Hang with me here. I like Memorial Day. It is a very appropriate time to honor those who have gone before us. And especially a good way to honor those in our armed services who paid the ultimate price--those who died on the field of battle.
My peeve is people and companies who turn Memorial Day into "Salute the Troops Day". Yes, I like the troops. Yes, I am thankful for the efforts our troops do to protect our country. But Memorial Day is not a troops honoring day.
I saw a post on Facebook from Air Choice One " In honor of Memorial Day, tag a veteran, and tell us how you appreciate their service, and we will give one lucky winner 2 round trip flights on our airline."
That's great, and it is nice a company rewards our veterans. But the people who should get the prize for Memorial Day, can't use it, because they are deceased. I think it is bad karma to do special things for live veterans on Memorial Day. Again, this is a day to honor those who have passed away, in particular, armed forces who died in service of their country.
I feel the same way about people who are posting pictures of their alive and kicking current and/or former military friends and family. If you want to post a picture of old Uncle Joe, in his uniform when he was in Korea, and then died in 1992, I've got no problem with that either. But today is not the day to post a picture of Cousin Jimmy, who is currently stationed in the Azores. Today. is. not. that. day.
There is a line there, and maybe I'm coming off as anti-military or anti-veteran, but that is not the case. My request is to reserve this day for those that have passed away, and use it to honor them.
Here's my guy to honor. I went looking for Vietnam War casualties. You can search by date. I decided to search for my birthday. Unfortunately, there were a lot of US servicemen killed on the day I was born. I'm gonna choose this guy, Gunny Willis Bowman, from Philadelphia. If you want to read about him, here ya go.
Spent some of my Sunday afternoon on projects, but did so while watching the 2016 Libertarian Party Convention. That brought back some memories. I was a delegate to the 1996 LP Convention in Washington, DC, representing West Virginia, and a delegate to the 2000 convention in Anaheim, representing Iowa.
In both cases, I got to deliver the state delegation vote totals for the presidential candidates. So that was kinda cool. I got my 30 seconds of fame on C-SPAN.
I sorta remember my speeches for both, in 96 it was something like, "Mr. Chairman, the delegation from West Virginia, where the state motto is Montani Semper Liberi, Mountaineers are always free, we cast our votes for the following....."
In 2000, it was, "Mr. Chairman, the delegation from Iowa, the birthplace of (I forget, it was somebody from Iowa who had just died or something), the birthplace of Super Bowl MVP Kurt Warner, and the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk, we cast our votes for the following..." I knew Libertarians tend to be Star Trek nerds, so I knew the Captain Kirk reference would get an applause line. It did.
I've always had kind of a love/like relationship with the Libertarian Party. For the most part, politically I am a libertarian. There are all sorts of definitions, I've heard "Pro Choice on Everything", "socially liberal, fiscally conservative", "Republicans Who Smoke Pot", "South Park Republicans", among others.
So there are libertarians (with a small "l"), who have a political philosophy. Then there are Libertarians (with a big "L"). That is a party member. The problem with being a big "L" is that America just doesn't, as a whole, vote for 3rd party candidates. It can be Greens, Reform, Libertarian, or whatever. Once any 3rd party starts getting too big, one of the 2 big parties will start endorsing what the 3rd party is pushing, and then the 3rd party goes back to irrelevancy. So to run or a support a Libertarian generally means you are voting for somebody who is not going to win. "Wasting your vote" is the frequent mantra. So to be active as a Libertarian means getting your brains beat in on Election Day. You don't get money because you can't win, you can't win because you don't have money.
Then I've found many Libertarians want to run a debating society, and not too the hard political work. People run for US Congress as Libertarians that have never even been elected to anything, don't belong to any civic organizations, but are the masters of online message boards. That's not a way to win elections. They may be great people, and great ideas, but that is like showing up with a bunch of 5 foot tall guys to play a NBA team in basketball.
So anyway, I was watching the convention today, that was taking place in Orlando. It was the same stuff that drove me crazy about those conventions. It is a meeting, run with 1000 people, with Roberts Rules of Order. So there are always people making "points of order" or "points of personal privilege". Then motions to argue all sorts of arcane crap. There is a certain segment of people that seem to get off on being Roberts Rules gurus. You even see it locally at the caucuses here in Iowa. "Mr. Chair, I move to suspend the rules to allow Joe Blow to make a 2 minute presentation to comment on the withdrawal of his nomination to be the party's Vice Presidential nominee". Then someone else hollers, "Point of information" "The Chair recognizes microphone #2. Please state your name." "Mr. Chair, John Doe, delegate from Ohio, is the 2 minute presentation now, or after the discussion of the motion to cease nominations?" ARRRGH!
Today was the awesome sauce of the LP tho. The Republicans and Democrats have highly scripted conventions. They care about what it looks like on TV, and nobody is getting to the stage without being properly vetted. But today....The LP was doing nomination speeches for individuals who were interested in becoming their national chairman. So the first speaker was some guy around 30 years old, about an 8" long beard below his chin, and weighing around 300 bills. He had the convention audio-visual people start some song, and he proceeded to slowly strip down to a thong. No one bothered to get him off the stage, and he danced in a thong for his allotted 2 minute time. Hilarious, sad, and pathetic all at the same time. At the end of the 2 minutes, he withdrew his nomination for chair. Here is American Democracy in action.
I heard some local sports talk guys talking about most overrated beers. I remember a couple from their list. Sam Adams Boston Lager, Blue Moon, and "American Macro Beers".
I don't think Sam Adams is overrated. It's a solid beer. Blue Moon is a good one for the list. I really don't get the appeal. "Put an orange with it". If it needs an orange, it sucks.
Which gets to my most overrated beer, and that is Leiney's Summer Shandy. I've never drank horse piss, but that is what I imagine it tastes like. Regular Leinenkugel's is ok. I'd love to have someone hand me a regular Leiney's. But their Summer Shandy is awful.
I get that people are trending to micro breweries. And these brewers are trying various concoctions. But please, no fruit in the beer. Beer should be beer. If I want wine, I'll drink wine. So this Summer Shandy crap has lemon in it. "It's like a combination of lemonade and beer." Think about that for a second. That sounds horrible.
I find myself watching the over the air "dot-channels" more than any other TV stations/networks. I guess my only time to watch TV is generally from 8:30PM or after. I'm really like watching Hill Street Blues on 8.3. It's on at 9PM. HSB was probably my favorite show when in high school. It still holds up pretty well in my opinion.
It's still a little hokey at times. But it is the grand daddy of realistic cop/law dramas. It does a nice mix of drama and comedy.
Something that I noticed, is that my political opinion hasn't changed in the 30 years since this show aired. I really disliked the character of Henry Goldblum back then. His character is a detective that is a bleeding heart liberal. Sticking up for dirtballs, and just generally being whiny and full of doubt all the time. Just didn't like the guy. And the funny thing is, I fell the same way now. Just find him annoying.
I don't have a favorite character. If I had to pick one, I'd pick a guy that didn't get on the show until the last couple years, and he wasn't ever on that much. But that was Sid the Snitch. The character was really pathetic, a sleazeball and very self-interested, but he had a good heart in the end. Here he is in action...
Now at 9:30, I might flip over to 8.2 to watch Hogan's Heroes. Probably my favorite live action 1/2 hour comedy show ever. They had some stinkers, but all in all a good show. I can forgive the laugh track, which is awful. And I get, POW camps are not funny, and they were nothing like this. But in the end, they are making fun of Nazis, so that is good.
I might flip over to 13-3 at 10PM. They replay old Tonight Shows with Johnny Carson. I didn't really watch him much back then, mostly because I generally was in bed then. But I watched enough to know that he was King of Late Night. So I like to watch his opening monologues. They are flippin' hilarious. Of course a lot of the jokes are time bound. I've heard a lot of Al Haig jokes lately. I'm sure they would fall flat to anybody over 40. But lots of really laugh out loud funny stuff that is timeless. Johnny is a really good interviewer too. Whether it is a staple like Tony Randall, or some starlet that was never heard from again.
So if you have your rabbit ears hooked up, give it a try!
