Dad Makes Prom Dress

This many condoms could be expensive,

The Commander Will Insist

Lord Kadizzle just found a site The Commander will insist we visit next week when we go to Arizona. The Kadizzles will be staying near Cornville where this art site is located. The whole story is in the NYT. The builder and his wife had an interesting tale to tell. Go to the web site http://eliphante.org/ and see the complete collection of art these people have made. Cornville is near Cottonwood, and we drive through there all the time. The area where this story is located now is becoming a wine area. During our last trip we visited some of the wineries there.

Are We better off than eight years ago?

The question came up in the Republican debate last night, "Are we better off after eight years of Bush?". McCain danced, and so did Romney, but Huckabee, and Ron Paul told the truth. Of course the nominee will be one of the dancers.

ND Politics Hits Front Page NYT

ND has cheapest people in U.S. for donating to politics. Article NYT

Scarborough: McCain platform is less jobs and more wars

McCain will end torture

“[A] McCain nomination means one thing for sure. The era of legal, authorized torture in America is coming to a close,” Andrew Sullivan writes at his blog for The Atlantic. “This is a critical moment. And it is more than fitting that a man who endured torture at the hands of America’s enemies should now be picked to restore American honor after the disgrace of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld.”

God sure doesn't understand politics

Remember when God told Pat Robertson to run for president. Pat ran, spent 22 million and lost. Now God told Pat to endorse Rudy. Rudy turned out to be another dud. Most of us know God is a Republican, but he sure is a poor judge of candidates.

Give the Fat guy Pizza

Imagine this; Ten people order a pizza, and one of the ten eats ninety percent of the pizza. It turns out the other nine are still hungry. All ten decide to order another pizza, and split it evenly. The fat guy who ate most of the first pizza insist this is only fair. This is exactly what the Republicans are proposing with the tax cuts for everyone. Yup, Bush's gang actually has the audacity to tell us that Bill Gates will get a check for one thousand dollars under the new rebate plan. Is this president dense beyond reason?

Good Dog Story on Meg's Blog

Bush Pathetic (State of the Union: were incontinent)

Bush gave a pathetic speech. Like the NYT said in the editorial, what a waste of seven years. After seeing how all his ideas are failures he has the gall to say he will not change up until the last moment. As one psychologist put it he has all the characteristics of the dried out drunk he is. The Commander said she could not stand to watch his state of the union address. Lord Kadizzle gave it a try, but when Bush urged congress not to undo the mess he has made, Lord Kadizzle had to turn it off before he puked.

Sailing Sakakawea with the Quinns

Wrong time of year, but it will evoke some nice thoughts

The Blizzard is here

It seems like years since I have seen a real blizzard. The TV just put out an emergency broadcast warning the weather is going to hell in a handbasket, and it is. It is blowing and snorting, and will be the real deal. Tonight we should be able to get a wind chill of forty or fifty below. The predicted actual temp for tonight will be about seventeen below. The wind will blow about forty, so you can imagine how nice it will be. There goes the propane bill.

Kadizzle Alert

Someone is sending out text messages at random to try to tout a gold stock. Last night Lord Kadizzle got one, and this morning The Commander got one. Let us know if this fraud has hit your phone. You are supposed to have the impression someone accidentally sent you a good stock market tip.

Stanton Gang Challanges Lord Kadizzle

After my blog on tatoos, the Stanton motorcyle gang has challanged me to get a real tatoo. As I explained to them I already have one. When my daughter Megan threatened to get a tatoo, Lord Kadizzle told her that if she did he would have flies tatooted on his butt. Well she did, and Kadizzle did (not really, but I might have). The tatoo I really want is one of the various cuts of meat you often see in a butcher shop. I want dotted lines all over my body showing the various cuts of meat. My big fear is too much surface will be devoted to bacon.

Man Stabbed While Changing Tire

As Lord Kadizzle, and The Commander sit around having our morning coffee, and reading the paper, Lord Kadizzle stumbled across the comments section in the Bismark Tribune. If you want some good laughs go to the comments about the article "Man Stabbed While Changing Tire". Only in North Dakota, could this take place, and get these comments.

President BUSH PARDON's HIMSELF against POTENTIAL WARCRIMES

Employement in Woodsdale

When Lord Kadizzle was young there was a strange concept floating about. Children worked for money, it did not fall out of the sky as is currently the case. As mentioned earlier his first income was from selling dirt. In the old days God did have a provision for all people. God put pop bottles in the hedge down by the school. These bottles could be collected for money. Even God thought kids should work in those days. If God really loved you he put the big Seven Up bottles in there. To show how nice God was in those days, he put the bottles fairly close to the drug store, where you could cash them in for five cents and get a candy bar.

In the old days there were all kinds of jobs going door to door. Shoveling snow was a big money maker. Old ladies would sometimes pay you five bucks to shovel snow. It was so lucrative that people form way outside the area would come to our neighborhood to clean up, so to speak. In the summer there were lawns to mow. Lord Kadizzle remembers push mowers that had no engine. You could pull weeds for my grandfather at a penny a weed. The little Kadizzle even sold vegetables with his brothers and sisters door to door. When Lord Kadizzle went for a swim at Oglebay Park, he always had to dive to the bottom of the pool and pick up enough change to get back in the next day. There were not a lot of free rides in those days. Kids did everything in those days. We put up hay, and did whatever it took to make a buck. Of course there were paper routes.

One business we used to have was painting numbers on curbs. After you got a customer you painted a white square on the curb. A few days later you came back with a stencil and put the number on.

One His Lordship reached high school he worked at the Burger Chef dishing out tons of grease. Dad did not just buy you a car automatically in the time of the dinosaurs.

Didn't Even Fool the Gumples

Today Lord Kadizzle sat down with some local Gumples. The Gumples are the simple minded people that wander around half broke and normally vote Republican, buy lottery tickets, and otherwise get lost in the universe. On their own the Gumples figured out you cannot borrow money to pay off money you owe. The Gumps were discussing the tax refund Bush was offering. One Gump said " Where's the money going to come from?". Another Gump said "Yea, the national debt is already what is killing us". God bless the Gumps. When George Bush can't even fool the Gumples you know we got a problem Houston. Bush will go to any length to avoid going back to a tax structure that works. So old George is going to buy us all a present and put it on our credit card. Didn't we go through this a couple times before?

Robbing Granny in Woodsdale

At an early age our little gang treasured candy about as much as anything. One reliable source of candy was Grandma Goodwin. We could always go knock on her back door and say "Could we have some candy?". Grandma would lead us to the big candy storage area in the dinning room and reward each of us with a treat. Well, being the greedy little pigs we were one piece of candy each was not enough, so we hatched a plan to rob granny. The plan was fairly simple. A contingent would be sent to the front door of the house. As granny went to the front of the house to be besieged by candy bums, one of our expert sneakers, which was usually Chris Hiles would go in the back door and quickly remove the entire supply. Lord Kadizzle can still clearly remember the day, because it was he day he learned the word irony.

Grandma went to get the candy while we waited at the front door. When granny returned she said " I just ran out". In my mind I thought "Indeed you did, your candy just ran out the back door". We must have developed a little bit of a conscious after that, I don't ever remember doing it twice. Perhaps we realized like Bush says "Fool me once, fool me twice, whatever". Perhaps when Grandma pulled that gun on us the next time and yelled "Give back that candy you little Bastards". Maybe that is when we realized the need for better community relations.

Lord Kadizzle gets Mock Tattoo

With his need to look more like a pirate in the summer Lord Kadizzle has had himself tattooed with one of the new removable styles. It had the amazing effect of also making him look skinner.

Atomic Anne

Solutions to our energy problems are not implemented because the correct people will not make money from the implementation. Oil, coal and gas interest do not want nuclear power around until they sell their ancient technology. Atomic Anne is the woman who runs the nuclear power industry in France. One of the major failures of my beloved Bush is the fact that he has done absolutely nothing to address our energy problems.

Fun Bus Heads to Bismark (It is a short Bus)

Today it looks like I will be one of the kids on the short bus. The Comander AKA also city bus driver for Hazen, will be driving the bus to Bismarck. There will only be two passengers, Ruby, and Lord Kadizzle. Pray for us, there is snow on the road. Ruby is one of my favorite senior citizens. I am not sure how old Ruby is, but I would guess over eighty. Ruby has a lot of spunk. Ruby walks everywhere every day. She walks to the grocery store, and caries her groceries home.

Alert, Alert, Alert, from Kadizzle

I want religion out of politics. Today the Bismarck tribune published a letter about one of my letters. The comments are fun and heating up. Get your two cents worth in. Help stamp out the religious right.

The Soft Dirt Factory in Woodsdale

Sister Kate has been bugging me about writing of Lord Kadizzle's first foray into capitalism. As a young entrepreneur of four or five Lord Kadizzle recognized the need for quality dirt. Since his Lordships mother had plants every where on the front porch of the house, the need for quality dirt was evident. The research department of Kadizzle enterprises quickly discovered that the problem with most dirt was that it was too hard. In this spirit soft dirt was invented. Now, what you may ask is soft dirt? Soft dirt is made by carefully screening normal dirt through an old piece of window screen. The result if you use good high quality dry dirt, is soft dirt. Once packaged in quart jars, soft dirt was ready for the consumer.

Ideally soft dirt could be used for your plants, however it could be used where ever dirt was needed. It was like instant dirt. Since it was packaged very dry, you could just add water and have high quality soft mud.

As the demand for soft dirt expanded, it became necessary to surface mine it in the back yard. The net result was a very large hole. Lord Kadizzle’s father, the Arch Duke of Kadizzle was for some strange reason tolerant of the excavation which was about ten by ten by three feet deep. The Arch Duke insinuated that it could become swimming pool. In retrospect it seems like a make work project to keep a bunch of little kids busy. Every kid in the neighbor hood wanted to help dig the hole, so it became the practice to charge the employees to work. This was long before Bush invented the idea, and may have been the roots of Bush’s regressive tax plan.

As luck would have it the soft dirt factory had no insurance, and sure enough a disaster hit. The fine crew of young boys managed to dig up the gas line leading to the house. My recollection is not complete, but I think we managed to break it. The net result was we needed a new gas line laid into our house. Luckily by some imaginative bickering Arch Duke Kadizzle found out the gas line had been improperly installed in the first place, and it was up to the gas company to replace it. Fortunately this kept the soft dirt factory from being forced out of business.

The sales department of the factory went door to door in Woodsdale with quart jars of dirt, and it sold well to old ladies, who could always use a quart for their plants. Now anyone can find countless imitators of the original soft dirt marketing strategy on late night televion. All sorts of products with the value of dirt are being package and sold for $19.95. The next time you see Pat Robertson, or some other preacher bilking and old lady, remember it was Lord Kadizzle who first thought of the idea of packaging hope in quart jars and selling it.

Market Free Fall Thank you George Bush

With a country that lives on the principle "Just Charge It", it is natural we would have a president that thought he could get away with it. Putting a war on our credit card had to blow up at some point. George Bush's total reluctance to ask his rich welfare clients to pay tax was bound to create a mess at some time. In a couple minutes we will get to see the DOW loose five or six hundred points.

With total amazement Republicans are blaming this mess on the Democrats and telling us it is a simple fix just to give the rich some more tax breaks. Are Americans in the aggregate that stupid?

Lord Kadizzle's Childhood Home

Woodsdale: The Greatest Shows on Earth

(THIS IS THE BRIDGE GRANDPA JUMPED FROM)

In the old days entertainment was a whole different thing. Sister Kate asked Lord Kadizzle to write about the amazing shows of the good old days. The most amazing show ever was the monkey fighting at the Jack Town fair. This story has probably been covered elsewhere in this blog. The NYT writer who was with me on the sailboat wanted to work the story into his article, but could not figure a way.

There were other venues of show biz in out little town . The Fulton Carnival, The Jamboree, The Strawberry festival, The school fair, The big circus that came to Wheeling Island, and always there were strip clubs for the education of young adults.

The Fulton carnival was a wonderful place to get your pockets cleaned, and your mind dirtied. Fulton was a little neighborhood down by Wheeling Creek. It was close to the Blaw Knox factory that turned out the tanks for World War II. You could get your pockets cleaned by playing any variety of rigged games that gave the illusion you could win. Another technique was a ride that would turn you upside down until the change fell out of your pockets. My favorite was the Alligator Woman. The barker would stand on the stage and yell “ She walks, She talks, She slithers on her belly, Come see the Alligator woman”. It turned out to be a poor quality strip show, but to a junior high kid it was the big time. Then there was the hermaphrodite,this poor person made a living by showing people this was actually possible. It seemed in the old days there were certain instances where all forms of decency could be temporarily suspended. Wheeling had more churches per capita than any city in the country. At the same time it had more probably more of every type of sin per capita.

The Jamboree was the mother of all shows. The Jamboree was a country western show that started when radio started. WWVA was the second radio station in the United States, next to KDKA in Pittsburgh. The Jamboree was the model for Garrison Keilor’s Prairie Home Companion. As a child I remember going to the old theater that had the Jamboree. The theater was amazing, It had five or six balconies. The same theater hosted the minstrel show. A minstrel show is something also that took place one a year. Bill Smoot used to sing classical music at the minstrel show, and of course there was the normal, at that time, black face comedy. At the minstrel show things were constantly raffled off. Since Wheeling was the garbage can capital of the world you could buy a garbage can at the minstrel. My grandfather always bought a garbage can. After you had your garbage can you filled it with salt water taffy, rat traps, and clothes pins, which were all staples of the show. You ended up going home with half a garbage can full of this crap.

The Shrine Circus took place once a year on Wheeling Island. The elephants had to walk out of sync as they crossed the suspension bridge during the circus parade. The circus was held at the stadium on the island where all the Quinn boys were football hero’s. The stadium was impressive for a small town. The Stadium made the national news on several occasions. Eisenhower spoke there, and McCarthy may have given his famous speech there. Kate can check on that. The most spectacular show the circus ever put on was when the Flying Wallendas did their pyramid act on the high wire. For the grand finally one of them touched a live electrical wire on the edge of the stadium and fell to his death over the back of the bleachers.

One great feat Lord Kadizzle only remembers seeing once was a person dive from the Fort Henry Bridge. It may have been to celebrate the opening of the bridge. The bridge is quite high and the man wore a superman cape. The old famous Wheeling Suspension Bridge is next to the Fort Henry Bridge. Family history claims my Grandfather used to dive from that bridge. The Suspension bridge is lower, and it may have been done. I would guess it was a pretty good drop, because steamboats had to be able to pass under that bridge, and they did not lower their stacks.

Laws of Physics have been suspended

This morning the Bismarck Tribune ran a full page ad for a heater that defies the laws of physics. Of course Paul Harvey endorses it. Recently this add has been popping up everywhere. Who ever is running the ad must have a lot of faith in the stupidity of your average American. If this ad is a gauge of how many dumb people are out there we are in deep trouble. According to the ad the heater uses less energy to produce heat. Isn't heat energy? This could be possible with a heat pump, but it would seem hard to do with light bulbs.

Economic Reality

Krugman, and Cohen hit some homers in the NYT today, don't miss them. The game Republicans have pulled with the peasants is remarkable. Working idiots swallowed the $19.95 logic sold by the Bush administration like Indians on fire water. Now we have a bunch of people hopping around screaming about how the bottom fell out of their retirement accounts.

Old Mr. Smoot's house

This house was just across the street from our home. On warm days and evenings Mr. Smoot would sit on the front porch, or the back porch and hold court. Mr. Smoot usually smoked a cigar. Mr. Smoot liked kids, and we liked him. Telling old railroad stories was one of his specialties. He worked for the B@O. His to grandchildren, and their mother lived with him. Charlie Saller was his grandson, and Charlie was the mad scientist that helped with a chemical and explosive projects. Charlie taught us how to make oxygen form hydrogen peroxide. There is a long story about how Lord Kadizzle hitchiked to California and back with a guy trying to escape his wife from Baltimore. Perhaps we will get into that some other time. Now, back to the Smoots. Mr. Smoot like to teach my cousin rhymes. One rhyme he taught everyone was:

If I had had a hit ta tit
To hit ta tit ta taney
I could have caught the thingamagig
Ah stealin my capanie.

For years I have wondered what a capanie was. I think it is some kind of a hat. Next to Mr. Smoot lived Bill Smoot. In the winter it was customary to throw snow balls at people windows. It is unclear to this day why the windows didn't break. However, I have a distinct memory of throwing snow balls at Bill Smoots house and having him chase us down the r. He caught Chuck Hiles and pushed him onto the street. We kept running, so I don't know what happened to Chuck. Bill Smoot broke us of this hobby.

I may have told this part of the story before, but I will repeat it. I just found this out in the last couple of years. My little Sister Patty used to play with Mr. Smoot's grand daughter Patty. Both the little girls could not have been older than ten at the time. My sister told me how before they went to bed when she was over there for a sleep over, Mr. Smoot, and the two little Patty's would sit down and enjoy a shot of wiskey with Mr. Smoot before bed. No doubt this solved all Mr. Smoots babysitting problems.

Candy at the Whore House

When traveling in my younger years I always noticed that when people asked “ Where are you from”, I would say “ Wheeling”. The response would always be one of two things, either “ That’s where the Jamborees is” or That’s where all the whore houses are”. One experience I remember well was hitch hiking up the Ohio River towards home. A guy in a Corvette picked me up and asked where I was going. After I said Wheeling, he told me I would not believe what happened to him on his way through Wheeling when he was headed South. He proceeded to tell me how he had stopped at a house of ill repute in Wheeling and asked for the services of one of their employees. Who should appear, but the girl he used to sit behind in school when he was in high school in Pittsburgh. I could imagine them both discussing how their careers were going.

Now back to the old neighborhood. As mentioned earlier our tribe lived in a respectable neighborhood near the National Road. Along the National Road were some magnificent old Mansions. Within a couple block of our house was a very nice Mansion along the National road that resembled one of the homes you would see on the finest of southern plantations. Somehow my father knew the people that ran an antique business from the home. As a child I remember going to auctions these people put on. Some of my siblings were used to make fake bids for these people to drive the price up.

Not until I was much older did I realize this place was actually a front for prostitution. As young kids around the age of eight or nine, we always were looking for candy handouts. We got to know who kept some candy around for kids. I can remember going into the basement of this place where these women sat around in their underwear. As kids we did not have a clue why these people sat around in this attire, all we knew was it was a good source for candy.

Check Erin's Cheese review on her blog

Read the adventures of Erin and Megan in the Cheese shop

Dowd fires a good one across the bow of Bush's sinking ship

Maureen Dowd fired a good shot at the economic nonsense of the Bush Administration. Dowd has been on a slump lately, but this one is on the mark. If this is not enough, Frank Rich may have sent the bullet that will sink the sunk ship.

Chapter Eight: The Melting Pot

Woodsdale had an incredible mix of people. Elsewhere in this blog you can read about the Home Dingers, they resided at the children’s home, and were a constant reminder things could get worse. Probably the winner for the scariest, and strangest character was some old bum type guy who sometimes walked down the ally just as dark fell. He dressed pretty shabby and carried a gunny sack over his shoulder. The story was he lived in this little shack down near the park. According to legend he had a penchant for killing kids. He never said anything, and no one knew for sure who he was.

Next door was Aunt Freeze. She was no ones aunt, but dressed in a black dress and sat in the window of the old decrepit house next door. She looked like some strange witch. When she finally died she left her outline in the mattress on the bed she had been in one place so long. Her son or whoever he was lived with her and always smoked a cigar. There was some story that they were related to a famous baseball player by the name of Freeze.

The next home up the street was occupied by an orthodox Jewish family. They were a strange bunch, and my sisters had to go and light their stove on the Sabbath and do other things they could not on holy days. There was a fair number of Jewish families living around us. The reformed temple was just about a block away, and as kids we often watched movies there.

Since Wheeling was an old town it had a few of every nationality. You name it we had it. It wasn’t until high school that kids started to realize everyone was not the same. I am always amazed how I slowly learned blacks were getting the short end of the stick. What ever we knew about discrimination crept up on us somehow. Our parents or no one else I ever knew acted racist, but as we got older and mixed with other kids the subtle racism began to emerge. Our high school was integrated, and always had been as far as I knew. It wasn’t until high school that I ever remember meeting a black kid. Most of the black kids went to Lincoln. Lincoln was the high school in town. There was a small mining community in Tridelphia and that is where the small number of colored kids, as was the proper nomenclature at that time.

There was a whole list of people like popsickle Pete who sold ice cream and illigal fireworks. Butcher Bill gave haircuts for fifty cents. Dr. Hanger was the old pharmacist at the drug store. There was a lady named Mary that was a fixture at the drug store. Sometimes Mary would extend credit up to a quarter. We got to know the bus drivers, and sometimes if you were stuck in town with out money they would give you a break. There was some guy a few houses up the street who walked to town everyday to work. Town was about four or five miles.

Today's Word: Snollygoster

A shrewd, unprincipled person, especially a politician.

This is another of that set of extroverted and fanciful words that originated in the fast-expanding United States of the nineteenth century (I see a snollygoster as a outsized individual with a carpetbag, flowered waistcoat, expansive demeanour and a large cigar). These days it’s hardly heard. Its last burst of public notice came when President Truman used it in 1952, and defined it, either in ignorance or impishness, as “a man born out of wedlock”. Many people put him right, some quoting this definition from the Columbus Dispatch of October 1895, with its splendid last phrase in the spirit of the original: “A Georgia editor kindly explains that ‘a snollygoster is a fellow who wants office, regardless of party, platform or principles, and who, whenever he wins, gets there by the sheer force of monumental talknophical assumnacy’.” But an American dictionary fifty years earlier had defined it simply as a shyster. The origin is unknown, though the Oxford English Dictionary suggests it may be linked to snallygoster, which some suppose to derive from the German schnelle Geister, literally a fast-moving ghost, and which was a mythical monster of vast size — half reptile, half bird — supposedly found in Maryland, and which was invented to terrify ex-slaves out of voting.

Dog and Lord Kadizzle in verbal battle

Megan's dog Tony was upset with Lord Kadizzle's claim that dogs were once more noble. Tony has written an editorial on Megans blog, The World According to Pook. You can access the article at the right.

What we know

What we know, and the second part, how we know it, is an interesting audio in the New Yorker. This is an audio, and it will take eighteen minutes. It has some interesting, and scary things about our future. If the government is not already monitoring everything on the internet, and spying on everything we do, it soon will be.

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven, young love. At some point the chemicals are bound to take over, and girls become more than just nuisance sisters. Lord Kadizzle’s first love was Gail Brandfass. Gail was a bit younger and lived diagonally to the Kadizzle household on Poplar Ave. Somehow conversations evolved into passionate sessions of making out in Gail’s basement. This all took place when Dr. Brandfass was out on the town and Gail was baby sitting. The procedure was for Gail to put her little siblings to sleep and then call me and say the coast is clear. His Lordship entered and left by the driveway that descended down into the basement. The joys of the basement were many, and his Lordship was risking his life if Dr B found out. His Lordship could have been the only eunuch in the neighborhood if Dr B found out.

On more than one occasion Dr. B and Mrs. B came home a little too soon and the basement had not been evacuated. Gail being a good planner pretended like she was down the basement doing the last load of laundry when the parents came home. If the parents only knew what had to be cleaned out of that room. In extreme fear poor old Lord Kadizzle was down there in the furnace room waiting to escape out the garage door and up the driveway. Above the driveway was a sun room. If Dr. B happened to be in that sun room and saw Lord Kadizzle emerge from the basement, nuclear war would have seemed pleasant compared to the explosion his lordship would have experienced.

Now the amazing part of the story. Over forty years later Lord Kadizzle is recounting this story to his brother in law Ned in Cottonwood, Arizona. Ned explains that he knows all about the escape procedures. Ned dated almost every one of my six sisters and ended up marrying my youngest sister. It turns out Ned had the same routine when my older sisters were baby sitting Gail and her siblings. Life never quits taking strange twist.

Real History

Lord Kadizzle is always amazed when he delves into history. His Lordship decided to do some research on shack rousters, since he wrote the article below. The history is pretty mean. To see how people treated people even back in the twenties and thirties is frightening. Being an underground coal miner myself, Lord Kadizzle is always amazed by the treachery of the coal camps. The other night The Commander and Lord Kadizzle were watching a show about the history of the Jews in the United States. We never knew that Henry Ford was such and extreme anti-Semite. It was never mentioned in our history classes, nor was it mentioned that the Rockefellers ordered the massacre of men, women and children in Colorado. Why don't we tell our school children what really happened?

Look Out for the Shack Rouster

Many moons ago when I was working in Southern West Virginia coal field I was engaged in a conversation with an old coal miner. I asked him what life was like in the old coal camps. The old miner told me how they had a "Shack Rouster". It was the job of the shack rouster to wake everyone up. The Shack Rouster rode around with a baseball bat and beat on peoples houses to get the men up for work. I always used to threaten our kids with the shack rouster if they would not get out of bed. Erin was still in bed when I called her this morning. I am looking for a good shack rouster in Evergreen CO.

New Feature

Look to the right, and you can check out the blogs of my chillen. Snoocher Bear, and her sister Bee Bumble Bee each have decided they need to get into the blogasphere.

Report from Stanton Indicates Dinosaurs were on Ark

Kadizzled got a report today from JK our correspondent in Stanton that indeed there were dinosaurs on Noah's Ark. Of course this is the same source that said ancient people drove pickups because two were found emerging from ice flows on the Knife River near Stanton. Many fundamentalist have done calculations regarding how big the Ark needed to be this will change everything. Mark Twain reported that every animal on the Ark had to be full of disease in order to get all the disease into the new world. Twain was more than a little pissed that Noah brought the flies. According to the fundies dinosaurs were alive at the same time humans were. This is essential since according to the fundies the world is only six thousand years old. Once the Ark is found on the Discovery Channel we can determine for sure if there are dinosaur droppings inside.

Try Pandora

If you haven't tried Pandora do so. Lord Kadizzle rarely recommends products, but it is a great system for finding new music. Of course it is free. Pandora allows you to choose a genre and it plays music based on what you like. Once you pick a song or artist you like it tries to figure what else you will like. Usually it is right.

Chapter Six Tunnel Stories

This is the old B&O railroad tunnel along Wheeling Creek. As kids one of our adventures was going through the tunnel. There was not a whole lot of room in there and I always wondered what we would do it the train came. As you can see being caught on the bridge was not a good alternative either.

Not far from this tunnel is where the new twin tunnels for Route 70 are built. My fond memory of the interstate tunnel was the night I was stopped by the Highway Patrol after making a run through the tunnel on my motor cycle. It all started with a demonstration ride to a potential buyer for the motorcycle. Each tunnel has two lanes heading each direction. I came into the tunnel from the west and thought it would be a great demo if I went through the tunnel as fast and loud as I could. In order to reach maximum speed I had to weave across the double line from one lane to the next. It was late at night and when I pulled into the tunnel from the on ramp on the river side, I had no idea I was pulling in front of the State Police. The police were not to happy with my road show, but did not want to turn on their siren, because they feared I would reach the other end of the tunnel and cross the median and escape back through the other tunnel. So the two fine officers scared themselves pretty bad trying to get through the tunnel and keep up with me. As we came out of the tunnel into the dark the trooper on the right side of the car blinded me with a spotlight and I pulled over. The trooper with the spotlight said to the one driving "We should take this guy up in the bushes and beat him". I was hoping we could work out a better arrangement, but I knew in West Virginia this was one remedy for traffic violations. Fortunately the senior patrolman prevailed and all I got was a ticket for one hundred dollars.

Chapter Five, The Lay of the Land

(My Cousins lived in the red house with the green roof)
Woodsdale started at the little intersection where we lived. Not really, but we thought it was the center of the Universe. As we got older the universe expanded. At the bottom of the street was a large park where baseball and football games could be held. In those days there was no little league, you made your own teams, made the bases, and figured out a social system that let it all work. The church and grade school were right across the street from the park. Along the edge of the park was the creek. The creek provided endless hours of entertainment looking for sewer rats, fishing, and getting wet when you were not supposed to. Walking on the ice in the winter was a great adventure.

There were all sorts of interesting paths, and landmarks everywhere. There was a small greenhouse beside the big steps that led up to the National road. An old trolley line right of way led through the woods and came out in another part of town where the theater was located. At night after a scary movie it was common for the older kids to jump out of the woods and scare the bejusus out of us.

Little stores were scattered all around. One of my earliest memories was going to the grocery store at the bottom of the street. To get the cereal on the top shelf you had to use a grabber device. Beside the grocery store was the drug store. The drug store was an old fashioned one that served ice cream and had the old soda fountain. Next to the drugstore was a tiny Gomer Pyle gas station. The National Road went by the edge of Woodsdale. This was one of the biggest and most important highways of the day. All night tractor trailer trucks could be heard shifting to make it up the hills.

At the bottom of the street was Bethany Pike. Bethany Pike lead to Oglebay Park. On the Pike is where I learned the art of hitch hiking. Hitch Hiking was the only way to get to the swimming pool at the park. There were buses that ran through Woodsdale. Riding a bus was an adventure when we were young and did it by ourselves. We got to know the bus drivers and figured out how to get to town on the bus for a quarter.

As we got older we kept straying farther from home and finding more and more ways to get in trouble. There was the railroad tunnel, and the railroad bridge. One of the most important landmarks was the “Hill” or Stratford Hill as it was officially called. As young explorers we used to dress in all the old army equipment, pack some peanut butter sandwiches and explore the Hill. Once back home we bragged about how far we got on the hill. An old Indian path ran along the top of the hill. Pushing the limit of the know universe on the hill was our equivalent of going to the pole, or up Mt. Everast.

Looking back on those days it almost seems kids are deprived now of interesting neighborhoods. We had an endless supply of places and things to explore.

New Bush Coins

Secret Bush phone tape LEAKED

Innovate or Die - Aquaduct: Mobile Filtration Vehicle

Lets see, should we invest in something like this or maybe update our nuclear weapons?

Sex before marriage is a must!

Worthless Money frightening prospect

Unfortunately this picture is real. This morning Lord Kadizzle faces the frightening prospect of going back to work. The false economics of the Bush years has resulted in a decline of 18% of our assets. Couple this with inflation that is rapidly accelerating, a dollar that has been devalued, and you can easily make a case for a decline in dollar value above twenty percent. Bush's tax policy of breaks for the rich is nothing but a Ponzi scheme. These things always collapse. The game that was played in the housing market is exactly the game the Bush administration has played. Real wages have actually declined. Read the whole thing in NYT. As I write this CNN is reporting that the politicians think the whole thing can be solved by what caused it in the first place. Tax cuts don't work, but they have such a nice ring. No one has the guts to tell Americans you have to pay for things when you purchase them, not put the bill on the next generation. We have become a nation of spoiled brats that don't want to be denied anything.

Interesting Statistics About Bush's failures

To see what the public thinks of "W" check out the polls. The man is close to the record for hitting the bottom. Read the full report and see how my hero compares to the other losers. Only Truman beat him for lack of public approval 56 years ago. If the poll was taken right now, I am sure Bush would be the all time loser. The stock market has is down 250 points as I type. 79% of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction. Can anyone say tax cuts for the rich? Yup, Rudy and Mitt are still all for it. Love ya man.

Hat Lady Comes to Hazen

Audrey is Quite an actor. Watching her change hats is like watching a play.

Chapter Four, Rockets, Bombs, ect in Woodsdale

As Woodsdale warriors we were naturally interested in making various home made fireworks, bombs, missiles, or what ever. There were a variety of chemicals to work with. In those days all kids had chemistry sets. There was not enough in the kit to make anything good, but it had some of the basics you needed. Someone figured out how to make gun powder by getting saltpeter from the drugs store. I don’t recall the gun powder we made ever being very good quality, but it would fizzle nicely. Once some kid came down the ally with some real gunpowder used for reloading shot gun shells. We induced him to give us about a cup of gun powder. I put it on a small rock and bent over close to light it. I thought it would just fizzle. It went off in a terrific flash and blinded me for about five minutes. For awhile I thought my life would be replete with a white cane. This was probably a blessing, or we would have killed ourselves early on. In our garage there was carbide. This was the kind of carbide miners used in their lamps in the old days to produce acetylene. Acetylene as I found out latter in life can be a very dangerous gas. It was another stroke of luck we never figured out how to use it effectively. However, I do remember once putting my cousin on a wash basin which was placed over a ground hog hole. Under the basin was some carbide. When moisture hit the carbide it gave off acetylene gas. The idea was to blow up the groundhog. Luckily we failed to light the gas, or more than likely my cousin would have metal in his posterior to this day.

Our version of NASA was NASAA ( It stands for Not As Smart As Average ), also built rockets. Our favorite was the rocket made from empty CO2 cylinders. These small cylinders were filled with match heads procured from political campaign offices. Each match head had to be carefully forced through the mouth of the cylinder. It was crucial that you use safety matches. Should the match light as it went into the cylinder it would set the rest off already in the cylinder and shoot a very serious rocket flame in your face. The simple minded kid up the street reported this to the NASAA safety office after he burnt his face severely.

Once these rockets were complete they were launched from a piece of conduit. Normally this conduit was crimped on one end and placed in the ground. The rocket launcher was aimed at the school from a distance of about four or five hundred yards. These rockets had a great deal of power from the compressed gas that shot out the back. Lord Kadizzle almost met his demise when there was a launch failure. The rockets were set off with a wire fuse that had a steel core. Normally the core burnt up, the rocket dropped to the bottom of the conduit, and all went well. However, on one occasion the wire jammed the rocket in the conduit. Lord Kadizzle was standing about five feet away when the rocket, and the tube exploded. Shrapnel went everywhere, and there were pieces embedded in the tree that were within inches of his lordships skull.

Ned and B. Bumble Bee

The two budding fashion designers living the good life in New York City. The press release for the fall collection will soon be out. The big sister has been helping with the PR.

Its about time someone was honest

Below is a video clip a Kadizzled follower put Lord Kadizzle onto. Lord Kadizzle is a rabid Christopher Hitchens fan because Hitchens has the courage to say publicly what so many cowardly people will not. Hitchens feels God is not the solution, but the problem. One thing Hitchens talks about in the interview is the indoctrination of children. This is criminal. Adults should be honest with children about what is known, and what is not known, it is crucial in learning to think. If the same amount of time were spent teaching children science and math, that is put into teaching them superstition, the world would be a better place. Sometimes the question is put to me or I am accused of being an atheist. My reply is usually "I am agnostic". I don't know if there is something more than the obvious. I am adult enough to admit it.

Interview with Christopher Hitchens, by Sally Quinn

Chapter Three Gang Warfare in Woodsdale

Gang warfare was an important part of Woodsdale culture. What always comes to mind first is the “Mary Wheat Gang”. Mary Wheat must have been a bit of a Tom boy, and she lived right next to my cousin’s house. She had a couple boys in her gang. If memory serves me correctly Mike Gaydosh, and the kid on the other side of my cousin’s house were her main henchmen. Somehow I remember a lot of the battles with the Mary Wheat gang involved a bizarre three wheeled bike. The bike was like a giant version of a child’s little toy tricycle. I am not sure who the bike belonged to, but there were always accusations about the bike being stolen by one gang or another.

Gang warfare usually involved throwing snowballs, and sometimes mud balls. I don’t know what the Wheat gang called our group. Our gang operated out several hiding places. As kids we discovered that there was always a secret little door that let you get under the enclosed porches of the old Victorian style homes. If you were lucky the door was hidden buy bushes. A real bonus was the fact that often the back porch also had the same set up. Under these porches we had everything a gang needed. Cigarettes, cigars, and Playboy magazines. Most of the supplies were stolen either from parents or the little drug store down the street. It was a miracle none of us died of lung cancer by the age of eleven. Lord Kadizzle never got addicted to nicotine, but by highschool Steven Leibold was hooked. Lord Kadizzle can remember Steve out on his attic roof at night enjoying a weed. The little red glow of the cigarette could be seen from our house across the street.

Lord Kadizzle clearly remembers one frightful day when we were all under the back porch smoking Winston cigarettes. We heard the door open and it sounded like my father had stepped out onto the porch. In a loud voice my father said to himself “ It smells like smoke is coming out from under this porch, I’ll have to go down there some time and see where it is coming from”. It appeared a raid was inevitable. All the cigarettes were placed in a large seven up bottle and secretly buried beside the house. As luck would have it the next day someone put my little sister Patty out in the yard to play in the dirt, right where the bottle was buried. Of course with a little digging it was not long before she found it, and ran into the house with her treasure.

As we got older and ventured into other neighborhoods, we began to see they also had gangs. Lord Kadizzle was very impressed when he saw the weapons of mass destruction the gangs on Washington Ave. had. They fought battles across Wheeling creek, which would be considered a river here in North Dakota. The weapon of choice was a giant sling shot. The sling shot was made from a small tree and stood about five feet tall. Between the forks of the tree a bicycle inner tube was tied. This device could hurl rocks about the size of a baseball across the creek. Why no one was ever hit and killed is still something I wonder about. A whole chapter could be written about bombs, and other devices we fabricated as our skills grew, perhaps that will be the next chapter.

Kadizzled endorses John Edwards

Sleeping in my chair in front of the television Lord Kadizzle awoke to the voice of John Edwards giving a speech on CNN. John Edward tells it like it is, he is willing to take on the drug companies and the lobbyist head on. He is willing to call a spade a spade. Americans never go for the best candidate, it is always the one that is too close to the center to do any good. What sold me on John Edwards was his reference to Warren Buffets article about taxes, I use the same reference all the time. Buffet admits publicly he pays a smaller percentage of tax than his receptionist, and says the same is true for the rest of the richest four hundred people in this country.

The Wave and Coyote Buttes North

The Commander loves this place

The Old Neighborhood Chapter Two DOGS

In the old days back in my neighborhood of Woodsdale, all professions, were much more professional. The Doctors really cared, the lawyers were honest and respectable, and even the dogs were professional. The dogs were much more human then. Our dog Skippy was a prime example. In those days you did not train a dog to do anything. The dog decided what its job was and did it. Skippy was the neighborhood policeman. Skippy protected all the children in the neighborhood. If a tuff kid from outside our area tried to assault or threaten any neighborhood kid, Skippy quickly made it known that it wasn't going to happen. One of the best things about Skippy was you never had to feed him. He had a route, after dinner he went from door to door, and everyone saved left overs for him. Often Skippy went to Smoot's to watch TV and relax after a hard day. I always thought it was interesting to go across the street and see our dog resting in an over stuffed chair watching television. At our own home Skippy would spend a little time on each bed checking on each of us nine children. After Skippy was sure everyone was asleep and accounted for he would settle in my parents room. Skippy knew the sound of each family member coming up the steps to the second floor. If anyone came up those steps at night that did not belong all hell broke loose.

My Grandfathers dog, who I think was named Jeff, took on a different job. He must have been named after Thomas Jefferson. Jeff was the dog that accompanied the mailman for years. The Wheeling paper did more than one story on Jeff. Jeff met the bus everyday that brought Wilbur from town. Wilbur and Jeff walked together all day delivering the mail. Jeff left Wilbur at the bus and went home to my Grandfathers house which was close to ours. I don't know for sure, but I imagine Jeff had a glass of Bourbon at the end of the day with my grandfather. In the old days dogs were never a problem. The dogs roamed freely and know one cared. Unfortunately dogs have lost a lot of their humanity in recent times, but I fondly remember when dogs were more noble.

Win if you can, Lose if you must, but always cheat.

Last night I had dinner with a good Republican friend, and we were talking about the crooked elections our phone company has held. He summed up the whole philosophy of the local phone company, "Win if you can, Lose if you must, but always cheat". The quote fit perfectly because I had just told him how they could have won the election even if they did not cheat, but given the choice, they prefer cheating.

The Old Neighborhood Chapter One

My sister is doing a project on our old neighborhood, and asked me to write down some memories. So here I go. I remember an old fashioned neighborhood that had a milkman, Mr. Bell, a baker Mr. Blum, and a mailman Wilbert. Wilbert came up on the porch everyday with the mail, and loved to kid my sisters about letters from their boyfriends. My grandfathers dog may the newspaper several times because everyday he went to the bus and met Wilbert and walked the entire route with him. According to legend my sister would walk with Wilbert and get cookies sometimes. I forgot Vicient, he was the fruit and vegetable man. As a child I learned the art of bumming from the vendors that came to the door. Mr. Bell would give you gum, some ice, and on a good day even free orange drink. Mr. Blum could be good for a couple of cookies and sometimes a doughnut. You might get some cherries from Vicent.

As Quinn kids we caught the tail end of an era. There were neighborhood bars, grocery stores, and it was a whole different time on the planet. People were trying to put World War Two behind them, but attics had old guns, bayonets and other war toys for us to play with. Our house was surrounded by doctors, and some of them saw the worst of the war, I don’t think they totally ever got over it.

Our neighborhood was a wonderful old fashioned place where people had big porches on the front of the house, we had one of the best with a swing. Our porch sat high on the corner lot where we lived and it was like a command center for the world. In those days you could walk up and down the street and talk to people like old Mr. Smoot. Mr. Smoot was the old retired railroad guy that sat on his porch and held court for the kids. Mr. Smoot taught us rhymes I still remember. Mr. Smoot told us how the railroad bums used to drink “Open Switch”. According to Mr. Smoot “Open Switch was buttermilk and gasoline. It would certainly open your switch. Stay tuned for tomorrows installment of “The Old Neighborhood.”

My Mind Keeps Going Back

About a week ago I cited an article in The New York Times. The article went into the implications of consumption. The fact that sticks in my mind is that I am consuming 32 times more of the worlds resources than a person in India, or perhaps China. This makes me feel a bit piggish, but then I think about the truly greedy, and really un-needy. If you know me you know I am a liberal left wing, socialist god only knows what. I think about the CEO's making 350 times what an ordinary person makes. Potentially this means the CEO could be consuming, 350 multiplied by 32. This means in theory the CEO gets to consume 11,200 times more than the person in India, or just 350 times what I consume. The ethical and moral question this brings up is why, or is it right. Some people will go to great lengths to spin this into being just fine. Most will say people need incentives to do good things. It just strikes me as crazy to say that in order to get someone to run the Coca Cola company and make Diet Coke for the world you have to give the man 11,200 times more than someone else in the world. Hell, I would do it for five hundred times what a person in India consumes. The absolutely most remarkable thing about this greed gone wild is our president who says we need tax breaks for the guy consuming many times his share of the world resources. My final bitch is the role Christianity plays in this, no Church or preacher ever stands up again this greed. It is what God intended.

The Rat ate the Pizza, or Late night thievery

As the commander just said " You just could not leave that last piece of pizza alone". Well the rat fell for the bait and ate the last piece. At 2:15 A.M. the acid stomach explosion hit, and Lord Kadizzle had fire belly. After several drinks of water that did not quench the fire Lord Kadizzled decided to get up an watch TV since he could not sleep. The thieves crawl out from under the rocks on late night TV. You have the crooked preachers begging for money, the get rich quick guys, the medical mirical guys, and my favorite the male enhancement bunch. These people must know you are sleepy or stupid if you are up at that hour watching television. I now realize it is so easy to become a millionaire, I don't know why more people don't spend the nineteen nintey five and just get it over. If you would just get up and go to the county court house you could buy a new home for only $591, but most people don't know this because they are asleep. Now, if you are two lazy to buy houses and resell them for a fortune then you can get the PPP. What is the PPP? It is the prosperity prayer plan, but you must send money NOW the black preacher screamed. God must have payments due if he needs the money now. Well I bought the male enhancement stuff and took it. The guy kept saying it will enlarge "a certain part of the male body". It wasn't what I thought, according to The Commander my gut is bigger than ever. Now, I have to stay up tonight and buy one of those magic excise machines that you just plug in and shock the fat off your body. This rat has learned a lesson about cheap store bought pizza.

Lord Kadizzle is taking flying lessons

In order to seek revenge on Bin Laden, Lord Kadizzle plans to learn to fly and crash a plane into Osama's Cave. Unfortunately the crash was a little premature.

Reel Geezers-Superbad

Watch these two. It will be Cissie and I in a couple years. They are doing a movie review.

Global warming makes perfect end to Hunting Season

As usual we have been hunting like we are crazy. The warm weather has made the last week very nice. Yesterday we finished the season with the mother off all hunts. Dave Stephens, Cissie and I went to the Scranton area. The pheasant pollution had to be seen to be believed. We got into legendary bunches of birds. In one field they were flying like locust. The weather was perfect. On the way home we decided to drive the back roads. There were so many roosters in every field that we all just said "Oh my God" in unison every time we passed them. Cissie was like a hunting dog out of control. We were short one bird, and Dave would not let her get out and plug the fellow. Unless there is a weather disaster there will be so many pheasants next year that hunters will be required to wear helmets to protect themselves.

You will hear this.

The Republicans may have started too soon with the smear tactics. Obama is a Muslim, is the rumor they are now spreading. Among the simple minded it works perfectly. Remember in the last election when the Bush people did a push poll against McCain? They had people in the Carolina's calling people claiming they were doing a political poll. The fake pollsters would ask "Would you be more or less likely to vote for McCain if you knew he fathered a black child?". This was a new low in politics and the Bush gang was behind it. So now we are going to try the "Obama is a Muslim" routine. An honorable person on either side of the fence would make a public statement denouncing this. Of course Bush never denounced the McCain trick

Good Morning, Rent a Womb now open

Some good stuff in the NYT today. Good editorial about election. Interesting article about women in India renting their wombs to Americans. What a great concept, send the sperm to India, and get a baby back. Just like dropping off film. With the Bush economy this will sure help working moms. You can drive your truck uninhibited while a woman in India plants rice with your baby her burden. This is Bush economics at its best, and shows how technology can export any problem to the third world.

An Absolute Must Read

The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush is a Vanity Fair article every American should read. Written by a Nobel Prize winning economist,Joseph E. Stiglitz, it details the disaster Bush has created.

Winter at the Indian Village

Every time Lord Kadizzle sees a picture of the earth lodge at The Knife River Indian Village he is reminded that The Commander helped build it one summer. What a squaw The Commander is. The people who lived in these lodges had to be tuff.

Kadizzled Book Review

So many teachers would be proud of Lord Kadizzle. During the last three months, his lordship has managed to read a book a month. THUNDERSTRUCK by Erik Larson is the latest accomplishment. It is by the same author that wrote THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY. Both books are written in the same way. Two stories are intertwined. In this case the invention of the radio, involving Marconi and the love life of Dr. Crippen. The story is a historical novel. If anything can keep Lord Kadizzle's attention, you know it has to be well written.

Two Buck Huck A Must Read

Don't miss this one. Two Buck Huck tells how Huckabee cooks squirrils in a pop corn popper. This is one of the funner, and better editiorial I have read in a while. Two Buck Huck

I am hateful

I have been perplexed by people who call me hateful. In discussions with people where we have different points of view, I have almost always found that when the person cannot defend their point of view, they resort to calling me hateful. Put another way, confronting illogic, with logic is hateful. Some of these people often have the audacity to say, "I know your wrong, but I don't have time to prove it". One of the best cases of this are the people who call me a Bush hater. These people never provide any information that supports their point of view. In fact when I send them documentation that supports my point of view, they refuse to read it. From the standpoint of these people the scientist that claimed the Earth was not the center of the universe, were "hateful". The point of the video below is along these lines. I have had the same experience the man in the video reports. The loving religious people cannot wait to tell me I am going to hell, because I had the audacity to question their beliefs. So I must tell anyone, and everyone, that if you question anything I expound I will consider you hateful, and if you provide proof I am wrong, I will consider you exceptionally vile. This whole train of thought came from my pondering a New Years Resolution. Someone suggest that I quit being hateful with people that I disagreed with. In code this seemed to mean that I should just be polite when someone is promoting "Intelligent Design", or introducing religion into the school system. Of course these people are not being hateful when they expound ideas I don't agree with.

Interesting

Born-Again Bashing

See more like this on kontraband.com

Why is the number 32 so important?

Reality is a nasty thing, but generally it works. The simple reality is that the world cannot sustain our life style. It can come no where near doing it. The New York Times has a very good article explaining why. Read it, New York Times

Black Light Bowling a Success

Lord Kadizzle has not bowled in about thirty five years. Stepping into the bowling culture was strange enough, but doing it under the glow of black lights made it even more surreal. The women in our group did a great job picking our outfits at the thrift store. Unfortunately at this point no pictures have emerged. Short skirts or tight pants seemed to be the weapon of choice mixed with fish net stockings. The Commander picked out a tent sized bowling shirt for Lord Kadizzle. As the night ended a young boy was so fascinated with The Commanders gold silkys jacket that he asked if he could touch it. Two compatriots kept givning Lord Kadizzle advice. He could not figure out why, their score was worse than his. Bowling is another game from God designed to frustrate humans with simple tasks.