I wonder how long it will be...

...before the secret police break into my house in the middle of the night and take me away from my children because I still have some incandescent light bulbs in use. My guess is sometime in this administration's second term.

The buildup continues... But who cares, right?

So Iran is starting to drop the hammer on their citizens who protest. It's to the point to where people know that if they go out to protest they could become "martyrs." Mackmud Amnijinishit or whatever his name is, was actually one of the terrorists who held US citizens captive in Lebanon 30 years ago, thereabouts. This has been confirmed!

A little further away, Kim Jun Hell or whatever his name is, continues throwing his little temper tantrum. He's trying to start a war and has threatened to wipe the US off the map for once and for all. Nobody knows what to do about that ship headed for Myanmar.

But who cares about this because John and Kate are getting divorced! Who the hell are John and Kate? And why is Fox News even covering this shit when we're seconds away from nuclear hell?

What is this, Kanadia or something?

Where ya been?

Facebook, that's where.

There's a German company that is making gold vending machines. Yeah, it's getting that big.

So here's the deal with gold. Now that B. Hussein has ensured the dollar gets destroyed when the economy recovers, people will be blowing up the gold bubble even bigger.

My guess at this point? 2011 - 2012 timeframe for the gold bubble to pop.

Got It!

http://www.facebook.com/dan.kelley

A Great Way to Ruin a Nice Day

Every once in a while I have a dream.. no, a nightmare... about Andy and cancer. You know the details.

These dreams are wracked with emotion. They're fairly vivid but it's not the vividness (is that a word?) of the dream that bothers me. It's the intense emotions involved. I wake up feeling completely drained of all emotion and energy. I spend the day being a zombie, or at the very least putting on a persona for the unwashed masses.

I had one the night before last. It ruined my day yesterday.

I had one last night. It hasn't ruined my day yet, but I can tell you I have a hopeless feeling and have no motivation whatsoever.

Back to work.

REAL BBQ!

Not grilling today. Barbecuing! Smoking if you will. Julie got up at 5am to start coals for me. I got up 45 minutes later and put a brisket on. Seasoned and rubbed it last night. Should be good stuff! I don't know how long it will take but I assume we'll be eating sometime between 3 and 6.

We also have some babybacks to go on later as well.

Need to whip up a good BBQ sauce and we're gonna have a great day!

A Criminal Trial in St. Louis

I've learned a lot in the two days this week. Not the least of which is just how safe it is to be a juror in a criminal case in the city of St. Louis.

First of all, the STL Sheriff's Department rox. I know one of you are probably reading this thanks to Facebook. I have no problems with the Sheriff's Department. It's the Jury Supervisor that I think is to blame here.

So this kid was the victim of circumstance. But then again, he put himself in that circumstance to begin with, so really it was of his own doing.

In the end he was found guilty. I guess he was to appear later for sentencing, but he went home after the trial instead of to jail.

And this was good. Most members of the jury really felt for this kid. Never been convicted of anything, etc. (of course we found out later that he had 10 prior arrests with no convictions) Given the circumstances I kinda felt like this kid shouldn't have the book thrown at him. And I wasn't alone in this thinking.

So anyway after the trial we, the jury, walked out of the court room. In front of us was this kid visibly upset. "How the hell did I get myself into this?" kinda upset, not "let's go kill a juror" kinda upset.

We all stopped and let him get on the elevator before us. We took the next ride.

Then there he was with his family on the court steps. We had to walk right past the kid that we just found guilty of this particular crime.

We had to walk the several blocks, unescorted, to the Kiel garage at 15th & Clark. Alone.

And by alone, once you get to 15th and Market, you're alone. Nobody around to see anything that could happen to you.

And apparently it's this way for the witnesses as well.

Fortunately this kid viewed the jury as robots instead of blaming us individuals for his upcoming sentence. But the circumstances could have been very different.

I learned a lot in the last couple of days. The biggest lesson was that if I'm ever a potential criminal juror for the City of St. Louis, I'm going to express my concerns to the court in front of the judge, attorneys, and defendant, and let them decide if they want me to be a juror.