Initial veggies and fruit

First of the harvest - tons of squash and zucchini to come soon.

First blueberries - need to plant some raspberries next

Impressive

Mount Hood cutting swaths through the clouds. At least I guess it's Mount Hood. It was on the right flying back from Portland.

Turd sandwich

Bunty's sammich (featured on dumps, dives, etc.) was closed, so the shuttle driver recommended Niclass' Lebanese.

35 minute wait. While waiting we went to a sketch ass bar nearby, across the street from a homeless shelter. They had lotto and the aptly named "Swill" on tap. Also featured was a vending machine with cigarettes and corn nuts.

Headed back to the lebanese place for what my colleague described as "turd on rice." I thought the food was pretty good. Not great, but decent. Standouts were the fresh baked pita and extreme garlic sauce that came with the kabob.

BBQ with fried asparagus

Lunch in Portland

Wisconsin is for LOSERS

While my travels across this "great" country have not been completely exhaustive, I have travelled to enough locales to gain a sense of the various driving habits around the country.  Drivers in the south can't merge, drivers in the North use a lot of horn, particularly in Massachussetts, where the people put in overtime to earn their "Masshole" nickname.

 

What I did not expect was psychotically aggressive driving behavior I found in Wisconsin.  Apparently, it is Wisconsin state law to leave less than 0.25 seconds between you and the car in front of you at all times.  Also, at any stop, Wisconsin drivers will honk at even a fraction of a second hesitation, even when there is a long column of oncoming traffic blocking you.    If you don't move immediately, they attempt to get around you and drive into oncoming traffic as if, in WISCONSIN, they have somewhere to be RIGHT NOW.  Get real!  Perhaps Wisconsinites just love rushing around to the next part of their dull, pathetic lives.

 

You may ask yourself why these people, who are located at least a hundred miles from the edge of nowhere, are so uptight that a millisecond of their time cannot be wasted?  After a week of observation in their native, dry, unimaginative, swill-beered, wastelandish habitat, I believe I have discovered the answer.  It is the cheese curds.  Fried chunks of what I assume is cheese that has passed it's prime.  There is some biochemical reaction such that when one ingests massive amounts of fried cheese over a period of months or years, clots form in their pea-sized brains which becomes the root of their nazi-esque patterns of violent behavior behind the wheel.

 

And believe me, these people are scarfing down the fried cheese.  Many of them have the physique of Louis Anderson if he somehow managed to kill and eat Roseanne Barr in a single sitting.  Perhaps the fat-soaked diet also feeds their urgent need to drive like total assholes for the following reason:  Their digestive tracts are in a constant state of over-lubrication, therefore they have perpetual trots and move primarily from toilet to toilet. 

 

These are the only plausible reasons that anyone in Wisconsin could be in a hurry.  Unless, of course, the rush is to get to the hospital for a triple bypass, which could be up to 50% of the population at any given moment. 

 

Fortunately for the rest of us, there is no helmet law in Wisconsin.  Out of all the bikers in Wisconsin (and there were plenty), I saw two with helmets.  Thankfully, this means Darwin should be alive and well in America's Dairyland.

Our miserable priorities

Apart the death toll of Boston but there's no massive media coverage of this. I guess criminal industrial neglect just doesn't make good TV:

Second death in Louisiana plant blast

A second man dies after an explosion that tore through a chemical plant on Thursday in the US state of Louisiana, as authorities launch an inquiry.

Read more:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22915116

Truechey, fortune cookie!

It's not real:

Inspiration in Beloit, WI

Just food for thought after a run to nowhere followed by New Glarus brew:

X marks the spot

Quote of the day . . .

"What does getting 'briefed' mean?"

Best open admission of complete incompetence I've seen - so far this week.

What Did Congress Really Know About NSA Tracking?
by Ailsa Chang

NPR - June 11, 2013

If you're a member of Congress and you didn't know about the National Security Agency's phone records program before it was disclosed last week, President Obama has this to say to you: Where have you been?...

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/06/11/190742087/what-did-congress-really-know-about-nsa-tracking?sc=17&f=1001

Spare the machete . . .

Spoil the child.