Happy Blog Anniversary!
Before I head out to take advantage of the nice day here in the Garden State, I want to congratulate Cousin Jack on the one-year anniversary of his blog. Prior to having launched Jack Bog’s Blog, Jack had created a web page, which he still maintains, that is primarily devoted to providing useful information to his students. However, even there, with his “Gallery of Jacks,” he found a bit of room to display his first-class sense of humor.

Jack is a nationally respected legal scholar, a consistent winner of teaching awards from his students, a terrific storyteller (one had to be in order to hold one’s own at family gatherings), and an all around nice guy. Oh, and did I mention that Jack can write his ass off? One of my favorites is his remembrance of being a sixth grader the day President Kennedy was assassinated. Great stuff.

Finally, as many of you know, but for his deciding to blog one year ago, I wouldn’t be writing here today.

Thanks, Jack and, again, congratulations.

One of the greatest things about living is that, if you keep your eyes and ears open, you truly can learn something new every day.

Last night, having been intrigued by the curious title of the documentary “Okie Noodling,” I tuned in towards the end of the film. I have always used the term “noodling” to describe something akin to surfing the Internet. I doubted that something so mundane would have piqued the interest of a documentary filmmaker. And, I wondered why “Oakie” noodling? (I believe that this refers to the documentary I watched.)

I soon learned that the “noodling” that was the subject of the documentary had nothing to do with computers or “noodles,” of the pasta kind.

Noodling is the art/sport/activity, practiced in a handful of southern states, which involves hopping out of a boat in pretty nasty looking water to catch catfish with one’s hands. Not being a fisherman, I watched a bit, imagining that in a minute or two one of these guys (they noodle in teams) would pop out of the water with a catfish, maybe a foot long, wriggling in his hands. WRONG!

One of the noodlers dragged a fish out of the water that required three men to toss into the nearby boat. It must have exceeded 100 pounds. I have since done a little reading on the subject here, and here, and I learned that the technique of noodling is to try to get one of these monster fish trapped in an underwater hole and to hope that he/she takes a shot at biting the noodler’s hand, at which point, the noodler blocks all avenues of escape and tries to grab the fish by the side of the mouth (to avoid the multiple sand papery-like teeth that fill the fish’s mouth) and the gills. A miss could mean that the fish grabs the noodler by the hand or arm and either causes a nasty injury or, in the worst case, prevents the noodler from breaking the surface thereby drowning the noodler. A few people die each year noodling.

To see a photo of the size of the fish that noodlers drag by hand out of the water, click here.

Absolutely amazing.

As for me, I think I will restrict my noodling to the computer.

At the Sound of the Tone….

The following was sent to me by my friend Brian, who is an Air Force Veteran and a retired police officer. Enjoy.

Police Department’s Answering Machine

Hello, you have reached the Police Departments’ Voice Mail. Pay close attention as we have to update the choices often as new and usual circumstances arrive. Please select one of the following options:

Thanks for calling your local police dept. and have a nice day.

In grade school, we were forced to learn the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence by rote. As we got older, we sometimes thought a bit about what those words we memorized so long ago really meant (e.g. the right to the “pursuit” of happiness versus a right to a free lunch). However, many of us do not often read the entire document.

Here is your chance. Cousin Jack has posted the text of the Declaration of Independence in its entirety. Read it, and I dare you not to be taken with the passion expressed in the document, the profundity of the issues raised, and the courage displayed by the men who put pen to paper and signed the document.

The Declaration is not a stodgy bit of flowery prose, difficult to understand and even more difficult to relate to today. On the contrary, it is a brilliantly written, angry, scathing, and highly particularized indictment of the King of England, who is referred to in the document simply as “He.”

Read it and be proud. Very proud

Read it and be thankful. Very thankful.

Liberia.

American troops to Liberia? Bad idea. I believe that country has been a mess since 1822. Sounds to me like a job for the French.

Duck and Cover.
Acidman has requested (challenged) Maripat and Lori, from Right We Are, to subject themselves to his 25 question interview. They are to answer the questions without consultation with each other, and Acidman reserves the right to offer some “comments.”

They have accepted.

I’m psyched.

Carnival of the Vanities #41.

It’s up at Amish Tech Support. Go read!

New Jersey – Still “In Business.”
Narrowly avoiding a threatened state shutdown, New Jersey’s Legislators finally passed a budget several hours after constitutionally mandated deadline of July 1.

It is sickening.

In order to fund the $24 billion price tag, the budget includes $600 million in new taxes. While the complete list of new taxes remains to be seen, a large portion of the money will come from New Jersey’s casinos, with Donald Trump and his three casinos somehow paying about half of what the Las Vegas-based casinos are paying. During the partisan fight that preceded the budget sessions, Republicans had charged that Governor McGreevey was doing his buddy, The Donald, a huge, political favor. I suspect that the criticism was well placed.

In their never-ending quest for money for the state to piss away, the Legislators turned to the old-standby. Yep. Let’s tax the smokers yet again. Now, smokers will pay an additional $0.55 in tax on a pack of cigarettes. This brings the State’s cut per pack up to $2.05, the highest in the nation. Taxes on hotel stays and billboards were also included in the legislation.

About $80 million of the new taxes will be used to fund “pet projects” in the home districts of the horse-trading pols in Trenton. Approximately one third of that amount will go to Camden County, which just happens to be the home district of both budget committee chairmen.

The Governor had threatened to shut down the state, except for essential services, if a budget was not passed by the deadline. It would appear that this threat was not getting sufficient attention from the people and the casinos, so he decided to play hardball and announced that the first state workers who would ordered to stay home would be the casino regulators. This would have shut down Atlantic City’s casinos and prevented the newest one from opening this coming Thursday. Apparently Garden Staters who didn’t much give a damn if the Division of Motor Vehicles shut down or other state agencies, where employees are not known for doing much heavy lifting, gave their employees an unpaid vacation. But, shut down the casinos? Horror of horrors. That got everyone’s attention, and it served to remind the casinos that the Governor is the Capo when it comes to the action in Atlantic City.

New Jersey’s voters, who would elect Dart Vader if he ran as a democrat, are getting exactly what they deserve. Unfortunately, the rest of us are just getting hosed.

I, for one, will never forget the contempt for New Jersey taxpayers that Governor McGreevey showed when he blew $105,000 of taxpayers’ money on a trip to Ireland that included a family reunion for a dozen or so of his relatives. I am sure that they are still talking about the day their rich American cousin came to town and threw a helluva party.

If they only knew.