea pigs.

We were virtually forced to buy and use computers and HDTV’s in order to simply exist in the “new millennium.”

 

“Paperless,” was the word du jour, implying that the world would never have to cut down another tree, and pen and pencil manufacturers would quickly go the way of the buggy whip.

 
But now we hear that with the new school curriculum, Common Core, there will be absolutely no teaching of cursive writing.
 
Cursive writing is what you do when you sign your name on forms and documents such as your driver’s license and other legal papers.
 

It seems as though the Common Core folks are a bit over-confident in thinking the world will be paperless in the next few minutes, thus having no need for people physically signing documents.

 

According to the powers-that-be, kids will be using computers to digitally send, read, babysit, order things, and sign legal documents.  In that case, there will be no need for paper or writing implements, folders, paper clips, staples, or reading lamps.

 

Commercial computers have been around for over twenty-five years, with mainframe machines in use since the 1950’s.  Great ideas and hopes are not necessarily the ingredients in science, so hoping for results is just that.

 

Of course there are some of us who have less-than-desirable penmanship, but that is the beauty of signing documents, individualizing each signature, ensuring each is unique and easily identifiable.

 

Now, however, the ‘globalists’ who want us all – world wide - to live as one, feel this is the next step to de-individualizing people as Americans, French, Germans, Japanese, etc.

 

This all sounds so good emanating from goofy think tanks in ivory towers everywhere.  But, what if the digital design plan fails?  Will kids turning 20-years old sign their names with an “X?”
 

Learning cursive writing is not the monumental task the illuminati’s make it out to be.  It is a right of passage akin to singers “making a song their own” by howling where howling notes do not appear in the musical manuscript. 

 

The letters of the alphabet turn into your own and you can become as creative as you like, making giant swirls or abrupt jags, placing dashes where none belong, and dotting letters that need no dots.

 

Too many kids – and adults – cannot print, much less write cursive.  I’ve seen a list of needed materials composed by a co-worker.  It had to be sent to the NSA for de-coding because it was so difficult to read.  This fellow was 40-years old, too.  I felt embarrassment for both him and his elementary school teachers.

 

His signature was incoherent but, it was a signature, nonetheless.  In fact, it was more than an “X.”  That’s because he had a modicum of a background in writing script.

 

Common Core pimps and parents who simply roll-over at the snap of school administrators’ fingers, deserve the blame for this debacle.  And, it’s still not too late to correct it.

Stickin’ Out My Neck

Where, oh where, to begin this new year.  There is so much fodder with peanut allergies, electric cars, affordable health insurance, and the United States’ Gay Olympics in Sochi; it is hard to figure out where to begin.  But begin, we must.

 

We have a tribe of bearded guys and their trophy wives who hunt ducks and pray and seem to be everywhere, including in Kmart in the form of Chia Pets.  That makes me nothing but jealous.

 

There is a sitting Unites States Congress and Senate, who, thankfully, are now on vacation, that feels it is better to fund the United Nations and old film restorations rather than returning military veterans, out of their inability to find $6,000,000,000.

 

Watching all this mayhem leads me to make predictions for the New Year and here are a few of those for 2014.

 

It seems that a majority of Americans re-elected a man to office who claims to be a Constitutional scholar, yet knows little about the Constitution.  I predict he will outlaw free thinking and confiscate all bank accounts in May or June.  Retirement accounts follow in August.

 

Thankfully, we dodged another Christmas season without bloodshed over displays of a crèche because of a random do-gooder’s complaint of pain for someone else.  I see the letters G – O – D being outlawed altogether from the alphabet just to make things easier for Supreme Court Justice John Roberts.

 

The new season approaches for another round of marketing for stores.  Beginning in early January is St. Valentine’s Day, followed by that spring holiday associated with eggs and a bunny – because we can’t mention Easter any more than we can mention Christmas.  I envisage July 4^th as the day stores will bring back Halloween displays.

 

My big prediction for 2014 is that every car insurance company will save you money.  That is, they will save you money until your first renewal, at which time your bill will more than double because of all those “high risk” drivers they’ve signed along with you.

 

 

Drones may be following you around in the upcoming year and actually catch you twerking with either Mylie Cyrus or Hannah Montana.  A new internet channel will be created to show all her hijinks, all the time.  Billy Ray Cyrus will be castrated out of principle.

 

All the Kardashians will pool their money and buy Associated Press to ensure they are receiving the appropriate amount of media coverage.

 

In a related matter, Kanye West will win the Douchebag of the Year Award, in an unprecedented tie with Vice President Joe Biden.

 

Lindsay Lohan will buy her own rehab center and hire Judge Judy to try her cases for TMZ and Entertainment Tonight.

 

Smart phones will finally grow to the size of cinder blocks and be connected with wires to the walls, kind of like the phones of yore.

 

Dennis Rodman will be named the new “uncle” of North Korean President Kim Jung Un, and lead the North Korean Olympic Basketball team to a victory in the summer games.

 

Nancy Pelosi will have a face lift.  Again.  And, her eyes may fall out of their sockets.

 

Ford will reveal the much-awaited 2019 Mustang that will look just like the 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018, models.

 

Former President George W. Bush, will be blamed for the Washington Redskins’ name and their losing record.