Zeke Blowing Out Candles

Zeke's Party

A Guide to Etiquette and Grammar for Facebook/Twitter Users (and other electronic media users)

It's not rocket science. Matter of fact, it's the language you speak every day and butcher constantly on your tweets, status updates and other media outings. You're starting to get on my nerves. Yes I am ranting but did EVERYONE sleep through 4th grade English class?

Here are my list of hates in the web-o-sphere:

You're is you+ are not possessive as in "your car".

You don't have to put quotes around "everything". See, it's annoying.

It's is for it+ is, not for possessive use as in "the dog picked up its bone".

If you are too tired, it is spelled t-o-o. Not t-o. If it is more than one and less than three it is t-w-o.

LOL was for chat rooms and was stupid then. Now it is what you say when you are all out of anything worthwhile to say.

I'm done with ASCII smilies and just kidding abbreviations. It's what is used when you want to be truthful and/or hurtful but don't want the person to feel bad you halitosis laden troll. :-P j/k

Three times is plenty for ha ha ha. Past that and you're just being annoying. Santa only uses ho three times so if it's good enough for Santa, it's plenty good for you.

No matter how proud you are, you are not your child. I don't remember your kid from high school so chances are if a three year old named John Smith requests to be my friend, he's getting ignored.

Ladies, it is NOT a competition to see if your ex-boyfriend's new girl is uglier than you are. Chances are, she's not so quit going through all of his photos online to look for flaws.

Guys, posing in pictures with you flexing your muscles without a shirt tells all of us you are a giant ego maniacal twit. And, you're probably not very comfortable in your own skin.

Guys, backwards hats are for catchers, umpires, photographers and guys under 30. If not one of those, flip it around playah and get back to keeping it real. You sir are past your prime.

Ladies, enough of the cell phone driving pics. There must be a better time to take pictures of yourself but please, dear God in Heaven, don't take a picture in a bathroom mirror so you can see it.

There is different than their and they're. I won't explain it because you should already know it.

I get it. You and the rest of the world hates the new Facebook. Everyone does. But they will keep changing it and you will keep using it so can everyone just shut it about Facebook.

And lastly, I hate rants from people who act like know it alls. Don't you?

Thanks.

Terrorism: Is It Only Jihad?

I'll warn you ahead of time, this post is a bit of a rant. It may even garner attention from the US Government or CIA, which is fine. I want to bring something to the forefront that has been a bit forgotten.

Terrorism.

And this is the part where you think I am admittable to Arkham Asylum. "How can he think we have forgotten about terrorism? It's on the news every day!"

Terrorism is more than wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and falling towers and plane crashes. Terrorism is more than a subset of extreme Islam. I would even question if most Muslims consider these terrorists to be followers of Islam at all. Do Christians consider KKK and Arian Nation members Christians? I can tell you the members of those groups do. How does that sit with you?

When Big Country (Texas) congressional hopeful Canyon Clowdus says he wants to ban Muslim immigration all together, I think we have a problem. For sure I think he does. Xenophobia anyone?

I think we haven't remembered enough history. Timothy McVeigh was a catholic. He killed 168 people, injured over 450 and 19 of the deaths were children in a day care. Three months after he died of lethal injection, three planes dove into targets that shifted our focus from global and domestic terrorism to one of Middle Eastern Islamic Jihad.

While domestic terrorism is considered uncommon, it is important to know and remember that it happens. Here are some of the incidents known to be done by American citizens:

Bombing of Los Angeles Times building October 1, 1910 (21 casualties)

Wall Street bombing September 16, 1920 (38 casualties, 400 injured)

Unabomber attacks 1978-1995 (3 casualties, 25 injured)

Oklahoma City bombing April 19,1995 (168 casualties, 450 injured)

Centennial Olympic Park bombing July 27, 1996 (2 casualties, 111 injured)

2001 anthrax attacks Sept. 18, 2001 and following (5 casualties, 17 injured)

Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting June 10, 2009 (1 casualty)

I pray we will never see domestic terrorism again. I do, but I also realize the number of people out there who are in an almost cult-like group who feel the world is at ruin and they must destroy it. The KKK has an estimated 5,000-8,000 members over 179 chapters. It's not only sad, it's scary. My hope is that focus will not be so near sighted when searching for threats to our homeland but peripheral in view to keep us all safe from further harm.

Before we deport those without the same religious views as ourselves who are law abiding citizens, let's try to get a handle on our own extremists who claim Christian religious views who are not.

At Long Last....

Meeting Gary Yamamoto

Places become dear to us after we make memories there. The more memories you make, the dearer it becomes. Such a place existed until very recently for my family but me in particular. It still exists, but its dearness and my enamor for it have vanished. Another place and more accurately, a family, have taken its place. The following is the true life story of how I accidentally met the finest fishing couple in the world, Gary and Beverly Yamamoto.

The place I used to visit is a quaint fishing lodge. Nestled away in the piney woods of East Texas, I thought it had it all. And, for awhile, it did. The people there were nice, the fishing was good and it was quiet. The amenities were top notch and the price was pretty good too. The thing about goodness that foils the plot every time though is it can be ruined by the wrong people. The lodge, we’ll call it Lodge D, changed management this year. Was there an update on their website? No. Did they tell me when I placed a deposit? No. It wasn’t until all six of us arrived after a four hour drive that we discovered the amenities we had previously had access to, we no longer could get to without paying additional money. Turns out, we should have been charged the last EIGHT TIMES we had gone and used them but never were. It isn’t stated in the brochure. It was never told to us until after paying in full and on site. I won’t go into great detail here but my family was about six seconds from a nuclear meltdown. When I inquired about why things had changed, the answer, “You should have always been paying” kept coming up. Not good enough. “Can you call someone?” I asked. “No,” came the answer. Needless to say, my three day vacation and $600 just went poof. My wife is crying. The kids a screaming because they see a lake, want to play and are getting strapped back into the car with another long car ride in their near future.

In my professional life, I problem solve. Problems arise, fires usually caused by tempers and misinformation and I put them out. This was no different. I look at my cell phone with one bar of extended range service (think corn can telephone quality) and get on the internet searching for any fishing lodge places in the near vicinity. I am having no luck and then a memory pops into my head. I’ll try to find a number. 411 gets me the number and dials. One ring, two, three…….seven rings and no answer. I hang up, upset, irritable and lost as to what to do. “No.This will not go down like this,” I’m thinking. One more call to that number. One ring, two…. “Hello?” Sweet. A Voice. A Person. Things are getting better.

I ask the inn keeper if they have any available rooms. She asks if I mean for tonight. I say yes and she says, “No, not right now. Why do you ask? It seems kind of late in the day for a reservation.” I explain my horrid situation and she says to hang on for a minute. She comes back and says, “Why don’t you guys come on and stay with us.” I ask some rate questions and about the grounds and we cover the basics. I ask a couple of pointed questions about certain amenities and she tells me, “Honey, this is my house. Not just a place to come stay but my house. If you want to do something and I’m ok with it guess what, you get to do it. I’m the boss here.” I like that. Straight to the boss.

At this point I know her name is Beverly but that’s really all I know. She tells me about the fishing on their place and how her husband is a professional fisherman. I ask her who her husband is and she says “Why, Gary Yamamoto of course!” Fireworks are going off in my head. Gary Yamamoto is my fishing idol! I use almost exclusively his soft baits and topwaters. Unbelievable. She asks if I am familiar with Gary’s baits and I tell her everything about the baits I love. She tells me to wait a minute. “You need to tell this to Gary, hold on.” She hands the phone to the man himself and we talk for about two minutes about the big fish I caught on the Sugoi Splash. He very calmly agrees and says, “That’s a good bait.” We talk for another two minutes and then I go back to Beverly.

We finish rounding up the details with directions, I go get my refund from Lodge D and we head on the hour trip to Nowheresville, TX. The road to get back to this place is one lane. As we round the corner, this beautifully landscaped ranch appears. Lakes, cattle, everything a guy could want. We were here. The home of Gary and Beverly Yamamoto.
She shows us our rooms and she asks, “Do you think you might want to do some fishing this evening?” I thought about it for about .0001 second and said sure. Then she said something I’ll never forget, “Let me go tell Gary you’re here. He said he wanted to show you a new bait and hook he was working on.

More fireworks. Kid at Christmas. Nervous. And then he appeared. Just a normal guy.

He said, “Hi, I’m Gary. Good to meet you.”

Through the nerves I introduced myself and complimented his beautiful home. We chatted a few minutes and then he offered to take me fishing on one of his private lakes. A lake Roland Martin has filmed a few shows on. Gary Yamamoto and ME!

Again I take about .0001 seconds to think and say sure. I’d love to do that.

We fished for about four hours, swapping stories about fishing, life, kids, business, cows, you name it. He was so easy to talk to and wanted to know as much about what I did as I did of him. We probably caught 60 or 70 fish and of course had his fishing partner Precious with us in the boat. It started getting dark and we called it a day. A day to remember forever.

The next few days I ate several meals with Gary and Beverly, chatting just like old friends and enjoying some cooler than normal weather. He told me about and then treated me to some of his 100% Kobe beef that he raises. BEST.HAMBURGER.EVER. I bought 12 pounds when we left. It wasn’t so much buying as begging to buy.

On the day before we left, my wife and mother in law were having breakfast with Gary and Beverly (who made fresh muffins every morning!) and talking about my trip with Gary. He told her, “I had a really good time fishing with your husband. He’s a really good fisherman.”

She told me this later that day and I about hit the moon.
It’s only been a little over two weeks since my first visit (Gary invited me back in the spring to go chase some big fish with him before they spawn), but it seems like yesterday. I have a few pictures to post soon but the images in my mind can’t be done justice.

So after all that, it would be very hard to say Gary and Beverly are not the finest fishing couple in the world.

Anna Kate Video

Fact or Fiction: 50 Million People Without Healthcare

Every stump speech, every health care forum, basically every opportunity that President Obama has, he tells us that there are 50 million Americans without health care. By health care, he means some type of insurance. That sounds like a lot to me, so it's time to dig and find out where exactly that number comes from and is it entirely accurate. 

The number of people with health insurance coverage increased by 1.4 million to 247.3 million between 2004 and 2005, and the number without such coverage rose by 1.3 million to 46.6 million (from 15.6 percent in 2004 to 15.9 percent in 2005). Original Here

So far, 50 million may be a rounded but close to accurate number. I need to know more though. Do rich people pay for insurance or are they fee for service? Do we count illegal immigrants in this number? They are counted in the census so it would be assumed reasonably yes. Let's dig.

Government estimates as of January 2005 place the number of undocumented immigrants at 10.5 million Original Here

So if we take the January 2005 numbers and use the same growth formula as is being done with the uninsured inflation number (46.6 to 50 in three years) about 6.8% and apply it over a 4 year period at 2.25% per year, we get 11.45 million illegal immigrants if we allow constant growth as done in the Obama estimate. 50 million -11.45 million illegal immigrants leaves 38.55 million Americans without health insurance. 

That takes care of the immigration numbers but what of the elective uninsured? Lets dig.

Uninsured Family Members in Thousands Based on Income  Original Here page 29

Household Income                                2005     2006 

Less than $25,000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14,452   13,933 

$25,000 to $49,999 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14,651   15,319 

$50,000 to $74,999 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7,826    8,459 

$75,000 or more . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7,886    9,283 

If you do the math here with a reasonable assumption that households from 50K and up can afford some type of health insurance and are electing not to that gives us a staggering 17.7 million who are opting out. 

Here's the new total: 20.85 million.

I think the 20.85 million number is relatively attainable and accurate. The 50 million, not so much. If 17.7 million are opting out, why are we going to develop a program for them? If they are not paying taxes and not citizens, why are we developing a program for the illegal immigrants?

I don't mind helping my fellow man but I won't foot the bill for illegal immigrants and people who don't want it. 

President Obama, tell it like it is, not exaggerated for effect and the check is in the mail. 

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