Alpo

Four times as many sheep, but only three times as much land. Hmmmm.

Remember in CROSSFIRE TRAIL, when they found the Indian girl and then the three guys showed up and said they wanted their squaw back? And Rafe mentions that the head bad guy's going to have a hard time drawing his gun with that loop over the hammer. And the bad guy asked one of the other bad guys - is the loop over my hammer? "Yeah, it is". Seems like Duke should not only be wondering whether the colonel's flap is snapped down, but whether the loop is over his own hammer spur.

In this movie it's a herd of horses but I suppose it would be the same with a herd of cattle. Do you suppose that in the chuckwagon they might have an extra firearm or two? You know, besides the rifle and or pistol that each Cowboy would have. For those that either have not seen the movie or don't remember it, Colonel Landers was sent to ask the Yankees for help. And he was unarmed when he was sent. Now they're going into battle. I didn't see any evidence of him having a gun, but I just wondered if this had been real, instead of a movie, there might be an extra gun stuck around somewhere.

I got out my digital powder scale, tared it with a Dixie bathroom cup on it, then put one scoop of coffee in the bathroom cup. 133 grains. Divide 7000 by 133 and you get 52.6 scoops per pound. Divide that by 3, because I use three scoops to make a pot of coffee. That's 17 and 1/2 pots of coffee to the pound. Divide the $4.66 a pound of coffee cost me at Sam's by 17 and a half pots and I come up with 26.6 cents a pot. Supposedly it is a 12 cup pot, but in actuality I get 10 cups out of it. So my coffee cost me 2.7 cents a cup. There was a survey from my grocery store yesterday and they wanted to know how much I paid for a cup of coffee. They said I could guess, I did not have to be precise. But it got me to wondering.

Is that the Aussie version of roast pig with an apple in his mouth?

Another ponder about that movie. The colonel, his sergeant, and the lieutenant were armed with Henrys. Being a rich planter I can see that Rock could afford to arm some of his men would that most excellent rifle. But I wonder about ammunition. I know that many Yankees were armed with Henrys. Privately bought. Did the supply people bring out 44 rimfires? The Spencer was an issue weapon, so they would supply ammunition for that. But the Henry was privately bought. Hmmm. If the colonel had outfitted his regiment with Spencers, they could get ammunition from Yankee supply wagons. But Henry ammo?

I'm watching THE UNDEFEATED. The big fuss is over, and Rock Hudson is leading a band of Confederates to Mexico to throw in with emperor Maximilian. And when they get to the Rio, there's a bunch of Yankees there. They have orders to detain them, search them, and turn them back. Now it seems to me that if I just went to war with a bunch of people, and I won, so they want to leave - I would be more than happy to see the back of them as they go on down the road. Like all them people that said if the Republicans got in the White House they were going to leave America. Except they didn't. But I wanted them to. If these rebels want to leave, why not let them leave? It don't make sense to me. Unless it's simply a dramatic thing they stuck in the screenplay, that had no basis in reality.

So have you decided what you want to be when you grow up?

There was this book - this shows you how long ago it was, I got it from The Weekly Reader Book Club - and they were in England. They have snuck out of the house for a little adventure one night and they brought food with them. The girl brought a package of biscuits. Biscuits come in a package??? And one boy had brought a tin of something. That was going to be a problem, but fortunately the other boy had a tin opener on his pocket knife. And poor little 9-year-old me trying to make sense out of that. I finally figured out the biscuits, because Nabisco - the cookie company - stands for National Ciscuit Company. So I decided a biscuit was a cookie. And I knew what tin was. I just had no idea what A tin was. Or how or why you would open it.

A five-year study. 35 instances. And they've reached a conclusion. In a country this big, 35 instances over a 5-year period. And they've come to a conclusion?

Since it's approaching midwinter, I thought our Aussie friends might appreciate these.

Do you now? When the Hillbillies first came out, their main sponsor was Kellogg's. And they had product placement. They frequently showed Jethro eating a bowl of corn flakes. It was a large bowl. And it's a good thing his Uncle Jed was rich. I don't see how Aunt Pearl managed to feed him.

I wasn't expecting her to do that. I was thinking that I would do that, but I wasn't expecting her to.

We was out on a road trip one day and stopped in at this place. It was 10:30, 11:00. The breakfast buffet was over. But some of the food was still on the buffet and there was a big bowl of cheese grits. And I told the waitress that I would like some cheese grits. And she brought out one of them little bowls like a side order comes in, you know like at a cafeteria that little light green plastic bowl that holds the green beans or the mashed potatoes. And I told her that I would like a bigger serving. And she says, "Oh, you want a Jethro bowl", and brought me out what look like about a quart mixing bowl full of grits. She didn't look old enough to know what a Jethro bowl was.

You never read Bill, I take it. Bill was a soldier. Lived in a time when medicine was so advanced that anything could be transplanted. So when people got killed, they would take anything that was usable and put it in the refrigerator until it was needed. Bill got his left arm blown off. And his best friend, who was a black guy, got blown up. They had no left arms left in the refrigerator, and the only part of his friend that was usable was his right arm. So that's what they put on his left side. So he had two right arms, and one was black.