lately, I've been wondering what it would be like to be somewhere — anywhere — other than here. Years ago, when I worked in NYCs advertising industry, I travelled extensively worldwide and enjoyed the constantly-changing variety of locale and scenery on a weekly basis. For the past 7 years, I've been pretty much sedentary in my travels and exploits, comparatively speaking. Things need to change soon; I've got itchy feet again. I feel a Road Trip! coming on.
Left Coast Plans.
Each year, I buy-in several hundred thousand dollars of rare, unusual and hard-to-find nursery stock (and even some ordinary stuff for errant shoppers) from specialty nurserys on the West Coast, primarily from Oregon. Seems the climate there is an exact duplicate, without the drought problems of USDA Zone 6, where my business is and where 95% of my customers live.
My sister, Becky also just happens to live in Mill Valley, slightly north of San Francisco, and a few hours south of the nurserys I do business with. So I can plan a two-fold trip and combine some relaxation with business. I'm planning the trip now and hopefully, nothing will get in the way of a small vacation, as it's done in the past 7 years. I need one desperately.
San Francisco has the finest restaurants anywhere, easily beating even NYC and Paris. After dining in NYCs famed bistros for 17 years, and comparing SFs cuisine while on business trips, I can say that with great affinity. Several trips to Europe also convinced me that the French should stick to lingerie and certain varieties of wine, since California has them beat in 96.3% of the instances of wine-making, rather than to try to compete in the cuisine area anymore.
I am greatly looking forward to two weeks away from here to recharge my spirit.
Trappings Of Fall.
It's a no-brainer when Fall arrives at any garden center or nursery: deciduous plants turning color and dropping leaves, leaf piles burning, pumpkins, corn shocks, bulbs arriving for sale, everything browning-off in the gardens, shorter days, nursery stock sales. The place takes on a whole new life as one season leaves and another arrives.
Yet some places still don't get it. They continue to have sales, just as they did all through the Spring and Summer; soon, people can't tell the difference between the seasons anymore. It's just the same-o, same-o shit on a daily basis. No differentiation. No delineation.
I decided long ago that constant sales cheapen the image and hurt the overall market and industry. The Fall is the only time we have any kind of a sale. When I ran that ad telling the general public that only cheap, substandard operations had sales all year long, it shocked many places into abruptly stopping their sales. Maybe they'll think (for a change) before they engage in that demeaning shit next year, but probably not. People around this area are addicted to sales and deals, and there'll always be someplace that will accommodate their craven desires for junk.
Racism.
As an employer of people, I deal with many things all day long. Personalities, business situations and conflicts of all sorts. Most are just SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) and are dispensed with quickly. Others are unpleasant and some can be downright nasty.
Recently, something happened that surprised even me: offhanded, racially-offensive remarks by one of the local guys on my landscape crew about blacks. A black crew member was right there, yet took it in good stride, unnecessarily. This kind of behavior has no place in my business operation. So I spoke with the offended person, and fired the offending party.
My philosophy is that every race has it's share of scum, degenerates and lowlifes. But most people are basically good at heart. The trick is to be able to tell the difference between those who take responsibility for their own lives, and those who want society to hand them everything in life, or commit crimes to get what they want, instead of working for it like the rest of us do. I treat all scum the same, regardless of their color.
I have no feelings of sympathy for those who want everything handed to them. They deserve the very worst that life can dish out until they wake up and take personal responsibility for their actions and lives. Most never do and continually blame the haves for their being one of the have nots. They somehow believe that there's monstrous conspiracy to keep them down. And that's bullshit. The person that I fired couldn't grasp that simple concept, even after 37 years of living. The sad part is that he probably never will.
First Frost.
Usually, we see our first frost around mid-November, here in USDA Zone 6b, but last night with a clear sky and no wind, it arrived early.
Leaving my condo at 6am, there was a light frost dusting everything. People had spread blankets, tarps and sheets over their annuals all through the complex where I live. It looked like someone's laundry line had collapsed and stuff had blown all over the place.
I'm amused at people going to all that trouble for annuals; perennials are hardy and don't have that kind of tender proclivity. I guess that since they pay for annuals every Spring, they want to safeguard their investment and get color in their gardens for as long as possible.
This early frost reminds me of the Fall we had two years ago just before The Blizzard of 96. With El What's-His-Name wreaking havoc in the Pacific, we might be in for another bad Winter. We'll know for sure, come next Spring.
Politics As Unusual.
shit-for-brains Al Gore learned one thing from Watergate: destroy the evidence. And his pathetic little servants have done just so. No habeas corpus, no case. Very smart move.
The only problem with that move is that is probably will cause a special prosecutor to be assigned (by the Reno idiot) to review the mounting case against the Gore scum who didn't keep fastidious records which might have absolved him from any suillegal alienion of wrongdoing, and the need for further investigation. Nice going, staff.
But the moron liberals weren't that smart. They simply wanted to destroy any paper trails back to Gore which could have implicated him in a very, very minor infraction of The Pendleton Act of 1883; making fund raising solicitations from government property a crime.
That whole indiscretion is really worth nothing and wouldn't have hurt him. Reagan and many others did it and suffered no lasting consequences. The destruction of DNC records will hurt him badly, though; with suillegal alienion currently cast over his office, he's all but finished for the 2000 race.
Hell, even the CIA is involved in this corrupt and convoluted fund raising mess, somehow.
Sweet Revenge.
Former White House senior adviser, Harold Ickes, an avowed die-hard liberal has gotten even with Slick Willie The Bubba for publicly humiliating and ousting him in 96 before appointing him White House Chief of Staff.
Ickes turned over thousands of confidential memos and documents to senate investigators, embarrassing the Clinton criminals into an unusually high damage control operation several weeks ago. Now he's confirmed that Clinton did make illegal fund raising calls from the White House.
Thanks, Harold. At least one liberal can tell the truth, if only for the wrong reason. It appears that he's going to get another chance to tell all.
If Bubba hadn't been so stupid in firing a trusted adviser who knew where the bodies were buried, Ickes would have sanitized those papers (read destroyed) before turning them over to investigators, and would never have betrayed his master. What goes around, comes around. Clinton doesn't have the brains to cover his own ass.
Why Our Judicial System Sucks.
There are too many stinking liberal judges and lawyers f*cking things up. Plea bargains. Criminals being released to whack, rape and rob again because the liberal mind-think feels an unnatural need to rehabilitate murderers, rapists and child molesters. They merely go free and commit the same crimes or worse, again and again.
Truth be told: only death rehabilitates that kind of subhuman filth. Not scumbag liberal do-goodie programs. Doesn't work. History has proven that pathetic liberal mindset wrong: 90% of the so-called rehabilitated criminals commit crimes again, often worse ones than they were locked up for in the first place. That's a real nice shining star on the liberal scum's scorecard, and a powerful argument for exterminating the worst offenders.
The whiny liberal scum quickly refer to "letting ten guilty go free in lieu of executing one innocent". Sorry, it's best to execute them all. The damage that ten guilty would do is far, far worse than losing an innocent. That's a 1-in-8,000+ chance, anyway. I figure anyone who's in jail belongs there. So what's the big deal? It's a way to clean out the jails, relieve the overcrowding and rid society of subhuman filth and scum. To make an great omlet, you gotta break some eggs. Too bad. No apologies from this viewpoint.
The moron Clinton just keeps appointing those liberal lowlifes to more and more positions. He knows full-well these substandard judges aren't fit to preside, yet caves in to the quotas he agreed to in exchange for the liberal legal community's votes in 96, and the payback is completed. At the expense of every citizen. The only way is to block the hearings and appointmentsfor years to come. Overwork the existing liberal scum, force them to resign and have law-and-order conservative-moderates appointed. Bring the legal system back around 180 degrees. Reclaim our streets and society.
An old lie of liberals is: judge a society and civilization by how they treat their criminals. f*ck that shit. The truism is really: judge a civilization by how it protects its innocent citizens. It's long past time for the mis-directed and severely mis-guided judicial system to wake the hell up and do its primary job: either incarcerate or execute criminals. Period. Nothing more and nothing less.
Great Gardens Tour.
If you have a fast connection, try this tour of some of the world's most luxuriant gardens. My cable modem at 500kbps handled it with ease. I'd be afraid to try some of those pics with a dialup connection.
