It is hard to beat a sixty-eight degree sun soaked spring day.  When I got home from work I took advantage of the mild temperature to mow the lawn.  My lot is a freckle larger than an acre so I liken it to doing chores on the farm.  I am no amateur.  I am fully equipped with a power-steering, 48 inch deck, cruise controlled, water-cooled, hydrostatic transmission John Deere 345.  It’s gotta be a Deere baby!  The guys in my neighborhood who ride anything else are the guys you will see walking at the mall three steps behind their wives wearing plaid shorts, black knee-high socks and sandals.  Need I say more.  I don’t know how I got to be an American made equipment snob but I am.  Let’s not quibble about how it doesn’t jibe with my liberal tendencies.  The fact that I own a GMC Yukon, a Harley Davidson and a John Deere garden tractor is a source of pride for me. 

          This post is going to be about some amazing adventures I have had as a proud John Deere owner but first I have to go off on a rant.  About this immigration stuff.  Man the bull shit is flying.  All this God Bless America and to hell with the Mexicans stuff is starting to chap my ass. First let me say that I do not believe anybody should be here illegally but what are you going to do?  Our weak and lax government let them in here in fact they practically invited them.  Are we going to start spending billions of dollars to hunt illegals down, try them and deport them?  And why isn’t anybody screaming their heads off about the people who hired the illegals illegally?  This reminds me of the classification of unwed mothers.  Why do we never talk about unwed fathers?  For someone to come here and work illegally or for a girl to get pregnant there has to be a prick somewhere and by God they should pay as well.  And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

          I am a Mexican-American citizen of these United States of America.  The only country I love is the good old US of A.  I choose to describe myself as Mexican-American because of the love I have for my mother and my grandfather.  My grandfather was a citizen of the United States.  He earned his citizenship in 1968.  He was a gentle, compassionate, generous and hard working man.  He was noble as were all of the extended family members on my mother’s side.  I love those people. I love who I became as a result of being around them and for that reason I will always claim pride in my heritage.  And really now, that is all I am going to say about that.

          Being Mexican-American I take pride in my lawn care abilities although I think I would be somewhat of an embarrassment to my “homies.”  Twice in my life I have done some rather remarkable stunt driving on my John Deere garden tractors.  Both times it involved flipping the tractor over backwards and pinning me to the ground as the blades of death whirred over my feet.  It is cause for a somewhat disconcerting feeling to have your shoulders pinned to the ground as you remain seated, albeit upside down on a running lawn tractor.  Safety features are built into these tractors.  If you come off the seat the motor kills but evidently the engineers at John Deere never conceived of the possibility that someone would be as stupid as to try to mow up a steep incline and as the tractor loses traction and begins a backwards assent that they would apply the rear wheel only brakes.  The flaw in their safety logic was that; in a completely perfect back flip you never come off the seat you merely trade vertical positions.  The sensation is rather remarkable as the 700 pound tractor slowly comes over the top of you and your view of the ditch is replaced first with tree tops and then blue sky. 

          The first time I flipped the tractor my wife was very concerned that I was alright and frightened of the possibilities that I could have been seriously hurt or killed even.  The second time I don’t recall exactly but I think she just kind of let out an exasperated sigh and muttered, “dumb ass!” under her breath.  I felt three types of pain on that second misadventure.  First was the resultant damage to my pride from actually repeating that feat and having to bear the under-the-breath “dumb ass” comment.  We had been married nearly twenty years when I did it the second time and I guess some of the glow had worn off my halo by then.   Second was the actual physical pain associated with sore muscles.  I dealt with that pain for over two weeks.  The third type of pain was the most painful of all.  Financial.  It cost me over nine hundred bucks for body parts to make my pride and joy look new again.  Perhaps had I dealt with that financial pain on my first episode I would have learned my lesson and not had the recurrent experience?  Nah.  I almost did it again tonight.

 

Song of the Day: Green Acres Theme Song

by Ruben Navarrette

When Congress went on spring break recently, having failed to put together an immigration reform bill, I had hoped that the respite might give Americans the chance to have a constructive dialogue on this explosive subject. Considering what happened in recent weeks, “constructive” isn't a word that springs to mind.

How about frightening? What else would you call it when two of California's most prominent Latino officials – Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa – receive death threats for having been vocal in support of legalizing undocumented immigrants?

The threats were brought to light last week by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who blasted such actions as “not what California stands for.” The governor said he had asked district attorneys in the state to “be vigilant and swift in their actions against those who practice hate against our fellow citizens.”

What about heartbreaking? That aptly describes the ghoulish attack in Houston where a 17-year-old Hispanic youth was severely beaten and sodomized, allegedly by two white youths who – according to authorities – yelled racial slurs.       Or sickening? That's a good description of an Internet video game – introduced in 2002 but enjoying a boost in popularity in recent months – where players can shoot Mexican immigrants coming across the border, complete with splattered blood. The images include an American flag where the 50 stars have been replaced by a Star of David, making it clear that the game is both racist and anti-Semitic.

A few weeks ago, there was also the ugly scene in Tucson where border-watch vigilantes burned the Mexican flag outside the Mexican Consulate. Then there was the firebombing of a family owned Mexican restaurant in Jamul, where – in an incident that authorities have labeled a hate crime – the building was spray-painted with anti-Mexican graffiti.

These are hard days in the land of the free and the home of the brave. It's no consolation that we've been here before. It's not the first time that some group – African-Americans or Jews or gays or Muslims – was singled out and persecuted and judged responsible for society's problems. Then, as now, relations soured thanks to racism or ethnocentrism or some other “ism” lapped up by those who feel it necessary to view themselves as superior to others.

The conversation usually starts with someone serving up ignorant and careless remarks about how this group is taking over, or that group doesn't know its place or demands special treatment. It's become standard fare on conservative talk radio, where hosts are spinning rage into ratings by repeating the canard that the United States is being “invaded” by foreigners.

And, with all this ugliness going around, what has so many people up in arms? Amazingly, it's the silly things. It's the fact that a member of the Brown Berets, a militant fringe group founded in 1967, once said something childish about how white people have a “duty to die.” Or the fact that when Mexicans joined in this week's boycott by forsaking U.S.-made products, our neighbors to the south tactlessly dubbed it “a day without gringos.”

Or the fact that a British record producer translated the national anthem into Spanish. It's not an official translation, of course, but that fact didn't stop President Bush – and some Mexican-American elected officials including Villaraigosa and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson – from registering their complaints and insisting that the anthem ought to be sung in English only.

You've got to be kidding. It was Bush who started the craze of non-Hispanic politicians speaking Spanish on the stump. Members of Congress, from both parties, now gather regularly for Spanish lessons. Both Villaraigosa and Richardson have given parts of major speeches in Spanish, and they have exploited their ethnicity and bilingualism for their political benefit.

The culture critics need to calm down and embrace this sort of thing for what it is – not an assault on America but a love letter to it. For crying out loud, it's the national anthem. If someone wants to translate it, or anything else Americans hold dear, we should feel proud. Translation is – like imitation – a form of flattery. We should also accept the obvious – that immigrants voted with their feet and that if any country should feel insulted, it's the one they abandoned and not the one they embraced.

Now that would be constructive.

 

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/op-ed/navarrette/20060503-9999-lz1e3navarret.html

 

Hear the author on NPR here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5378520

 

Song Credit: Van Morrison Brand New Day

          It’s not easy being fat and sleazy.  Okay, first let’s get one thing straight.  It’s okay for a fat person to call themselves fat but if you call me fat my first inclination is to make you flat.  Sorry that’s just the way it is.  Besides, I don’t really consider myself fat.  If you ever read my “About Me” section on this website you would know that I am not really fat at all.  I am merely short for my weight.  In case you were wondering, we of the large persuasion, while having our moments of feeling our girth, (think running, stair climbing and riding in the backseat of any two-door automobile) do not feel any different than you as we go about our daily lives.  While 0ur perceptions of the world around us are similar I must say that some of you are really messed up and I want nothing to do with the world as you see it.  What I am saying is that you may have a beautiful body but maybe you have big ears, a lazy eye or a crooked nose, maybe you may have an ethnic look which makes you distinctive.  Whatever, the thing is, the defining characteristics of your outer self should have little to do with who you are inside. 

          Sometimes I wonder about the beautiful people.  While there are obvious advantages I can not help but wonder if those who are gifted with outward attractiveness ever question the sincerity or motives of those who profess to be their friends or associates.  I am sure that once one has been established as a proverbial have, as opposed to a have-not, with regards to physical desirability, they would not want to cross the line back to mediocrity or heaven forbid the godforsaken classification of butt ugly.  Still, I have friends who are in that physically gifted category and it seems that it gets annoying to have people behave stupidly in their presence.  There, now I feel better for discrediting the multiple and enviable benefits of that outward beauty which is not immediately obvious in a case such as mine.

          My wife drives a Subaru Forrester and I am sure it is a fine automobile, if you are less than 5’10” tall and weigh less than 160 pounds.  In other words it would have made a great graduation present for me…when I finished the 6^th grade.  Her car has gotten to be quite the conversation piece for our family.  If ever I ride with her to the mall, the grocery store or wherever it never fails but we draw a crowd as I attempt to dislodge myself from its inadequately proportioned interior.  Rude bastards.  They don’t think I can hear them wagering if I will be able to get out without involving those emergency thingys, what are they called?  The jaws of life!  If you are wondering how I ever get myself into such a predicament the answer is easy.  I simply have one of the kids open the passenger door of the little Jap car and then, after taking 17 paces away from the car I make a run at it.  One sure sign of my success is the resultant, inverted index finger slipping from the cheek “POP” sound as my body clears the weather stripping.  I hate that car.

          There are disadvantages to being a big guy but I take comfort in the notion that if those disadvantages ever cause me too much pain I can always diet.  People who have a problem with the big people of the world are small minded and there isn’t much that they can do about that.  I kinda feel sorry for them.  Okay, no I don’t.  If someone is an asshole I take comfort in knowing that they will most likely die as an asshole.  They shouldn’t feel bad if I miss their wake.  There will most likely be a cheeseburger with my name on it somewhere that would mean more to me to look into.  So it goes.

 

Song Credit: Cheeseburger in Paradise Jimmy Buffet

          It rained all weekend here in good old Iowa.  I suppose that is okay seeing as how I spent yesterday developing a case of bleacher butt at the wrestling tournament and spent the better part of Sunday working on month end processing for work.  Gotta pay those dividends!  What I really should have been doing was stripping kitchen cupboards.  When my wife left last November I promised to do a lot of amazing projects around the house.  If she recalls the discussions we had prior to her departure she will be expecting to come home to a fully remodeled home this fall.  Let me just tell you this right now.  It ain’t gonna happen.  Well the kitchen cupboards might because I have run out of excuses not to do that project. 

          I started this project with a sixty day planning mode where I gathered details about how I would go about it all, I verified what materials I would need and then consulted with some folks who have done similar projects to see if they had any tips.  It should not go unnoted that more than one person said it is easier to just replace the cupboards.  While the $10,000 required to do that might seem like a lot at first the farther into the project you get the more and more reasonable it begins to sound.  Well ten grand would pay for a lot of fun on Harley trips so I have decided to apply the macho approach. Sheesh, “How hard could it be?”

          The second sixty days I was preparing the cupboards by thinning them out.  I figured with “she who must be obeyed” a thousand miles away I would never have a better chance to throw tons of crap out that has never once seen the full light of day since we moved in.  Remember, I am the guy who lives by the motto, "It is easier to get forgivenss than permission!"  Take for instance; this old collection of plates that looked like, oh god, I don’t know, they had to be a hundred years old.  They were heavy and very fragile; they had these horrible floral patterns around the edges.  And tea cups and saucers.  Like who drinks out of teacups any more?  They don’t have near the capacity of my NAPA Auto Parts travel tanker.  Get this; on the bottom they said genuine China.  Right!  If they had said genuine American on the bottom I might have given it a second thought before I tossed em out.  Anyway, I tossed all those old dishes out and tons of other pans, platters and baking dishes that looked old and festive for one season or another.  Now I have lots of extra room in the cupboards, so I got that going for me.

          During the months of March and April I began the process of gathering supplies.  You can’t rush into these things.  Most of March was spent finding just the right size empty boxes at work and brining them home to store the reduced quantity of cupboard items during the stripping, sanding, priming and painting processes.  Then I spent some time researching strippers.  Hey, when your wife is out of town you don’t want to just rush right out and buy the first stripper you see!  I opted for a product called liquid sandpaper.  I was assured by the 17 year old veteran home improvement guru at the local Menard’s store that this stuff is the shizzle.  What ever that meant?  Next on the list was sand paper.  I found these things called sanding blocks.  They looked pretty cool and the 18 year old veteran home improvement guru at the local Sherman Williams store said they are the bomb so I bought six.  I figured there is no sense in rushing to buy the primer because as long as I don’t actually get started with the liquid sandpaper or the sanding blocks I really won’t need the primer. 

          I wonder how much I would have to pay someone to come in and do this job?  Being out of excuses to get started is starting to stress me.  I’m sure the wife would not like to have me stressed over something so insignificant as cupboard painting.  Yeah, no sense starting this project tonight.  Maybe tomorrow.

 

Song Credit: You're Gonna Get What's Comin' Bonnie Rait