Shackled by religion

...and they're more than willing to admit it.

Apparently this downtown church is willing to loosen the old shackles just a wee bit if they're hurting you -- but they are in no way interested in having you remove them. You might escape.

Teabagging, post script

[This is a post script to Teabagging. If you're reading this top down, you might want to read that first.]

Wow. I just read Janeane Garofalo's rant on tea party supporters:

"It's not about bashing Democrats, it's not about taxes, they have no idea what the Boston tea party was about, they don't know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks. And there is no way around that. And you know, you can tell these type of right wingers anything and they'll believe it, except the truth."

Oh Janeane. I had such a crush on you. Why do you have to end it with us this way? So, the logic goes "if you disagree with a black man, you hate black men." According to this logic, I disagree with Hilary Clinton. I hate all women. Oh, and let's throw "carpetbagging Yankees" in there as well to stir up trouble. I disagree with George Bush. I hate all white men. I did not much care for Alberto Gonzales, thus I obviously hate all Hispanics. I really detest and fully disagree with Kim Jong Il and I guess that means I hate all Asians. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad really sets me off sometimes, showing, I am sure, my pure unfettered display of unilateral hate of all Muslims and Middle Easterners. I have never found a love of the taste whale blubber, which obviously shows contempt for the Inuits. I've never spent any time reading Perez Hilton's celebrity gossip drivel and obviously this is my latent homosexuality showing which creates my internal strife and makes me violent towards all gays and lesbians.

If there was divisive, bile spitting, prejudiced hatred with no rational thought going on, I assure you it was in categorically crying "racism" over "disagreement." The truth is that if someone can have a peaceful disagreement over the policies made when a black man was in the white house -- that alone is a positive sign of the changing times.

Teabagging

First off, I must admit: I am a coffee drinker. Tea doesn't do it for me. That said, I like the whole tea party concept -- but I think it missed the boat. I think it was ignored. And I think I know why.

First off, it got no media coverage. Oh, sure, Fox News was there -- and almost seemed to be a sponsor. This probably drove the other media outlets away. Who wants to be seen covering someone else's event? Some will see this as the "awful liberal media" but I don't see it -- at least not at the moment. And I don't care if Fox was the only one covering you -- this is not a benefit. Fox News is divisive. Sure there may be a handful of pundits on Fox that occasionally spout a rational point of view, but they are so buried in over dramatization, fear promotion and pandering to the religious right that it gets lost in the shuffle. And the right so doesn't understand they are getting hoaxed -- that Fox News is a lefty's joke to make money off the right and funnel it to the left.

And, oh my god, shut Rick Perry up. I understand his message. And the right person can say it in a way that is a little more balanced. But this is Texas. And in Texas there is something extra special about the whole "Secede from the Union" thing. In Texas, there is a whole subculture of crazies that preach secession all the time. They don't need anyone pushing them. In Texas, secession brings out the confederate flag waving, monster truck driving, hood wearing lynch mob. These folks don't need a push. They are scary enough without the Gov standing up and giving them a shout out. Take your Rod Blagojevich hair and go back to the governor's mansion.

But most importantly, if this movement were to be effective, there needs to be a very loud criticism of the right. Yes, I said the right. We all know that the tea party folks hate the insane spending of the left. But they need to embrace the insanity of the spending of the right as well. Don't you sit there and defend Bush and criticize Obama when their spending and bailout plans are pretty much explicitly the same. Bush and Clinton got us into this mess with their idiotic financial policies. Obama's plan to get us out is right in line with the plans that got us here. To criticize one without bashing the other is a farce.

This needs to not be a left vs right or liberal vs conservative issue. This needs to be a reason vs irrationality issue. And it needs to be loud. And it can't just be something we do on "tax day." The protest needs to happen until the idiots in Washington step down. Right now, they're not even scared. Right now, the tea parties have been dismissed and ignored.

French Kiss Taco

That's right, a taco with tongue.

The raw state. Say "Aaaah"

Now stop right there. Quit your bitchin and moanin and complainin and whinin. I don't want to hear that this is gross or icky or anything like that. Let's visit Aristotle for a little syllogistic happiness, shall we?

• Tongue is considered a delicacy in Mexico.
• Mexican peasant food is frickin awesome.
• Therefore, it is pretty gosh darn likely it will be awesome.

Plus, I am an "everything but the oink" kind of guy. Or moo, in this case. If you are going to eat it, eat it all. What you don't eat, use somewhere else. No waste.

As always, there's a little back story. You see: we make our own dog food. We're not overly crazy nutso, we just started reading the dog food bag one day and -- well it didn't sound like stuff I wanted to feed my best friends. And the corn, good god, the corn. I used to live right next to a corn field. And I had 2 dogs back then -- darn good ones, too, if you ask me. They begged and whined for all sorts of food at various times, but they NEVER EVER went running into the cornfield looking for corn. Corn just isn't a natural food for a dog. (A cow either, but that's another rant altogether.)

Post boil. Still with fiddly bits on it

In fact, corn's just not that great a food or a great anything. It sucks rocks, actually, which is why your tax dollars go to grow it. So anyway, before you diverted me off the point -- we make our own dog food. Usually we buy some form of protein that is on sale. They're pretty happy about it -- they're dogs.

Skinned

One day we bought a big cow tongue. I cooked it -- totally unseasoned. And as I chopped it up for the micro canines, I thought: "Hey. That smells pretty good." And I tasted it. Remember, this is unseasoned boiled meat... and damn if it wasn't pretty tasty.

De-fiddly bitted

So now I am pretty sure I need to try it for real. And again, I know it looks gross. But not liking a particular food is a weakness. The more you like, the better diversity you get and the better you are able to shop for what's in season and what's on sale. I guarantee those of you that are picky are getting less nutrition by eating the 3 or 4 bland things you like. It's time to branch out. Come with me... taste the food that will taste you back.

Step One

I googled around a bit. The more traditional approach is boiled with spices. There is also a cured approach (which I will definitely be trying). I am going to go with the traditional... and maybe twist it a bit in the middle. I started with a pretty simple recipe I found on JAMSGems4u. I pretty much followed her boiling recipe, though I figured a whole handful of garlic couldn't hurt, so that went in as well.

baconified

Step Two

I took a left turn right off the recipe and decided to add a little smoke flavor. So I wrapped that bad boy in bacon to keep it from drying out. (Bacon is the universal flavoring, protector and moistener -- 3 products in 1!) Remember: the skin came off after boiling. There's nothing to hold in the moisture. And then I popped it in the smoker for a few hours of smoke

smokey time

Smoked

When it was done, I went back to the JAMS recipe. Oddly, it seemed to be missing jalepenos, which I am totally sure was just a typo. No one would make a taco without jalepenos. I also folded all that luscious smoky bacon in. No one complains about too much bacon.

taco meat

the tacos

admire the beautiful hand model

Tardo Tidbits was taken

Okay, I am well aware there is a last name pronounced Moe-Ran. That's totally beside the fact. I've watched enough Bugs Bunny cartoons and read enough Fark to know that moran and maroon are both valid synonyms for moron.

Normally, I am not a fan of marketing. Seriously. I find marketing to basically be the art of selling me crap I don't want or need to buy. It is so... Ark Ship B. But in this case, I think someone might want to have a talk with a marketing professional.

Apocalyptica

[Editorial note(s):

1. It appears I am now taking requests. I would explain, but I won't. I could say it's a long story, but it isn't. It's just not a particularly good story.
2. I never miss an opportunity to plug the band Apocalyptica, so I was sneaky on putting that in the title, though it has no bearing whatsoever on the rant. If you've never heard Metallica played on the cello, your life is incomplete. I don't care what your musical tastes are, you'll like it. I promise.]

---

Self awareness and evaluation time: I've been living off the grid^[1] for two and a half years -- living in a 600 square foot metal tool shed in the woods in the middle of nowhere with the wife (Ellie May), 2 shelter rescue dogs and 3 bulimic cats. My threat level with the federal government has officially been downgraded from "unibomer wannabe" to "mostly harmless." At at some point I start to wonder: Who's the crazy next door? No, not next door in the physical sense of the word.^[2] But, you know, in the general area. Out here in the country, it's an odd mix of tin sheds (me), 3 bedroom brick affairs, monster doctor/lawyer houses, geodesic domes and the occasional tar paper shack meth lab.

I was driving by "never smiles or waves scary Viet Nam vet guy" as he painstakingly hand watered the drainage ditch.^[3] And I started to wonder: how many tightly wound nut jobs live within a 5 mile radius -- ready to go sproing at any moment. Sure there's a Google API plugin to find the nearest sex offender... But where's my Ruby Ridge Google? I want a map with a little confederate flag markers and a satellite view where I can zoom in and see the catacombs of broken school buses buried in the back yard.

The funny thing with these people is that, while they are all waiting on the impending doom of the next disaster, they're not all waiting on the same disaster. You've got your basic "housing market/stock market crash" guys, "racial riot expectations/Klan" folks and your basic "impending nuclear holocaust/terrorist briefcase dirty bomb" guys. They all have 6 months of food and a 55 gallon drum of gasoline stashed away. They're just waiting on different disasters. But the sad truth here is: There has always been some fire on the horizon. There has always been impending doom. Yet, mysteriously we still keep chugging along.^[4]

And I do mean always. Just in the last fifty years, I can name a multitude of them off the top of my head: the cold war, the bay of pigs,^[5] the Carter energy crisis, Reagan's star wars, Y2K,^[6] the expected tribulations following the imminent second coming of Jebus,^[7] asteroid strike, Mel Gibson, global warming, nuclear war, Islamic terror... I could go on, but I had to take a breath. It makes me wonder a few things, though.

First of all, what's the payout for all the hoarders and woodland creatures? Sure, they see it as insurance of sorts. And to some degree I understand that. I live within the last mile (literally) of a power line branch. I understand I am last in line for power restoration when a disaster occurs. I understand the need for a generator, a garden and a little bit of food. But the idea of hoarding a 6 month supply of food and a big sack of real gold just doesn't reach me. That food is just not likely to last and will have to be constantly replaced. Let's say you spent $10,000 on food for the coming apocalypse in the late 70's. Then assume, instead you put it in the stock market. It would be an underestimate to say it would be worth almost $100,000 some thirty years later -- even in today's down market.^[8] And if the apocalypse comes and you really have a large sack of real gold, you may find it extremely difficult to defend or find the government may want to take it. Your best bet here is to just have a skill and a willingness to trade it.^[9] But isn't that pretty much true all the time?

But most importantly I want to know: how do I make a big sack of cash off of these folks? Selling freeze dried banana chips in bulk isn't my thing. I am unlikely to open up a gun store. The school districts have the lock on broken down buses. I fear that the reasonable, rational model may win out again here. I suspect the way to win in castastrophear is to buy into widely diversified mutual funds. "What?" you say. "You're a crazier than a commune dweller. The market is sunk." Precisely. And here I sit without a real income. One lowly Unix administrator in a county that has 15 Unix systems -- 2 of which are mine. It's time for me to find an income stream or two and sink a big fat wad of it in the market. Remember: the goal is actually to buy low. So what if it tanks a little more. Low means its on sale. Turning it down would be like saying "I'll buy the Costco tennis shoes if they ever get up to $30 a pair. I don't want them at $14."

Besides, Ellie May wants a real kitchen. And I don't get home made pie crust until then.

---

1. Well, socially at least. Not physically.
2. That would be (a) "Have you found a spiritual home guy" and (b) the "everyone move in with grampa before he croaks" family. I guess in 30 months I should know their names, huh?
3. Yes, I am serious. He does it absolutely every day. No, I don't know why he does it.
4. At least here in US... There's poor bastards in forever unstable lands that mark time by when the next mortar round falls. Whistle. Boom. -- Ooh, tea time.
5. Mmmmm. Pork
6. Y2K was my personal fave! As a geek that expected a big fat lot of nothing to happen, I enjoyed the biggest paycheck of my life for the least amount of work. We weren't even allowed to touch anything for a month before because we might break it. The real scare comes in 2038 and no one will hype that one.
7. And why in hell would you worry about the problems of the second coming? Is it because you have enough faith he's coming back but afraid you chose the wrong flavor? Are you afraid you picked a dunking when you should've gotten sprinkles?
8. This is such an underestimate. This just follows the Dow 500 price without dividends. Reinvested dividends would make this figure huge, but computing that sounds like work.
9. I can see it now. A post nuclear world and there are bands of IT directors wandering the countryside seeking Perl hackers.

ANNOUNCEMENT: First sporadically periodic photo captioning contest!

I would call it "first annual." But there are a bunch of things wrong with that. The obvious is the picky gripe that the first in a series is not the "first annual." There actually has to be 2 of them to qualify. (I am still guilty on that charge.) Secondly, annual seems like a long ass time. And third: I find it really hard to tie myself down to a calendar based schedule. It just is not me. Maybe it should be the "first occasional." I don't know -- but its the first, anyway.

The prize: bragging rights that you are, in fact, the wiener.
The reason: I saw this at The Walmarts¹ parking lot. The absolute flood of smartass captions to this photo was so huge that I thought my head might actually asplode. I had to sit right down, set my milk on the asphalt and breathe into the plastic bag to settle down my hyperventilation.
The rules: Rules? Why do we need rules. It's not like there's a real prize or anything. Enter as often as you like. Have your friends, relatives, pets, enemies and livestock enter. I don't care. It is a blank canvas. Please scrawl on it with spray paint like you're spraying graffiti. Pull up your damn pants. Besides, if there were rules, I would probably change them as the contest went along...

The photo

Ah, the Jesus Gas Cap. My god, it's beautiful. And Jesus must be so honored to be proudly displayed here... in a place of honor.

Let me get you started:

• Jesus cries every time you use fossil fuels: Dinosaur juice doesn't exist and the world is 6000 years old. Drive a horse.

By the way: I am still waiting on the "Bathtub Jesus" photos that were promised to me so so long ago.

¹If you live in the country, you absolutely must pronounce it this way. It must be preceded by 'the' and must be plural. Period.

The 8 Hour Sandwich

Let me ask you: If you had to name one invention that truly made the world a better place to live, what would it be?
Architecture... maybe the Empire State Building?
The internal combustion engine?
Space Travel?
Telephony?

Nay, I say. I say it is cured meats. Not because it was the means to keep us from dying of various nasty things. No. It's because they taste so damned good.

Let me introduce you to: The 8 hour sandwich. Or maybe it's the 4 day sandwich. It depends on how you measure it I guess.

I have toyed around with the salt cured meat in a couple of baconacious slabs of yummy pork.

And for several years I have played with the smoke cure of the barbecue pit.

And now, the culmination of the two arts: Pastrami. The salt cure of the brine. And 6 hours of heavy smoke. And I must say, it tastes just as heavenly as it sounds.

But I get a head of myself.
It all starts with a brisket -- the tough ass boot of the steak world. And yet, so yummy. Being the cheap ass bastard that I am, I buy a stack of them when they go on sale and shove them in the freezer, which explains the frosty twisted look of this puppy. I keep a hacksaw stowed in the kitchen for emergencies like this one. However, I guess I have not quite ever attacked something quite this big. I was a sweaty mess after cutting this bad boy. I guess I need a coarser tooth on the saw.

Next comes the brine....and 3 days curing in the fridge. Note here the cure is done and its just about ready to go to...the smoker. You might notice the pastrami has a couple of friends in the poultry family. As a rule there is always a chicken in the smoker at our house. If you go to the effort to light it and smoke all day, you might as well have chicken for lunch. And smoked chicken is the ultimate ingredient: enchiladas, chili, soup -- you name it. Smoke 2 or 3 chickens, rip them up and chuck them in the freezer. It's the rule.Isn't she beautiful? All blackened and covered with pepper and coriander.... What can I say. I am hungry all over again. So on to the most dangerous thing I have ever done in my life. I have seen a hundred 9 fingered farmers. They catch their fingers in tractor implements all the time. But nothing prepares you for...the crank slicer.
I got this as a freebie hand me down. But it just isn't long enough to slice a pastrami or a pork belly. And the little hold down isn't big enough. This means your fingers are the hold down. Count them now. Count them again when you are done. Use double entry book keeping. Your goal is that the numbers match up in both columns.And you end up with this pile of loveliness. It's tasty, but steam it for another 2 hours and you have the ultimate sandwich. Oh god, I am going to make myself cry. I swore I wouldn't do this. Not here. Not in front of everyone. I gotta go.

Didn't believe me?

For those that have never visited and doubt the validity of my profile location -- "In a metal shed in the woods" -- I offer you solid proof:



There she blows, complete with Ellie Mae's car, Sally the goat truck and a glimpse of Tilly the tractor. If you look hard enough you can even see the colored sheets placed over the plants in the garden to protect them from frost.

My buddy and college room mate JohnBob is in town. Back when we were room mates, I made him jealous by getting my private pilot's license. Now he often returns the favor by taking me putting around in his own damn plane. That dirty rotten bastard!

It almost sounds like the start of a great joke: What do 2 college educated, unemployed guys do instead of finding a job? Go flying. I gotta work on that punchline.

JohnBob has a sweet new radio stack.



You know there are too many lawyers on the planet when warning labels pronounce nothing but common sense. If you click on it, you can make it out, but let me spoil the surprise: "Caution: Leaking fuel caps can cause loss of fuel" REALLY? The saddest thing here is (a) this is probably there because someone didn't know that and died. (b) that person was smart enough to earn a pilot's license, but dumb enough not to know leaking fuel caps leak.
And because I know everyone on the planet shares the "joys of tractors" just the way I do: Here is the tractor store where I bought Tilly.
And another item from the wonderful and mysterious world of the tractor: The tractor auction. Sorry kids, this isn't auction weekend or the entire lot would be full to the brim with leaking, smoking, sick tractors with flat tires and worn out clutches. Grab some ether and get over there.And what tour of the city is complete without seeing "Jesus and the money lenders." Stop into the book store and purchase a T shirt or a big box of pamphlets. But hurry while the tiny struggling church only covers 10 acres. As you can see, it's about to double in size. Oh, and that building across the parking lot in the top right... yeah that's part of it too. It's okay they bulldozed all those houses. I am sure the property taxes from the church will be more than the city got from the houses.

I'm stumped, Part 3

Did you notice the subtle shift from "day 2" to "part 3" or did I get away with it? Several days of rain and a few days of slow starts (and only a couple hours working) made day 3 turn into multiple days. But I rein superior. The stump king has fallen.

You just cant make this stuff up

In a comedy of errors, our power feed and broken power pole suffered a second, almost deathly blow this evening.

You would think our power feed would have been fixed, seeing as it has been broken for six weeks. However, reliable electricians are just not as easy to find out in the sticks. A local guy has been forgetting about me and putting me off for 6 weeks.

And this evening... crash. A second branch has fallen on the power line, making the bubbified tippy electrical feed even more scary to look at. (Excuse the extremely brightened photos... it's dark out.)

Ike photoshoot

First things first: bugger the power. My freaking tractor is trapped under a 12 inch monster tree top. (I know it doesn't look that big in the photo. It is.)


Alternate viewpoint... There are a couple of small sheet metal dings on the hood, but for what this looked like, it really aint too bad.
Oh yeah... This is our power pole and meter. The wire sort of snakes across the ground under that same tractor tree. As a side note, one benefit of those newfangled electric meters that they can read remotely is that they can tell if your power is on. So they can close the ticket. If you have live power that is laying on the ground, they will continue to close the ticket because they can see the meter. Now that's progress.Hillbilly Electric company to the rescue! Climb up tree #1 and tie off rope. Run rope through eyes of power pole. Toss rope over branch of tree #2. Tie rope to tractor. Raise pole.
No good fix is complete without duct tape. Yes, I do see that crease in the conduit. Yes, I am curious as to the conditions of the wire beneath it.. Don't worry, I wrapped a shower curtain around the duct tape, so I am sure it is water tight.
Thar she is all a braced with them thar 2 b fors. Its hard to make out the rope still strung at the top, but its still there, holding us up.
And here is the company photo: Hillbilly Pire and Lite (HPL)

Ike Strikes. Yikes.

Power restored. Sort of... but I am getting ahead of myself.

I haven't been able to post. Or read mail. Or pretty much do anything. Firstly due to some personal issues. I'm not entirely sure if I want to get into that in a public forum just yet though. But they certainly have kept me busy.

Secondly, my power was gone. I don't mean my power was out. We had power. It was gone. The power was dutifully delivered to us and then was leaking out on the ground. A big ass tree top was blown down on top of our power meter and on top of my beloved Kubota.

I dug out the Kubota with a chainsaw on Saturday night while the storm was still wrapping up. No damage. Not even a scratch. Once I got the thousand pound thingy off of it, it was fine.

Yesterday, I picked up the freezer with the tractor bucket, placed it in the back of Sally (the goat truck) and drove it over to my sister's house where it has been dutifully humming along in her garage.

Today, after waiting patiently for the power company for 2 days, I decided to take it into my own hands. I carefully cut the remainder of the tree top off the downed line, then hitched a rope to the top of my power pole. Using another tree branch as a pulley I tied the whole shooting match off to the tractor and pulled it upright. This was literally a rope, duct tape and 2x4 fix. (No bailing wire used. Sorry.)

I know this is useless without photos, but as we have been gypsies for the last 3 nights, the camera and various sundry items are strewn about town like so much hurricane debris. As we gather it back up, I will try to post pictures. Really, the power pole is a total Bubba work of art -- a regular Leonardo DiCaprio.

I still will totally have to redo the power feed to the Stuga. But we have power for now (until the next rain storm, where I am relatively sure it will blow out.)

[Later edit: photos here]

Bubba Toothbrush

Instead of a long crazy "hey you kids get off my lawn" rant, today's topic is oral hygiene.

I am on my 2nd Sonicare toothbrush. They last about 5 years in my experience, then they go poof. In reality there really isn't anything wrong with them other than they have NiCad batteries and the batteries just get worn out (or get a memory of zero).

I opened my first one (about 5 years ago) by splitting the case down the seam. This is obviously how they are put together... and they obviously think that is how you are going to take them apart. Smart thinking. Its really easy to tear them up this way. And then there is a really fragile circuit board with about 6-8 solder points that all have to be unsoldered to get to the batteries. And the batteries are super epoxified to the back case. All in all, not an easy project.

So when this one died the long slow painful death, the cheap ass bastard kicks in. My last one was about $100.... which isn't bad if you think of it as $20 a year. But those manual toothbrushes are cheaper than that.

This time I googled around looking for options. Everyone bitched about how hard it was to get the circuit board off in one piece or without burning it up, yadda yadda. Then I find this guy that talks about just cutting a hole around the battery box with a Dremel. Now I actually have one of these, but it is my firm belief that this is the ultimate "girl's tool." In other words, it works great on balsa wood. (80,000 rpm and 0 torque.)

So lets begin, shall we?


The cuts, made with a hacksaw in about 2 minutes. It would take me that long to find my Dremel. And then I'd have to replace that little cutting wheel at least 8 times when it explodes during a cut. Yeah, go with a hacksaw.

---

And this already looks easier. I nailed it when it comes to hitting the "battery box."

---

---

Batteries out... and a nice replaceable cover.

---

And here I have taken some off the shelf NiMh batteries and soldered them in. I make that sound short and simple, but for me it took a while. I am not some electrical whiz, just a guy with a soldering iron. I extended the original + and - poles to make longer pigtails. I had a little bit of a difficult time with one tying to one of the negative poles. The negative side of the battery makes a damn fine heat sink.

---

And here it sits in the charger... charge light blazing. (Okay, Blazing might be an overstatement.)

---

Add a little electrical tape and viola (or cello, or whatever). By the way, the little battery bastards are a bitch to get back in. The originals had finer wire on the upper side and a thin metal strap on the lower side (which I replaced with wire). Tight fit. Push. Shove. Swear. Accidentally rip one solder off of it. Repeat.

Ellie makes fun of me

Okay, chicks can move right along. Don't bother looking. The reason here is that the sex appeal included below may be too much for you. Honest. I am warning you.

So Ellie makes fun of me. For lots of reasons really. But I just wanted to share 2 of them.

First off, she doesn't think much of my bubba bifocals. I don't know why. They work just fine.

Secondly, (and she is really to blame for this) for my snorific chinstrap. See, I snore something awful. And its starting to bother not just her but (gasp) me. I would wake up in the morning so dull and lifeless (and yes, more dull and lifeless than usual) that it would take an hour to really come to consciousness. And yes, I am fully aware this is really hard on me. I started looking into a do-it-yourself CPAP. Do you know you have to have a freaking prescription to buy a CPAP? Now I could make my own with an air compressor and a bit of bubba engineering. And that might actually be dangerous. I mean if the pressure was 140 PSI, I might bust a lung. But I cannot imagine why a CPAP needs a prescription and hence a hugely expensive sleep study. I mean, we're easily talking 4 or 5 grand here.

There is also a little bit of evidence to suggest that serum cholesterol is actually affected by apnea. (No, not bacon, apnea. That's my theory and I like it a lot so shut up.)

So I went with a chin strap. And yes, more than just looking sexy... it actually seems to work somewhat.

I warned you it was sexy.

We become official rednecks July 8, 9:00am

Yes, we now officially have the "working TV on top of the broken TV." Ah, success.

Note that the working TV was purchased in approximately 1984. The broken TV is about 10 years old.