The Osbournes? YIKES!!!

Okay, I have heard quite often about the Osbournes having a show of their own on MTV, and I scoffed at the notion that anyone could fill up a weekly half hour time slot with family interaction. With that in mind I never really watched the show. Well, lately, I have actually seen it a few times, and geesh, it's freaking addictive. I would assume that Ozzy himself has been declared legally dead at least half a dozen times over the course of his body polluting, drug and alcohol abusing life. Don't get me wrong, I do respect him for even being alive, and I love his music, the No More Tears album is very good, but watching him walk around on the show, he looks absolutely geriatric.

Sharon is hilarious, although she needs to kick the crap out of her daughter. Kelly Osbourne is a spoiled rotten little brat that needs to have her ass beat. I guess I'm a firm believer in the use of the spanking, and something tells me that Kelly didn't get NEAR enough of that. She complains about getting drunk, and for what? She's 17!!! She shouldn't even BE drinking, instead she's going about talking about how she's the "worst drunk ever" as though she's had a vast experience of drunken occasions with which to make this distinction. Hell, who knows, maybe she has. How as a parent does Ozzy tell his kids NOT to drink or do drugs when he has been blitzed or shitfaced off of probably about every drug known to man, and some not known? I guess it's the old adage, do as I say not as I do.

Then to see them all sitting around the table eating dinner, and the discussions they have with one another, be it nudity, masturbation, drinking, drugs, etc, anything taboo makes it to the dinner table to be discussed in front of steak and cans of pepsi. Sounds like home? Yah, doesn't to me either, but it is hard to turn the crap off, that is for sure.

I don't watch it week after week, just if I happen to catch it online is all. One thing is for sure, I wouldn't be able to handle all those little itty bitty horrible dogs. I like bigger dogs, and 'yap dogs' really annoy the crap out of me. It would be hard to avoid booting them like a football, I mean that in the most loving sense though, hehehe. Anyways, I'm getting off the topic here. I don't know if it's subliminal messages or what that keeps me watching that show, but non the less when it's on I tend to sit there open mouthed disbelieving what I'm seeing, that anyone could live so dysfunctionally and still stay together. I guess that's the key, when you've been thru THAT much, anything that you hear, regardless of how bizarre, becomes a drop in the bucket.

It sure makes for some wierd tv watching though, that's for sure.

Friendly Fire

Listening to the news today, I heard more about possible deadly accidents being attributed to 'friendly fire' in Iraq. Friendly fire is when you are engaged in combat by your own troops, or vice versa. I had to just shake my head though when I listened to the reporter's idiotic comments about friendly fire, as though it is a completely avoidable risk and our troops are just being a bunch of morons out there killing one another.

Let's get a few things straight about 'friendly fire'. First off, there has always been friendly fire in wars. Thankfully, as technology has moved along and brought about better weapons and battlefield tools, the number of casualties due to friendly fire has also gone down. Now, technology advancing has also brought along easier methods for determining death and injury due to friendly fire. This is a double edged sword. Although determining casualties due to friendly fire is a tremendous asset and learning tool for the military to use in determining battlefield tactics, it also paints this broad picture of the military as being prone to blundering stupidity. This is just not true.

Battlefields throughout time have been graphic, fast paced, and tremendously confusing. This is especially so during modern warfare. Although methods of determining friend or foe are as advanced as ever, the speed at which things move on the battlefield has also become astronomically fast. A patriot missile battery operator may have only 5 to 10 seconds to determine if an incoming 'blip' on the radar is an enemy missile or a friendly plane flying in at high speed. The marines use an amphibious armored personnel carrier called the LAV-25 that looks remarkably like a soviet block armored personnel carrier, so much so that there have been at least 2 cases I know of where AH-64 Apache attack helicopters or A-10 Warthog attack planes have destroyed them, creating more friendly casualties.

But even with all of this going on, one needs to realize that there are far less friendly fire casualties today than ever before. I spoke to a relative who told me that in the Pacific theater, during World War II, if a new lieutenant was not listening to his sergeants and getting lots of people in the platoon killed, someone would take the lieutenant out on a hill to 'recon' something, and a sniper in his own platoon would shoot him. For obvious reasons I won't say who this relative is, but things like that were a lot more common during WW2 than most people would believe, and probably even during later wars.

To change the topic just a bit here, something I hope a lot of people understand... when American troops begin door to door combat withing the cities of Iraq, otherwise known as MOUT warfare (Military Operations, Urban Terrain), there are going to be a LOT of casualties. I don't like it, but that's just how it is. Don't be surprised if the death-toll for United States military personnel ends up around 1000 or higher, that's just an indicator of how incredibly dangerous MOUT warfare is. My only hope is that somehow, the people in Iraq will realize that things can be better with Saddam gone, and embrace the freedom that the United States wants them to have. If not, it's going to be a long drawn out affair within the cities.

NO JELLO FOR THE TROOPS!!!

I try hard to avoid being stereotypical about any group of people, be it based on sex, race, creed, sexual orientation, etc, but sometimes it's really hard when I'm looking at something and I just shake my head at the utter nonsense of it all.

Today I was looking over what cannot be sent to American troops in the middle east, the list of prohibited items sometimes makes sense, sometimes you scratch your head a little, and other times you sit in bewilderment at the nonsense you see before you.

I have provided here a list of items that are prohibited for shipping into Arabic countries:

Money or precious metals: not that there is a McDonalds to spend 20 american dollars at in the middle east, but this still seems crazy.

Mail addressed to 'any soldier' or 'any serviceman', etc: not really sure why this isn't allowed, perhaps to avoid anthrax letters? who knows.

Obscene articles, movies, paintings, and horror comics: can't have our servicemen looking at a playboy before going out to war!!! I suppose any comic would be considered a horror comic in the middle east. "OH NO, Batman the Horrible!!!"

Any mail containing anything contrary to the islamic faith: yah, imagine that, for a faith that claims continually to be persecuted by all other religions, they certainly do their best to destroy anyone who thinks differently than they do about religion.

Firearms of any type are prohibited: this is worldwide actually, but it's still too bad, I was going to send out some nice weapons to all the people I know over there, you know, cuz they don't have enough guns as it is? MMMkay?

Pork or pork by-products: oh no, no jello for the troops, no sausage or bacon for breakfast!! Does this mean no football too? You would think so, wouldn't want someone tossing the 'pigskin' around the dessert now would you?

Fruits, animals, or living plants: dang, I wanted to send a cat to a friend of mine, now I can't. So much for the oak tree too.

All alcoholic beverages: I can't imagine what this is like, drinking is as much a part of the military as shooting the enemy a few dozen times.

Materials used in the production of alcohol: "Look, I swear the yeast was for making some yummy bread, okay?"

There were some other ones, but they were usually related to the size of the object or other meaningless things. I guess I can't send my sister that keg of beer and the roasted suckling hog she wanted to have, she will just have to get by on some O'douls non alcoholic beer and some turkey ham.

World's Biggest Jigsaw Puzzle

During the last 7 years or so I've developed a real interest in working on cars. I purchased a 1989 Chrysler Lebaron Convertible in 1996 that became Car Care 101 class for me because of all the problems that the car had. I put two engines in the car and also replaced the transmission. I replaced the shocks and struts, fuel pump, map sensor, oxygen sensor, and many other things.

Right around the same time, my father discovered the Omaha police auction, and I discovered the Salvation Army auto auction. Every saturday my dad goes to the police auction and once a month I they have the Salvation Army auction and I try to go to that. We buy 1985 to 1994 Chrysler, Dodge, and Plymouth 4 cylinder and 6 cylinder cars and rebuild them for sale, and sometimes keep them ourselves. That is where my last two cars have come from, a 1987 Plymouth Sundance Turbo and a 1991 Dodge Shelby Daytona IROC.

I have replaced around 35 to 40 4-cylinder 2.2 and 2.5 engines by my estimation, on all sorts of Chrysler cars, from Horizons to Acclaims. I'm working on my first V-6 right now, a 3.0 liter engine for a friend. Since it's my first time working on one of those I have been taking it slow so I learn what I'm doing and don't mess anything up. The engine is out of a 1993 Dodge Caravan and it's going into a 1991 4 door Lebaron.

A dream I've had for some time now is to find a 1991 Dodge Spirit RT or Daytona RT. Then in October my dad got a phone call from the local tow shop, of all places, who informed him that they had towed in a wrecked Spirit RT and wondered if we were interested in it. Of course, we jumped right on that. The car is in horrible shape, the driver fell asleep at the wheel and drove off the interstate and hit a fence post, so the frame is all bent, the car is unrepairable for all practical purposes.

But what I wanted out of the car is the engine, a DOHC intercooled turbo motor. It's got the basic 2.5 4 cylinder block, but the head is built by Lotus, and is different from any other Chrysler motor of that era. It puts out 230 horsepower and the car could beat a Mustang 5.0 in 0-60 and the quarter mile, something not many people knew about. I want to drop that motor into a 1991 Dodge Shadow, my friend's girlfriend had one but it appears she sold her Shadow to her parents, I'll have to make them an offer for it, maybe repair another car and trade them or something. Basically the Shadow weighs a good 1000 lbs less the Spirit does, you do the math, more horsepower, way less weight, that car would be a screamer, lots of fun.

Someone in St. Louis has already created a car similiar, a 1987 Dodge Shadow with an R/T motor in it, and he gets 12 second quarter mile times, that is amazing. Basically what he has done gives me somewhat of a blueprint for getting to work on my vehicle.

Anyways, that's just a little glimpse into a big hobby of mine. If you want, you can see my car pictures where I was doing repairs on my Daytona at

My Daytona Page

Now, I don't have the finished pictures up yet, plus I hit 2 deer after I had gotten the work all done *grumbles* and that really messed up the front end. But I have some nice pictures before that happened. I just don't have them uploaded yet. Hope to soon though.

Cheap Made-Up Clothing

Old Navy has to be one of the strangest stores on the planet. Certainly the clothing is cheap, low priced and not the greatest quality. The strange part about Old Navy though is that they make up new names for existing clothing or create their own oddball stuff, like the Old Navy 'polar fleece'. Then I see they take a pair of carpenter pants, which is what everyone I know calls them, because of the loop to hang the hammer in, and Old Navy renames them 'painters pants'.

Now, who in their right mind is going to hang a dripping wet paintbrush from the loop on a pair of jeans? That doesn't even make sense. Well, I guess most people that buy those jeans are buying them about ten sizes too big and wearing them around their knees so perhaps it shouldn't matter what they are called, hang a hammer on the loop and they will be around the ankles.

I'm not going to shop at Old Navy until they bring out the Old Navy 'woolen jockstrap'. Nothing better than itchy support as you are doing athletic activity, that is for sure. I bet I can even buy it for under 10 bucks, THANKS OLD NAVY!!!

Hey, don't laugh, you just might see it very soon!!! If they do market it, I'm going to get big time royalties!!! I cannot wait!!