For those of you that ride further than the corner store or pub, you know that helmet laws across the United States are a mishmash.  The differences in the technicalities in each state’s rules vary so much that it is almost impossible to decypher.  For adults it’s pretty cut and dry, whether you have to wear one or not, in most states minors MUST wear helmets. 

Technicalities in Flordia for example, require a helmetless biker to have proof of ten thousands dollars in medical insurance.  This does nothing, as ten thousand dollars insurance is chewed up in a day or two in a hospital after brain surgery and the possibility of institutionalization from permanent brain injuries could run into the hundreds of thousands easily. 

How do I feel about helmet laws and helmets? 

Helmet laws are absurd, no adult that I know of, gave up his or her right to think for themselves when they reached 18.  A person should be able to decide whether or not they want to wear a skull bucket, and we don’t need control freak politicians telling us how to be adult in our recreations.   Hang gliding, another of my past hobbies has far less restrictions and is genuinely much more dangerous.  I know, but that’s another story for another time.

If you don’t want to wear a helmet, you should not have too.  However, I believe that riders that go helmetless should have at least 500 thousand dollars in medical insurance, for one reason, you and I pay the bills for people that cannot afford medical care!  The helmet choice should be yours, the choice to put me in a position to pay your bills by raising the cost of mine, is not yours.  Get some fucking medical insurance people, or just try to make sure your head pops like a grape when you have your accident, so the rest of us don’t pay your liftetime medical bills.

How do I feel about helmet use personally?  As the victim of a recent crash on my Heritage Classic, I can tell you that my choice to wear a helmet was very good.  The same window and door that broke my left shoulder and hip also took the full force of my helmet against the top roofline and then through the window shattering it.  It probably would have killed me, taking off the top three inches of my skull when my head hit the roofline just above the passenger window.  I was wearing a very expensive Carbon Fiber half helmet that took no damage whatsoever.  Yeah for www.carbonfiberhelmets.com !  I won’t argue that I am not already brain dead or stupid, but at least I kept what I had huh?

So as a man and citizen I say it is your right to do whatever you want with your braincase.  As a friend and concerned biker, I urge you to always wear a helmet, protect your most valuable asset your brain!

PR

June 19th, 2008 by forniss | Bikers, Uncategorized | 3 comments

Dear Family & Friends,

Click on the link below to see my op ed on the “Likely” Vaccine-Autism Connection.  This appeared in today’s Pensacola News Journal. 

http://www.pnj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080413/OPINION/804130314

I am sure I will be criticized by some of our area pediatricians.  However, I will start listening to them when 1) they actually read the studies—most have not, and 2) they can answer the legitimate criticisms raised in contrarian research and in peer reviews of the CDC-sponsored research they claim demonstrates no causality.

For those who may be unaware, I am the father of a 15-year old, autistic son.  He was developing normally, talking and playing appropriately.  However, after a battery of childhood vaccinations, he regressed into autism.   

Our follow-up research showed he had received enough mercury in his vaccinations to exceed the EPA mercury exposure limits by several hundred times.  We also had his hair tested for mercury. (Hair elements testing is a standard procedure for determining heavy metal exposure.)  This testing revealed our son, like many autistics, is not excreting mercury like a normal child.  In fact, his level of excretion is about one-fifth of normal—again a common trait with many autistics.

Many researchers believe that a certain portion of the population has a genetic predisposition making them unable to ward off heavy metals like most people.  Thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative used in vaccines, is 50% ethyl mercury.  And, mercury is one of the worst neurotoxins known to man.

I am not a doctor, although I have two advanced degrees.  On the other hand, I have read every study and peer review on the autism-vaccine controversy that I have been able to find over the past decade.  Contrary to the mainstream medical and media myth, the jury is still out on this subject.  It is my opinion that there is likely a Vaccine-Autism connection.  However, only with time and additional research will we truly know one way or the other.

Julian Irby

Pensacola , FL

June 19th, 2008 by forniss | 2008 Election, Politics | No comments

O boy, I woke to an empty house, could not find anyone! Then I remembered they were all helping a friend, and I was sleeping in! NOT. Just a pretty day, so I called my brother who I had not seen for weeks and we decided to hook up at his house. Back in 2004 he had a nice little rancher style home on the tail end of Bayou Chico, nice bit of narrow bayou, and a boat house with his yard yacht hangng from the beams.

Then hurricane Ivan smashed Penacola. The next morning, our business was destroyed, every home and rental we owned took damage, and my brothers house was under 8 feet of storm surge, totally destroyed. Every memory, photo, stitch of clothes, ruined or lost forever. Fast forward to yesterday, 2008!

I grabbed my leathers, rode to the local leather shop and picked up one repaired jacket and dropped off another. Damn it was a nice crisp morning and it was nice to have my old school leather jacket back.

I took my time drivng back towards Bayou Chico. Four years earlier, I would have never believed I’d be on my very own scooter, headed over to sit on the patio of my brothers new house on the bayou. It’s worth over a million, but we built it ourselves, so he being the president of the family company, got a good discount, hahahaha. I dropped off a few things I had brought with me and we quickly migrated to the back patio, by the pool, and hot tub, next to Bayou Chico. The only thing that survived that storm, was his old boat house, and his boat. It still hangs, the lovely yard yacht, ever there a reminder of what we all went through, the town destroyed, lives turned upside down. Wallets emptied overnight, everything gone!

Well, sitting on the back deck, drinking sweet Tanqueray with a little ice, we never once even talked about all the sadness and destruction that mother nature can bring down upon us. We talked about making a run to the liquor store, but the Tanqueray was fine. We talked about me quitting smoking… which was fine too, I need to. We talked about our kids, famly, and all the rust that builds up in a man’s life over time.

Mostly, we just sat and sipped and enjoyed being alive. Storms matter. Property and losses matter. Businesses and ways to make a living matter. But nothing in this world matters more than this: Sitting on your younger brothers patio, in your bug splattered leathers, sipping sweet Tanqueray, on a cool Saturday afteroon, and listening to the sea eagles (Ospreys) and Redtail Hawks bicker screeching at one another is just about the best way in the world to spend a few hours. Several hours later, a samidge and some GatorAde-the national drink of Florida-in my gullet, I slipped on my new spiffy polarized bazillion dollar HD glasses/goggles, roared my Pearl to life and slipped out of brothers new circular drive way with the palms and landscaping. Looking over my shoulder as I thundered away, he with his prematurely white hair was still sipping on a Tanqueray and enviously smiling as he waved goodbye.

May 23rd, 2008 by forniss | Humor | No comments

well it was a borein satday arvo n it didnt look like i was gunna hav much 2 do so off 2 my local i go 4 a slap on the pokie’s n a beer 2 pass the time aways! i put a tenner in this machine went max line’s ten credits $5 a slap ??? the first press won zip n it looked like it wasnt gunna be a lucky day 4 me wit my eyes shut n my fingers crossed i hit the button 4 the secound n last time 2 my surprize i pull off a minnie jack pot of $600 so it was back 2 home 2 get the good gear out dress up a bit n off 2 the casino in brissie i go !! feelin like a millon air i hit the black jack tables but four hands laters my big pile of cash was down 2 a lousey $125 feelin sad n sorry 4 my self i walk over 2 this masive poker machine n i mean masive you could hav housed a famly of 10 in side easy (LOL) $20 bucks i slid in the slot pulled the handle wich was so high of the ground i had 2 jump 2 grab the fucking thing! well as it cam down i sliped of the end of it lost my balace came crashin 2 the ground hit my head n was out cold when i came thourgh i was flat on my back in the middle of the casino wit peps running all over the shack 2 help me get up! as im gettin 2 my feet i notice a casino chip hiddin under the machine n said 2 one of the bouncer’s i lost a couple of chips out of my pocket one of them is stuck under the machine can u help me get it back??? so he lays down on his stumick puts his hand under grabs the chip puts it in my hand n gos there u are sir but there was only one under there hope its your lucky 1????? well guys i can tell u it was as it was a $1000 chip i went strait to the chip box cashed it in n walked out the casino $1105 richer than b4 so now the night is gunna be big so in to the valley i go 2 where all the bad girls hang out had a ball n started my way home around 330am was walkin up this side street when a young nip come 2 me asked 4 a ciggie as i was givin him 1 he trys runing wit my packet i catch up 2 him clip him around the ear take my smokes back n start 2 walk away im half way back up this street n all of a sudden im fronted by about 2o of this little fuckin nips rellies running at me wit sticks knifes rocks any fuckin thing they can pick up !!!! im way out numbered so i leg it across the story bridge i get about half way n these guys are gainin fast so i look over the rail of the bridge 2 far 2 jump 2 the water about 30mtrs then i look up the beams the only way 4 me 2 go is up so i climb all the way 2 the top about 60mters in all by the time i got 2 the top the sun was dawning 4 a brand new day i look down n theres pigs n nips running every where the pigs dont see me right up the top n leave me be (LOL) so i sit on top take some pics wit me phone do the rocky dance sing eye of the tiger count whats left of my $ wait 4 all the bullshit down below 2 go aways climb back down jump in a cab n go home!!!! what a fuckin night that was i will not 4get it in a hurry (LOL) i posted the pics of my view on top of the bridge its the best sight see iv ever had in brissie in all my life it was orwsume man!!!!!!

March 31st, 2008 by TrueBlueAussie | Anthropology, Humor, Journalism, Urban Myth | No comments

What is your drug of choice?

Huh?

Mine? The most desired drug is caffeine, not the soda pop variety, but real juice from the coffee bean. I took my first cup when I was about 12… been jigged on the stuff ever since. A sixten ounce cup of about 8 espressos might give me a heart attack, but is sho’ fine.

My most sensual drug is cocoa…………..real chocolate does the same thing to my brain as sex, or opiates or cannabinoids……….only it’s more subtle, and pure delight when I need it. A half pound of dark sweet chocolate, a full tripple jigger glass of single malt scotch… a fireplace warm and cozy, and heaven’s goddess cuddled beside me is HEAVEN ON EARTH.

Just add in some backgrouund music… old Stones, mabye some Tull, Guthrie, or Cash, even Doobie Brothers, or god forgive me for saying it, Kenny Loggins…. and it could turn into the night of Rapture!

Alcohol? I can take it or leave it… it’s good, but not that good, unless coupled with life’s other more tangible pleasures.

And alas, the most despised drug in my life…. tobacco.

It’s more addictive than heroin, I still remember when during 1985-1990, still buying a carton at the base store in Germany for 2-4 dollars. Easy to get addicted at those prices…wonder if the military wanted to see if they could “enhance” me with all those poisons at cut rate prices. It was not their fault, I wanted the fix, but damn it was cheap over there and helped me solidify and firm up my tobacco addiction.

I only rarely smoked before 1983, and never more than a pack a week before 86. Now?  I’d kill for another good and very real Cuban cigar! The 2 I have savored were so good I enhaled! LOL, I ain’t skeered, LOL. PR

March 25th, 2008 by forniss | Humor | No comments

A close friend called me last night… lost a job.

Another person called me a week ago… lost a job.

A competitors company just folded… lack of business and more lost jobs.

A subhuman that pretends at humanitay called me yesterday… lost a job.

It’s not the ECONOMY stupid, it’s real souls, with lives to live, being raped in public through their wallets, while the elite meet to eat, beat off , and plan their next big rip off of the little people.

Those are tough words for a retired businessman, and retired MSGT to say, but it’s true. Bush and his croney/master Cheney have in connivance with the financial/military industrial trans-nationals taken us all to the cleaners, and left us there for someone else to pick up the tab.

I don’t know about you, but I simply cannot afford the $85,000 that’s my growing portion of our tax deficit ,mostly due to a war that our President lied to us and the world to get started, and does not have the balls to say he screwed up!

Can you afford the impact of this growing tax deficit?…. you will pay it!… thorugh lost buying power!, lost voice in government!, lost jobs!, you will pay!

Like the little girl in the Addams Family movies said…..”Be afraid, be very afraid!” Your elected government lies to you because YOU let them.

All the while, companies are going under due to cash flow issues, no one is buying their products. Yet CEOs are raking in hundreds of millions in bonuses and severance pays from these very companies for doing such great jobs. Stack on this that most of these ultra-millionaires and billionaires pay less taxes than any of us… well I am sorta getting pissed about it.

Our family net worth is a bit over 7 figures, but our net debt is higher so that we can try to keep 50 people employed and able to buy gravy and gasoline.

We are not considered wealthy, so we pay ALL our taxes even with accountants trying to find ways to let us use the loopholes the mega-rich enjoy.

You, and I are getting assfucked by the old purple shaft wrapped in rusty barbwire!

For Gods sake people, vote for something different this time around. I am Independent, I plan on voting all over the spectrum just to fuck with the system and maybe make a few differences.

We probably will be buttfucked by the next administration and the standing congress, but at least let’s choose a different set of sodomists to nail us, variety is the spice of life!

Can ya tell I am having a political moment?

LMAO, serious as hell!

Purple Raven

March 24th, 2008 by forniss | 2008 Election, Capitalism, Humor, Journalism, Politics | No comments

I have been unable to discover the author of this story, so am categorizing it as an urban myth perhaps true, perhaps not.  All that said, if the author is discovered, full credit will be given and the story removed if so requested by the actual author.  Please sit squarely in your chair, guaranty your hernia belt is tight, and start reading… this will make you laugh until your guts hurt…Gods bless America where free men can purchase weapons for self defense, from deer………………………LMAO 

Roping A Deer 

(Actual Letter from someone who writes and farms…)
I had this idea that I was going to rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it. The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that, since they congregate at my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.

I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, having seen the roping thing before, stayed well back. They were not having any of it.
After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up — 3 of them. I picked out a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw my rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me.

I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold. The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation. I took a step towards it…it took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope and then received an education.

The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope. That deer EXPLODED.

The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a LOT stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope and with some dignity. A deer– no chance. That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I had originally imagined. The only upside is that they do not have as much stamina as many other animals.

A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head. At that point, I had lost my taste for corn-fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope.

I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slow and painfully somewhere. At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that moment, I hated the thing, and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual.

Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer’s momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in, so I didn’t want the deer to have it suffer a slow death, so I managed to get it lined back  up in between my truck and the feeder - a little trap I had set before hand…kind of like a squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and I started moving up so I could get my rope back.

Did you know that deer bite? They do! I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was very surprised when I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of my wrist.

Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite you and then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head –almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts.

The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was ineffective. It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several minutes, but it was likely only several seconds. I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by now) tricked it.

While I kept it busy tearing the bejesus out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose. That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day. Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp.

I learned a long time ago that, when an animal — like a horse –strikes at you with their hooves and you can’t get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the animal  This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape. This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously, such trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different strategy.

I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run…

The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head. Deer may not be so different from horses after all, besides being twice as strong and 3 times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down.

Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are laying there crying like a little girl and covering your head.

I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away.
 
So now I know why when people go deer hunting they bring a rifle with a scope, so that they can be somewhat equal to the Prey…

March 19th, 2008 by forniss | Gun Control, Humor, Second Amendment, Urban Myth | 2 comments

Curhurock-opboink

This starts with just bhxob and forniss, doing counterpoint and point respectively.  Anyone of you can join in, and are encouraged to.  No one is right,  no one is wrong.

Point:

After nearly 52 years of wandering through tons of literature and miles upon miles of life, I have come to a solemn conclusion. The most important question in my life has changed. It was “Is god real?” (I will use the word god as both singular and plural to satisfy all of your concepts!) Now the question has evolved. “Does it matter, do I even care about the belief in god, real or not?”

I do in an oblique way believe in supreme evil as well, i see it in the hearts of men and women all around me, in fact, its the ONLY place I see evil, nature is not evil, only the heart of mankind

Counterpoint:

I should start his off by saying that I am agnostic. I believe that I don’t honestly know.

Atheism is a belief, of a specific non-belief.

Point:

Stepping back, I have to look outward and think of this in a “We” formation for a bit. Looking out at the 6 billion or so folk who trod this worn out planet, arou

All major nd 97.3% of those folk believe in some form of deity. The other 2.7% believe in atheism, which some classify as a religion with man as god. Either way you count it, most folks believe in something supernatural, that forgoes any rational explanation. So, whether it matters to me or not, it does matter to nearly everyone else. It matters to humanity that there is deity.

Counterpoint:

All religions are just sets of beliefs, each acting as a model or guide to some aspect of the universe the user is expected to intersect with. If it is not a model, or functional in some way, it is just exposition. Fiction, in this way, also has it’s place in many religious beliefs.

Models, religious or not, can be useful tools in our individual journeys through the ridiculously small bit of the universe that we interact with. Weather models, for instance, are functional guides for predicting inclement weather and hazards. They can also be wrong, but they act as a general guide to a system which is much to complicated to be reduced into a more empirical system, at the current time. This is an example of a scientific model, however. One which was developed through research and study over long periods of time. It produces useful information, regarding happenings in the weather on this planet.

Point:

The profitable reality of belief and religion reaches back to the first shaman who accepted a hindquarter of deer for a spiritual service rendered, or curse cast. The processing and manipulating of the need to believe is singularly the most profitable enterprise mankind has ever invented. Does the hypocrisy of organized religions/beliefs have a tinker’s damn of a relationship to whether god exists?

Counterpoint:

We have many other models that determine our human action. Destructive and inane are the realms of most of them. Either useless, for providing real information to the user, or completely ineffective. The situation that most humans are living in right now, for instance. We have societies of people who have no rational explanation for its belief in a god which does not present itself in measurable ways, yet they are willing to warrant their own exceptional behaviors in that god’s name.

March 17th, 2008 by forniss | Anthropology, Capitalism, Politics, Religion, Spiritualism | 2 comments