Cowboy Coffee

On one of the forums I frequent, I found this recipe that someone posted.  The post is quoted in its entirety below the *s.  I'll have to give it a try sometime.

* * * * * * *

I drink a couple of cups a week... usually black. But when camping we just throw the grounds in the water, boil and settle the grounds with cold water. It's horrible. Here's the recipe!

Cowboy coffee isn't known for tasting good, because many people make it using this recipe. If you want to taste truly awful coffee, just follow these steps:

1. Disregard the coffee-to-water ratio guidelines, because the coffee won’t be good enough for the ratio to matter. Just add some grounds to a pot and fill it with water.
2. Place the pot on the fire and bring the water to boil. When done correctly, the grounds will float to the top, so most of them aren’t being brewed, and the pot will boil over.
3. After burning your hand while trying to adjust the pot so that it doesn’t boil over again, let the “coffee” sit for a few more minutes.
4. Remove the pot from the fire, and sprinkle a handful of cold water into it. Not only will the cold water help the grounds settle on the bottom, but it will also give the appearance that you know what you’re doing. Perhaps you’ll recover some of the dignity you lost in Step 3.
5. Serve the coffee. There are two strategies for this step. You might pour your cup first, so you have as few grounds as possible in your mug. Alternatively, you can save yours till last, hoping that the coffee will be gone by the time you get to your cup.

KMOX Radio, St. Louis

That one night back in high school where I discovered that I could tune in distant radio stations at night will forever remain special to me.  I was able to get all sorts of stations.  WCFL in Chicago.  CBM in Montreal.  WWWE in Cleveland.  WWVA in Wheeling.  WJR Detroit.  And more were to follow that night.

The prize catch of them all was KMOX St. Louis.  That was the most distant signal I got that night, and certainly the westernmost.  I remembered that station from a road trip when I was not even a teenager, as that the family favorite baseball team was the St. Louis Cardinals, and their games were carried on KMOX.  On one trip we stopped to take in a Cardinals game.  This was back in the era of Lou Brock and Bob Gibson.  Curt Flood and Orlando Cepeda.  Nelson Briles and Steve Carlton.  They were America's team in their day.

We had to resume the trip, so after catching the last half of the first game (it was a double header) and the first half of the second game, it was back on the road.  We listened to the game on KMOX as we continued on to Kansas.

I hadn't heard KMOX since then, until that one night.  KMOX was the standout catch, and I hadn't heard KMOX since then..........until last night.

I've been spending some nights tuning in those distant stations.  The radioscape here, of course, is different.  I've been getting stations in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah, and other places.  Stations from Mexico have been tuned in and identified (my Spanish has gotten quite rusty over the years but it has been a help).  But the one station I had been most wanting to get, KMOX, just wasn't coming in.  I have checked on those nights set aside for listening, checking 1120 kHz, but nothing.  Oh, there is a station in Utah on that frequency that I can get almost every night, but I would null them out to see if KMOX was there.

Last night wasn't set aside for radio listening.  Several nights are spent laying upstairs in bed with Sheila.  She's watching her favorite shows and I'm working on some favorite novels.  Lots of time we talk.  I enjoy being with her and I very much enjoy being married to her.

Anyway, it was time to check the garage, and I thought, I'm going to go out there and turn on the radio to see if KMOX is there.  It was almost the top of the hour, when station IDs take place, and I didn't want to miss out if they were there.

This time, there was a signal on 1120.  Utah had been nulled out and the signal that I had was weak to fair, but copyable.  I thought I had heard a mention of KMOX but I wasn't sure.  There were some local commercials, some local weather, and I'm thinking, that might be the type of weather one would expect in St Louis this time of year.

I continued listening, and then got a definite ID.  It was them!  I was hearing KMOX for the first time since high school!  I then came back inside, and making use of a distance calculator, I learned that they were some 20 miles further away than KOMO out of Seattle, which I got a week or so ago.  KMOX held in steady, but I couldn't stay long as that I was tired and bedtime was fast approaching.

Long distance radio listening, called DXing within the hobby circles, is one hobby that I've indulged in off and on over the years.  Winter is the "season" for AM broadcast band DXing, and I've been doing plenty of it during this sabbatical.  Logging KMOX here has been a goal since I've resumed this, and I figured sooner or later I would get them.  KMOX has been heard in Europe and in South Africa.  I knew they would be heard here sooner or later.

Now if I can only get a positive log on WWL from New Orleans.

So Why Did The Donald Win?

The most interesting election in my lifetime is now behind us, and we're watching a transition get under way.  There has been lots of interesting speculation on talk radio, the newspapers, internet forums, and the foreign press.  Some folks are looking at at what went wrong, while others are trying to figure out what went right.  Why did Trump win?  I've touched on it in my previous entry, but I want to expound on this further.  Here are the reasons why, in no particular order.

(1)  Hillary Clinton wasn't exactly likeable.  Ever since she became prominent in 1992, half the country has hated her.  Books I've read on 1980s Arkansas politics strongly suggest she wasn't exactly well liked there either.  When the rest of the nation knew about her, there was a lot of chatter about her being Co-President.  I remember a conversation with a taxi driver in Rome that took place in 1995, who made a snide remark about "Presidente Hillary".  So, even the Europeans could see right through her.

(2) Serial betrayal of their base by the Republican Establishment.  For years we heard their message that if we would just give them a chance, we would get a lot of great results.  They promised us conservative judges.  We got David Souter on the Supreme Court, and a Harriet Miers nomination.  They promised us a secure border.  They tried to join forces with the Democrats and force "amnesty" down our throats instead.  They said they would defend the Constitution, and instead we got the Senate Majority leader Trent Lott saying that talk radio ran the country and that something needed to be done about that.  It got well past the point to where they could be trusted, much less given credibility.  All members of the Republican Establishment wanted President Obama to "succeed", and many of them voted for Hillary.

(3) Widespread hate for Organized Media and a repudiation of their way of thinking.  Rush Limbaugh calls them the "drive-bys"; I call them "Organized Media" and have for years as that it connotates a sinister purpose like the term "Organized Crime" does.  Organized Media talks down to us.  They act like they are visionary, that they know what's best for us, that we're just a bunch of stupid uneducated dumptrucks who need our freedoms taken away since we don't know how to properly use them.

They are in meltdown over this election.  They are also in denial.  You have Van Jones telling CNN that this was a "whitelash", which is a cheap shot and an attempt to suggest that there was a racial component involved in supporting Trump.  He has to know that this is a cheap shot, but he runs with it; CNN lets him run with it, and they arrogantly think that we're too stupid to figure all of this out.

I despise Organized Media, they are the ones misusing their freedoms.  In spite of that statement, I honestly want them to continue going down this road in the hopes that more of the masses will wake up to what they're doing.

(4) Trump connected to the people.  No, he didn't connect to that part of the country that voted for Hillary, but he connected to that part of the country that counted.  I wasn't on board his train at the start.  I voted for someone else in the primary.  I wasn't sure he was for real.  He is still technically an unknown quantity to me, but I found that preferable to a known evil, and that's why I voted for him.

Now I want him to make America great again.

(5) The country has been heading on the wrong direction, and you'd have to be stoned on marijuana to not be aware of this.  Really, are millions of more Americans on food stamps going in the right direction?  Home ownership at a 51 year low an improvement?  Well, that would be seen as an improvement by those who think that the State should own all property and distribute it as they see fit, but in my mind that view can only be seriously entertained by those who think they are entitled to assets that they were too lazy to earn.

(6) Multinational trade agreements are much more of an issue than Organized Media and the fatass politicians realize.  Now personally, I think a free trade agreement between the United States and Canada makes a lot of sense.  Standard of living of the two nations is practically on par.  NAFTA?  There is no doubt that Mexico is still a developing country, and if she would make proper use of her resources and rid herself of institutionalized corruption, she would be a great asset to a trade pact.

Mexico's not there yet.

(7) This was a repudiation of the Obama agenda.  Trump won the primary because his supporters knew that Jeb wouldn't fix it, and Rubio wasn't going to stop.  Jeb was proud of the similarity of stances that he had to Hillary, and Rubio was fixated on shoving "amnesty" down our throats.  We didn't want more of the same!  We wanted it to end!

(8) Big Hollywood actors threatening to leave the country.  We heard this in 2000, and they didn't leave.  We heard it again in 2004, and we gave them another reason to leave.  We were hearing it again this time around.

Well what the hell were we supposed to do?  Give in to these Hollywood millionaires and beg them to stay?  Do they really think that the rest of us are just as stupid as their fans who fawn all over them?

This time, will you just shut the firetruck up and make good on your promise?  Leave, and don't come back!


If I think about it long enough, I could come up with some more reasons, but I think I will instead observe our sorry-ass Organized Media wring their hands and moan about how the rest of us (that is, the real world) just doesn't get it.  

The Donald Wins It!

I didn't think it was really going to happen.  Organized Media went all out for Hillary, as did the welfare class, the Silicon Valley titans, and even some members of the Republican Establishment.  I honestly thought that there would be some vote-rigging in five states.  My home state, as I write this, hasn't yet been called.

My gut feel in this, is that this is more of a rebellion against the Establishment than it is support for Trump.  Well, there are also a lot of people out there who don't like Hillary.  Some in her own party either stayed home and voted for others, while others voted for Trump more in order to keep her out of the White House.

Not being able to return to the White House isn't, in my mind, going to bother Bubba any.  There's no shortage of babes out there who would try to be that one who gets to satisfy him.  Personally I have thought for a long time that he was more qualified to be an assistant manager at Burger King than he was President, but Ross Perot didn't think so and was able to siphon votes away from Bush 41.

So, what's next?

Expect a lot of university protests and riots in California.

Do not expect court filings from the Hillary camp.

Her political career is over.

As Predicted......Hillary Will Skate

I figured I was going to be proven right in my last posting about there not being an indictment brought against Hillary "What Difference Does it Make" Clinton.  I didn't think it would happen this soon.  The announcement yesterday by FBI Director Comey effectively squashes any chance of criminal charges.  It spares President Obama any repercussions of having to pardon Hillary on his last day in office, which he may do anyway just to be on the safe side, but the upshot here is that Hillary will walk.

It is unfortunate that there are going to be other repercussions from this.  I've read where the FBI has had a lot of agents resign over this, and more are sure to follow.  When you put your heart and soul into investigating something and then have your work consigned to the trashcan, that has to be demoralizing.  Yes, I've had that happen to me as an engineer due to program cancellations and stretchouts.  You get to where you want to work on something else.

Anyway, the big day is tomorrow.  I will offer no predictions on that one.  My gut is telling me that The Donald has the momentum, but if Hillary has the machines rigged in five key states, it's in the bag for her, and knowing that she will never fear indictment for anything criminal that she does, she may be encouraged to implement the fix.  That is, if the fix really exists, and I have no way of knowing if it does or not.

One other scenario may play out.

If The Donald wins the electoral votes that he needs, is it really in the bag for him?  What are the chances that his electors are more beholden to the Republican Establishment than they are to the will of the electorate?  What's going to stop them from voting for Hillary?  I bring this up as a possibility as that I have no way of knowing if any of them are "Never Trumpers".  There is already one Hillary elector in Washington state who's declared that he is not going to vote for Hillary.

Maybe another question is, are there other Hillary electors who won't vote for her?

That's extremely unlikely in my opinion, but it may only take a small handful to throw the election to the House.