Is This Hell?

I find myself in a room in the Excalibur Hotel on The Strip. I have been through Vegas but never "been" to Vegas. After checking in I thought I would take a stroll. The Excalibur, The Luxor and The Mandalay Bay are connected with a "mall-ish" walkway. My first reaction was the nauseating fumes of the casino areas. There is something to second hand smoke but I do not really know if it causes pathology. I observed some of the people on the slot machines. Of course there are different denominations, penny, two penny, nickle, dime, etc. Many of them were hunched over pushing a little button with their index finger. Some had a "thumb" technique. There eyes and head barely moving as they watched the display, time after time waiting to hear the bells ring.

Walking around many people had a glazed look in their eye, even at the early hour of 8 PM. Must have been the Margaritas or something, I watched a group of youngish looking women, in black clingy dresses, very short appearing to end just below the gluteal fold, with the northern reaches of their dresses extending quite south of their Adam's apple. In fact it looked like they were looking to eat the apple somewhere. And noise, man the noise was thick. Every little shop in the walkway was blaring garish music that seemed to want to hypnotize you into entering and seeing what in the world was going on in there.

There are no deals here either. I remember people talking about how cheap the food was because they would just make it back in the casinos. Not any more. Everything is Uptown now, upscale. There are no geriatric feeding buffets for $4.99 here, no everything is in the high class eating range.

I am here for a seminar on implants, dental implants that is, but there sure are a number who have had other various types I'll tell you that. Plenty of silicone and saline wandering around here. In the Field of Dreams the young Archie Graham asks, "Is this heaven?" The answer was no, it was Iowa. This place certainly isn't heaven, nor Iowa, it must be Hell. More to come on my first walk down the Strip.

Grilling in the Cold

The wife said she hadn't thought of anything for dinner today. So I thought it might be nice to get the grill cranked up and do something while she was still at Church. So, I grabbed some frozen chicken breasts, thawed them out in hot water, wet them down good in Worcestershire sauce with some poultry seasoning, minced garlic and white pepper. It is a quick way to season because I didn't have much time. I mixed up the oat bran muffins with blueberries, whipped up a tossed green salad and threw some spuds in the oven to bake. Voila! The wife walks in, dinner is ready, she's happy, I'm happy. Easy as pie.

Here you can see the little darlin's on the grill. I love my grill. It is big, it runs on natural gas plumbed out to the patio so I do not have to make propane runs. It works out great. Oh, it was pretty chilly down in the 30's but it is seldom too cold to fire of the grill.

The Steamrolling State

O'er the Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave. Of course free and brave are relative terms. Some consider it brave to forsake the basic principles of the Declaration of Independence and the framework of the Constitution. These people do not think there is any relevance in the anachronistic musings of the Founders. In fact, they believe that their perspective has no place in modern society and their words should be carefully molded into whatever meets the exigencies for the day.

Ezra Taft Benson who served as Agriculture Secretary under President Eisenhower and in the hierarchy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints literally foretold and he clearly saw the disintegration of the wonderful principles of the Founders; seeing our country degenerate into a Statist bureaucracy that consumed the life and freedom from all Americans--except those who thrived in the bureaucracy. Bureaucrats loved it in the Soviet Union and they love it here. After many years encased in the bowels of the buildings in the Federal Government they are so deep in the forest they cannot see any trees.

Today, Mark Steyn posted this insightful column and yesterday added this ditty in the Corner. We are thinking that the health care issue has to do with health, the delivering of health care, the good of the People and so on. I am convinced that it does not have much to do with that at all. In fact as I examine the proposals and try and understand the complexities that are being thrown into the Health Care System, I am convinced that there is nothing good that will come from this.

As one who provides a form of health care, I find the people that have the best oral health are those that take care of themselves. The rest of the body has chance of degenerating, developing disease and so on, but it seems like those they take care of themselves seem to have less chance of these kinds of things happening. They are free to be agents unto themselves. If disease develops the current system seems to do pretty well. If 31,000,000 do not have "insurance" (which is an absolute misnomer, the insurance doesn't really insure anything) then 10% of the population need some assistance and it does not make any sense to me to destroy the 90% to improve things for the 10%. I think Mark Steyn has it analyzed correctly and lawmakers should read and understand his points of view.

Spring Snow

It snowed yesterday. These kinds of storms in March hardly ever last long. In fact, the snow will probably all be melted by tomorrow. It sure plays havoc with the golf game, which is a negative. But, and this is the important part, it makes it impossible to get out and do any yard work for the weekend. It will just be too wet. Less than 3 weeks to the equinox and Daylight Savings Time starts in about a week. Hooray! I love the extra sun in the afternoon. Who cares if it is darker in the morning for a little while. We can live through that.

Card of the Week

The Cash Man. That's what I thought this guy was, rich because his name was Cash. I never was much of a Tiger's fan as a young guy. But Cash, along with Kaline and Lolich were some names that I admired. Norm Cash did some rather amazing things. He led the American League in batting in '61 with a .361 average. In 1960 he played the entire season and did not ground into any double plays. That is pretty remarkable considering he batted in the "meaty" part of the batting order. In 1968 the Tigers beat the Cardinals in the World Series. Cash hit .385 in the Series with one home run. He played with the Tigers until 1974 when he was released by the Tigers after hitting .228.

A few years later he played in the American Professional Slow Pitch Softball League if you can believe it. His team the Detroit Caesars won the league title both years. Sounds like a pizza team doesn't it. Norm Cash drowned after he slipped on a boat in northern Lake Michigan, hit his head and fell into the water. When Norm Cash came to the plate anything could happen. He hit four home runs out of Tiger Stadium, becoming the first man to ever do so on June 11,1961.

Abs of Mush

Is it really possible to get a firm, strong waistline? Man, we did some gut exercise at the gym this morning and they were killers. You lay on your back, stick your legs up straight and your partner throws them in different directions. You let your legs go for a bit and then try and keep them from hitting the ground. Not for the weakhearted, that's for sure.

Shopping Cart Syndrome

One wonders what is going on out there? It is not a pretty sight in the financial markets and the business sector. Who is going to take care of things? Is it something we expect government to do or does it come back to being an individual quest for most people? I don’t know. The other evening I was at a retail big box store with my wife. I noticed something. I have noticed it before and I call it the “Shopping Cart Syndrome”.

People just leave their shopping carts sitting in the parking spaces and expect somebody else to take care of it for them. I don’t understand that. Do these people have the capacity to perform basic personal hygiene tasks? I don’t know. How tough is it to walk 30 or 40 feet and put a shopping cart where it should go? I do it all the time.

Maybe this is a reflection of our society as a whole. Most people take care of their shopping carts but enough people don’t that it creates a problem, they are in the way and it is kind of a hassle to clean them all up.

It seems to me that this syndrome is kind of like the economic mess. People expect everybody else to take care of their incapacity to handle a mortgage, or a loan. The vast majority of people are taking care of their financial carts, but a small minority have abandoned their carts for someone else to deal with. This is more than a hassle though, it is going to be one of the identifying periods of time of the 21^st century. I sure hope we can get all the carts rounded up and put where they should be and get the world back to a small semblance of predictability.