Some Strange Directions from Google Maps...

Driving directions to Chick-fil-A

3D2D

(614) 438-5845

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4240 Melbourne Road Victory, OH 43509

	1. Head south on Melbourne Road
		1.6 mi
	2. Turn right onto OH-809 W/​Grant Hwy E
		3.2 mi
	3. Turn left to merge onto US-63 S toward Delaware
		31.3 mi
	4. Turn left onto OH-750 E/​E Powell Rd Continue to follow OH-750 E
		2.4 mi
	5. Turn left
		463 ft
	6. Turn left
		0.3 mi
	7. Turn right onto Gay Street
		0.2 mi
	8. Turn right Destination will be in the reservoir.
		322 ft

Chick-fil-A Chick-fil-A Bottom of the Reservoir, Columbus, OH 43240

And Now Some Words from Denzel Washington... I Mean, Malcolm X

via The People's Boycott on Facebook

Your local tank

     

    Hello there! Wander here from Wander without Being Lost; again Ben has graciously opened his doors to me and after the charged story he opened with earlier today I thought I would go another direction. this post is a slight spin off/reason for a poem on my site...and being the free plug whore that I am here is a link to that poem.

    About a month ago I was driving on highway 30 in Portland on my way to Sauvie Island and I drove past an abandoned gas station, then another. I remember thinking at the time “what a waste”, the building appeared to be in good working order, and the location was great for a station.

 It got me to thinking about how many abandoned gas stations there are all over Portland…then the thought expanded to the whole country. How many derelict gas stations are there in our country, and why?

    Now being the extremely busy person (and at times lazy) I haven’t had time to do an exhaustive search of every database; what I did do was to ask the Google!  Now the Google being all knowing and also all seeing told me to look at an article from the Herald Tribune. In this article the author claims that there are over fifty thousand abandoned gas stations in our country…if that number is to be believed that would mean that there are enough for every state in this country to have a thousand. Can you imagine that? One thousand empty fill stations in Wyoming, or Utah, Florida, Washington, Ohio and even Rhode Island. 

    Another article the google told me to look at was from the Pierce County Business Examiner, this article made claims that there were in upwards of two hundred thousand of these sites, and the norm for a clean up, just of the tanks and any contaminated soil, would be thirty to fifty thousand dollars.  That is just a shit load of money…three to five billion dollars on the low side.

    I am going to stop here. What I would like to have happen would be for you to do some research of your own…fill in the other blanks…what other costs are there, and why the hell don’t we completely transition to something safer, and cleaner, like hydrogen!

Wander

Images found on bing image...key words: abandoned gas stations, and old gas pumps

The Aurora Colorado Massacre

I told myself I would hold off saying anything political about the massacre in Aurora for at least a week. I didn't want to be divisive.  And I wanted us united as a country. I think, from what I've seen it happened, if only for a moment. The presidential candidates both mourned, their focus on the victims, not each other, the hospitals treated victims without cost and Christian Bale himself came to see the victims.

But, now, I must say what I've held back saying. A killer was able to buy three weapons in a short span of time as well as an unprecedented amount of ammunition. That there were no red flags attached to the purchase of these or the body armor is astounding. Believe me, I have no problem with people defending themselves. But it is insane how little protection the law offers. If everyone had had a gun and their concealed carry license in the theater the outcome would have been no less worse. An automatic weapon that fires a hundred rounds a minute, will not be easily stopped by a large group of unaware citizens. Especially in a dark location.

The federal assault weapons ban should never have lapsed. Let people have all the handguns they want. These are logical tools to defend themselves. An assault weapon's only purpose is for murder; in the military, on the streets and in Aurora.

That concludes this afternoon's rant.

Well, If You Won't Believe Me, This Guy Seems Pretty Religious...

via Enough Is Enough: the blog page on Facebook

"Bane" Capital

via Being Liberal on Facebook

“Do you know the name of the villain in this movie?” Limbaugh asked his listeners. “Bane. The villain in ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ is named Bane. B-A-N-E. What is the name of the venture capital firm that Romney ran and around which there is now this make-believe controversy? Bain. The movie has been in the works for a long time, the release date has been known — summer 2012 — for a long time,” he added. “Do you think that it is accidental that the name of the really vicious, fire-breathing, four-eyed, what-ever-it-is villain in this movie is named Bane?”

And Now a Smack with a Sock Full of Truth Rocks...

via Being Liberal on Facebook

Texas Law Defunds Providers Who ‘Promote’ Abortion

In an article provided by Kimberly Johnson of Addictinginfo.org, she discusses a new Texas law that cuts funding for doctors mentioning abortions. Whether you agree with the practice or not, I feel this goes too far. Teachers have been banned elsewhere (Tennessee) from mentioning homosexuality. How much longer will we force our personal views on professionals and threaten them for not towing the line?

Santorum's Endorsement?

via I'm Voting for Barack Obama In 2012

A Conversation Thirty Years From Now...

My grandchildren and I are sitting in a platformed house far up in the sky.

Rebecca: Tell us another story, grandpa.

Lance: Is it true people who loved each other couldn't get married when you were a kid?

Me: It is.

Rebecca: Why not?

Me: Well, Rebecca and Lance, there were groups of individuals who saw it as their moral duty to prevent others from sinning.

Lance: What's sinning?

Me: It means being very bad.

Lance: Like breaking the law?

Me: Not exactly. It means making God mad.

Rebecca: But God doesn't get mad. He loves us all!

Me: I know, and believe me, it's what a great many tried to get across.

Lance: Why did they think love was a sin?

Me: They fell victim to the same things people do in everytime. They saw a group different than themselves and decided it was best for them to be the same.

Rebecca: But, they didn't want to, did they?

Me: No, they did not.

Rebecca: What did they do?

Me: They marched, they protested, they petitioned and they sacrificed for many years.

Lance and Rebecca: Wow.

Me: It was very impressive to live through.

Lance: Grandpa?

Me: Yes?

Lance: What side were you on?

Me: I was on a lot of wrong sides, but I knew from the beginning that this was the right one.

Rebecca: Did you ever have doubts?

Me: I never doubted the cause, Rebecca. I sometimes doubted if we'd win. I'm not proud of it but I did.

Rebecca: I'm glad love won. I hate hate.

Me: Oh, Rebecca. Don't hate. Not even hate itself. You have to love, as hard as it might seem. It's the only way to make things better in this world.

Lance: [Yawning] That was a great story, grandpa. You want to go play rocket tag, Rebecca?

Rebecca: Yeah, just a second.

Exit Lance

Me: What's wrong, Rebecca?

Rebecca: There's this guy I like at school. He's from Andromeda though and the other kids would laugh at me.

Me: Then be thankful. They could do much worse than laugh.

Rebecca: Thanks, grandpa.

Me: You're welcome, Rebecca. Go out and have fun, now. Don't worry about me.

Exit Rebecca

The world's not half as dark as when I found it.

Remember This.

Liberal or conservative, they fight for us all. Sometimes, long after the gunshots end.

Mullen: 18 veterans kill themselves every day in the U.S.

By Stephen C. Webster
Monday, July 2, 2012 12:04 EDT

Navy Admiral Mike Mullen (ret.), former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an audience in Aspen this weekend that military has “18 vets a day who are killing themselves in the United States” due to the incomprehensible stresses of military life, which he said are compounded by a public that is increasingly disconnected from the ongoing wars.

Military suicides rose dramatically after the start of the Iraq war, according to a recent study by the Army’s Public Health Command. That same study found that in 2008, 1 in 5 U.S. soldiers voluntarily submitted to a mental health evaluation, “implying a prevalent public health problem.” Since then, the military’s suicide rate has continued to climb, hitting a 10-year high in 2012, even though U.S. forces are almost entirely withdrawn from Iraq.

s bad as that sounds, it gets worse: Those figures only account for active duty soldiers, and not soldiers who have returned to private life. If Mullen is correct, then the problem of military suicides is even worse than previously known.

“If I’m a 5-year-old boy or girl in the family of one of these deploying units for the army whose average deployment was 12 months at a time, and my dad or mom – but mostly my dad – has deployed at this pace, I’m now 15 or 16 years old, and my dad has been gone three, four or five times,” Mullen explained during an appearance at the Aspen Ideas Festival last weekend. “And my whole conscious life, from the time when I was 5 and I started to figure out that there was something out there, my whole conscious life has been at war. The United States has never, never experienced that before. And we see incredible stresses on families.”

President Barack Obama’s former top military adviser’s response was triggered by a question about offering more compensation to soldiers in exchange for their sacrifices, essentially converting the military into a mercenary-style force instead of a volunteer army.

That possibility seemed to disturb Mullen greatly.

“Indicative of [those stresses] is the incredible suicide rate we have on the active side, which is even despite all the efforts of leadership to contain it, is in the army this year higher now than it was a year ago,” he said. “And another statistic that hasn’t gotten much traction is that we’ve got 18 vets a day who are killing themselves in the United States.”

Mullen added that the military has become less present to the American people thanks in part to an all-volunteer force that is paid in salaries and benefits to fight and die on the president’s orders.

“But, I do worry that it’s just, ‘Please go off and fight our wars, we don’t want to be bothered’ — that the whole country isn’t in,” he said. “We’re not there, but at some point we cross the line where, essentially, it’s not unlike mercenary forces from other countries… which may be another option. I think the United States of America, without its military being a direct output of its people’s will, and understanding what that is, is a disaster for us in the long run.”