It is good

I was going to talk about humor today, but I’ve shelved that for now. I want to stress to you how important it is to have tools and skills. These things are what really make the world go around, and also make it worse being as mankind hasn’t gotten wise enough to do things in moderation and technological civilizations tend to destroy themselves rather quickly.

Unless you are a very new reader here you know that I have lots of tools and equipment, including a metal lathe, you know that I’ve been a master mechanic, race car builder and driver, inventor, carpenter, long haul truck driver, and blah, blah, a bunch of other things.

Anyway, I wasn’t tooting my horn (beep, beep, get out of my way you little monkey), just stating some facts. It is good that I have a metal lathe, it comes in mighty handy at times even though it may sit a year between uses. Friend Rick got a good deal on a Toro riding lawnmower recently. He got it running but it wasn’t cutting grass worth a damn, figured the blades needed to be sharpened. I told him I would do that for him and went to his home yesterday morning to take them off.

They were in bad shape but he had bigger problems than that. The pivot assembly that tightens the belt driving the two blade pulleys was all cocked over and the belt wouldn’t tighten properly and was twisted. So I took the mowing deck off and took it to his shop to work on it. Found the pivot bushing block was plastic and worn egg shaped, so I took it to my place and turned a metal bushing then bored out the bushing block out and pressed the metal bushing into it. Yup, I have a press also. :-)

Sharpened the blades the best I could because someone before me had screwed them up pretty well when they sharpened them. Don’t use a bench grinder or a disk grinder to sharpen mower blades. Use a belt sander, or a wide flat bastard file and do it by hand if you have to. Nope, I don’t think they make a bitch file. And goddamn it, keep the bottom of the blade flat, don’t sharpen the bottom of the blade at an angle also or I will call you an idiot. It’s not a knife, it’s a fucking lawnmower blade.

I figure I saved him up to a couple hundred bucks had he took it to a shop to have it fixed, I may borrow it at times to mow Helen’s lawn, it’s just more fun to mow grass while riding around on a riding mower drinking a beer than it is pushing one when there is as much grass to mow as she has.

I went to the spit for a while last evening, I do that a lot, and there was some bitch from the Insane Chicks Society that looked to be in her twenties that was speeding up the gravel parking strip in her jeep trying to run down seagulls. Not much fear of her nailing one but it was irritating to me, I like it peaceful out there so when she went by I honked my horn and when she looked my way I gave her the finger. Seagulls may not be important to many people but they serve a useful purpose that I won’t get into now. And at the rate things are going your grandchildren may have to resort to eating them.

I was going to say more about therapists today, one in particular, but I guess I’ll be nice today. Not really his fault he hasn’t learned much and has any real skills, but if he pays attention his journey will teach him some things. Maybe he will even seek out an honest profession… :-)

Where have all the flowers gone

[Revised]

Where have all the flowers gone? – long time passing.
Where have all the flowers gone? – long time ago.
Where have all the flowers gone? – bombed away, every one.
When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

Where have all the young girls gone? - long time passing.
Where have all the young girls gone? - long time ago.
Where have all the young girls gone? – killed off, every one.
When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

Where have all the young men gone? – long time passing.
Where have all the young men gone? – long time ago.
Where have all the young men gone? – gone for soldiers, every one.
When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

Where have all the soldiers gone? – long time passing.
Where have all the soldiers gone? – long time ago.
Where have all the soldiers gone? – gone to graveyards, every one.
When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

Where have all the graveyards gone? – long time passing.
Where have all the graveyards gone? – long time ago.
Where have all the graveyards gone? – under the rubble, every one.
When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?