Sunset Bike Ride

There was a bashful moon tonight,
almost full, but a day or two shy of boasting about it.
I went for a bike ride
just before it got dark.

The sun had set.  The street lights had yet to come on.
I rode side streets in my neighborhood to be safe.
My legs had a life life of their own,
they pumped and pumped madly
as if driven by anger  or frustration.

I flew past the McMansions
where God's Elect
sheltered behind their iron gates
(the gate code being Ronald Reagan's B-Day).

 As I streaked by,
blackbirds  tutted and flew into the trees.
I heard a cricket sing and then crickets joined in chorus.
Terriers yapped, their owners oblivious to their warnings.

Twenty-six minutes later I was home.
As I reached my house
an  ice cream truck played "Music Box Dancer,"
like a tocsin for the end of the day.

I was home marveling at the madness
that had gripped part of my body,
trying to understand why I had done
 what I had just done.

Capitano Tedeschi

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Sunset Bike Ride copyright July 30, 2012 by Jamie Jacks

Rep. Issa Lead's America In Prayer

Ronald Reagan Official Portrait 

"Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is floating legislation that would name most U.S. coastal waters after former President Ronald Reagan.

Issa reintroduced his bill Wednesday to rename the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), which generally extends from three miles to 200 miles offshore, as the Ronald Wilson Reagan Exclusive Economic Zone.

The late Reagan, a Californian like Issa, established the EEZ with a 1983 presidential proclamation that declared the nation’s sovereign rights for exploring, exploiting and conserving offshore resources, including energy.

Issa, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has introduced the bill multiple times in past sessions of Congress.

Under the proposal, references to the EEZ in U.S. laws, regulations, maps and other documents would carry Reagan’s name."

Issa ended his announcement with a  prayer the Creator of the Universe in the hopes that he'll use his influence to allow him to rename the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the Gulf of Mexico. With head bowed Rep. Issa prayed:

Ronald Reagan, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth,
As it is in heaven.
Give us this day our tax cuts, school prayer and AR-15 Assault Rifles.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive won't forgive them that trespass against us including but not limited too:
Gays, women, the liberal media, Democrats, Democrat Party, Environmentalists, Mexicans (legal and illegal, African  Americans especially that Kenyan Anti-Colonialist, who pretends to be President, the poor, the non-white, non-southern and Muslims including that Kenyan Anti-Colonialist, who pretends to be President and anybody who is different from us.
And lead us not into temptation, like advocating for actual conservative principles that you actually advocated, like raising taxes, and gay rights.
But deliver us from evil, including but not limited to Evolution, All religions except Christianity except Catholicism which is a Papist cult, helping the poor, working to improve the planet's environment, advocating alternative energy, cuts in military spending.
For thine is the kingdom, including but not limited to gate communities, country clubs that don't allow anybody listed above, Disneyland, Israel, Arab oil, off shore tax havens, and Swiss Bank Accounts.

The power, and the glory, Wall Street, Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes and the Koch Brothers

For ever and ever.

Amen.


Capitano Tedeschi


30

Rep. Issa Lead's America In Prayer Copyright July 24, 2012 by Jamie Jacks

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is floating legislation that would name most U.S. coastal waters after former President Ronald Reagan. Source: http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/238881-issa-name-us-coast-after-president-reagan

Ronald Reagan Official Portrait source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Official_Portrait_of_President_Reagan_1981.jpg. Government document public domain.

Channeling Dame Agatha Christie

Dame Agatha Christie, Source: Flanker from Wikipedia

It's been a good day. Hardest part was the 2 hours I spent in the Ford Dealer's waiting room, listening to a woman chew gum.

 The old darling must have been wearing dentures that had been castanets in a previous life. It was click, click, click, click, click, click for 120 minutes. Always at the same pace, an insistent, unavoidable chomping noise that carried for at least 30 feet in all directions. There was no escaping it, no way to politely make her stop. 

I was channeling Dame Agatha Christie by the end of the first hour, experimenting with various types of poisons and explosive devices to put the woman out of my misery. Cruel of me I know. But still that's how my mind works. 

So I plotted and planned, planned and plotted. Chewing gum coated with arsenic? That's pure Dame Agatha. But that would have taken several sticks and they way she was chomping on that one piece, I would have died before the arsenic had done its work. Cyanide? Way too quick. Plastic explosive? That might have worked but would have required some type of fuse which would have resulted in a piece of chewing gum the size of a pound of cheese. No one in their right mind would have accepted a piece of gum the size of a pound of cheese from a total stranger.

I finally settled on gum that contained some type of powerful adhesive that would have eventually welded her false teeth shut. A very humane option you'd all agree. I then realized if I could invent such an adhesive I'd be a millionaire. As a millionaire, I would have sent the chauffer to the Jaguar dealership across the alley and he'd been sitting in the Jaguar waiting room and I would have avoided the gum chewer altogether. 

Life's funny like that. 

Capitano Tedeschi

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Channeling Dame Agatha Christie copyright July 25, 2012 by Jamie Jacks

Picture Source: Flanker from Wikipedia  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Agatha_Christie.png. Used by permissions of Creative Commons license.

Spanish Galleon

I've been working on the photos from my trip. The picture of these wall tiles was taken in the Plaza in Kansas City, Missouri on June 6, 2012. I took the with a disposable camera (My digital camera having been lost, perhaps stolen). Given the fact that my hand shakes, I'm partially color blind, and I had no way to really control the quality of the photo, it came out quite well.

After editing in Microsoft Photo Editor, I am pleased with my enhancements.  

Capitano Tedeschi

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Spanish Galleon text copyright July 11, 2012 by Jamie Jacks
Photo copyright July 11, 2012 by Jamie Jacks

Armstrong Cleaners

I took this photo in early June of 2012. It's a suite of shops at 4018 State Line Road in Kansas City Kansas.  Roughly 28 years ago I was driving with my mother and when my car passed this building, she said.

"Oh, that so that's where it was."
"What?"
"That's were uncle Clovis had his dry cleaning store" she said.

Clovis was her uncle Clovis Armstrong. Clovis was one of those uncles no one talks about. From what I know of Clovis, he was terrible drunk.

So I asked mom, "Clovis had a drying cleaning store?"
"Yes," she said.  "He wasn't drinking during that particular time. But then he married that woman. When he and she started having problems, he started drinking again and lost the business."

Mom told me a little more about Clovis. He was a World War 2 veteran and a hopeless alcoholic. When ever he'd get drunk he'd go home to his mother, who would take him in, allow him to drink and berate him for being an alcoholic.

My mother died in 2002. Going through her papers, I found a business card that said. "Armstrong Cleaners 4018 State Line, WE 7200 "Not How Cheap but How Good." On the back of the card was the slogan "If our work pleases you tell your friends, if not tell us. To please you pleases us."

Look at the picture, reading the slogan on the business card, it seems to me that Clovis' sad ghost still wanders.

Capitano Tedeschi

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Armstrong Dry Cleaners copyright by Jamie Jacks July 9, 2012. Photograph: Shops on State Line Road copyright July 9, 2012 by Jamie Jacks