Than Shwe Antoinette

This may only be funny to me but after reading an article about Than Shwe kicking refugees out of the camps and sending them back to the delta with the excuse that they could eat frogs, I decided to have a little fun.

While it is generally accepted that Marie Antoinette never said "Let them eat cake", there's little doubt the Burmese junta wouldn't even be that generous with their starving, dying population. They are, however, loudly condemning all of us for not coughing up 11 billion in aid for them, in cash paid directly to the ruling junta natch. No doubt that is why they've had to resort to stealing aid intended for their victimized populace. Hard to afford things like million dollar weddings on a small country's budget. Doubtless that 11 billion would go a long way towards finishing up the renovations at the junta's new bunker... er, capitol.

Sooner or later the Burmese people will rise up and slaughter him and his ilk just like the Romanians and Italians did to their own despotic leaders in years past. Their total lack of weapons won't matter. They'll simply lose their minds from all the crap that's been inflicted upon them for decades, and tear the bastards to shreds with their bare hands.

Blade

Thought I'd show off Blade. Took this at 2 weeks old. He's on my waterbed with his favorite stuffed teddy bears. Yes he's living in the house for now. Believe it or not he's pretty well housetrained... or well, he'll pee on a towel on the floor. I just had to make sure there wasn't any other cloth on the floor because he doesn't care if it's a towel or my dirty clothes. Spoilt rotten is an understatement. I'm about to go out to the barn and set him up a private stall so he can stay in it during the day. I'd let him out with the main group but I don't trust Diesel.

Hindsight is a bitch

When I bought this place the pastures were in mediocre condition. The middle and back pasture were dominated by 10 ft tall sunflowers, ragweed, tumbleweed, and careless weeds. The back one had one large patch of bermuda, and another large section of switchgrass. In the winter, both of them covered up in rye. Overgrazed to be sure, but not destroyed. I figured by running the goats on them, it'd eradicate the weeds and give the grass time to come back. I didn't understand the concept of rotational grazing or the real causes of overgrazing at the time.

The other day I went out and walked the middle pasture and took a long hard look at bad it's gotten in the last 10 years. As expected, the ragweed is completely gone, along with the tumbleweeds, and the careless weeds and sunflowers are following suit. However, there was not a single blade of grass of any sort in the center pasture. Instead, thick carpets of purple nightshade, thistle, cockleburr, and buffalo burr coat the majority of the pasture. It's a complete wreck out there, and I can only blame myself for it.

I'm marking out new fencing for the center pasture now, 4 paddocks 100 ft wide and 400 ft deep, with hooks to subdivide them via temp electric fencing down to 20 ft wide sections. Spent yesterday afternoon spraying the worst patches of buffalo burr and thistle, will order grass seed this weekend to start putting down. I'm thinking if I rotate them once a week, that will give each section a solid trampling down and then a month to rest before being regrazed. That plus running some irrigation lines along the fence should help to bring this one back.

The back pasture needs to be shredded and seeded. It's got a bad patch or two of nightshade but still has a lot of native grasses in it. I'll figure out how to divide it up after I get the center one done.

If I'd done this 10 years ago, when I was making twice what I make now, I'd not be looking at this mess of prickly poisonous weeds taking over. File that in the Too Late Now folder I guess.

Zenni Optical

I tend to buy 90% of what I need online. A while back my glasses broke and I was faced with either paying $150 for some ugly ass frames here in town, or squinting a lot. I decided to see what I could find online, and I found Zenni Optical. Frames start at $8, shipping is $4.95 no matter how many pairs you get. I'm guessing they are getting the frames out of China because they've got a lot of designer knockoff looking frames.

I've gotten three pairs from them so far. The most expensive pair ran me $27 including shipping. That's with anti glare coating, tinting, and a half rim frame. If you need glasses or prescrip sunglasses but are short on cash, you have to check this place out.

Now for the warning. If you are of average brights, you won't need the following but I post it anyway for those folks who get pissed off when they get something for nothing and then don't get their butts kissed in the process.

1. The glasses cost less than a trip to the chicken hut. Do not expect them to be the same quality frames as say a $200 pair of D&G frames. They're very thin and lightweight. Actually that's why I like them so much, feels like I'm not wearing anything. That said, mine have survived a lot of abuse so provided you don't run over them (like I did to one pair), they should last plenty long enough to justify their paltry price.

2. The glasses cost less than a trip to the chicken hut. Do not expect the customer service to be any better than what you'd get from the crackheads that work there. It's pretty much nonexistent.

3. When you fill out the order form, do not screw up anything. If you put in the wrong address or the wrong sphere measurement, you'll just have to eat the loss. They're not going to send you a free replacement because you were too lazy to double check all the info and make sure it was right.

Blade

In a nod to the vampire trilogy featuring the now incarcerated Wesley Snipes, I named my solid black bottle lamb "Blade". He is currently asleep on my feet under my desk. His mother didn't have any milk, and by the time I found him he was more than 24 hours old and hadn't had any colostrum. I mixed up powdered colostrum in his bottle for a week, can't hurt right? Been keeping him indoors most of the time to avoid him picking up any nasties from the other sheep, but I had to leave him at the clinic over the weekend and he came home with a head cold. Adding B12 and antibiotics to his bottle now, so far he doesn't seem to notice the taste.

Speaking of taste, I tried lamb milk replacer once and it tastes like ass. No wonder it's so hard to get them to take a bottle at first. I would have to be starving to drink that swill too. And so I bring you my own lamb milk replacer mix that no lamb of mine has ever refused.

Take a gallon milk jug, pour in 1 cup of buttermilk, 1 cup of heavy cream, and 1 can of evaporated milk (not the low fat crap either), then fill jug up with whole milk.

Basically the same thing that a lot of goat people use, but I upped the milk fat by adding the heavy cream. It smells sweet and it must taste good because I've had lambs who had been nursing on their dams come over to try to steal his bottle. So far he's growing fast and is fat as a tick. It's not cheap... not with milk running $4-5 a freakin gallon now days... but for the occasional bottle lamb I can handle it.

Shaving Jack

Since the temps are climbing nearly to 100F now, I decided it was time to shave Jack down. This is a biyearly undertaking, once in May and again in late July, and it's an all day affair to remove the matted, cocklebur infested pelt that encases him. I've gotten into countless arguments with Pyr purists who insist this breed does not need shearing, but to them I say, piss off. Until they've had one running amok in the west Texas brush for a few years, they don't know jack. Or in this case, Jack. Originally I had wanted something with short hair, like an Anatolian or Akbash, but Jack was given to me 6 years ago as a pup and I wasn't going to quibble about hair on a free dog.

Last summer I passed on the $100 grooming visit and just bought a pair of $25 clippers at ChinaMart. I viewed these clippers as a disposable item, because no one would expect them to survive more than one shave down. They did a pretty good job, but as expected, did not last long enough for a repeat shave. This time, I borrowed a friend's clippers to do the deed.

I should have known better.

Normally you'd bathe the dog prior to letting the blades anywhere near them, but Jack's coat forms an impenetrable barrier once it mats up, and any attempt to get him clean is futile. He's actually 1/4 Kommodor, which I suspect is why his coat dreadlocks if left unattended for more than a few days. This meant I had to clip him dirty, and calling Jack dirty is calling Scientologists misguided. He was filthy, and before I had even gotten his hips cleared off, the clippers dulled to the point of uselessness.

That left me with scissors, and dull ones at that. Only the very tips would cut, so through the matted mess I went, snip snip snip a few hairs at a time. Chunk by disgusting chunk came away, held together by thousands of fuzzy little burrs. Fine white hair was everywhere, in the air, covering my clothes, wrapping around my teeth. It seemed as if for every hair I cut, twenty more appeared on me. Jack was fairly stoic about the ordeal, until I got to his butt. This led to a half hour of him trying to sit down, and me trying to make him stand up so I could clip the dingleberries free. Gross. Working my way down his tail proved nerve wracking, since he'd broken the very tip years ago and now it's crooked end was buried deeply in the middle of everything. Eventually I got around the tip and peeled the pelt off like a filthy fur muff.

Three hours later, and still only 1/4 of the way through, I let Jack loose, and leaned back to survey the disaster on my porch. Huge piles of hair lay in drifts against the door, and coated my flowerbeds. It looked as if I'd clipped twenty dogs, but Jack hardly looked touched save the one spot on his hip where the clippers worked.

Guess I will buy another $25 set of clippers tomorrow and try to finish the job.