Sharks In Lake Guntersville! ::

I don't see any way this can be anything other than a hoax, although a great hoax! It takes me about 6 to 7 hours to drive down to the coast so I'm curious just how long it would take a saltwater compatible fish to swim through the locks to Guntersville. I eagerly await the input from the biologists although, as I understand it, the fish was destroyed.

I haven't boated since just after J.'s accident since, at the time, she was unable to physically spend much time on the lake, but I miss it. I love being on the water and there is little more magical to me than being on the water at about midnight on a full moon! Ironically I spent 4 years in the U.S. Navy and never set foot on a ship!

McCain Bumper Sticker ::

I saw my first one earlier today. Clearly someone delusional!

Josh Seagall Running In The 3rd Congressional District ::

Not my district, but I really like the power of this campaign video:

Sunday Evening Bird Blogging ::

There are little baby Mockingbirds living in my Boston Fern. I have to be very careful about watering the fern now and I am dive-bombed by the parents who don't seem to realize that I would never hurt the baby birds. Such is nature!

Catfishing In An Economy Down The Toilet :;

It's amazing just how much we're affected by the "global economy" along with rapid rising oil prices. Here are some bits from today's New York Times about southern catfish farmers going out of business.

LELAND, Miss. — Catfish farmers across the South, unable to cope with the soaring cost of corn and
soybean feed, are draining their ponds.
“It’s a dead business,” said John Dillard, who pioneered the commercial farming of catfish in the late 1960s.
Last year Dillard & Company raised 11 million fish. Next year it will raise none. People can eat imported
fish, Mr. Dillard said, just as they use imported oil.
As for his 55 employees? “Those jobs are gone.”

[snip]

Perhaps nowhere has the rise in crop prices caused more convulsions than in the Mississippi Delta, the hub
of the nation’s catfish industry. This is a hard-luck, poverty-plagued region, and raising catfish in artificial
ponds was one of the few mainstays.
Then the economics went awry. Feed is now more than half the total cost of raising catfish, compared with a
third of the cost of beef and pork production, according to a Mississippi State analysis. That makes catfish
more vulnerable. But if the commodities continue to rocket up — and some analysts believe they will —
other industries will fall victim as well.

I hadn't thought about corn going to ethanol production affecting catfish farmers, but this seems to be pretty dire.

Rising feed prices were the final straw for Dillard & Company, which decided to close last January. Eighty
of its 10- to 20-acre pools are empty already. An additional 170 will follow as soon as their fish are big
enough to sell.
“It’s easy. You just pull the plug,” Mr. King said, surveying a pool that was nearly dry. Nearby, half a dozen
men were running their nets through a pond, then hoisting the last of its catfish onto a truck.
“I’ve been doing this for 23 years,” said one of the workers, Craig Morgan. “I don’t know what I’ll do now.
And there are a bunch of me’s out there.”

emphasis added is mine!

I have a friend who I seldom see who runs a catfish operation about 40 miles away. Buddy is old school and technology challenged so he doesn't use e-mail, but I think I'll run by there in a few days to see how he is doing. His operation is pretty small compared to what we're reading about here, but I'm sure that the impact of higher feed prices is just as crucial, if not more so!

There is also a feed mill down in Guntersville, about 20 miles away from me and I wonder just how this is affecting them. I don't know anyone who works at Wayne Feeds, but I may go down to Guntersville this weekend and ask around.

Cheryl Baswell Guthrie

Gone by something like a 4 to 1 margin, but her comedic tv ads will be sorely missed, especially the Bush lookalike monkey!

With the money she tossed down the drain a lot of hungry people could have been fed, clothes could have been obtained for poor children, and at least some health care for the needy could have been provided! Instead her misguided vanity led her into a losing political battle. I hope that she has learned a humble lesson from her experience!

Bye, Bye, CBG.

Run-off Election Today ::

The results tonight should be interesting, but I expect Pea Nut Parker to take the republican nomination. I gotta say though that I will miss the hilarity brought into our lives by the TV commercials of Guthrie!

On a national level John McCain does a good comedic job every day!

Baby Mockingbirds! ::

I went out early this morning to water the plants and 2 of the eggs had hatched overnight so I can expect the other 2 to hatch sometime today. Now I have to be very careful in watering the nesting fern!

See the post down below for a photograph of the eggs.

Troy King=Teh Gay=Schadenfreude? ::

I came late to this story today and I'm waiting for it to play out in the Big Boy Blogs just to see what happens, but this is just too delicious not to savor! I don't know what the definitive outcome will be, but I have to keep following Loretta in order to keep up. Here are some of her thoughts:

I have been sitting on this story for about a week. Truth is I am SORE from having to sit on it so long....but not as sore as Troy King is. Badda Bing! I would have blogged about it when I first learned of it but I can't afford a defamation lawsuit and Troy King already hates my guts anyway because of this...

[snip]

I have some friends in pretty high places in Alabama politics so I called one of them up with the juicy details. They told me they heard a rumor about his sexual orientation some six months ago from a former reporter with a large, credible newspaper in Alabama. I also know that reporter and knew them to be very credible. The rumor at the time was that Troy's mystery man was his old college roommate who he gave a position to when he took over the AG office in 2004. Supposedly when Troy was out of town so was lover boy.

The story then became that the mystery man was a young man who had just graduated from Troy University and was the Homecoming King(no pun intended) (God that gets confusing...Troy King with the homecoming king who graduated from Troy) and that was who the wife walked in on. Then a few weeks later Troy and his boy toy from Troy were spotted at the YMCA (not kidding) engaging in....ummmm....inappropriate activities. Yeah...at the YMCA...made famous by the Village People. Apparently Troy has no inkling of what it means to be 'discreet'.

OK, I'll lay off for a bit because my sides are hurting from laughing at the hypocritical asshole. I don't care that Troy King enjoys gay sex as I don't make value judgments on anyone's lifestyle. What I do care about is the hypocrisy shown by an elected official who is so adamant in denouncing the gay lifestyle while enjoying it in his, I presume, offtime.

I'll be curious to see his the reaction of his wife and I would be astounded if she didn't know about the AG's sexual predilictions all along. Maybe that was her kink also!

Elder Draper Helping People!

Here's my first Youtube video try. Let's see how it works.

Rove Refuses!

Rove, through his attorney, has said that he will not appear before the House judiciary committee on Thursday even though he has been served with a legal subpoena. I just tried to call Artur Davis' office to voice my opinion that Rove should be immediately held in contempt of congress, but I was too late for his office hours. I have resisted calling from work, even on my cell phone, but I will be making the call tomorrow during office hours. I generally try to watch as many of the committee hearings on c-span as I can I have long been impressed with Davis' tenacity in questioning. I'm hoping that he will support a congressional contempt citation against Rove!

Artur Davis' phone number is: (202) 225-2665. Let him know how you feel about this issue since he is the only Congressman representing Alabama on the committee.

As an aside, I happen to own a bit of property in South Carolina and I am not shy about expressing my opinions to the legislative delegation from that state. It helps a bit that I have a cousin in the state legislature!

I have a nice collection of plants on my front porch and several require watering twice per day. The Petunias are especially thirsty, but I have this Boston Fern that I have babied for the past couple of years. During the winter I keep it in the garage and it sheds some leaves, but it rebounded nicely this spring.

One day last week I noticed that there was a bird nest in the fern, but I didn't think much about it until a couple of days ago when I noticed 4 little eggs which left me scratching my head as I had not seen any birds around the fern. That has now changed and the fern was occupied a little later although all I could see was the tail sticking up.




Now I have to figure out a way to water the fern when the little ones hatch. I'm kinda thinking a rubber tube and a funnel so I can route the water around the nest.

[update] It's a Mockingbird which is sitting on the nest. I was out watering this morning and she stayed on the eggs most of the time I was doing the watering of the other plants, but she flew off when I neared the fern.