An Obvious Name

If you are sensitive to strong language, swearing, cursing, invective or whatever you want to call nasty words -- do NOT read any further. Go away.

If you are under 21, go away.

Are you ready?

This is serious stuff.

This is going to be rough.

Take a deep breath and hold on.

Here we go ...

If you've been over to the family blog, you know that we bought a car down in CR and Pat thinks we should give the new wheels a name. She even has a survey over on that blog so that you can vote for a suggested name or even suggest one of your own.

When she asked me to suggest a name, I immediately knew what to call the new buggy. This critter is a 1994 Isuzu Rodeo. Remember those old tanks? Solid.

But, being 14 years old and having seen a lot of duty on some pretty rough roads, I'm betting that this old lizzie will hear some invectives from me (gasp!).

{I've been trying to get rid of this bad invection, but I'm pretty sure that this is a Multi-Antibiotic-Resistant Invection (MARI). Groan.}

Seriously, here's the name:

"Fucking Car."

Perhaps even, "The Fucking Car."

Why, you ask?

Think about it. How convenient that name would be and how easily it will roll off my tongue.

When going out for a ride, or shopping:

"Get in The Fucking Car."

When coming home:

"Get out of The Fucking Car."

Let's say you're out for a day of shopping at the big mall and it has been so long since you arrived that you can't remember:

"Where's The Fucking Car?"

You can blame things on it with an innocent tone in your voice:

"The Fucking Car broke down in front of the bar, so I just went in to look for a mechanic."

Think about getting a flat tire:

"The Fucking Car has a fucking flat tire!"

What if, during idle conversation about exercising, you need to determine if your partner really feels like a jog or a ride:

"Do you want to take The Fucking Car or walk?"

As old as it is, it will certainly cost me repair money, whereupon I shall say, disgustedly:

"That Fucking Car."

I've already felt the vibes from Pat and I don't think The Fucking Car will formally initially be known by this name I'm suggesting. That's O.K. Everyone knows that it will eventually shed its cute anthropomorphic name in deference to the name it will answer to.

I'm taking The Fucking Car on a beer run. So there.

Bagging On Bags

I'm sure you've noticed that every product that comes with a storage bag -- air mattresses, tents, sleeping bags, quilts, etc., -- all come with storage bags that are sized so that the intended contents can only be folded small enough to fit back into those bags if you are a professional "Folder," working from a Folding Blueprint, and have arms and hands as powerful as Popeye.

If you're a normal person, chances are that your best efforts, along with multiple re-folding attempts, will only result in a lump of product that either won't go into the storage bag at all or which sticks out of the end of the bag.

WHY?!?

Message to manufacturers: You shit heads! I'm paying hundreds of dollars for your stinking product and you can't spend 30¢ to enlarge the stinking bag ... oh, maybe get crazy and slip in 6 whole inches ... so that normal people can put their valuable purchase away after using it. Sheesh!

The Stir Star Awards (Toll Road Division)

For those of you who don’t have toll roads or may not even know what they are, please indulge me. Read on. You might recognize a stirring performance that you’ve seen elsewhere.

The guy in the full service pay-lane that waits until he is stopped in front of the toll booth before he leans over to fish out his wallet; and, then he has to dig around in it to come up with the appropriate folding money.

Why am I in the full service lane anyway? Ya gotta be here in Houston to know. At some toll plazas (like the West Little York, on the West Sam Houston) if you are getting on the toll road at Little York, to go south, you are barred from using the main automatic lanes. And, the toll road authority brain trust has decided to only install a single automatic lane for EZ-Tag and that usually backs up beyond belief. Thus, if you want to get home while supper is still hot, it is quicker to go to a different lane. Sometimes the full service lanes look like they’re moving faster. That’s when I end up there.

Now, why is it such a reach for me to expect a person to plan ahead just a little … and BE CONSIDERATE (you clod!) of the dozen cars behind you. We don’t need to watch you finger through a wad of bills in your wallet while you select THE special dollar that you’ve been saving for years, just in case you ever have to pay a toll. Get that shit out before you even start to drive, dunce boy.

Taking your foot off the gas at the electronic toll gates, over on the EZ-Tag-only side.

Oh, all right, these people probably only deserve 1 stir, but this is a pet peeve of mine.

And, admittedly, there are signs that tell you to slow down and even signs that tell you to slow to 45 but this is the only State on Earth where some fools actually do it. Some states (e.g., Illinois) have even built the automatic lanes far away from the cash lanes, separating them by berms and trees. They command you to not slow down.

So, WHY do so many Houstonians slow down?

Are you afraid that the Tag reader won’t be able to read your Tag? It works on radio waves, Einstein. They’re travelling at more than 186,000 miles per second. Do you really think you can drive fast enough so that the speed of light waves cannot get down to your car and then be received in the return signal?

Scared of other drivers changing lanes right up at the readers and that they then might side-swipe you? We’re only changing lanes because people like you are impeding the flow of traffic when you slow down, pudding head.

And, what’s with you people at the Westheimer Plaza? What is so special about your fears and foibles that you need to slow down to stop & go for the automatic lanes? Who starts that mess? Please, some cowboy, shoot them.

Stop it. Just stop it. Keep your stinking foot smashed down on that stinking little narrow pedal on the right.

On the side of the toll road where EZ is mixed in with Full Service, getting into the EZ-Tag-Only lane when you don’t have an EZ-Tag.

Are you truly that unaware of your surroundings? Or are you just a mega-turd that thinks he’s getting to the head of the line … screw the rest of the world.

What happens, is that all of the lanes are filled up with long lines of cars needing to pay cash. In our single lonely EZ-Tag lane, the traffic usually moves significantly faster because we don’t have any clown digging under his seat for loose change.

Note to HCTRA: I’ve written to you jack-wads twice about leaving gates down across EZ-Tag lanes. One of your little minions even admitted that she couldn’t think of any reason why they are left operational. TAKE THOSE DAMNED GATES OUT!!!!!

Back to the story …

So, while we are moving reasonably steadily (5 mph,) down the long canyon created by lines of cash-pay cars, inevitably some anti-Mensa either doesn’t notice that he’s in the EZ-Tag Only lane or he’s trying to get to the head of the class. Either way, he then tries to push his way out of the Tag lane and into one of the cash lanes.

But it can’t be done. The cash lanes are at a dead stop and they only creep along one car length at a time. We, then, are trapped behind this clever person, building up our own traffic backup.

Please, oh please, give me Sidewinder missiles on my next car.

Stopping fully in front of the toll gate in an EZ-Tag lane when you have an EZ-Tag.

Ohmigod! What are you thinking!?! Oh … right. You haven’t the capacity to think.

Very close to these people are the folks that make a mistake in lane selection and then not only stop, but they begin to back up. I’m not making this up.

Patricia and I were driving back home one day, at about 75 mph (oh, get over it). She was driving and talking to me. I was lazily semi-focused on the road ahead as I listened. Something caught my attention. Something didn’t look right in the traffic way up ahead at the toll plaza.

Once the old synapses processed the message and I shouted, “Car backing up!” Pat barely had time to react. She got into a different lane and we went by that 7-stir. As we sped away down the road, I watched him in the side view mirror, expecting to see a fireball as he got run over by an 18 wheeler but, alas, no fireworks that day.


That’s the rant for the day. Many of the wackos that I mentioned in earlier posts about Houston drivers are doing their surface street tricks up on the toll roads, also. Sometimes it is just too bizarre to even award stirs.

Why are they breathing my air?

Flummoxed

I B Flummoxed. How else can I be?

A bit of background:

My company uses fairly large quantities of hydraulic oil. So, rather than have a zillion steel drums sitting around, we store our oil inventory in 275 gallon "totes."

Totes look like giant cubic plastic boxes. Picture your favorite refrigerator box-wine large enough to hold 275 gallons. Now, replace the cardboard wine box with a steel cage and make the plastic bag have thick enough walls so that it holds its shape. That's a tote.

But, because anything can leak, and because neither I nor the EPA want hydraulic oil running down the street in rivers, all users of big quantities of hazardous liquids are required to set up "secondary containment" around or under all "primary" containers. In other words, if the tote leaks, it has to leak into a tub or something so that it is contained for disposal.

For totes, we use specially made "pallets" that look like a monstrous kid's square wading pool, with a thick grill over the top. The totes sit on this grill and if they leak, the oil simply drops down into the "wading pool."

However, the secondary containment pool has a finite volume. If you let the pool fill up and don't empty it, then subsequent leaks would overflow the pool and run out on the floor. Therefore, one would think that every person would think of that when they saw the pool filling up, over time. Wouldn't one always strive to keep the secondary empty and dry?

One would also think that folks working around these totes and their secondary containment pools would object to the smell of the hydraulic oil emitting up from the pool, if you leave oil in it.

Finally, one would think that just out of general good housekeeping practices that workers wouldn't want all of that leaked oil sitting around out in the open. Oil just seems to get everywhere when you have it out in the open.

BUT ... our pudding heads are not (apparently) folks that think or act in any of the ways that "one" would think!

My morning:

Arrived at 8. Plugged in my laptop and booted it. Shuffled a little paper and decided that it would be a good time for me to do a sweep through the shop, ensuring that safe work practices are being observed.

Walked out the door, into the shop, and there's a tote, perched on its secondary containment, with piles and piles of granulated absorbent heaped up around it.

"What's going on?!?" I gasped.

"That funny tub thing got a leak," said one of the braver workers.

"How ... uh ... wha ... hey. How would the secondary leak? It's supposed to be empty?" I spat out.

"No. It always has a lot of oil in it ... at least since they were filling those hoses the other day and spilled a whole bunch down in there," said Brave Boy.

"No," I said back, "No, there is never supposed to be ANY oil in the secondary containment unless the tote leaks!" I said, starting to lose it.

"I didn't know," said Brave Boy, now meekly.

I'm thinking, "Yeah, but there are a half dozen "old salts" standing around you that know damn well that there isn't supposed to be oil in the secondary," but I sucked it in and kept the thoughts to myself. Time for a safety meeting -- for sure!

"Wait," I said, "That's a new secondary. How could it leak?"

Now the troops within ear shot are starting to look REALLY busy. Way too busy to be a part of this conversation.

Brave Boy goes on, "Well, we were sliding the plastic thingy into the pallet rack and when he backed out, his forks were tilted up too much and he ripped a hole in the bottom of the thingy."

Two more stirs.

The metal cage around the tote has fork lift channels under it so that one can lift these totes up off of the secondary containment for filling or discharging them. Steel. Strong. Fully protecting the tote's plastic bladder. In contrast, secondaries have narrow, thin PLASTIC grooves under them so that you could, if you were stupid, lift directly under the plastic wading pool to lift the pool and the tote, together, as a unit. Well over a ton of load on the little pool bottom.

Huh. I wonder why it split?

So-ho-ho-ho-ho, now I have a ripped open, useless $2,000.00 secondary; plus, another 10 gallons or so of liquid contaminated (hazardous material) oil to pay someone to dispose of; plus several 40 lb bags of "kitty litter" oil sorbent, soaked with oil (hazardous material) to also pay someone to dispose of.

Maybe if I'm lucky, tomorrow somebody will jam a forklift fork through this tote's steel cage and gash the plastic bladder open. I've always wanted to see if those oil containment booms work well. I wonder if we can get them deployed before the oil seeps under the office wall and into the office carpet?

Learning From Our Mistakes

What ever happened to “learning from our mistakes?” Is this time-tested precept of the higher apes also passing away as a distant memory of a few elders in the clan of mankind?

One of our “experienced,” albeit newer, employees was hired to lead some teams and sort of take care of the newbies and the dolts, thereby avoiding losses, embarrassments or accidents. To hear this guy’s personal testimony, he’s waged wars, fought fights, conquered countries and validated virgins from Timbuktu to infinity and beyond. One would think that there had been a few teensy mistakes along the way and our hero, who I call “Slinky,” should have learned a thing or two.

Nah.

Many weeks ago, my company mobilized large machines, portable control rooms and gobs of tools to rig out an offshore demolition boat. (Our parent company manufactures machinery that cuts apart pipe and steel structurals, under the sea.)

A critical little tool – a cutter – is terribly expensive for its size so we don’t keep hundreds of them on the shelf. We don’t have to. One of these palm sized little cutters will zip a 3-inch diameter hole through a sunken deck plate in minutes and keep on “punching” more holes all day. At almost $500.00 each, they better. So, we had only about 20 of them in stock.

Slinky supervised the load-out of the equipment for this boat, knowing full well that this would be only one of many boats to be equipped from our inventory. But, a couple of days after everything was shipped out, the boss, Tree Tall, went looking for a few of these cutters to be used in a demonstration. The shelves were empty.

“Where’d they go?” he wanted to know.

“Well, I sent them all out to the boat,” said Slinky, lamely.

With no love in his voice, Tree asked, “So what were you planning to send out on the next boat?”

No answer.

That’s when I got sucked into the fray.

Tree wanted at least two (preferably 3 or 4) cutters for his demonstration; and, he knew that another boat was coming up for outfitting in a couple more weeks. He turned to me to locate more cutters.

I contacted all the vendors and discovered that our normal cutters were 4 to 6 weeks delivery. Another vendor proposed an alternate cutter design which we accepted out of dire need. We cleaned that guy’s inventory out, bringing all 10 of the available alternate cutters into Houston on Fedex Next Day. I also promptly put in an order for 10 more from the usual vendor who would build them to our regular specifications.

I sort of lost track/interest in the cutters after that, although I did notice that “da boyz” were doing several extra demonstrations that might eat into the cutter supply. No worries, I thought. These guys have just been through the wringer over these things and they’ll tell me when they need more cutters. Besides, in about a week we should have the second order of ten pieces.

Then came an order for a third boat.

And in came an order for a training demo.

Both used these hard to find cutters.

But, I’m not aware of these events, so I don’t bump up the inbound order quantity.

This immediately past Saturday, Slinky and da boyz worked like maniacs to get everything out the door for boats two and three. The training demo is tomorrow (for divers who will eventually work from one or more of the boats we’d outfitted.)

Today, Tree wandered out into the Houston shop to grab cutters for the training demo.

“Who moved the 3-inch cutters?” he said. He probably had a knot in his stomach, fearing that he knew the awful answer. He dialed Slinky’s cell phone. “Where are the 3” cutters, Slink?”

“Why? I sent them to the boat.”

Worst fears confirmed.

“All of them,” said Tree, more as a statement of resignation than a question. He looked at me. I shrugged. He shook his head. The same stupid move had been made again.

The 6-week-delivery cutters aren’t due in for another couple of days. I found one dusty old cutter on a vendor’s back shelf and that’s the best we can hope for.

Do I think that there’s a possibility that Slinky and his team learned anything this time?

What do you think?

The Stir Star Awards (Freeways)

“Freeways” around Houston aren’t really “free” anymore but they are supposed to be free of impediments and cross traffic that can lead to accidents and slow the flow of traffic to an inefficient pace. Here are some of my favorite stupid people tricks done on our freeways.

Going 45 mph. (or even going the speed limit)

Ya know, Slick, in some states if you drive at 45 mph the cops won’t bother giving you a ticket for impeding traffic. They don’t have to. The other drivers will simply kill you.

You want to go 45 and feel safer? Stay on the surface streets.

If you’re having car trouble, get the hell over to the far right lane and put on your hazard flashers – then get off the freeway and over to the repair shop ASAP.

When you’re going 45 and the big bad 18 wheeler is going 70, you’re going to be hit as if you backed into a wall at 25 mph. Lots of damage bro.

As for going 65 (or 55 in the damn construction zones) get real. Please observe the other drivers. NOBODY IS GOING THE SPEED LIMIT. Pick it up, homeboy. We all have to get to work.

Playing “Sheriff” in the fast lane.

Did you know that we have several dozen Special Enforcement Sheriffs scattered in among the citizenry of our fair city? Yep. These are every day folk that drive their car over into the freeway fast lane, set it at some speed, such as the speed limit, or some such nonsense and thereupon they enforce THEIR perception of propriety and the law by holding back a line of 20 cars that are trying to get from here to there in the shortest reasonable time.
These self-appointed sanctimonious mouth-breathers will just cruise along, happy as you please, reveling in the knowledge that they have kept some more careless heathen from going to hell a little sooner than later.

Get out of the way, Pudding Head, or somebody'll help you from the freeway to the glory road.

The idiots stopping at the bottom of an entrance ramp.

How … oh, how did ANYbody ever figure that it is right, correct, proper, safe, or even sane to haul their ass to a halt at the bottom of the acceleration lane, right where the entrance ramp merges into the freeway’s slow lane? They stop! Not a California rolling stop. I mean, they STOP!

I think most of these mental heavyweights have either been killed or arrested because I only see about one a year now. Just a few years back, all of us normal drivers were always on the alert for the ramp stoppers. We just KNEW that today was the day that another one of them was going to toss out the anchor just as we were getting up to merge speed, coming up behind them.

Slowing down to exit.

What? Do you think that because you’re coming up on YOUR exit and that you’re finished with YOUR commute that the rest of us don’t have to keep going to our destinations? How can these people (a majority of drivers) possibly think that it is O.K. to decelerate in the main lanes of traffic, as much as a ¼ mile before their exit ramp.

Exit ramp, a.k.a. Deceleration Ramp, stupid.

EVERY morning, at the northbound Sam Houston exit ramp to Tanner Rd., there is a slowing down and backup because these lemurs are dropping down to 50 mph or less in the right one or two lanes. STOP IT!

Not accelerating in the acceleration lane.

Horse feathers. The price of gasoline isn’t that high that you have to nurse your way up to speed at an acceleration rate slower than a Moped.

These on-ramps are the site of more trick driving than anywhere, I think. The clowns are out and the circus is beset with their antics.

People … hear me … the entrance ramps are an acceleration feature of the freeway. Your State of Texas Professional [chortle] Engineers have designed them so that the average under-powered rice burner can reasonably be up to freeway speed by the time that they get from one end of the ramp to the other. Don’t insult our State Engineers (that’s my job.) Get your butt up to speed by the time you try to cut me off as you merge.

Speed and depth perception challenged.

I suppose these people are more a source of entertainment, rather than a source of irritation or a hazard. But I should mention them here anyway.

Don’t you just love the cretin that you’ve watched for miles as he slowly creeps up to pass you, from the next lane over, and then waits until the very last minute as he comes up on a slower vehicle. Then, way way past the last possible second for the safe execution of a pass (to get in front of you) Mario Andretti steps on the gas and zooms up beside you, only to have to slam on the breaks behind the slow vehicle.

I see this happen more often than I see a clean pass. Who are these people? What is wrong with their sense of speed and their depth perception? I shouldn’t complain. I really do get a good laugh out of these particular Pudding Heads.

Leave that left turn blinker going … forever.

Yeah, I know that it’s a cliché, but these encounters can be fun if you try to guess what the driver looks like before you get up next to them. Or, if you have a passenger, you can make book on which way the blinky fool is going to really move, and when.

Going straight for the 2nd lane when getting on.

I actually love this about people. I’ll bet you didn’t ever notice that virtually 100% of the vehicles entering a multilane freeway will stay in the first lane only as long as they are forced to stay there (by traffic, etc.) Then, the will immediately move to the second lane in from where they entered. (Some may continue to move further and further to the left.)

I use this human foible to my advantage, every morning.

Normally I set my cruise control to exactly 72 mph, based on my GPS speed reading (accurate to within 1/10th kph.) Since the far left, fast lane, keeps speeding up and slowing down, I usually get all the way over to the rightmost lane and stay there. There’s almost nobody there, on the Sam Houston Toll Road.

Sometimes there might be a truck or something in that lane but when they come up towards an entrance ramp, they get over a lane or two, expecting merging cars to be running slowly. What actually happens is that, first, the truck moves over and then every one of the merging cars goes immediately to the 2nd lane or further. If everything is spaced out right, I have clear sailing and never have to switch off the cruise control. Happiness.

Cops pulling people over and impeding the traffic for 15 minutes during rush hour.

I’d say, “Those pigs,” but that wouldn’t be nice. The fact is that Constables (Texas pseudo cops) are allowed up on the freeway so that they can raise money for their politician bosses. They’ll find some dope doing something outrageously stupid – something that will stick in court no matter what. They then get to pull the clod over.

O.K., you have your victim, you have his plate, you have his driver’s license, you probably have his photo on your patrol car video. GET OFF THE DAMN FREEWAY!!!

A cop, with his flashing lights on, will instantly slow down traffic, resulting in a dizzyingly fast traffic backup.

Think (?) about it officer. You’re scared, walking/standing on the roadside with the traffic wizzing past you at 70; you’re really rolling the dice that nobody is going to crash into you or your car during the stop; and, there is nothing that you can do up on the freeway that you cannot do down on the feeder road. So, tell your victim to carefully exit at the next interchange and write him up in a nice safe frontage road location.

See … you’re safe and I’m happy.


Cops conducting a multi-hour “investigation” on the freeways.

Oh, this one sticks in my craw. The poor s.o.b. is dead, damn it, move his ass and all the twisted metal off the stinking freeway NOW!

I’d like to see the statistics that show that all of the photos and measuring and supervisor visits and interviews have EVER made a difference in a conviction or lawsuit. Get real. So many vehicles ran over all of the bits and pieces before you got there that any “evidence” was obliterated. The freakin’ dead guy doesn’t care. Supervisors … do your job and give your people the authority and responsibility to get the highway cleared expeditiously.

Come on. Tell me in a response to this post, what the real advantages are to keeping a roadway closed or restricted for hours and hours while an “investigation” is completed. Go ahead. Try.

Cell phone up, gas pedal up.

Here’s a new anthropological theory: Many Houston drivers have a tendon connecting their right foot to the hand with which they lift their cell phone to their ear. And this makes their bodies work like this …

Phone rings; stupnagel picks it up and raises it to his ear; as the hand raises, the foot is pulled up away from the gas pedal by the magic tendon. Works every time.

Put down the phone and drive you slugs or at least set your cruise control so you don’t get distracted off in your little phone world and drop your speed to a crawl.



Yes, once again, I've finished a rant. Do you think anybody will read this and change their behaviors? Me either.

Time to Modify the First Amendment

Ya know … Freedom of the Press was a good idea. The printing press was an integral part of keeping extremes of behavior in check. The operators of those presses that distributed news depended on the acceptance of the people for their livelihood. Tell lies or publish things too off-the-wall and the people wouldn’t buy your publication. You were gone. The survivors were therefore largely honest and straight forward.

Other than the short heyday of Yellow Journalism in the William Randolph Hearst era, the true press had some real integrity and responsibility.

Even up until the mid-1960’s this was still the case. Your job as a journalist was to tell who, what, when, where, why and how; and, your editor would chew your head off if there was an obvious slant to what you wrote.

Then came 1968 and Happy Talk “news” at the ABC broadcast outlets. Professional Journalism was on its way out. The honored profession about which the Freedom of the Press was written would soon be gone – at least in broadcasting and the yellow news outlets.

Here we are, 40 years later, and the Happy Talkers have degenerated to a bunch of chittering morons feeding us masses of garbage sensationalism, crappy grammar, twisted language structure … and now, blatant irresponsibility.

Today’s big story? The two leading “big box” stores, Sam’s and Costco, have put a limit on how much rice you can buy. It’s a crisis!

Isn’t there anyone at least 40 years old and in charge at these “press” media outlets? Is anyone responsible? Remember the society-clobbering, press-created "crisis" of gasoline and toilet paper we endured 35 years ago?

For you younger folk, here’s what I’m talking about:

1973: Members of an oil cartel in the Middle East started cutting back on production and refused to sell oil to the United States. (The reasons are complex.) The popular press hammered and hammered on this story, spinning endless gloom and doom scenarios. One of the clear messages was that at any moment, there might be no more gasoline available.

Suddenly, people were worried that when they got up the next day, there would be no more gasoline for sale. So, if you were down to a half a tank, you darn well knew that you better go fill up.

Do the math. Probably 1/3 of the cars normally ran around with a ¼ of a tank of gas, or less; another third might have had anything from a quarter to three quarters of a tank; and, the final third might have just filled up. Let’s say that this averages to a half tank times several million cars. That was the demand on the U.S. refining and gas distribution infrastructure – and, therefore, that was their capacity.

Suddenly everybody wanted a full tank (times millions of cars.) There wasn’t that much gasoline available.

What happened?

Cars lined up for blocks and blocks, outside every gas station; and, gas stations with no gas. A national plan went into effect wherein you were only able to buy gas on even numbered days if your license plate ended in an even number and vice versa for the odd numbered license plates.

All because of stupid sensationalist and ill-informed “news.”

It was so laughable that the comedians of the day constantly poked fun at the “gas lines” and society’s situation.

Then one night, in December, a super-famous comedian, Johnny Carson, made a joke on his nightly national television show and the public went nuts.

Johnny mockingly told a bit of “news” to his audience. He said that he’d heard that there was going to be a shortage of toilet paper. Pretty funny. Toilet paper fergodsake.

Suddenly, normally sane people were rushing to the grocery store (Costco & Sams didn’t exist yet) buying shopping carts full of toilet paper. By the end of the next afternoon, there was no more toilet paper on the shelves.

The broadcast “news” people jumped right on this “nationwide shortage” and by the end of the second day, there was no more toilet paper in the distribution warehouses.

Carson retracted his joke while the news people pontificated that they were really amazed at how people behaved. About 24 hours later, it was over. But that was a long 3 days in hell.

2008: The news pudding heads are pounding on a rice “shortage.” One of these feces distributors, ooops, I mean news outlets, even had an interview with some old guy who said, “I don’t remember any other food rationing since World War II.”

Screeeeeaaaaaaaam!!!!!! Now they’ve gone from hammering on two stores keeping you from buying more than 100 lbs of rice in any single purchase to, “We’re about to repeat World War II food rationing.”

So let’s get back to my headline.

Since these pin heads cannot seem to police themselves, let’s really go back to World War II. Let’s set up a National Censorship Board to vet what news people want to flood out onto the national psyche. If they’re going to talk about gasoline, toilet paper, or freakin rice … black them out, off the air!