Recent Blog Entries

  • Today, inside, they dedicated a new statue of another American giant, Fredrick Douglas – a man born into slavery, but who knew instinctively that he was not born a slave. No man is. To keep a man a slave you do much the same as the cruel circus masters did to the elephant around the turn of l...
  • Wed at 6:21 AM
    Posted by Chip Murray
      “One of the virtues of being very young is that you don’t let the facts get in the way of your imagination.” – Sam Levenson, humorist I spent a couple of years in my prime in Bacliff Texas just a stones throw from Gilley’s where I discovered Willie, Waylon and...
  • June 15
    Posted by Chip Murray
    “One man with courage is a majority.” ~ Thomas Jefferson   Once upon a time I lived in the San Fernando Valley of California. One day in the middle of the afternoon I heard the dog next door barking and smelled smoke. All I remember is running through a burning house filled w...
  • June 13
    Posted by Chip Murray
    “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand!”~ Milton Friedman There are simply no words to describe the stark contrast between our lives twenty years ago with what we are all experiencing today. For one thing...
  • It seems that the scandals just keep on coming. First, Americans are abandoned to die in a terrorist attack in Benghazi and the American people are lied to about the attack by the President and members of his cabinet. All of the facts are still unknown and the cover up continues. Then we learn tha...
  • I spent this past weekend in Syracuse with family I haven’t seen in forty years, sat in the same church in the same pews I once sat next to my Grandparents in and visited their graves with my cousins and “Uncle Bill from the Hill”. Sunday was a perfectly sunny day, sandwiched in be...
  • Recent news of the NSA collecting metadata of phone calls from communication companies, along with federal law enforcement seeming to continue to press for expansion of its ability to collect personal information online without warrants, has many questioning how safe their own privacy is. Although ...
  • A great 3 part, so far, series on how the collapse of our government could affect you.   http://www.capitolhilldaily.com/2013/04/government-collapse/ http://www.capitolhilldaily.com/2013/05/federal-reserve-theft/ http://www.westernjournalism.com/depending-on-where-you-live-youre-screwed/
  • Transparency & the Rule of Law will be the Touchstones of this Presidency.~ Barack Obama, January 2009 How many of us pulled the lever for Obama five years ago hoping for a kinder, gentler, more open and inclusive America? How many of us bought into the notion that Obamacare = Compassion?...
  • June 10
    Posted by Jon McKeone
    And he doesn't even mention crime rate!  Former State Senator and Republican Cook County Board President candidate Roger Keats and his wife Tina are leaving Illinois to live in Texas. They bid farewell to their Illinois friends with the following letter.    Dear friends,  As ...

The electric fence

  • With all that is going on in our world and the general nature of this site's content being serious I thought a bit of humor would be nice.

    Here's a little something I got in email some time back. The guys will likely fall over laughing, if their sense of humor is just a tad warped. Ladies ... well ... you be the judge.

     

    We have the standard 6 ft. fence in the backyard, and a few months ago, I
    heard about burglaries increasing dramatically in the entire city. To make
    sure this never happened to me, I got an electric fence and ran a single wire
    along the top of the fence.


    Actually, I got the biggest cattle charger Tractor Supply had made for 26
    miles of fence. I then used an 8 ft. long ground rod, and drove it 7.5 feet
    into the ground. The ground rod is the key, with the more you have in the
    ground, the better the fence works.

    One day I'm mowing the back yard with my cheapo Wal-Mart 6 hp big wheel push
    mower. The hot wire is broken and laying out in the yard. I knew for a fact
    that I unplugged the charger. I pushed the mower around the wire and reached
    down to grab it, to throw it out of the way.

    It seems as though I hadn't remembered to unplug it after all.

    Now I'm standing there, I've got the running lawnmower in my right hand and
    the 1.7 giga-volt fence wire in the other hand. Keep in mind the charger is
    about the size of a marine battery and has a picture of an upside down cow on
    fire on the cover.

    Time stood still!

    The first thing I notice is my pecker trying to climb up the front side of my
    body. My ears curled downwards and I could feel the lawnmower ignition firing
    in the backside of my brain. Every time that Briggs & Stratton rolled over, I
    could feel the spark in my head. I was literally at one with the engine.

    It seems as though the fence charger and the piece-of-crap lawnmower were
    fighting over who would control my electrical impulses.

    Science says you cannot crap, pee, and vomit at the same time. I beg to
    differ. Not only did I do all three at once, but my bowels emptied 3
    different times in less than half of a second. It was a Matrix kind of bowel
    movement, where time is creeping along and you're all leaned back and BAM BAM
    BAM you just crap your pants 3 times. It seemed like there
    were minutes in between but in reality it was so close together it was like
    exhaust pulses from a big block Chevy turning 8 grand.

    At this point I'm about 30 minutes (maybe 2 seconds) into holding onto the
    fence wire. My hand is wrapped around the wire palm down so I can't let go. I
    grew up on a farm so I know all about electric fences ... but Dad always had
    those little junk chargers made by International or whoever that were like 9
    volts and just kinda tickled.

    This one I could not let go of. The 8 foot long ground rod is now accepting
    signals from me through the permadamp Ark-La-Tex river bottom soil. At this
    point I'm thinking I'm going to have to just man up and take it, until the
    lawnmower runs out of gas.

    'Damn!,' I think, as I remember I just filled the tank! Now the lawnmower is
    starting to run rough. It has settled into a loping run pattern as if it had
    some kind of big lawnmower race cam in it.

    Covered in poop, pee, and with my vomit on my chest I think 'Oh God please let
    me die .... Pleeeeaze . But nooooo, it settles into the rough lumpy cam idle
    nicely and remains there, like a big bore roller cam EFI motor waiting for the
    go command from its owner's right foot.

    So here I am in the middle of July, 104 degrees, 80% humidity, standing in my
    own backyard, begging God to kill me.


    God did not take me that day .... he left me there covered in my own fluids to
    writhe in the misery my own stupidity had created.

    I honestly don't know how I got loose from the wire ....

    I woke up laying on the ground hours later. The lawnmower was beside me, out
    of gas. It was later on in the day and I was sunburned.


    There were two large dead grass spots where I had been standing, and then
    another long skinny dead spot where the wire had laid while I was on the
    ground still holding on to it. I assume I finally had a seizure and in the
    resulting thrashing had somehow let go of the wire.


    Upon waking from my electrically induced sleep I realized a few things:

    1 - Three of my teeth seem to have melted.

    2 - I now have cramps in the bottoms of my feet and my right butt cheek (not
    the left, just the right).

    3 - Poop, pee, and vomit when all mixed together, do not smell as bad as you
    might think.

    4 - My left eye will not open.

    5 - My right eye will not close.

    6 - The lawnmower runs like a sumbitch now. Seriously! I think our little
    session cleared out some carbon fouling or something, because it was better
    than new after that.

    7 - My nuts are still smaller than average.

    8 - I can turn on the TV in the game room by crossing my eyes, while thinking
    of the number 4 (I still don't understand this!).

    That day changed my life. I now have a new found respect for things. I
    appreciate the little things more, and now I always triple check to make sure
    the fence is unplugged before I mow.

    The good news, is that if a burglar does try to come over the fence, I can
    clearly visualize what my security system will do to him, and THAT gives me a
    warm and fuzzy feeling all over, which also reminds me to triple check before
    I mow!

Comments

1 comment
  • Mark Wilson and Doug Walters like this
  • Mark Wilson
    Mark Wilson Doggone Jon: the mental picture that tome painted was vivid, I could hear that top fuel, supercharged Briggs & Stratton sitting there idling, just waiting for someone to give it WOT and let it really roar for a bit, all while the operator was trying t...  more
    October 3, 2012