This is what I saw directly in front of the House by the Parkway when I returned from work yesterday. The thing is that yesterday, before I left home for work, this was a tree roughly as high as my house. In fact, I used that tree that very morning to lean on to stretch my legs after my walk. I’ve been using that tree for that purpose for at least a half dozen years, and I sure as hell didn’t ask anyone to cut it down.

I know that it had to be the town that cut down the tree, because the town actually “owns” the trees that reside between the sidewalk and the curb. It was the town that planted the tree (now Mr. Stump) about fifteen years ago after some douche bag smacked into and destroyed the then-existing tree with his car.

But still, WTF? Nobody smacked into this tree. It was perfectly fine just ten hours earlier.

I entered the house pissed to the max.

When I asked Mrs. Parkway, who was home all day that day, if she saw that some son of a bitch cut down our tree, she explained that a town tree guy knocked on the door and explained that half the tree was dead. He opined that the tree should, therefore, be cut down, but that the frontage of the house was actually wide enough to accommodate two trees, which he said the town would return at a later date to plant.

Hell, I thought the tree was perfectly fine, but: (a) I’m not a tree mavin, and (b) there was no point in giving Mrs. Parkway or the town, for that matter, a ration of shit, as neither would have brought my tree back.

So, the bottom line is that, probably sometime in the tree planting season (whenever the hell that is) the town will show up and plant a couple saplings in front of the house. Great. I figure that by the time they are real trees, I’ll be seventy-farookin’-five. Hell, I’m still young enough to buy green bananas, but sheesh!

I think I would have kept the half-dead tree, which, as noted above, didn’t look at all dead to me.

Progress? Feh!

Dear Shithook Jimbo:

You thought I’d be back to work today, didn’t you? Admit it. You know you did.

Well, guess what. I’ve been checking around, and now I’m really pissed.

You know, if I worked for this guy or this guy, I’d only have to work a few days per month. I’d have it farookin’ made. Hell, if I worked for this guy or this babe I could actually show my poetic side. You wouldn’t know a decent poem if it bit you on your ass.

You might also be interested to know that I am considering an offer to work for Jesse Jackson, whom I have made aware of our current labor dispute. Working for Jesse, now there’s a real cakewalk. Jesse loved these:

SCREW THE JOOS, NOT THE MUSE!

WE’RE NOT AMUSED WHEN YOU ABUSE THE MUSE!

NO MUSE JUSTICE, NO MUSE PEACE!

So, Mr. Smart Guy, how’s the blog goin’? BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Regards,

Your Muse

Dear Jimbo:

This note is to let you know that I’ve decided to take the day off.

Am I sick? Well, that’s sort of half of the problem. I’m sick and tired of being called upon damned near every farookin’ day at all hours of the day and night (and weekends too) to come up with stuff that doesn’t stink for your crummy blog.

Benefits? Forget it. You provide zero, zip, nada. Hell, I don’t even get a goddamned footnote for the occasional times I hit a long ball for you. You just wanna sit around drinking all sorts of spirits and hang with the Usual Suspects while I do all the heavy lifting around here, for absolutely no money, no benefits, no recognition and no goddamned respect. Hell, an illegal alien wouldn’t take this gig.

I may even take tomorrow off. And, maybe even the next day and the day after that. Waddya gonna do then, Mr. Great Farookin’ Hair? Post one of those “What Kind of Festering Pustule are You?” quizzes?

Feh!

Very truly yours,

Your Muse

I only learned of this today – a car with a built-in guitar amplifier! And, the car comes with an electric guitar! How could I have missed this?

I may have to trade in the Big, Fat, Black Capitalist Car and get one of these units. The possibilities are endless.

I can see it now.

Promotional Stuff – Jimbo coming soon to the Raritan Toll Plaza! Future concert venues include the Sears parking lot in Watchung and the parking space directly opposite Ziggy’s Hot Dog Emporium in Seaside Heights! Get your tickets now!

News Stories — Jimbo wows the crowd outside the local 7-11! Sahid Green, the manager of the convenience store stated, “Sales were flat until Jimbo showed up with his musical car. He has such wide appeal. Not only are our Slurpee sales going through the roof, but we also are selling lots of soft food to his older fans. It’s fantastic!”

COMING SOON TO A PARKING GARAGE NEAR YOU!

A couple weeks ago, one of the main streets in my town was undergoing a bit of a face peel, which is to say that the top layers of asphalt were being removed in order to pave over the freshly scraped street with new black, smelly stuff. The operation took several days; it caused lots of traffic jams and pissed off more than a few merchants whose businesses suffered from zero traffic during business hours.

During one of my weekend walks while this was violent road work was going on I came upon this massive gizwiz, and was quite taken by it, so much so that I used Mr. Cell Phone camera to take some pictures. Unfortunately, the sun (damn you, Algore!) screwed up all of them except the two shown above.

This baby has as many gauges as a 747 and, like a 747, it has seats for two drivers, a pilot and a co-pilot for the street muncher! Very impressive.

I only wish I could have seen in actually gobbling up layers of street.

Check this out.

The segment deals with Democrat Pork, but squandering taxpayer money with earmarks certainly is not something unique to democrats.

Both parties ought to be ashamed.

While cogitating on Abe Lincoln’s voice, I got to thinking about George “Blood and Guts” Patton and his voice. Patton’s voice is historically morphing in our minds into that of George C. Scott. Who doesn’t remember the scene in the movie Patton where George C. Scott, as Patton, appears before a gigantic American and address the troops in England in June 1944? One of the great moments in film, that.

The bad news is that, just as Lincoln surely did not sound anything like Raymond Massey, General Patton didn’t sound anything like George C. Scott. Patton, like Lincoln, had a rather high-pitched voice.

The good news is that you can still hear a clip of Patton’s real voice .

The really excellent news is the text of the actual speech General Patton made to the troops in June 1944 has been discovered, and it is quite something. Turns out that the version for the movie had to be “cleaned up” quite a bit, because General Patton was not shy about using profanity, including the liberal dropping of “F-Bombs.”

Here are some excerpts:

All through your Army careers, you men have bitched about what you call “chicken shit drilling”. That, like everything else in this Army, has a definite purpose. That purpose is alertness. Alertness must be bred into every soldier. I don’t give a fuck for a man who’s not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn’t be here. You are ready for what’s to come. A man must be alert at all times if he expects to stay alive. If you’re not alert, sometime, a German son-of-an-asshole-bitch is going to sneak up behind you and beat you to death with a sockful of shit!

(snip)

An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is pure horse shit. The bilious bastards who write that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don’t know any more about real fighting under fire than they know about fucking!

(snip)

I don’t want to get any messages saying, “I am holding my position.” We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy’s balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time. Our basic plan of operation is to advance and to keep on advancing regardless of whether we have to go over, under, or through the enemy. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose; like shit through a tin horn!

Read the entire speech (and the background of its discovery) here.

I can only imagine what General Patton would think of the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

I have a good ear for voices. There have been times when I’ve recognized someone from his or her voice when I didn’t recognize the face. I hear and remember inflections, cadences, pitches, timbres, and accents. Fascinating stuff, that.

Then there is Abe Lincoln.

Chances are excellent that you have read Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address dozens of times, if not more, and you probably heard various actors recite those perfectly crafted phrases and sentences. When I read the Gettysburg Address, in my mind’s ear I “hear” the beautiful baritone of Raymond Massey.***

Problem is that my “mind’s ear” is wrong, for history tells us that President Lincoln’s voice was anything but a beautiful baritone. On the contrary, it was described as “shrill, squeaking, piping [and] unpleasant.” Unfortunately, Lincoln was assassinated twelve years before the first recording of the human voice, so the sound of his voice is lost to history. In fact, there isn’t a person on the planet today who has ever heard Lincoln’s voice.

I admit that I do experience a bit of cognitive dissonance trying to imagine Lincoln sounding more like Pee-wee Hermann than Raymond Massey, but, still, I’d sure love to be able to hear the real thing, shrill and piping though it might be.

***This Wikipedia entry suggests (without any citation to a source) that Lincoln’s son, Robert Todd Lincoln, heard Massey perform early in his career and was “struck by the similarity between Massey’s speaking voice and that of his father.” My guess is that the story is complete baloney, or if Robert Lincoln really said that, he was flattering Massey.

For reasons I do not understand, the following does NOT appear (at least on my screen) below the image in the post below.

“I’m not a fan of the genre, but I think I like Chunky Pam. She’s got a generous helping of some Genuine Jersey ‘tude.”

If you can see it on your screens where it belongs, let me know, and I will delete this post.

Farookin’ cybershit.

I’m not a fan of the genre, but I think I like Chunky Pam. She’s got a generous helping of some Genuine Jersey ‘tude.

via Pereiraville