For any of my blog readers that might have missed it on Facebook, here is how a brand-new Grandpa celebrates. Chandler James Gohring was born at 11:28 Friday, December 17, weighing in at 6 lbs., 13 oz and 20 inches long. Papa Steve had a work Christmas Party that night, and was part of the entertainment.

Today's News

I have to admit, I am posting this link entirely because of the last two words of the fourth sentence. It made me smile that the author did not call the man a "Muscovite" (the proper way to refer to a person from Moscow), but rather went with "Moscow man". This prompted me to start singing "Moscow, Moscow man, I've got to be a Moscow man."

While we are on the subject of Today's News, this was in the NY Times today. To my mind it is representative of slanting the way an article is written to prove a point that just isn't there. Rep. Rangel is quoted as saying that the vote for censure was "very, very, very political", and the author states that he (Rangel) denounced the vote as partisan, and then the author points out that only 2 of 79 votes against censure were cast by Republicans. What the author (conveniently?) skips over is the basic fact that of 255 Dem votes, 170 were cast in favor of censure. Granted, 91% of Republican Reps cast a vote in favor of censure, which taken by itself seems large, but if it were really a partisan vote, doesn't it seem like the Dem votes would not have come in with 66% in favor of censure?

Here's a partisan vote. 240 Dems and 14 Reps voted "Yes", 3 Dems and 149 Reps voted "No". Now if the Rangel vote had run along those lines (actually the opposite of those, but you get my meaning), then he would have room to make his assertions, but as it is, he appears to have gotten a fair shake.

Interesting News Item You Might Have Missed.

You might have missed this article, but fortunately you have me to keep you up to date on these important news events. What I found interesting was the fact that the poor woman is beating on the pipes for three weeks, day and night, and what do her neighbors do? They start a petition to get the pipe-banging to stop.

Well, barring some unforeseen circumstances this weekend, it is actually going to happen. Papa Steve is going to hit 50 on Monday. A lot has happened in this last half-century. On the day I was born JFK was elected the 35th President in a close election defeating then-VP Richard Nixon. Since then we have seen the civil rights movement, the race to space, the Cuban missile crisis, the decline of communism, and the invention of the internet by Al Gore. That pretty much sums up the last 5 decades I think.

Well, today is a huge day at the Gohring household. I received the following e-mail yesterday.(recreated in it's entirety for your review.)

From: Mr.Louis Mike
Sent: November 02, 2010 9:33 PM
To: undisclosed-recipients
Subject: Notice

Your e-mail address have been Chosen by The 2010 SENATE HOUSE. You Have won ATM
Card Value of $1,800,000 USD in cash.

Send your Full Names
Occupation,
Addres,
Age,
Cell phone,
Fax Number,
Country,

Regards,
Mr.Louis Mike
info@globallogistics-courier.tk
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
This message and its attachments are strictly confidential. If you are
not the intended recipient of this message, please immediately notify
the sender and delete it. Since its integrity cannot be guaranteed,
its content cannot involve the sender's responsibility. Any misuse,
any disclosure or publication of its content, either whole or partial,
is prohibited, exception made of formally approved use
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

So, it appears, my dear friends, that I will be quitting my job and living the sweet life with my $1.8 million ATM card, courtesy of my friends at the Senate House. You see how quickly things change once the congress is no longer controlled by the Dems? Well, here's to you losers who will still be working. Me?, I'm walking on Easy Street, although I kinda wonder why Mr. Mike is apparently located in Tokelau, but I bet that means that the money will come to me tax-free. Woo-hoo!!!

Relay for Life

Through the hard work of my wife and daughter, and many of our dear friends, I am pleased to announce that we were able to raise $2,706 as a group (Jan's Fans) for the American Cancer Society in this year's Relay for Life. Way beyond our initial goal of $1,000, and representing, I think, a great success for our first time. It is a testimony to the giving nature of our friends and family, and the love that they all have for Jan, that we were able to be so successful.






















Even Chet Edwards came out and put in an appearance, although I am not sure how effective this was as a campaign stop for him.

Internet Privacy

The latest big technology news is the so-called privacy breach in Facebook. Apparently when you have been playing Farmville, or Mafia whatever, the people who run those games have had access to your information on Facebook, and may have sold that information to others, so that they can market to you. How much information that is seems to be hard to determine, but at least they know your name and/or e-mail address.

My father worked for a number of years for a company called Names Unlimited. Their only function was to amass lists of names and addresses of people who had previously bought things from mail-order catalogs, and to then group them by their apparent interests, location, or whatever, and then sell those lists to other people who were interested in marketing through the mail. In so doing, we all received a little more "junk" mail, but the cost of First Class postage was pretty cheap, because the US Post Office was making a mint off of all the junk mail that they carried. Well mail-order has mostly gone away, to be replaced by online shopping, and as a result the cost to mail a letter has gone up from .25 in 1990 to .46 in 2011.

I guess my point is, if you want to play the games on Facebook/Myspace/whatever for "free", then you should know that there really is nothing that is "free", there is always an angle. They aren't spending money on programming all of this stuff just so you can waste time at work, there is always an ulterior motive.

And the winner is....

Here is an example of a recently settled lawsuit, where the real winner, once again, is the attorney. He wins a settlement of $610,000.00, and pockets 70% of it as his fee. I know it costs a lot of money to prepare to litigate in a case of this type, but c'mon.... $425,000, and you never even went to court?

The Book Incident

In case you haven't heard, President Obama was nearly hit with a paperback book in Philadelphia. Secret Service agents have interviewed the book thrower and have dismissed him as being overly-exuberant, but looking at these pictures, the facts just aren't adding up. The angle and velocity of the book are off, I think that we might be missing a second thrower. Fortunately the alert Secret Service Agent (the one in the yellow tie in picture 1), was able to apprehend the book in question, and at the time of this writing, the book is reportedly being held and undergoing interrogation in an undisclosed Philadelphia location. Several eyewitnesses have identified the book differently. Clearly the President was unaware of how terribly close he came to a mild thump, or possibly a papercut.

For the record

Tomorrow will be the 70th anniversary of John Lennon's birth. Not his 70th birthday. You cease to have birthdays when you die. If you disagree with me, then it is also the 424th birthday of Archduke Leopold V of Austria, but since he died 378 years ago, that just seems silly.

Weird News

In case you missed it, there is a great story about a three year old girl's "princess" party here. As they say in one of my favorite movies, "Raising Arizona", "It's a crazy world - someone should sell tickets - I'd buy one".

Texas in Late September.

You know that you are finally coming out of the Texas summer when you are sitting with friends, as I was on Saturday at noon, watching a youth soccer game, when someone comments about how chilly it is getting. You get in your car, and notice that the outside temperature is in the lower 80s. Riiiiiiight..., chilly. Teresa would definitely have needed a sweater.

Philosophical moment coming....., Life is just sort of like that, we get so used to things being just one certain way, then any small change happens and it seems so major. It is funny how we often perceive change, any change, as being far more traumatic and drastic than it probably really is.

But, thank goodness that the worst of the hot weather seems to be behind us now, that is change I can get behind, even if it means I feel a little chilly.

I give up.

This article was posted today on MSNBC.com. I am clearly fighting a losing battle when I say that we shouldn't care what entertainers think about important issues. Granted this sort of stuff brings publicity to what is going on in Washington, but I can't help but believe that there are people out their with legitimate opinions, as well as the credentials to back up their arguments, who have been denied this same sort of access to government policy-makers. When our elected officials would rather laugh and entertain themselves than do their jobs, then there just isn't much hope. Bring on the meat dress. We are only several poor decisions away from President Flavor Flav.

Verbose loquaciousness

OK, lets play a game. Make sentences using as many of the words listed as you can.

vacuous
vernacular
virulent
voluntarily
vuvuzela

Please no cheating, and as always wagering is expressly forbidden.

Dear highly overpaid entertainer(s),

I know that there are literally thousands of people hanging on to your every word, and there are innumerable hangers-on and lackeys that surround you daily feeding off of you like remoras on a shark, and this utter dependence on you for sustenance has you thinking that the rest of the world must wonder what you think on a veritable panoply of topics, but please be advised, I do not. I don't care about your political views, I don't care about which particular laws you find offensive, not stringent enough, or just plain meaningless. I am sure that you have great thoughts, I imagine you fancy yourselves as deep thinkers, but when it comes down to it, your function, purpose, your raison d'etre is to sing, act, and/or entertain (period).

On tattoos and such....

A friend of mine told me the other day that she was having a conversation with someone, where they mentioned that they would never get a tattoo, because the Bible forbids it. My friend said, "Well you know I have a tattoo, don't you?", to which she received a mumbled response of some sort. Anyway, it made me wonder, seeing as how I recently got a tattoo myself...

The section of scripture that the person was referring to is from Leviticus Chapter 19, Verse 28 (NIV); "Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord." It appears to me to be talking about the ritual practice of defacing your body in grief, such as was practiced by some of the people at the time, in order to appease the gods of death, etc., so I guess if you are getting a tattoo for idolatrous reasons that would be wrong. But isn't it interesting how we can sometimes take things like this passage out of the Bible and apply them to others, without worrying about the rest of the reference? For instance, in verse 28 it says, " 'Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard." and in Verse 19b; "Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material". Hmmmmm, perhaps I need to re-examine my wardrobe, and change my personal grooming habits.

One section of this Chapter of Leviticus that really jumped out at me though was verses 33 and 34; "When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the Lord your God."

Somehow it seems to me that this admonition has much more relevance and applicability today, for me anyway, than a warning that I should not breed different kinds of animals together. (Verse 19a).

A new look

I promised Scott that if he would get his haircut in March that I would get a tattoo. This was not just a spur of the moment thing, but something I had been thinking about for some time. The design is a combination of two elements. The ichthus, which of course is symbolic of Christ, surrounding 143, which has always been the way that Jan and I have communicated "I Love You" (The number of letters in each word, I-1, Love-4 and You - 3). So after considering it for some time, and four months after I made the commitment to Scott, I decided to go with him on Thursday to see about getting the tattoo. In my mind, this meant that I would find out if they could do it, and when, and how much it would be, etc. At any rate, one hour later, this is what my upper arm looked like.

For those who might be wondering, it really did not hurt that badly, and the worst part so far was sleeping the first night, since it is on my right arm, and I generally sleep on my right side, but even that was like having a bad sunburn.