Silflay Hraka

Ever tried to spread beer on your morning toast, only to create a soggy mess that fell apart before it ever reached your mouth?

I know I have.

Many are the morns I spent taking the Lord’s name in vain because I couldn’t get the Natural Light flavor I craved served to me on a piping hot slice of toast.

Beer with the taste for food, my ass.

But I shall wander in the wilderness, no more, thanks to beer jam.

The word “Drinking”is up there too, isn’t it? At least a version of it is.

Very well, then. Here’s a real short Barleywine article–big on generalities, but a decent overview of what a barleywine is, at least. The Avery Hog Heaven* that made last year’s Ocracoke trip is a barleywine, but doesn’t get a mention.

*very hoppy, as I recall, which turned some off

Maryland’s solution to shrinking blue crab numbers? Why, expand the number of ways commercial fisherman can take them, of course!

The DNR, which appears to be on a misguided mission to provide an income for commercial fishermen in the state, says the taking of hard crabs from fish nets instead of the traditionally accepted crab pots or trotlines is expected to create a positive but undeterminable economic benefit for the watermen and for crab processors.
What are they thinking up there in Annapolis?
Here’s what bothers me: No biologist disagrees that the pressure on the Chesapeake Bay’s crabs remains super high and that supplies remain very low. So why would the DNR want to increase the removal of crabs? If anything, shouldn’t they decrease it?

And those poor fisherman need not bother with reporting the size of their catch with the proper authorities. Too much red tape, don’t you know.

Rightly, the CCA/MD is upset about the whole deal, including the fact that the watermen would not have to report how many crabs they catch in various nets, or where such nets are located.

Crab pot removal program stories are obviously becoming the Lay’s potato chip of the Internet for me–I can’t stop at just one.

Mississippi joins NC and Texas, and the state is looking for voluneers to help.

Smelling up the Place at Fishing, Drinking Stinking

Yet More Pot News

On the plus side, PCB’s are low-carb

Building your own in-home live-eel well

Hyde County Head Counters

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Pot News

Festering Underground In The Warren

Having bred successfully, Cap’n Holly returns.

Kerry’s Affordable Housing Solution

France is Undefeated!

Outsourcing Your Ketchup

Life behind the Zion Curtain

On the basis of (literally) little evidence, Meryl thinks I’m mad at her. Which is is just crazy talk, even if it did stimulate her creative juices. It’s crazy talk, of course–I make it a point never to hate people who get more traffic than we do, reserving my spleen only for those safely smaller than we are–making Hraka is a bully pulpit in more than one sense.

Heh. But regardless of size or anger, I would still join in Meryl’s Jew crusade.

Medicare is projected to go broke in 2019.

I’ll be 54. I’ll be 77 when Social Security is projected to go kaput in 2042.

Not that I’ve ever expected either to be around by the time I need them.

Social Security was passed by Congress in 1935, when an American?s average life expectancy was 61.7 years. 30 years later, when Medicare was first established, life expectancy was 69.7. It’s now 77.4 years.

Had the age at which a person qualifies for either of the programs been tied to life expectancy when the programs were first passed, one’s first Social Security checks wouldn’t begin arriving nowadays until one’s 8Oth birthday. People would qualify for Medicare at the age of 72.

Now obviously any retroactive attempt to raise the qualification ages to what they should be now based on the life expectancy of the 30’s is bound to fail, but there’s no logical reason why both programs can’t be set up to function that way in the future, though whether the political will to do so is available is another question entirely.

American life expectancy in 2019 is expected to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 years, which would raise the Medicare qualification age to 68–hardly a crippling burden for someone expecting another 12 years of life, and it would save…call it whatever 2019’s equivalent of what $750 billion is worth today. (Medicare outlays in 2004 are expected to be $250 million–I just multiplied the number by three. Yes, it almost certainly misses low.)

American life expectancy in 2042? 82.2 years, which would raise the retirement and Social Security ages to 70 from today’s already too low 65.* That saves the equivalent of 2.5 trillion in today’s dollars–not an amount to sneeze at no matter when it is.

Tying existent elderly benefits to a ever-higher life expectancy doesn’t seem that controversial to me, but then again, I’m not the AARP, which presumably can be counted on to oppose even theoretical reductions in the amount of money paid out to its members.

*My parents may not feel that this is so–but then again they are both double dipping, which is evidence in favor of my argument, I should think.

Kevin Smith, of Dogma and Clerks fame, was once contacted by Michael Jackson about directing him in a movie.

Michael was to play a man who turns into a car.

A boy then rides around in the car.

The movie was to be called….wait for it…..Hot Rod.

And here I was thinking all that surgery was meant to turn Michael into a Pixie.

Obviously he’s been aiming for Gremlin the whole time.

There’s the good kind of horny, and the bad kind of horny. This isn’t the good kind.

Has anyone seen the documentary “Bowling for Columbine?” I picked it up from the library this past week and finally got around to watching it on Sunday night. For some reason, I really enjoyed watching it. It kept my attention throughout and did pose some interesting ideas to consider.

The most interesting part of the film was when Michael Moore went to the home of Charlton Heston, president of the NRA, to talk to him about gun ownership and some decisions made by the group. Yes, I admit that Moore blindsided Heston with some of his questions, no doubt posing them for effect, but it was no less interesting to listen to Heston’s responses. Undoubtedly, Heston wishes he had some cue cards to read from, rather than having to answer off-the-cuff, because he stated some things I’m sure he wants to retract. When asked why the U.S. has so many gun killings per year (over 11,000) while Canada, having just as many guns did not crack the 50 mark, Heston responded that he thought it had to do with so many cultures mixing in our society. What he managed to do was to solidify the stereotype of NRA members as being racist white people who want to own guns to protect themselves from the onslaught of minorities. In his film, Moore did point out the “coincidence” that the NRA and the KKK were created in the same year.

Heston stated that he keeps loaded guns throughout his home, even though he said he really didn’t need to because he had never been a victim of crime, and in his palatial estate, probably never will be. Yes, he has the right to bear arms, and there is no crime keeping loaded weapons in his home. Still, watching him hobble away from the interview in disgust made me a bit uneasy. The thought of an old white man living in a mansion with a stockpile of weapons, when he is barely able to walk across his driveway is scary to me. I would not want to be the minority person who has to deliver his pizzas or drop off a package from UPS. For some reason, it lessens my image of him as Moses, standing on the mountain and declaring that I “Shalt not kill.” I will now forever picture the man standing at a podium shouting, “From my cold, dead hands!”

UPDATE: Perhaps this is reason enough for him to put down the guns and slowly back away.