Injured State Trooper

You may have read in the paper or saw on the web or even caught the news on TV where a local (local to me at least) State Trooper was struck by a tractor trailer while conducting a traffic stop on June 14th.  Yes, a tractor trailer, and yes it actually hit HIM.  He was standing next to the car he pulled over when some @$$hole in a tractor trailer slammed in to his cruiser first and then hit the Trooper that was standing there.

Well, this Trooper is my next door neighbor and a really, really good friend of mine.  He is home and recovering now.  Not sure how it wasn't worse than what it is but he is extremely lucky to be alive.  Or for the godly people, God must have been watching him...but not too close though, otherwise the truck would have missed.  Anyways, he has a pretty jacked up shoulder and neck and he suffered a concussion.  He is home now and he is slowly recovering.

Here is my beef.  I looked up some info on the web and since he is actually not pulling people over and generating dollars for the State, they put this injured Trooper on "administrative pay."  This is 2/3 of their normal pay, and they do this for all injured Troopers.  Yes, you read it right.  They are PUNISHING him FINANCIALLY for getting hit by a 30 TON TRUCK.  Now, I don't know about you but if I took a 33% pay cut I would definitely have an extremely difficult time.  Sure, workers comp will pay the lost wages, and sure maybe he will get a chunk of dough from the trucking company but guess what?  Bills are due on the first of every month and it may be MONTHS until he gets any of those funds.  He may need a year to recover.  No one knows!  You just can't predict things like that.  Each pay period that goes by is going to get tougher for him and his family, just like it would with any of us.

This is why I set this up http://www.indiegogo.com/trooperavila?a=782100  This is a site where people can go and contribute to him not just for the hell of it, but because this is a man that has gone through some major horse doo-doo and he shouldn't have to worry about the next mortgage payment, or the next electric bill or the next school supply shopping trip for his 3 awesome kids.  We as a community should be more than willing to help a man that puts his life on the line every day to serve and protect.  His recovery period should be one thing, a recovery period.  Not a worry period.

Now I know some of you know this person and a lot of you don't.  I also know that some of you have really good jobs and some of you don't.  But it's going to feel good, whether you know him or not or whether you contribute $1 or $100, to know that you are stepping up and helping out.
 

Thank you all for supporting and thanks for reading!!!

Cheers!


K.A. Ball

Don't you hate when ____________?

TOP 25

You make microwaved popcorn and all the butter and seasoning sticks to the inside of the bag?  Should you lick it?

The person in front of you in the drive-thru line has a list?  Just ruined my day!!

As you are washing your hands in a public bathroom several people just walk right out?  You just touched your wiener Dude, wash your damn hands.

You finally decide what you want in the menu but when you order it they "are all out?"  Thanks for the heads up Bro!

People leave their cars running and the music blasting at the gas station?  Yeah, you have subs and listen to rap...we know.

You hear the noise flip flops make?  It's even worse when it's coming from my own feet.

On a plane, they still feel the need to remind you that you can't smoke?  Who the hell doesn't know that?

People smoke in their house?  Ummm...you stink, and now I do too...thanks.

People have bad spray tans? You look absolutely ridiculous.

Someone is in the left lane so everyone has to pass on the right and they STILL don't get over?  Move the F#@% out of the passing lane!!

You can only find one shoe?  Why is it not with the other one?

People that say carmel instead of caramel?  The "a" is there...pronounce it.

You turn off the shower and realize you forgot to put a towel on the hook?  It's cold, and now the floor is soggy.

Actors and actresses endorse politicians?  Did they forget that we know they act for a living?

You pay $10 to go to the movies and have to sit through 30 minutes of commercials and previews?  It's getting old.

You're ordering fast food and see the worker touch everything in the kitchen with the same glove they are making your food with?  Yeah, that glove is not so sanitary anymore.

People have been dieting for a year with no progress and ask you how they look?  Ummmm, happy?

Chef Boyardee has 20 different things that all taste exactly the same as Spaghetti Os?  You're not fooling anyone Buddy.

You step in dog poop?  Awwww man!

Tractor trailers ride next to each other on the highway blocking both lanes?  Makes my blood boil!

You're in a public restroom and you hear someone talking on the phone while going #2?  Seriously?  Call them back when you're done.

You're in the drive-thru and they say, "Just pull up there and we will bring it out to you."  Umm...no, I was in line first so I get my food first... and fast, like the sign says.

You're at a place of business and the employee complains to you about their job? Then quit!  But not before you finish ringing me up, I got shit to do.

All of a sudden you open your eyes and realize you are still driving? Guilty!

Some Guy you barely talk to keeps sending you invites to read his dumb ass blog?  Heyyyyyy now!


Cheers!


K.A. Ball

Out Of Wedlock Children

I read an article today that said that 41% of Americans still believe that a couple that has a child with out being married is WRONG.  Who are these people?  I really don't see what the big deal is.  Now, don't get me wrong I got married 2yrs before we had my Son but it really had to do with timing and whether we were ready.  I don't really think we said, "OK, we are married so now we are ALLOWED to reproduce."

In my family there are five Sons (Me plus my four older Brothers).  Between us five we have given my Parents seven grandchildren.  Two boys and five girls (2 of my brothers apparently aren't man enough to make boys).  My Son is the only one that was conceived after wedlock.  In fact, I am still the only one that has gotten married.  But this doesn't make my Brothers bad people, or the Grandkids bad kids, and my Parents definitely accept the kids because they are awesome and no matter what, they ARE BLOOD.  I am pretty sure my Brothers aren't going to go to hell because of this either.  My Son is not better than the rest because he is from married Parents, he is better than the rest merely by default, because his Parents are just WAY COOLER...lol!  No seriously, in my family he gets treated like the rest of the kids, he gets treated LIKE FAMILY.

I have heard of families not accepting a child as family because the child was born out of wedlock.  I can't imagine ever being so self-righteous that I wouldn't except a child in to my life that had some of MY blood running through his or her veins. It's definitely different when your Child comes home from High School and tells you she is pregnant or has gotten a girl pregnant.  But when your kid is in his or her 20's, or 30's even and decides to have a child with someone that they aren't married too, well then that's they're decision and it should be ACCEPTABLE FOR THE ENTIRE FAMILY.  Well, unless the other person is an asshole...

Bottom line is, it's OK to have an out of wedlock child.  Is it better to be married?  I have no clue.  Just be a Parent or Uncle or Aunt or Grandparent or whatever your Family Tie is to this child and love them for being in your life.  Don't judge these children for something that was completely out of their control.


Cheers!


K.A. Ball

Pyromania and Men

                                              
                                           
                                            How perfect is this picture?  I bet a Man took it...

Pyromania is defined as a compulsion to set things on fire according to dictionary.com.  I am pretty sure that if you are a Male, you suffer from this.  But is it really suffering, or just sweet??  I don't know if I have ever met another Man that doesn't like fire.  Maybe it's not even considered Pyromania, but just an infatuation.  I mean, think about it, fire is awesome.  It's bright, warm, colorful, crackly, smells good, and the best part is it burns things to nothing if it's hot enough.

My love of the flame goes back to when I was a kid, so I am guessing we are just born that way.  We used to take lighter fluid and spell our names in cursive in the backyard and then light one end of it.  If you have never done this before, I highly recommend it.  I do not recommend doing this in the garage though.  Sorry about the chair Mom.  My brother and I had fire pits all over our 18 acres of wooded property.  We would clear an area, cut down some trees for a perimeter, gather some large stones for our pit, get some wood, and start a fire.  Then we would sit back and cook some hotdogs while looking at dirty magazines and smoking stale cigarettes that we kept in a Ziploc bag.  Don't judge us, we were 10 and lived in the woods, this was our summer vacation.  Most of my fondest childhood memories include fire.  Whether it was when I was 6 and I dropped my hotdog in the fire and there wasn't anymore and David gave me his or when I was 9 and Wayne and I bent pipes shaped to resemble guns and shot bottle rockets at each other and caught the woods on fire.  We put it out, but why did it have to land in the leaf pile??  That made it a tad bit harder to extinguish.  Even when we went fishing we would start a small fire to keep the bugs away.  We used fire to light the firecrackers to blow up the crayfish we caught and we had a huge fire every Thanksgiving to burn all the brush and sticks that fell into the yard throughout the year.  That reminds me, when you are a Dad and you put gas on a giant pile of wood and you forget your Zippo.  Take the gas can with you when you walk back up to the house to get it because your kids will dump a lot more gas on it and when you light it you will blow back 10 feet and singe off your eyebrows and your beard.  Sorry Dad :)

Now, I don't recommend just going around starting fires, and I don't recommend dumping gas on a fire from a can that doesn't have a safety valve (as you may know, this is why I still have both hands).  But you can safely enjoy fire any time anywhere.  I have a fire pit in the back yard and I love it.  I like to put things in it and watch it change shape.  Whether it's something that burns, starts on fire, or melts it's interesting to watch it break down to ashes.  Some of you women would probably think, "Wow this guy is nuts!"  But you would be wrong, all Guys are like this.  Some may be in denial of their infatuation of fire, but it's true.  Some men only go camping just to light a fire.  You know why?  Because it's the best part.  Nobody loves sleeping in a tent, dealing with mosquitoes, and pooping in the woods.  It's the campfire that draws us in.  Sure the fishing is fun, but what happens after you catch the fish?  You start a fire and cook the damn thing!

Don't compare my love of fire, or any Man's love of fire to being an arsonist.  It's completely different.  Those people are crazy.  I, on the other hand, am just crazy in love.  Can't wait till later...


Cheers!


K.A Ball

Alcohol, Tobacco, and Marijuana...

Alcohol kills.  Smoking kills. Marijuana makes you hungry.  Yet, the ladder is illegal.  Do the math? 

This just doesn't make any sense.  Have you ever heard of alcohol poisoning? Think about that for a second.  The reason they call it that is because you have drank too much "poison." Yes, alcohol is essentially poison.  A delicious poison at times, but it is in fact poison.  They even have a poison meter, so you know how much poison is in the liquid that you consume. It's called proofing.  If you drink something that is 80 proof, that means that the liquid is 60% water and 40% poison.  Somehow the government thinks that it is OK to start to legally and slowly poison yourself when you turn 21 years old.  God forbid if you ever start to poison yourself before that age, you could go to jail.  We all know that 20 year olds aren't responsible enough to slowly poison themselves, that's just crazy (sarcasm).

Back to my first point, alcohol kills.  Approximately 100,000 people die each year in the U.S. from alcohol.  This includes all alcohol related deaths from disease, accidents, and homicides.  Yet, you can still go to store and buy it every single day of your life.  Also, think about how they manufacture alcohol.  They let fruits and plants rot and ferment...yum!

Now lets talk about smoking.  A cigarette isn't just made from tobacco.  There are over 4000 chemical additives in your average cigarette. Except for Winston, they are supposedly just plain ol' tobacco.  Some of the ingredients the Government allows tobacco companies to add to their cancer sticks are;

• Acetone – found in nail polish remover
• Acetic Acid –  an ingredient in hair dye
• Ammonia – a common household cleaner
• Arsenic – used in rat poison
• Benzene – found in rubber cement
• Butane – used in lighter fluid
• Cadmium – active component in battery acid 
• Cyanide – a deadly poison
• Formaldehyde – embalming fluid
• Hexamine – found in barbecue lighter fluid
• Lead – used in batteries
• Napthalene – an ingredient in moth balls
• Methanol – a main component in rocket fuel
• Nicotine – used as insecticide
• Tar – material for paving roads
• Toluene - used to manufacture paint 

Don't you think it is absolutely ridiculous that the Government allows these additives or even worse, that THE MANUFACTURERS ADD THESE CHEMICALS!!!  There are over 440,000 smoking related deaths each year in the U.S.  PLUS there are about 8,600,000 people that live with smoking related diseases.  This is kind of sad, if anything should be illegal it should be cigarettes and the CEO's of these big tobacco companies should be thrown in jail.

Now let's talk about marijuana.  It's just a plant. It's not manufactured. It has no additives.  The chemical that makes you feel funny is called Delta-9 Tetrahydrocannabinol. Also known as THC, this chemical wears off.  Does not have any long lasting side effects and never leads to dying.  I used to be a regular pot smoker, and I kind of just grew out of it I guess. But look, I turned out OK.  I am not some kind of bad person because of it.  In fact, I probably smoked with several of you that read this blog, and trust me, I have stalked your FB page (like we all do) and you guys seemed to turn out OK too...Haha!  If Marijuana is ever legal, I am not going to start smoking it again, but I think there are millions of people that could benefit from it.  Whether it's used for pain, stress, disease, or recreation it needs to be legal for Americans to choose for themselves if they want to use it or grow it or buy it from the store.  There is a pill form of THC called Marinol that you can get a prescription for, but that, again is manufactured.  God knows whats actually in it.  And how stupid does the Government sound when they say, "You can do THC in a pill form but don't you ever do it naturally No smoking it, no eating it, no vaporizing it.  Just buy our pills"  Can you imagine if all of a sudden the Federal Government said, "Tomatoes are ILLEGAL, but you can go get a pill form from the Pharmacy for lots of $$ even though you can grow them in your yard."  Silly isn't it? 

Look, I am not writing this because I think drinking and smoking cigarettes are only for bad people.  I do both.  A few Yuenglings and a Marlboro Light or two is my idea of a good Saturday night.  What I am saying is, marijuana is a weed that grows in the woods and for some reason if you are caught with it in your pocket you go to jail.  JAIL, for a plant....that grows in the woods.  Jail...


Cheers!


K.A. Ball

Supermoon and Meteors Saturday Night!

                          


Hey Everyone!  Don't forget that the Moon will becoming it's closest to the Earth all year and it will be a full Moon at the same time!!  The Moon orbits the Earth in an ellipse so it's distance from Earth constantly changes.  The Perigee is when the Moon is the closest and this is what we will be experiencing this weekend.  This will make the Moon look about 14% bigger and 30% brighter than usual, hence the term Supermoon.  The Moon becomes Full officially at 11:35pm on Saturday night.  So, in your Cinco de Mayo drunken state of mind, take a second to look at the Moon and see something spectacular!

A little later, if you haven't passed out yet, download your Google Sky Map and look toward Aquarius and you will most likely see some Meteors (this will be on the Eastern Horizon).  The eta Aquarid meteor show (left over dust from Halley's comet) peaks on Saturday night/Sunday morning.  Aquarius should start to become visible between 2am-2:30am on Sunday morning and you should be able to see meteors from then to sunrise.  You may be able to see a meteor every 2-3 minutes if you are in a darker area!  The Moon's light will make these difficult to see but you should still be able to see some pretty cool streaks.  You should be able to see fireballs shooting all the away across the constellation.  Some of these meteors are only as big as a grain of sand but because they are moving at 145K miles per hour, the friction it produces against our atmosphere creates the awesome light show!!! 

Have a Great WEEKEND!!!!!!!






                                             
                This Sky Map should help for people that can't download Google Sky Map.

Cheers!


K.A. Ball

Life Outside Our Planet?

                                           
                                        This image is a cluster that is 1/10 the diameter of the Moon...

...In other words The Universe is HUGE!  Earth is inside a giant galaxy called the Milky Way.  The Milky Way galaxy is estimated to be 100,000 light years across. A light year is roughly 5.9 Trillion miles.  This means our galaxy is about 5,900,000,000,000,000,000 across.  That's a lot of zeros.  I actually had to look up what comes after quadrillion, the answer is quintillion.  Our galaxy is about 5.9 quintillion miles across.  It has about 300 billion stars and about the same amount of planets.  Its is estimated that at least 10 billion of these planets may lie in what they call a "habitable zone."  This is where a particular planet orbits it's star in a similar spot where Earth orbits our Sun.  What's my point?  My point is there are billions and billions of galaxies like the Milky Way.  Don't you think it would be silly to think that there is no possible way that there is any form of life outside of Earth?  It's naive to think that we are alone in The Universe.  It shouldn't matter whether you believe in God or not, it's pretty much common sense.

It's almost comical when I see people write or hear them talk about how they think there is no life outside of our Solar System.  How could it mathematically be possible that we are alone?  It can't be possible and it isn't.  I am not saying that there are little green men roaming far away planets.  Life comes in all kinds of forms.  From bacteria to viruses to animals to plants.  There HAS to be some of that somewhere other than here.

There very well could be intelligent life somewhere else.  In fact, they could be so far ahead us in technology that they don't even care to visit us.  Think about how far we have come technologically in the last 150 years.  Can you imagine if there are life forms on other planets that are 1 million years ahead of us?  They don't need our resources, they don't need to probe us, and they don't need to abduct us.  They may not even have a way to get to us.  Think about this.  Even if we had some how figured out how to travel at the speed of light, it would take us 25,000 years to get outside the Milky Way from where Earth sits today.  So, a possible visit from any other life form from another galaxy is most likely never going to happen.  The only way this could ever happen is if they are so far advanced they figured out how to not only travel 100s or even 1000s of times faster then the speed of light, but also they would have to go into some sort of hibernation or a cryogenic state to survive long enough to get here.  Another way they could get here faster is to bend space.  Try this little experiment.  Take a piece of paper and draw a circle on both ends.  These represent galaxies.  Lets say that the space in between both galaxies are 1 billion light years apart. Now, let's bend space!  Grab both galaxies and bend the paper in a "U" shape so now the galaxies are almost touching.  We just bent space and now they are 100 light years apart. Tada!  So if they figured out how to travel at 100 times the speed of light, they will be here in a year.  Pretty crazy to think of, but hey who knows?

It's tough to know exactly what's out there but you got to admit there HAS to be something someplace somewhere somehow someday sometime.


Cheers!

K.A. Ball