The World According to "Aaarrgh!"

As you know, both baseball and softball are being dropped from the Olympics.  The reason?  Total dominance by one country.  Until this Olympics, Cuba had won pretty much every baseball gold, and the U.S. had won every softball.  This dominance made the sports boring, so they were dumped.

 So, here are some of my suggestions for possible replacements.

–Dwarf Tossing

–American Gladiator (throw in all the AG sports.  Wouldn’t it be cool to see the athletes race around the stadium in those giant hamster balls?)

– Bungee jumping

–NASCAR

– Ballroom Dancing (It’s not that far fetched.  Both synchronized swimming {ballroom dancing in swimsuits} and rhythmic gymnastics {dancing while throwing things} are actual events!)

– Cow Chip Tossing (like a discus, only organic)

– Golf (Tiger has already won everything; he needs something new!)

Michael Schrader finished in the Top 10 in the Olympic Decathlon.  Way to go me!

Monday, I took the plunge and plunked down a wad of dollars to get a tie rod in the Dodge replaced.  I figured it was better to get it replaced now, then wait until the old one broke and caused some serious problems (like my wheel turning sideways).  So, I thought I was done with costly repairs for the month.   Not so fast!

Yesterday, driving in the Osage Hills, I heard a noise, and noticed that the Dodge was leaking antifreeze.  I filled the radiator back up, and hoped that I could nurse the car the five miles into Bartlesville.  But it wasn’t to be!  It was leaking so fast that I barely travelled two miles when the needle zoomed to H.  Not wanting to burn up the engine, I turned it off.  Luckily, I was on top of the hill on CR 3102, so I coasted down the hill (without power steering or brakes) to a junction where I knew there was room for me to leave the car.  I was lucky in two ways, actually. First, that I was at that hill, because there is no other place on CR 3102 that one can safely leave a car.  Second, that my wife was with me looking at houses, and that she had met me out there, so I wasn’t stranded in the middle of nowhere without a way home.  It could have been worse! 

If you haven’t been following the melodrama surrounding the Washington County jail, here is a brief synopsis–

Washington County’s jail is overcrowded, and they have to build a new one.  If they don’t they will be fined $10000 a day by the state.  The county wants to build the new jail in the center of Bartlesville on the west side of the railroad tracks on the south side of Adams Blvd, on a site adjacent to Dunlap Construction, which is owned by Mike Dunlap, one of the Washington County Commissioners.  The problem with the site is that it is not zoned for a jail facility.  It’s also in the only predominantly minority neighborhood in town.  The planning commission refused to rezone it, so the county appealed to the city.  In a 3-2 decision, the City Council also refused to allow the rezoning.

Now the finger pointing begins.  The county blames the city for its malfeasance in letting the situation go on as long as it has before trying to remedy it.  The neighborhood is playing the race card, accusing the county of racism by selecting the only minority neighborhood to place the jail.  The people in the city don’t want the jail in the city but outside in the country.  Question– where in the country should the jail go?

People tend to forget that Washington County is only ten miles across.  There isn’t a whole lot of places in the county that are remote enough where it wouldn’t impact someone.  I can think of two — in the Caney River floodplain along U.S. 75, or the industrial area east of Dewey.  The jail could be stuck along the state line with Kansas, because the only people impacted would be Kansans, and they, after all, are Kansans, so who cares!  It could be stuck on 4100 Rd (aka 186th St N) on the Tulsa County line, because we don’t much like Tulsa, either.  But why should the country people be penalized?  They don’t like criminals any more than the city people do.

The problem with NIMBYs (Not In My Backyard!) is that they have a lot of ideas what you can’t do, but very few of what you can.

If you don’t care about international events, now is the time to start caring.  The Russian invasion of Georgia is very very bad, like throwing fuel on a smoldering fire.  Several decades ago, there as a book that discussed possible causes for WW III, and one of those was Georgia and the oil and gas pipeline from the Caspian Sea.  On top of Georgia, throw in the Russian threat to nuke Poland if we put missiles there, and we are at a crisis unparallel since the Cuban Missile Crisis.  When it comes to their pride, the Russians are not exactly known for swallowing it and exercisng restraint (can you say World War I and World War II?).  If you believe in God, now is a time to pray that cooler heads prevail…..