Since my computer decided to go belly up because Vista is a piece of crap, I have been finding more photos of my car.  I look at them a lot and I keep thinking about how I just never seem to be able to get to that project.  No matter how much I try, it never happens.

Take this year for example.  I put aside 500 dollars, just 500, to get new injectors for the engine.  Yup... as fate always has it... the truck I drive needed new tires.  No problem really, that shouldn't cut into the 500 I set aside.  Well, that would be the case if the dealership I bought it from didn't sell me a piece of crap!  Come to find out, the wheels on my truck were "modified" to fit because they originally didn't belong on the truck.  So.... to make a long story short, in order to get new tires, I needed to spend 800 on rims as well.  Bye bye 500 + 300 extra for good measure.  *sigh*

So year after year my car sits in a cocoon of dust and other junk. 

This really all started 3 years ago.  2 years after my father passed away, I decided to try and get some work done on our project, my car.  Well, that didn't go as planned as my Bronco at the time dropped a starter, and the other backup car I had needed a new clutch.  Suffice to say, I ended up just getting another vehicle instead (back into a payment).  So the car sat there for a while longer.  Then, after a family incident where I was barred from the house where my car was at for over a year, I was finally able to go get it and try to do something.  Well, that became a disenchanting moment as all the money I put into it was wasted having sat out in the winter all year.  All the nice polished aluminum was pitted from weathering. 

I became frustrated and just depressed about it.  It became clear to me that not only did my father pass away, but so did my dreams of finishing the car off in honor of my father.  Each year it gets worse for me, and each year money gets tighter and tighter.  Its like I will never be able to finish the car... or at least, when I do have the money to finish it, the car will have to be scrapped and redone, costing me 3x the amount it would have had I not had to deal with all the setbacks I am constantly faced with in this project.

This spring it will be 4 years since I lost my father.  I may have started this car since he passed 2 dozen times or so.  In fact, I went to mum's where it is stored and found transmission fluid all underneath it.  The seal around the pan has deteriorated from time and negligence.  I feel like all the work my father and I put into it has been for nothing.  I almost want to get rid of it, but I can't.  I am too attached.  Yet, there seems no point in keeping it as the costs to finish it keep rising year after year as it sits and does nothing year after year after year.  And does anyone care but me?  Probably not.  I doubt I will ever have the money to fix it.  I keep having to spend money on the house or other things... 

Its really frustrating to me because this car is so important to me... but as always, it seems other things come before my real desires.  Hell, I even thought about applying for "Overhaulin", but alas, they are not taking new applications.  Even if they were, it wouldn't matter.  They are in CA and I am in NH.  Nothing like that exists on the East Coast.  Only CA... which totally bites. 

So in the end, it all falls on me.  And... I feel like a failure.  I think about it all the time.  Every spring when the weather starts to get good enough to drive it I want to take it out and show the road 2 brand new strips of rubber to usher in another driving season.  Every summer when the weather is sunny and the roads are dry, I dream of chasing the wind on winding, tree canopied roads.  Every fall I dream of kicking up a turmoil of leaves behind me as I race down the back grounds on a cool crisp autumn day.  And then the winter hits, and I look at it and think of yet another year that has gone by that I have not gotten to enjoy it.  Another year it sits and rots.  Another year... another year since my father passed away. 

A Time for Choosing:

I am going to talk of controversial things. I make no apology for this.

It's time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, "We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self government."

This idea? that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream-the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, "The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits."

The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing.

Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, "What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power." But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.

Yet any time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being opposed to their humanitarian goals. It seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that all of us share the desire to help the less fortunate. They tell us we're always "against," never "for" anything.

We are for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we have accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem. However, we are against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments....

We are for aiding our allies by sharing our material blessings with nations which share our fundamental beliefs, but we are against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world.

We need true tax reform that will at least make a start toward I restoring for our children the American Dream that wealth is denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as high as his strength and ability will take him.... But we can not have such reform while our tax policy is engineered by people who view the tax as a means of achieving changes in our social structure....

Have we the courage and the will to face up to the immorality and discrimination of the progressive tax, and demand a return to traditional proportionate taxation? . . . Today in our country the tax collector's share is 37 cents of -very dollar earned. Freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp.

Are you willing to spend time studying the issues, making yourself aware, and then conveying that information to family and friends? Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? Realize that the doctor's fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can't socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business. If some among you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or even government, recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile hoping he'll eat you last.

If all of this seems like a great deal of trouble, think what's at stake. We are faced with the most evil enemy mankind has known in his long climb from the swamp to the stars. There can be no security anywhere in the free world if there is no fiscal and economic stability within the United States. Those who ask us to trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state are architects of a policy of accommodation.

They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right. Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits-not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.

Ronald Reagan, 1964

Ask yourself... how true is this and how applicable is this now more than ever?

http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 11"> name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 11">

I have been thinking a lot about things I do, things that affect me, and everything around me.  It is true that I cannot control what others do, nor do I want to.  However, it must be a pet peeve of mine to see people doing nothing when they could be doing something.

 

 

I remember once when I was an admin for a forum.  There was the start of an internet arguing session between two users.  I promptly jumped in before anything could happen and closed the thread.  Yet, after doing a little preventative maintenance, I was scalded by both the admins and the users.  I still remember how crappy I feel about that because I was trying to do something good for everyone, and yet, everyone made it seem they liked to live with an acceptable level of misery.  I believe the phrase “if its not broken, don’t fix it” was used.  

 

Preventative maintenance.  Has ANYONE heard of this?  Or is it dying with everything else we have tried to hold sacred?

 

 

I apply this lesson to today.  Yet, the masses choose to live in misery.  Politics are huge for me lately because I don’t want to end up like my parents, poor, nearly on the street, and with nothing.  My mother works two jobs now – she is over 60 – just to make ends meet.  Is that the American Dream now-a-days?  I don’t want to be like that.  I want my piece of the pie.  Here lies the problem though.

 

We are currently faced with a lot of decisions in our government that can seriously hurt the population or help them.  I am not talking about a president or an administration – I am simply talking about informative choice and making one – then… doing something about it.  Yet, (and this truly pisses me off) there are those that don’t care.  “It doesn’t affect me, so why should I care?”

 

This is similar to the “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” attitude.  

 

Another problem is that we don’t remember what it was like when America had this attitude – the Great Depression.  The years before going into the Great Depression, Americans had the same idea – it doesn’t affect me, so why should I care?  Well look what happened?  For everyone’s lack of involvement, there was a serious back-lash that cost people their lives, houses, money, food, etc.  Nobody now-a-days remembers what that was like because none of us were around at that time… and its sad.  We don’t care because “It doesn’t affect me, so why should I care?”  This is why we SHOULD care.

 

 

So I will quickly spell out the fact of the matter here so you get the point.  If you – and yes, I mean you, are one of those that just doesn’t care cause it doesn’t affect you, think again.  It may not affect you now, but I will bet my life and soul that it WILL affect you at some point – and at that point, it will be too late to do something about it.  The time is now to act.  Failure to do so will be catastrophic for you and others around you.

 

Case in point – right now we have a shortage of ammunition on the shelves.  This isn’t because of hunting season, its because those that see what’s going on and stay informative know something is going to happen… and they are preparing.  Its sad to even have to say this, much less think it, but those people that are stockpiling are going to have little compassion for those that have sat around and done nothing to stop what is going to happen, what is happening, and what will happen with the choices our government is making today and tomorrow and the next day and so on.  I know this to be true because I am one of those people.  Read history and understand what this country was founded on – its principles, and read about how people were treated for their lack of support.  

 

This isn’t to say that everyone needs to stockpile for an inevitable conflict.  YOU can be working to prevent what could happen.  Call your congressperson/senator and get involved.  Tell them how you feel about the choices they are voting on.  Send emails (takes 10 minutes of your day) or a letter if you support the post office.  GET INVOLVED is all I ask.  IF these people don’t hear what you have to say, then nothing will change.  We, the people, hold all the power.  WE, THE PEOPLE, can make the change and the difference.  But if your choice is to sit around and wait, then you will hold the responsibility for what can happen, especially if its bad.  God help you if that’s the case because I won’t.