A few things jumped out at me this morning while reading the fish-wrap. Gas thieves suck the farmers dry caught my attention. The second was naming a stretch of Highway 178 the Kern County Deputy William "Joe" Hudnall Jr. Memorial Highway. We have road blues today. Too bad.

All this got me thinking that politics and the gas crunch have really put a crimp into a serious American pastime, cruising in the automobile. In days of yore great tunes flooded the airwaves with songs about cars and the road. Chuck Berry has a bunch of my favorite tunes in this sub-genre of road worship. No Particular Place To Go, You Can't Catch Me, Nadine and Maybeline. A person cannot help but feel good listening to these true classics. The Beach Boys put out a bunch of car and cruising tunes with Shut Down, 409, I Get Around, Little Deuce Coup and Little Old Lady From Pasadena coming immediately to mind. The Beatles had Drive My Car and Why Don't We Do It In The Road?.

Steppenwolf made a career out of Born To Be Wild. The Byrds had Easy Rider. Foghat had a couple of great  road tunes with  Highway Killing Me and Drivin' Wheel. Rambling Man, Key To the Highway, Making Thunderbirds, and I Can't Drive 55 are a few other road classics.  Even Jimi Hendrix did Highway Chile.

Maybe you've got a few great road songs to share with the world today to get the bad-news beast off the billboards. "There's too many Datsuns in this town." -NY-

Well, the Supreme Court of the land made it official today. There is no justice in America. Money talks and the rest of you will have to walk.  The environment and the little people working where accidents can happen are exploited once again for the sake of executive and shareholder profit.

It has been nearly twenty years since the Exxon Valdez dumped more than 11 million gallons into Alaska's Prince William Sound after running aground.  A lot of trials  have been held over the matter  over this  lengthy period of time. We have watched  the original Alaska  judgement  of $5 billion in 1994 get whittled to $4.5 billion by a federal judge, and then to $2.5 billion by an appeals court a few year later. The final act in this play closes with punitive damages set at $507 million. It takes about two days to bring in $2.5 billion  in revenue for Exxon.

I was a pool guy for years. Not the business entrepeneur driving from one home to the other treating and cleaning  those submerged ponds for big bucks and early retirement,  but the dude who had a pool to relax in for a few months after working my butt off over it every day of the year.

I've used Polaris types of skimming devices, and the Creepy Crawlers, to help maintain the purity of the pools. The Polaris left such hard water marks on the windows and patio furniture from its backspray that it cost me more in scrubbing and replacement than the time it saved me from vacuuming and brushing.  The Creepy always had  some pressure issues that I had to deal with, or some dingle ball problem from Liquid Amber trees in the vicinity that gave little respite from the daily chores. Don't get me started on Cottonwood trees or Italian Cypress droppings that always managed to populate the surface and slowly cloud the waters.

Chemicals, like chlorine and acid,  were daily requirements that had to be mixed in proper proportion to maintain the harmonic balance of the pond.

All of this work to stop the scourge and killer of the pool experience: Algae. I hated that stuff and would scrub it with a variety of brushes, or dive  to areas where it was forming and with dry chlorine to rub on the spot  the one chemical that slowed its inexhorable march of total pool domination. The stuff always came back. It was tougher than Iron Man.

Now I read that algae is my friend. After all these years of battling, arguing and all out war it seems algae could potentially solve the energy crisis.  I'm looking at algae with new respect and hope these days.  Check out the following link  all you pool warriors, and/or just the curious, if you want to see what great potential algae has for us.

http://www.valcent.net/s/Ec...

We just moved past another meaningless Hallmark Holiday marking another notch on this year's calendar. Quite a weekend for brutality and mayhem in the Central Valley to highlight the feel good atmosphere that Dad's Day always produces. There was a particularly disgusting affair that took place just outside Turlock on Sunday.

Well, those are just two indications of how frustrated, crazy, malicious and weird the world is today. You can read it all day long on these blogs, as people continue to criticize one another over some foreign or domestic slight, and no real progress or consensus is seen on any important initiative. Given that today's world is geared strictly for the visual, I offer today an honest look at two big problems we face, and a thoughtful proposal from an individual, Joe American, caught on youtube to energize your thinking caps. The clip is about 9 minutes in length and is totally non-partisan. Joe does not belong to any political party and endorses no candidate. If you have 9 minutes to chew over a decent starting point for dialog check out this clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

If you are just down for insulting one side or the other please ignore this post and get a life.