Breakfast Club. I was part nerd, part rebel. Funny how I read comments about how unrealistic the characters are. Guys, that is exactly how it was in the 80s.

Figured this out some time back. Firing a manager is an admission of failure by someone even higher.

Georgia Satellites - Keep Your Hands to Yourself

I CANNOT kill this off my Spotify country list.

Them’s fightin’ words!

Thought this was a joke, but it appears to be exactly what it says it is.

“Break out the 20-gauge Pa! We eatin’ tonight!”

The walnuts are on a string and lubed.

There’s a short stretch of road on the way to camp that’s always been a sand trap, but lately it had become almost impassable.

Whenever someone is stuck, people come out the woods and start shoveling and hooking up tow straps. Pulled up last week to 3 vehicles, grabbed my shovel and walked up, “OK. Which one’s stuck?” “Bro, we all stuck.” “OK, who’s first?”

There were two white girls stuck in an AWD drive vehicle. One of the guys got them into AWD mode and they drove it out. A black family was stuck in a medium-sized car and the neighbor used a 4x4 (which he keeps in the weeds for just such cases) to lever the ass end off the ground. Our local Boomhauer backed his 4WD up and yanked another truck out. I stood there with my shovel mostly being useless.

Never gone 15-minutes stuck without a helpful redneck pulling up. One of the guys on the road just dropped a dump truck full of red clay and packed it into a little hill! Should be good for a long time. The guy next to my lot is poor as a church mouse, and not in great health, but he drives his little POS tractor down the roads pushing the sand to the side. Not long ago the road collapsed where I turn just past the trap, so bad even my ancient F150 would bottom out. Someone got out there and removed all the broken asphalt and smoothed it over, that was serious work! (I should note, this is a private dirt road in the boondocks, no city or state assistance.)

Agreed! But the real-life stories hammer those points home.

Hi! I’m going to pick your brain because this is on my mind tonight.

My family happily eats meat. I’ve never hunted anything but a few fish, rarely and not for decades. So, there’s the background.

Noticed there are LOADS of squirrels around. In my yard, at my camp, in the woods. Thought about harvesting a few. (Turns out I’m too soft, what if I shoot someone’s wife?!, but I thought about it.) My kids were horrified at the notion. “But you’re happy killing chickens and cows for your McDonalds?!”

Kayaking tonight, I ran into a monstrous rookery in the swamp. Egrets I think? Great Herons? Anyway, they seem always in the same place, by the hundreds and hundreds. Thought, “How about bringing a 20-gauge and shooting down dinner?” My wife was horrified. “Birds are not food!” So I brought out a pack of chicken, “Chickens aren’t birds!” (She’s Filipino, something may have got lost in the translation…)

What are your thoughts? I dated a vegan once who couldn’t admit that hunting your own food was morally superior to farm tortured meat. Uh… I don’t get it. If you’re going to eat meat, isn’t harvesting your own the moral choice?

Pretty in Pink - Pure 80s.

Romeo and Juliet is my all-time favorite Shakespeare adaptation. And yes, the soundtrack is perfect.

How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie

Old Dale sets out in the 1920s to find a book about how to get along with people and gain confidence. What’s the secret sauce? He travels to many universities, corresponds with professors and other learned men, all to find there is no such book of wisdom! So he wrote one.

First off, it’s not some step-by-step textbook. The author himself says you can open it to any given chapter and have a read. True! Most of it is Carnegie telling short stories of his experiences and what he learned about people. Couple of examples that stick with me:

He finds himself at a dinner party where the host will not, cannot STFU. The man goes on and on so Carnegie listens politely and hardly says a word. By the end of the evening the host is walking him out telling him what a great orator and conversationalist he is!

In another story a man is terribly afraid of some near-future event, I think he fears losing his job? Carnegie walks him through his fears always asking him to imagine the worst outcome and then asking if he could live with it, not die. The answer is always yes.

It’s long been in the public domain.

https://edisciplinas.usp.br/pluginfile.php/5585443/mod_resource/content/1/14DaleCarnegieHowToWinFriendsInfluencePeople.pdf

The vast majority of pistol rounds are not pointy, and quite a few rifle rounds are not either.

1958 Plymouth Fury 🚫

Green Goblin Big Rig 🚫

1953 Buick Roadmaster 🚫

Lada?

None of us 1971 kids got the smallpox scar. Discontinued in 1972 (US). Whew.

It’s a satchel. Indiana Jones carries one.

Me too. I’ve got several “purses”. Can’t stand much in my pockets.

Where do you live where this could be problematic?!

Sometimes we men don’t ask for help simply because we want to see if we can do it ourselves. It’s a test.

I often have work at my camp that makes me think it would be smarter or safer to wait until I can get help. Then I think, nah, you can figure this out. That often leads to novel solutions.

Crying in front of a woman has got me dumped a few times, like next-day dumped.