Deer Mommy - A Letter From Camp

Oh,  the  things  I  do  on  Facebook  to  make  my  mother  giggle ...

Deer Mommy,


things are going okay here at camp, but I am homesick and wanna come home. The camp count-sellers are mean and the other kids are mean and the canoes are old and the cabins leak when it rains but I do have a grill friend named Tambo and a pet wolf named Rambo. Please send money and a bus ticket soon. I heard we moved, where do we live now? I love you Mommy,

love,

Urn-ist

Top, Bottom and Right Dakota

One, two and three, there are three Dakota states, not just two! Besides the North and South versions of Dakota, I learned today that the word Minnesota comes from the Dakota language, meaning "sky tinted water". So I propose we change the names of the three states to Top Dakota, Bottom Dakota, and Right Dakota.

I figured that the "old" North Dakota, now Top Dakota, would need to give up its North part because it goes as far north as 49 degrees, while the "old" Minnesota, now Right Dakota, goes to 49°23′ N latitude, which would have made it a 'More Northern Dakota', farther north than 'Lesser North Dakota' or 'More Southern Old North Dakota'. Fourth grade geography students are confused enough having a Washington state, a Washington DC, a Virginia and West Virginia, so that would probably just freak 'em out completely.

I forgot to check on Wish-consin to see if it was Dakota-ish: Nope, looks like it is Algonquin with a French twist (-degradation-).

Gas Prices for Borger Texas

Listing of Gasoline Prices for the Borger TX Area

As I drive by stations I will gather gasoline prices and update this list

Store Name	Location	Unleaded	Date Time
Allsup's	201 W 10th St	269.9	Jul 25th 12:40
Allsup's #41	Wilson & McGee	269.9	Jul 25th 12:43
Allsup's #210	511 N Florida St	269.9	Jul 25th 12:00
Allsup's #244	3309 FM 1551	269.9 (?)	Jul 25th 12:00
Express Lane	1407 S Main St	259.9	Jul 25th 14:52
O J's Discount	1103 S Cedar St	269.9	Jul 25th 14:50
Phillips 66	Jefferson & Cedar St	269.9	Jul 25th 12:55
Taylor's #57	1402 S Florida St	269.9	Jul 25th 14:53
Taylor's #77	3302 Fairlanes Blvd	269.9	Jul 24th 14:20
Toot N Totum	10th & Cedar	269.9	Jul 25th 12:40
Texaco	(on Cedar by China Dynasty)	259.9	Jul 25th 12:40
Valero	Cedar across from H.S.	269.9	Jul 25th 12:45

I am a Lion Man for the County

I posted a Facebook status of my dreamscape:

Had a strange dream. Lots of tiny rocks in my drinking water.

My friend asked if it meant that I had kidney stones.

I thought, "That would be handy, a look-up table that tied strange dreams to medical diagnoses." So I created these ones, which are probably extremely accurate.

Dream: Birds Suddenly Appear Every Time You Are Near But They Don't Want To Be Close To You because you appear to have insect bites all over your body

Medical Problem: Careening Carpenter Ant Bites

Dream: Lug Nuts Keep Falling Off Your Car and you look like Englebert Humperdink only you are compressed vertically to 4' 7"

Medical Problem: You have a cold (I know, it doesn't make sense to me either)

Dream: I am a Lion Man for The County and I drive all over the Maine roads.

Medical Problem: You don't have anything wrong, but several people in Maine have been turned into Purina Lion Food because you are not very good at your job.

Dream: You have a repeat dream with the "lug nuts" only this time you get it right and you look like B. J. Thomas and you are stretched to 7' 4"

Medical Problem: You have pneumonia (now it makes perfect sense, well, compared to the original version) 

Don't worry, I will probably add more "Dream/Medical Problem" combos in the future. Somebody has to keep winning Nobel Prizes in Medicine AND Writing Fiction and it may as well be me, say, I wonder if I would get two for this one article, as it stretches across both medal categories?

Now something for the real world:

Wikipedia Article: Where There Is No Doctor

Jaycee Dugard versus Law Enforcement

I realize that the Jaycee Dugard case is frighteningly sad and bizarre. But at 21.1 million dollars for a single victim compensation when there was not a complete judicial process but a legislative bypass with an almost unanimous vote, I know why the state of California is going, has gone, and will always be broke.

There is a difference between making a claim that the law enforcement system failed Jaycee Dugard and actually proving that it did. This "weak evidence against law enforcement" but high profile case simply opens a flood gate for similar inequitable settlements.

Link to News Story

My expectation of law enforcement is that they perform at best effort for the assets and people they have available. There is an expectation of equal and honest enforcement and services. BUT ... I don't expect perfection. There will always be "should have", "could have", "would have's", and there doesn't appear to be any express violations of law or misconduct on the part of law enforcement from my perspective, and I have dug deep, spending several hours researching this situation.

There will always be crazy, bizarre people among us capable of doing the things that Jaycee's captors performed. The number of times that her kidnapper was incarcerated shows that various police agencies had tried to take care of this individual when he had broken the law. If Jaycee had lived in a tightly monitored police state with informants everywhere, could this sort of thing have happened? Not likely, but then again, I don't think we want to live in a police state. And have there ever been serial killers in Communist countries? Why of course there have been!

Some Russian serial killers:

Andrei Chikatilo

Alexander Pichushkin

 

In the long run, the people who are hurt in THIS situation of the extravagant unjustified  compensation are the tax payers of the state of California. It straps the budget process for services that much more and does nothing to encourage someone to be a law enforcement officer, other than to fight against this sort of fiscal abuse by the legislature. As a society we can't afford this level of compensation to each individual, and therefore it should not be given to any individual. Stop expecting the state to do everything for you, AND watch your children more closely AS WELL AS your neighbors.