Are You Ready For This?

I spent Wednesday night cruising the Internet for old time radio shows. I found a lot and listened to a few while I worked on the blog. Thursday night was different. This time I spent my time looking for old time TV shows.

Wow! If only the day was 48 hours long I would be happy.

As I search for things on the Internet I sometimes think I need GPS. I mean I sit down and know exactly what I'm going to look for and what I'm going to do; and I start. It always seems to go downhill from there. Take for instance last night; I planned on researching classic or old time TV shows. (Really, I just wanted to try to find some episodes to watch. I mean gee, sometimes TV with 100+ channels gets a little boring.) Anyway, I start out on YouTube and find the pilot episode for Fibber McGee and Molly on NBC in the 50's. So I watch.

Then I do a search for classic TV. This, of course, yields a gold mine. So I proceed to visit a few. The first is Like Television. There you can download many classic series and watch to your hearts content and it's easy too. The shows are divided into various categories which makes it relatively easy to find what you want. They also have films, commercials, and cartoons. Then I headed to TV Land. They have a few episodes to watch but I didn't stay long. After that I mostly find links to web-sites that are databases and the like; good to read but not much if anything to watch.

I head back to YouTube.

BONANZA!! And I don't mean the show, although it can be found there.

See, I told you it could be found there. Anyway, I look for Fibber McGee again and watch a few of the videos and then somehow jumped to Jack Benny. One of the Jack Benny videos had Mel Blanc on it. So then I started watching videos with Mel Blanc. You know Jack Benny once said, "There are only five real people in Hollywood. Everybody else is Mel Blanc." After Mel Blanc for some reason I started watching Spike Jones; John Denver; Peter, Paul, and Mary; and Patty Duke. That's quite a variety of music videos, and in the middle of all of those I watched some episodes of The Life of Riley and The Patty Duke Show. And all the while I open more screens and look up information about the shows and read about them. Of course when I do that I can't watch the shows, I can only listen. Then I try to write my blog while I am reading and watching and listening and talking to Chris and Julie and tending to the cats and walking the dog and taking out the trash and, and, and.....No wonder I'm tired!

Good night or good morning or good day or good grief!

© 2008 Barry T Horst


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Does My GPS Work Now? (It's not really about GPS, that's just a little joke of mine.)

Help me out here. I know I wrote a few days ago about how the recent emphasis on bio-fuels had pushed the commodity prices of corn, wheat, and rice to skyrocket. At least that is what I intended to write about on April 15. It seems that I quickly digressed and wrote about everything but that it seems. I quipped in the post that I didn't have GPS to give me direction. Well, now I'm trying to see if I have found that direction yet.

Now I see in the headlines that there is a shortage of rice, yes I said shortage of rice. Sam's Club and Costco are going to ration rice. Sam's Club will limit sales of imported jasmine, basmati and long grain white rices in the 20 lb. bag size.

Now rice is a staple in many countries. Rice is also the food that you always seemed to get a lot of at Mexican and Oriental food restaurants. It was always the item that filled up the plate so that it looked like you were getting your "money's worth".

Now why is this happening? I don't know, I'm not an economist. I didn't even stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. I'm sure that part of the reason is the burgeoning population in countries like India and China. But, don't you think that one of the biggest reasons is the recent emphasis on bio-fuels? I sure do. Think about it. Governments are now trying to push the development of bio-fuels. In order to make many bio-fuels the various grains that were destined to the various levels of the food chain are now being diverted to bio-fuel processors. This doesn't leave enough for livestock and poultry so producers pay more. This cost is passed along to you and I at the store and restaurants. There is not enough grain for the food processors to make the various food products. Producers then pay more for the grain. And yes, this cost is passed on along too. All because the government thinks the answer to more fuel is in the bio-fuel area. The answer is in more drilling and more refining capacity, not suddenly diverting our precious food resources from the food chain into fuel tanks.

Another mistaken answer is the government sticking it's finger into the auto industry by setting mileage per gallon quotas hoping to conserve gasoline. This is a topic for another blog on another day. But briefly, studies have shown that when the mileage per gallon goes up the nation ends up using about the same amount of gasoline because people decide they can now drive more. Also, auto crash death rates go up because auto makers make the cars smaller to meet the guidelines. But as I said, his is a topic for another blog on another day.© 2008 Barry T Horst


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Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.

Tuber Time or Perhaps Ramblin' Tater

It is interesting the way things change with time. Wheat has been known as the staff of life. Keeping company with wheat is corn and rice. Altogether these crops help to give sustenance to the worlds population. Now we are turning to these same crops to help break our dependence on oil. Thanks to this and increased development in China and India the price of these staples have skyrocketed. In turn, we have witnessed double digit inflation in grocery prices recently.

Enter the potato. I read an article on Reuters about potatoes last night. It seems that people are rediscovering the benefits of potatoes, but thus far speculators in the market have not "bitten" the potato yet. Read the article here, it is interesting.

Potatoes are native to Peru and will grow anywhere from the frigid slopes of the Andes to the flat lands of tropical Asia. Not only that, but potatoes will yield more per acre that rice or wheat. Potatoes also yield a flour that can be used in baking bread. It has been used in donuts for some time. There used to be a Spudnuts Donuts shop in Waco a long time ago. It seems that it was on 25th Street, just across the street from O & H Rare Foods. (You could by chocolate covered ants at O & H by the way.) But that was long ago. It seems that I recall my brother working there for a time delivering for them. But, that too was a long time ago.

There still seem to be some Spudnut shops around, but I am not sure they are related to the one Waco had. Here is another article about Spudnuts that is very interesting. Need a recipe so you can try the Spudnut donut? Here ya go.

How I ended up on a donut recipe I'm not sure. I guess that's what happens when you don't have a GPS unit to give you direction in life.

I don't know if any of you care, but I used to buy some pretty good sandwiches and O & H. I seem to remember pastrami on rye and other good deli sandwiches. I didn't get the ants though. Another place that had good sandwiches was Antone's in Houston. I reckon I should change that to "still has good sandwiches." When I lived in Houston I loved them. Check 'em out here.

Guess what? Still no GPS. Can ya' tell? © 2008 Barry T Horst This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.