Friday Night Music

Since I liked the movie and the song, this week I'm going with Ryan Bingham and "The Weary Kind." Give the man a listen.

The Week in Rearview

We had a pretty good snow Tuesday, for this part of the world at least. Five or six inches. A lot of people wound up in the ditch. I was going down the highway and saw something big. When I got closer I saw it was a 3/4 ton Dodge that had slid into the ditch while pulling a big module builder. A second 3/4 ton Dodge had gotten stuck trying to pull the first one out. I couldn't resist, so I pulled over and drug the whole convoy out. Four wheel drive is a useful tool.

Crazy Heart

I saw Crazy Heart over the weekend. It was more than worth seeing. I'd recommend it. Like so many other great movies, Robert Duvall is in it. Jeff Bridges wears the part of Bad Blake like I wear my brown shirts. Blake is a man confronting the life he has lead and the mistakes he has made, putting one foot in front of the other, for better or worse. Plus, it turns out that Bridges actually makes a pretty good bar room singer. He sings a couple songs himself, and I was impressed, which got me to thinking.

Technically speaking, most of my favorite singers don't really have text book voices. They don't have huge ranges. They wouldn't make it far on American Idol. As a matter of fact, I've heard various ignorant people say Robert Earl Keen is a bad singer. I've heard the same thing of Jerry Jeff Walker and Chris Knight. None of those guys went off for vocal training at some east coast school. Music moguls didn't pluck them out of the mall and make stars out of them because they fit an image. They picked up guitars and started writing about life. And what they and others like them have in common is that they can sing their stories as if they lived them. Heck, Jerry Jeff wrote "Mr. Bojangles" about a man he met while spending the night in jail in New Orleans. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure Chris Knight didn't live through "Back Down the River." If he had I doubt he'd have made a written public confession in a song. But he still sings it as if he means it. And that's what Jeff Bridges manages in "Crazy Heart." He didn't actually write the title song, Ryan Bingham did. He's been married 33 years and has three grown daughters. He hasn't lived the song, but he still manages to play the role as if he has. That's what makes a good entertainer. I've paid money at the door to see Bingham down town at the Blue Light. If Jeff Bridges ever decided on a career change and found himself on stage playing a guitar in West Texas I'd put my money down and buy a ticket for him too.

Life is Good

I got to see my Great-great-granddad's Colt Lightning last night. I had previously mentioned it as being a Single Action Army in this post, but turns out I was wrong. Either way, it was pretty cool to hold.

Friday Night Music

I'm feeling festive, here's Paul Eason singing "One More Dance." Hope everbody likes it.

Weekend Menaces

Psycho people will always be a menace. Thinking somebody else will protect you can be a menace. Believing a sheet of paper can protect you can be a menace. Not being able to protect yourself will always be a menace. Buy plenty of ammo, practice for everything, think through any potential situation you run across, and stay prepared.

Friday Night Music

This is another song I heard for the first time on my vacation a couple weeks ago and have been listening to a lot lately. It's by Lyle Lovett and is called "Natural Forces." As a guy who covers a lot of ground under the open sky, I like it. Can't say the same for Mr. Lovett's barber though.

The Week in Rearview

That would be the aforementioned four bale trailer, hay already dumped off, being pulled back to the barn.

Going Green

Uncle saw the same commercial as Mad Ogre, and he didn't like it either.

The commercial should have ended with a guy in a big ass Ford Earthf----r that gets 5 miles per gallon with seats made from baby seals blowing past the roadblock billowing smoke. And, for effect, the driver flips them off. I’d buy that car. Not this little compliant pansy car. You appeal to Americans in an ad by showing rebellion and general orneriness. Not passiveness, compliance, or sheepishness.

It didn't take long before reports of this beast started coming in from the wild.

Being an outdoorsy type, I decided to share some of my experience with the creature, performing its namesake act.


Here we have one preparing to burn a lot of diesel. To produce even more hippy tears, the boomlift could have been left running on the trailer.


This is a good example of the Ford EarthF---er upsetting the natural preferences of hippies, not only by directly burning diesel and producing stuff to float up into the atmosphere, but also by providing 20,000 pounds of concrete to replace some of Mother Earth's grass and dirt, all just to put up a fence to prevent our animal friends from roaming as their natures intended. Notice the gray clouds, Gaia was sad.


Here we have a pair of the creatures actually making Mother Earth cry and fight back. Not only were they creating hazardous emissions, but they were also involved in the process of using our peaceful bovine friends for non-vegetarian purposes. To make matters even worse, they were subjugating our equine and canine brothers to accomplish their vile deeds.


As you can see, Mother Earth tried to ensnare the more distant Ford to prevent this tearful act. She came close, but was unsuccessful when the Fords brought in back up in the form of a John Deere EvironmentDespoiler.

Blogroll update

I'm adding Farmgirl, of Tractor Tracks, to the blogroll. She's a wonderful writer and interesting person who I've enjoyed reading for a long time, but have always followed Lawdog's link to get there. Since the world is imperfect, Lawdog doesn't post every day, and so I don't read Farmgirl as often as I should. Problem solved.

Wow

I came across this earlier and was a more than a little bit amazed.

First of all, Holy Cow! Clone a Neanderthal? Seriously? We could do that? I'm impressed.

Secondly, Holy Cow, there are a lot of things to consider here. Cloning a Neanderthal? Has nobody seen Jurassic Park? Science gets out of hand, and there are consequences. Is it morally right to bring a person into this world without any sort of similar people, let alone a family? Would it be raised in a lab someplace? What sort of life would it be able to lead? Would he/she be able to live the same way anybody else can in our society? How well could it blend in? How about society? We've produced Paris Hilton, what would we do to a poor Neanderthal?

This is the most interesting article I've encountered in a while. Wow, on every possible level.

Sparse Hunting

A lot of ammunition is easier to find now than it was a year ago, but I'm still having hard time finding .357 in any sort of quantity. Good thing I've got other calibers to shoot.

Quote of The Day

I missed most of the Super Bowl driving back to town last night, but George, the Mad Ogre himself, watched the game and saw the commercials. He had this to say about some hippy car commercial.

Green doesn't sell except to Liberals and Liberals only want to drive Priuses and Subaru Outbacks. Ford needs to come out with a counter Campaign. BLACK and RED... Because those sell cars. Talk to Car Guys, and they will, in short order, talk about Performance Cars... and you ask them what color... Black or Red. Crank up some AC-DC playing Back in Black with the image of the new Mustang GT (with some new factory independent rear suspension) power sliding across the screen leaving a cloud of smoke... with the tag line “Let the Hippies buy more Carbon Credits” as the car roars off into the distance. Tell me that wouldn't sell some cars. Audi and Toyota can be as Green as they want... American Car Makers need to do what they do best – Being BadAss. Because that's what sells American Car.

Back Seat Driving

This weekend, I found myself once again hauling a four bale hay trailer through a muddy, sloppy mess. Afterwards, I unhitched and chauffeured my Granddad and uncle around. Both gave me lots of helpful backseat advice of the "This part is rough, slow down a little, not that slow, speed up or we're going to be walking" variety. This went on until my Granddad suggested a detour, and when we got around a corner reached a swamp. Seeing our situation, my Granddad said "Oh. You're on your own now Grandson."

Weekend Menaces

As I've mentioned before, people who aren't responsible for their dogs are a menace to both dogs and bystanders.

What caliber for Giant Squid?

Large, speedy, carnivorous felines can't be healthy to have roaming around.

Sometimes, you need a bigger boat.

Friday Night Music

I heard this one while I was off having fun hunting up bulls. It's by a guy out of Fort Worth named Joey Green. Here it is, "Natchitoches Blues"

For The Curious...

Winchester Ranger 230 grain .45+p was carried on the aforementioned outing. I've been very happy with it on hogs, and it has penetrated the skull very well putting down crippled cattle. And no, Winchester hasn't paid me or given me anything for this endorsement, they don't even want me buying the stuff with my own money.

What I Did On My January Vacation

I know it's been a while since my last post, but I've got a pretty good excuse. I've been off gathering cattle.

My family has a place in Hamilton County. The north end of the place is rough and hard to get to. The brush and terrain make it hard to drive the cattle at all. So it turns out that there is some really wild stuff living over there, stuff that has never been caught, or four year old steers that have been caught just once. We've adapted our methods to get them gathered. We put out a round bale as bait and then another guy and I drove in and darted some of the wilder stuff and then radioed in for dogs and cowboys once the herd got spooked. It worked pretty well.


One of the trailers has a winch in the front. After they get tied down, they get hooked to the winch and untied. Once they get off the ground they get drug in. From there we can transfer them to a steel stock trailer when the winch trailer gets full.



We were well on our way to getting the whole bunch taken care of when the rains came. And kept coming. The six inch rain gauge was full before very long. This lead to some complications. The creek got up and we couldn't get the trucks across to load anything. I managed to back up the muddy hill with my stock trailer and get out. Paul managed the same with the winch trailer. My brother did not manage the same.

I tried pulling him out with my truck.




That was a no go, so out came the tractor, right as the rains got heavy.

That made all the difference. Anyway, the flood was the end of our bull catching adventure.

There were some exciting mishaps along the way. Paul took his trailer over a terrace and managed to un-attach it.


Even before the flood came, the creek was slick and steep. The entire trail to the north patch is rough and involves crossing two more creeks. We made it several times, pulling gooseneck trailers. After the flood, there was still hay that had to be put out using a four bale gooseneck trailer. I know Brigid likes her Chevy and JayG likes his Dodge, but for hard use in rough terrain, neither of the two .gov owned manufacturers build anything that will stand up to it like an F250. That answers that question.

I had one occasion to draw my sidearm. Wes and I darted a black dagger horn bull and had to follow it into the thick stuff. Bulls really aren't that distantly related to Cape Buffalo, with all of the exciting Peter Hathway Capstick imagery that that brings to mind. We found him but he wasn't all the way out. We were trying to tie him down when he came to and got up quickly. I was carrying my favorite commander length 1911 in an El Paso Saddlery tortilla holster and made a nice, smooth, four point draw and had that front sight lined up and ready by the time he was up and decided on flight over fight. I was proud that practice had paid off and my draw was smooth when it mattered.

Even if the productivity did end a little sooner than I would have liked, it was a pretty good working vacation.